What is "Real"

Thank you Fresco.
Do you think this understanding ever had any benefit to the research you mention?
I don't know the nature of your research, but do you think that there was ever a point where you achieved something because more 'options' were open in your mind due to your stance- Enabling you to follow thought trains unavailable to others?

I can imagine this position is extremely isolating- especially considering Cyracuz's last comment. Do you find that a frustration?

I would agree with Fresco that you understand more than you are claiming, but I like your approach of not claiming authority and remaining relativist. However, I suppose this only works 'inside' the construct. Fresco transcends this by 'disregarding' language in a sense and becoming 'objective', whereas you present your opinions from 'inside?'
I think the positions are pretty much the same?

Also, JL, sorry the same question goes to you-

Cyracuz, how does this change the way you operate in 'everyday life' which demands that you communicate with others in a dualistic fashion? If you are so focused on unity, is it easy to snap back into acting in accordance with the 'conventional' manner of understanding?

PQ, everyday life is a blend of the concepts unity and dualism. The concept of unity is in itself only valid as an oposite of something. Language is naturally restricted by this, but not thought. One thing that becomes simpler with this in mind is to remember things. If you deconstruct the dualisms into a single mental image or landscape you have one single object to remember.
Of course, dualism isn't eliminated, you merely applied it consciously in a way that benefitted you.
In most aspects of daily life, wether to percieve dualism or unity in any given object or situation is determined for us, perhaps subconsciously and collectively. But there are exceptions. Times when it is not given which concepts apply where. And then there are times when you have to let all these things go and become a seamlessly integrated part of whatever function you are performing just to get it right.

Hardly "enabling" ! I left psychological research with the distinct realization that most of behaviouristic psychology was pseudo-scientific bunk...a view that has yet to be changed. What it did do was push me towards philosophy in the sense that so-called "difficult" stuff like the later Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, or Piaget's "genetic epistemology" seemed obvious to me. Little "me's" could certainly get frustrated with others who could not understand some of these areas, but "self-transcedence" can ameliorate that frustration.

Very good!

Very good!

I wonder if the question can be answered mathematically?

Unfortunately the word "real" takes on a particular significance in mathematics being the adjunct of "imaginary" in complex number theory. I remember being slightly "mind-boggled" at age 16 when I was taught that the "imaginary numbers" are multiples of "the square root of minus one" and lie on an axis at right angles to the "real" number line !

On the other hand, it has always been my contention that we lack the mathematics which describes the mutual interaction of "thinger" and "thinged". Some attempts have been made at the edges of this concept such "second order cybernetics" (the observation of observation) and "non binary logic", but I don't see any signs of a general solution.

Mr Goswami, who I have become very facinated with, starts with the idea that the world is inherently consciousness and that physical existence is secondary; a result of conscious activity. He claims quantum physics makes this "clear as day".

He says that subject and object arise from tangled hierarchical measurement in the brain, but it is not the brain that is causing them. From the inside of consciousness, he says, it seems like subject creates object and object creates subject, but that is an illusory manifestation of consciousness.

I would really like to hear what you guys make of this.

Ask a bloke before he's shot by a firing squad. He could give you a definitive answer.

Spendi, you are still inside the thing we are looking at...

By your argument we are still inside what Mr Goswami is not looking at.

Are you imagining this thread?

We would need to read more of Goswami to understand this point. But in as much that "subject" and "object" are normally thought of as "separate" and"physical", I would concur that that is a pragmatic "illusion". It is the equivalent of separating a river (consciousness) into "the water" and "its bed".

Yes, I am imagining this thread. What else?

Blimey fresco--do you not understand quantum physics. Quantum physics makes it as "clear as day". Can't you read or what?

Yes, more reading is neccesary. But so far it seems to me he is trying to connect consciousness to quantum mechanics. He refers to the world as probability, and what actually happens as choice.

I think I've linked this video in at least 3 different threads now, counting this one... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s42mrdhKwRA
Sorry for the spam..

He's a weaver of the winds Cyr. Intellectuals with names such as he has always are.

Does he make his statements as subject or object or both or neither?

I suspect he is rounding up a sort of harem of Oxbridge ladies or rock stars who have run out of ideas.

That sounded like wind to me.

Yes

More wind.


But hey, wind rocks the boat