Is Reality a Social Construction ?

LW


This is the antithesis of what JLN and I have been saying. Is that what you imply ?

I think it should be interpreted that way! General Symantics would likely show us going in the right direction and, after all, he's giving the orders!

Well said, except I would use the word "magnified" rather than "slightly."

The use of the term "concrete things" is the epitome of "naive realism".
Number 5 in my list is transcendent of that position.

A more extreme rejection of naive realism comes from Maturana who argues there are "no sense data" and "no ontic reality" from a biological perspective. He relegates language to the position of "the co-ordination of cordinations within an organism". ..."Individuals" are a "linguistic construction".

Some magnify (maybe drama queens?),but there you go, that's your slightly different viewpoint.

However, Mencken may have hit the nail-on-the-head:

"We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine."

....provided that "we" . "here", and "now" are axiomatic .
Non-locality findings suggest anything but for the last two !

No things (beings), only processes.

Yes, there's a problem in conveying the dissipation of I/We. Such an idea is predominantly experiential rather than intellectual.

However, Capra (et al) does give a possible model when he speaks of hierarchies of organization: "Life" ( aka "cognition")is structured at ascending levels...cells...organisms...societies....>. Indviduals at one level become components at the next level. There was a good TV programme recently on swarms of ants etc which likened them to brain cells contributing to "swarm decisions".

A second potentially helpful model is one involving Bohm's concept of "implicate order". Non-locality of particles is taken by him to imply that what appear to be "individuals" are in fact dispersed instances of "a holistic consciousness". He explains this by analogy to folding paper, cutting a single hole, which then appears as multiple holes when the paper is unfolded. The Yin-Yang principle allows us to inderstand that even the first hole is only "a hole" by virtue of its surrounding contrast of "non holeness". Thus both "self/other" and "self/not self" are unified.

Yes, I prefer "emergence" (ascending levels/orders) to "reduction" (descending levels...).
My response to LW was based on Nietzsche's notion of "becoming" vs. "being."
Everything is in process of becoming something else rather than a Newtoning world of fixed/static beings affecting each other mechanically.
You're right. This insight requires experience, especially the kind of experience involved in meditation (in its many possible forms) rather than the intellectual manipulation of abstract "things", e.g. invariant relationships between all As and all Bs.

I agree; change is constant, and nothing remains the same.

In what respect do you think the 'intellectual enlightenment' differs from the buddhist concept?
The Buddha's main teaching was verbal differentiation. It is possible to understand that humans are constructed by language... but yet we still reach this through a system of language and logic.

I think many of the non-intellectual elements of buddhism are paradoxical, by attempting to achieve a positive life path we are still chasing an abstract goal...
even if it may be a more rewarding one than money or drugs or the like...

I don't know enough about Buddhism to comment specifically, but if Buddhists are seeking some "goal" then this is where they depart from what you call "intellectual enlightenment". The latter transcends "goals" and "paths" in so far as the concept of "time" within which those concepts have meaning is itself deconstructed. (Ref: "The Ending of Time" Bohm and Krishnamurti)

PQ, What are the "non-intellectual elements of buddhism?"

As I understand Buddhism--aside from its spurious popular versions with their other-worldly and supernaturalist mythologies--it is more a kind of "spiritual" psychology than it is the pursuit of scientific truths about the "objective" physical and social world. Buddhism is fundamentally different, even though many of us use it in our pursuits of "intellectual enlightenment."
It IS transcendental in the sense that it tells us what the world is not rather than what it is. "Neti, neti" (neither this, nor that) is a famous response to questions about which poles of dualistic conceptual frameworks are preferrable. The Heart Sutra abolishes all dualistic meaning, telling us to go (always) BEYOND all shores; ultimate reality is found neither on this side nor on the other. Nirvana (the mysterious goal of Buddhism) is the state of being beyond all deluded thoughts--and all thoughts are delusions.
Where does that leave the phrase, intellectual enlightenment?

Honestly I believe that the phrase is misleading from the start. Enlightenment is of intellect and emotion, and all other aspects of the human experience that you would like to include as factors that are active in deciding your "fate".
It is the perfect communication of all the conflicting aspects of the human experience, that we at any given time strive to form into a coherent focus.

Yes, in addition to intellect and emotion, it must also include environment and gene. Those are the factors that influences our lives.

Yes, C.I., it would include the person as a totality of sorts. I don't want to overstate the point but it would also include the less than conscious levels of human experience. I said elsewhere that "enlightenment," as it is understand in much of Asia, is acquired more in monastic settings rather than in more narrowly defined educational settings.

Yes, C.I., it would include the person as a totality of sorts. I don't want to overstate the point but it would also include the less than conscious levels of human experience. I said elsewhere that "enlightenment," as it is understand in much of Asia, is acquired more in monastic settings than in more narrowly defined educational settings.

Yes, any particular thing we can single out to describe our experience would be included. But from a vantagepoint of enlightenment they would all be unfinished descriptions that require endless elaboration to be true.