What is "Real"

@fresco,

you mention Krishnamurti. As it happens I am reading one of is books entitled "on love and loneliness"; a very insightful man. I think I recall you, Fresco, putting up a link of some of his thought on one of my posts, which as a result got me interested in him.

how much of his work have you read, if any, and what do you think of his thought?

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@existential potential,

I have listened to his audios and videos (check u-tube) more than I have read, though I have read most of "The Ending of Time" (K in discussion with the physicist David Bohm). His message is somewhat repetitive but it gradually reinforces the method of pointing listeners inwards on themselves and conducting self-enquiry. This amounts to non-prescriptive meditation in order to observe "the self" non-judgementally. I rate this activity to be as effective as any prescriptive system in promoting transcendental experiences ( experiences such as "dissipation of self" or "holistic consciousness", both of which might be called "spiritual" by some).

K's rejection of all organized religion (and nationalism) attracted many intelligent atheists with "spiritual leanings" to his door. His invitations to address the UN followed from this. His rejection of "guruhood" was also attractive, but ironically it was perhaps in keeping with a "less than saintly" private life.

I would rate K highly for those seeking something beyond materialism and who are suspicious of "cultish" systems.

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Oh my gosh, I've just discovered this interesting thread. Got to go back and read it from the beginning. See you later.

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I like to think that EVERYTHING is "real", even fantasies, illusions and mirages are REAL fantasies, illusions and mirages.

or perhaps everything is unreal.

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@JLNobody,

I think you are spot on JL.

But real as opposed to illusory then become sub-categories of reality.
In this sense it seems to me that what is real is generally thought of as what we can sense. Sentience is perhaps the only "unquestionable" measure we have of reality. The common ground of all humans. For the rest there is discussion, experiments and theories, but nothing definite that all humans can relate to as naturally as they can their own senses.

I say "unquestionable" since our senses are the starting point for any inquiry into what is real or not.

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But when I think a little more about it, I believe most people just use the word "real" as a substitute word for "physical". Real is simply what you can see or hear etc..

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@Cyracuz,

Perhaps real vs. unreal is more pernicious a dualism than is good vs. bad.

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@Cyracuz,

Perhaps real vs. unreal is more pernicious a dualism than is good vs. bad.

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@JLNobody,

Note that "perniciousness" is a social evaluation, which seems to illustrate two issues related to language:
(1) Heideger's view that Dasein (our being) is "thrown" (as in pottery) in language.
(2) Maturana's view that all "observation" involves "description".

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@fresco,

How does Maturana explain his view that all observation involves description?
What does he put into the term observation?

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@Cyracuz,

Maturna distinguishes between "the realm of the observer" and "cognition". Cognition is another term for "the general life process" in which all organisms adapt to perturbations from sources outside their structure. But "to observe" involves distinguishing a "self" ( self-awareness) as separate from a source of perturbation.

Quote:

According to Maturana, all linguistic activity or "languaging" takes place "in the praxis of living: we human beings find ourselves as living systems immersed in it". Languaging, for Maturana, does not mean conveying news or any kind of "information", but refers to a social activity that arises from a coordination of actions that have been tuned by mutual adaptation. Without such coordination of acting there would be no possibility of describing and, consequently, no way for the distinctions made by an actor to become conscious. To become aware of distinctions, is called observing. To observe oneself as the maker of distinctions, therefore, is no more and no less than to become conscious of oneself. Maturana has recently described this very clearly:

Quote:
...if we accept that what we distinguish depends on what we do, as modern physics does, we operate under the implicit assumption that, as observers, we are endowed with rationality, and that this need not or cannot be explained. Yet, if we reflect upon our experience as observers, we discover that our experience is that we find ourselves observing, talking, or acting, and that any explanation or description of what we do is secondary to our experience of finding ourselves in the doing of what we do.

The salient point in this closed circle is the basic condition that Maturana repeats so frequently, namely that what is observed are not things, properties, or relations of a world that exists "as such", but rather the results of distinctions made by the observer himself or herself. Consequently, these results have no existence whatever without someone's activity of distinguishing.

Von Glasersfeld

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@Cyracuz,

To understand this you need to bear in mind that Maturana is taking a phenomenological point of view, not one that requires "an external world" to be observed. Rather "observation" in the active construction of such a world via language.

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JL and Fresco, whilst you are on the same thread.
I hope you don't mind me asking- You are/were both academics- does this insight/understanding have any bearing on what you are doing? Presumably your work has shaped your thought process in a kind of dialectic. Obviously in much of what you do you this kind of a thought pattern is unobservable to anyone else- but it must pose some kind of a bearing on your work, however small.

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@The Pentacle Queen,

I would guess Queenie that they have jobs where they talk down to the sweating masses and it causes them to adopt an aloof tone generally.

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@spendius,

Quote:

and it causes them to adopt an aloof tone generally

did i blink and miss the fox following its own scent

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@The Pentacle Queen,

In my case, PQ, I am retired from my 23 years academic job, but my general "constructivist/phenomenological" orientation has been influenced (for better or for worse) by at least three conditions: (1)my inexplicable personality in the broadest sense, (2) my academic profession in a narrow sense (to be explained by PM), and (3) my fifty some years as a practicing meditator. I have no "insights" that would lead me to (or justify) my talking down to my fellow A2Kers. Indeed, I often fail to understand much that Fresco offers--at least not without considerable effort.

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@The Pentacle Queen,

PQ,

I am a now a semi-retired school director having taught and researched the psychology and philosophy of language many years ago. Both the "leadership role" of my current occupation and the psychology of "retirement" are aided by an ability to stand back and objectivise the concept of "self". I should add that this mode can come with the price tag of isolation (as in Camus "The Outsider")

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@JLNobody,

JLN,

You understand more than you imply ! Most of my exposition comes from trying to make sense of the "mainstream" subjects which I have been obliged to teach for financial gain, especially the traditional "logic" which is used to underpin them.

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@JLNobody,

Quote:

In my case, PQ, I am retired from my 23 years academic job, but my general "constructivist/phenomenological

Right then. We are here to ask an expert. On the matter of eidetic intuition what do you consider the universal essence of femininity to be?

Do you think academic work is designed to distort such an essence and create separate individual essences none of which are congruent with the eidetic essence.

Would it be reasonable to hold an eidetic intuition regarding Queenie?

Is the academic phenomenologician an eidetic essence or a silly sod who has talked his way into a comfy job well out of the way of the ****-shifting which he presumably creates the demand for at a level above the average directly proportional to his pay differential from average pay?

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Thanks for the explanation fresco.

I have been so focused on the unity of all things lately that the mechanics of dualism have started to appear strange to me, as once oneness did...

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What is "Real"

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