does reality exist before Human existence and thinking exist ?

@kennethamy,

Sorry, You've had all the arguments you are going to get !

BTW that "Nonsense" T-shirt goes well with the hearing aid and the thick spectacles.

Keep jogging ! Wink

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Sorry, You've had all the arguments you are going to get !

BTW that "Nonsense" T-shirt goes well with the hearing aid and the thick spectacles.

Keep jogging !

What is it with you and age? Do you also dislike black people and women? Or are you just a selective bigot? Perhaps you think that the argument, you must be mistaken because you are old is a valid argument. I would not be surprised given the caliber of your other arguments. Calm down. it does not really help to lash out stupidly just because you cannot argue your way out of a paper bag. Your IQ is not your fault. It is mostly inherited. So blame it on your parents. And keep in mind that I was not always old, but you have always been stupid.

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@kennethamy,

How could "we" exist without "Reality", and how could Reality exist without us, given "it" is our ground and we are its expressions? Why the separation in your question?

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Well guessed. It was Einstein.
And the fact that you don't understand him either, was well demonstrated.

Your "puzzlement" comes from the fact that you are unaware that you are stuck with the layman's use of "time" as a social convention useful for predicting and planning our interactions. For modern physicists it has no status of its own independent of "space" (hence "space-time"), and by extrapolation "space-time" too only has "existence" in relationship to concepts which ultimately correlate with human observations.

(My other answer was to North. I don't intend to go through your misunderstanding of Wittgenstein with you)

fresco , specifically what other answer to ME were you referring to ?

spell it out

north

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@north,

No sorry, it was in fact to Failures Art, but I could not read the latter name when responding to Ken.

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

How could "we" exist without "Reality", and how could Reality exist without us, given "it" is our ground and we are its expressions? Why the separation in your question?

Why are you asking me? I hope you don't think that I believe that the Moon could not exist unless people exist. For we know that the Moon did exist long before people exist. Address your question to Fresco. It is never clear just what he thinks, but apparently he thinks that people existed before the Moon (I think he gives some reason he believes that. It has to do with "thingyness" but I have no idea what that is, as I am sure you don't (or maybe Fresco doesn't either).

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@JLNobody,

JLN,
Ken hasn't worked out yet that he is looking at "that ancient moon" in his mind' eye, every time he verbalizes the concept, thereby falsifying his premise of "no observer". Bishop Berkeley was aware of the problem and " solved it" by making "God" the "ultimate observer".

Now instead of attempting to understand the problem, which essentially makes the OP question vacuous (unless you are a theist), Ken is likely to jump on my use of "falsify" because it triggers his formal logic mode. The fact that such logic depends on human concepts of "set membership" will no doubt continue to escape him.

There seems to be no way in which he is going to understand non-dualistic thinking which of course would ultimately require him to relinquish his "comfort zone" on which he fabricates his "self integrity".

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

JLN,
Ken hasn't worked out yet that he is looking at "that ancient moon" in his mind' eye, every time he verbalizes the concept, thereby falsifying his premise of "no observer". Bishop Berkeley was aware of the problem and " solved it" by making "God" the "ultimate observer".

Now instead of attempting to understand the problem, which essentially makes the OP question vacuous (unless you are a theist), Ken is likely to jump on my use of "falsify" because it triggers his formal logic mode. The fact that such logic depends on human concepts of "set membership" will no doubt continue to escape him.

There seems to be no way in which he is going to understand non-dualistic thinking which of course would ultimately require him to relinquish his "comfort zone" on which he fabricates his "self integrity".

From the fact that I cannot think of the Moon existing without thinking of Moon existing, it does not follow that unless I can think of the Moon as existing, that the Moon cannot exist. I am well aware of that argument of Berkeley's (and I thought I had its exact reference, but apparently I did not). But it is obviously invalid, as I have just shown in the first sentence of this post. In fact, it is this argument (and its various versions) that was given a kind of prize by the Australian philosopher, the late David Stove as "the worst argument in the world". See,
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/worst.html

Now, I have to confess that I am not sure it is the worst argument in the world, and certainly not the worst philosophical argument in the world, since there is a hell of a lot of competition. But it is certainly among the top contenders for being the worst argument in the world. But what is peculiar about it is that it is so obviously invalid, and yet people keep falling for it, and even using it, as you just did. Again, to repeat, because it might not yet have sunk it, how can it follow from the undoubted truth that I cannot think of something without thinking about it, that that something cannot exist without its being though of? Well, on second thought, it may very well be the worst argument in the world, and Stove may have been right.

1 Reply

Hello all !

What an interesting topic.

I think it is reasonable to consider that a reality is able to exist independent of human existence. The moon may not be in any particular state while not being observed, but the moon's existence is not lost by not being observed. Rather the state of the moon is not determinate without the observation of the moon. Whatever something is while it is not being observed, there is no particular reason to consider that the something should not exist (at all) that is more convincing than to consider that the something has a form that is not determinate while the something is not being observed.

The reality we experience may not be easily argued to exist prior to our existence, but I suspect that this is purely a consequence from the definition of reality being strictly subjective.

Some questions that I am interested in your answers are:

If reality is defined as the sum of all of our experiences as they appear to us, does this include or exclude potential experiences?

Does this then place things which are not able to be directly experienced e.g. double slit experiment i.e. seeing one particle take all paths, into the realm of non-real or a not knowable reality?

Is there a difference between non-real and a not knowable reality?

If so what are these differences and how do we know something that is by definition not knowable?

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@kennethamy,

Quote:

From the fact that I cannot think of the Moon existing without thinking of Moon existing, it does not follow that unless I can think of the Moon as existing, that the Moon cannot exist.

None of that has anything to do with the CONCEPT of the moon. Concepts require conceivers. Since by your own definition you cannot be present in your example, all you have to play with is your CURRENT concept.
i.e Retrodiction demands conceptualization in the present. And such retrodiction is always functional for present purposes.

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@validity,

A reasonable argument, but I would say that the role of the philosopher is to attempt to attain a vantage point outside the common conception of a division between "observer" and "observed". Such a position has been called a holistic one in which "the parts" are dynamically co-existent and co-extensive ( "observer states" are isomorphic to "states of the observed")

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Quote:
From the fact that I cannot think of the Moon existing without thinking of Moon existing, it does not follow that unless I can think of the Moon as existing, that the Moon cannot exist.

None of that has anything to do with the CONCEPT of the moon. Concepts require conceivers. Since by your own definition you cannot be present in your example, all you have to play with is your CURRENT concept.
i.e Retrodiction demands conceptualization in the present. And such retrodiction is always functional for present purposes.

No one is saying that the concept of the Moon is independent of people. Wherever did you get that idea? It is the Moon that is independent of people. You do, I hope, distinguish between the concept of the Moon and the what it is a concept of, namely, the Moon. The concept of X and X are very different things, as is proved by the fact that the concept of X may exist, but X may not exist (as in the case of the concept of a mermaid and mermaids) and also that something may exist without the concept existing (for example, there were germs in the 12th century since it was germs that cause the plagues that devastated Europe at the time) but no one had the concept of germs in the 12th century. Therefore, the existence of concepts, and the existence of what they are concepts of, are independent of each other. And to talk of concepts and to talk of what the concepts are concepts of, is to talk of two different things. And therefore, although the concept of the Moon is not independent of human thought, it cannot follow that the Moon is not independent of human thought. Unfortunately, another of your confusions seems to be between concepts and things which are not concepts.

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@kennethamy,

No. I do not distinguish between concepts and things. I am not a naive realist like you. All we ever have is "concepts" because we never experience "the world" directly. . Perception is both physiologically hard-wired according to species, and sociologically conditioned through the the acquisition of language.

As far as I am concerned "the moon" is a concept related to the concept of a human "observer". who also has concepts of other "celestial bodies". That relationship includes what we humans call "physicality" . "Existence" = "relationship between concepts" and such relationship may or may not be "physical". It also follows that "existence" is species specific and even culture specific because conceptualization predominantly involves language. As culture changes so does the "nature of existence" aka "reality".

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

No. I do not distinguish between concepts and things. I am not a naive realist like you. All we ever have is "concepts" because we never experience "the world" directly. . Perception is both physiologically hard-wired according to species, and sociologically conditioned through the the acquisition of language.

As far as I am concerned "the moon" is a concept related to the concept of a human "observer". who also has concepts of other "celestial bodies". That relationship includes what we humans call "physicality" . "Existence" = "relationship between concepts" and such relationship may or may not be "physical". It also follows that "existence" is species specific and even culture specific because conceptualization predominantly involves language. As culture changes so does the "nature of existence" aka "reality".

If you do not distinguish between concepts and things then you must believer that unicorns exist, since the concept of a unicorn exists. Do you really believe that unicorns exist, and, in general that everything that you can possibly think of, exists? Is that really what it means not to be a Realist, so that to be a Realist is to believe that it is not true that just because we can conceive of something, that it exists? I never realized that someone who believes that just because he can conceive of something it exists was just not a Realist. I thought that people who believed that whatever they could conceive of exists were either called insane, or were very small children.

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@kennethamy,

To understand the following you must suspend your own usage of the word "existence".

Insofar that the concept of "me" has a relationship with the concept "unicorn" then they mutually "exist", according to my definition. The nature of that relationship (unlike that of a child say) includes the expectancy of never encountering a" live" unicorn. In the same way, as "an atheist" I cannot deny the concept "God", indeed the word "atheism" is predicated on that concept. I am merely stating that the "God" concept has no direct functional significance with respect to my "self" concept. However it does have indirect significance with respect to my relationship with "believers". Functional significance is a matter of physiological, psychological and social cohesion.

"Properties" of "things" amount to statements about relationship or expected relationship between concepts of "self" and "not self" in accordance with the human predisposition to predict and control. Most of the time neither "self" nor "things" are conceptualised (as per Heidegger) and questions of "existence" are meaningless. Such questions only arise with respect to disruption of expectancies. There is usually just a flow of "unconscious" dynamic interaction. At the extreme, it can be argued that all "observation" is verbal in so far as it involves conscious commentary. (Maturana gives a good argument for why we should not use the term "observation" for the perceptual dynamics of non-verbal animals). "Words" trigger re-presentations (i.e. mental re-living of relationships) in observers. The persistence of the "word" conditions us into expectancies of persistence of relationship with "things", which naive realists interpret as persistence of "the thing itself".

I have said all this before several times on this forum so I intend this to be my last response. I suggest that all the objections you might raise come from your conditioning with respect to the lay use of the the word "existence". You should note, however, that I have transcended the level of Wittgenstein's accusation of "language on holiday" by considering the very nature of language itself.

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

I have said all this before several times on this forum so I intend this to be my last response. I suggest that all the objections you might raise come from your conditioning with respect to the lay use of the the word "existence". You should note, however, that I have transcended the level of Wittgenstein's accusation of "language on holiday" by considering the very nature of language itself.

What is important is not my conditioning, but the argument. What difference does my conditioning (whatever that is supposed to me) make to whether my argument is correct or incorrect? Have you ever heard of the "genetic fallacy". The Nazi's used to dismiss Einstein's theory of relativity because it was "generated" by a Jew. And Marx would regularly dismiss the arguments of his opponents because those arguments were made by capitalists. As if it mattered to whether the Einstein's theory was right or wrong, or whether the arguments advanced by the opponents of Marx, were good or bad arguments, by whom they were produced. An argument or theory stands on its own merits, and not on who produced it.

You can read about the genetic fallacy here, and learn a little logic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy It may still save you.

First of all, no philosopher (or anyone who can think) would argue that just because you have a concept of something, that something exists. That would mean that any believer could prove that God exists, simply because he has the concept of God. In fact, the theist could argue that because even the atheist has the concept of God, the atheist, simply because he has the concept of God, ought to believe in God if even having the concept of God is sufficient to show that God exists. What an easy way to prove Theism, and refute Atheism! (Actually, there is such an argument for God. It is called the Ontological Argument for God. It argues that since the concept of God exists, God exist. ) But even those who advance the Ontological Argument don't claim it is valid for every concept, so that if I have the concept of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, then it follows that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists! No Idealist, not even Berkeley was silly enough to hold that because you can conceive of something it exists.

Have you ever thought that it is your conditioning that makes you think that (1) it is your conditioning that that makes you think that your conditioning and not the merits of the argument are important? And so that it is your conditioning that leads you to commit the genetic fallacy? (Your conditioning includes, of course, the fact, that you never learned any logic). And (2) that is your conditioning that leads you to think that just because you can conceive of something, what you can conceive of, exists? And that it is because of your conditioning that you commit so outrageous a fallacy?

Of course this argument of yours, that we should examine why someone produces an argument, rather than examine the argument itself, can be turned on itself, which is why it is a fallacy. Just think about who it was who commits the genetic fallacy. It is you. Someone who is ignorant of logic.

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@kennethamy,

Quote:

Someone who is ignorant of logic.

Does that mean I should query my A grade for the logic module of my degree ?
My professor, (Quine's son-in-law) will be a bit upset !

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Quote:
Someone who is ignorant of logic.

Does that mean I should query my A grade for the logic module of my degree ?
My professor, (Quine's son-in-law) will be a bit upset !

I would really have been worried if he had been a blood-relation. If you can think clearly you have given no evidence of it in your posts.

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does reality exist before Human existence and thinking exist ?

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