What is Real?

@Razzleg,

For me the "real" is unproblematical. Delusion or the "unreal", on the other hand, IS more of a problem. What is THAT?

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

For me the "real" is unproblematical. Delusion or the "unreal", on the other hand, IS more of a problem. What is THAT? I've said before that everything is real--even a mirage is a real mirage--but some things mislead us; delusions and illusions are tricky and sometimes injurious for that reason. But why?

I tried to bring that up elsewhere, but it fell flat.

The Pyrrhonists agreed that even illusions are real illusions. The senses are doing their job. The problem lies with the subsequent interpretation (belief) that one assigns to the experience. The interpretation/belief is what gives us problems, not the perception.

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@FBM,

Good. Nietzsche's epistemology is helpful. For him everything is a matter of interpretation and perspective. I find that useful despite the fact that in meditation one merely need be mindful (bare awareness) of the raw sensual data--pre-reflectively--before proceeding to "cook" it interpretively (keeping in mind that many of the resulting "understandings" are culturally/conventionally available).

1 Reply

@FBM,

FBM wrote:

JLNobody wrote:

For me the "real" is unproblematical. Delusion or the "unreal", on the other hand, IS more of a problem. What is THAT? I've said before that everything is real--even a mirage is a real mirage--but some things mislead us; delusions and illusions are tricky and sometimes injurious for that reason. But why?

I tried to bring that up elsewhere, but it fell flat.

The Pyrrhonists agreed that even illusions are real illusions. The senses are doing their job. The problem lies with the subsequent interpretation (belief) that one assigns to the experience. The interpretation/belief is what gives us problems, not the perception.

JLNobody wrote:

Good. Nietzsche's epistemology is helpful. For him everything is a matter of interpretation and perspective. I find that useful despite the fact that in meditation one merely need be mindful (bare awareness) of the raw sensual data--pre-reflectively--before proceeding to "cook" it interpretively (keeping in mind that many of the resulting "understandings" are culturally/conventionally available).

Perhaps the epistemological problem that you're discussing is as ephemeral as the one you're dismissing. Nietzche's theory of "perspectivism", not only accepts, but counts on, contradictory interpretations in its account of reality.

Perhaps neither sensations nor contrary interpretations are at fault, maybe it is the traditional logical (and at this point, vaguely "Kantian") law of non-contradiction that presents the problem.

JLNobody wrote:

...n meditation one merely need be mindful (bare awareness) of the raw sensual data--pre-reflectively--before proceeding to "cook" it interpretively (keeping in mind that many of the resulting "understandings" are culturally/conventionally available).

i would challenge that claim -- that in meditation, we need only to be mindful of "raw sensual data" as a preparation for "cooking/interpreting" said data. Our senses could be, and often are, as divisive as any interpretation re: our communion with/within "reality". Reality is such a mottled muddle; pretensions of "purity" and "bareness" seem more prohibitive than embracing of the said cosmological mess.

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

Good. Nietzsche's epistemology is helpful. For him everything is a matter of interpretation and perspective. I find that useful despite the fact that in meditation one merely need be mindful (bare awareness) of the raw sensual data--pre-reflectively--before proceeding to "cook" it interpretively (keeping in mind that many of the resulting "understandings" are culturally/conventionally available).

It goes even deeper, too. What we take to be volitional actions (including with regards to interpreting experience) may turn out to be ad hoc rationalizations: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/abs/nn.2112.html

http://videolectures.net/eccs08_haynes_udofdithb/

(This is dated. There is newer stuff been done on this.)

1 Reply

@FBM,

FBM wrote:

JLNobody wrote:

Good. Nietzsche's epistemology is helpful. For him everything is a matter of interpretation and perspective. I find that useful despite the fact that in meditation one merely need be mindful (bare awareness) of the raw sensual data--pre-reflectively--before proceeding to "cook" it interpretively (keeping in mind that many of the resulting "understandings" are culturally/conventionally available).

It goes even deeper, too. What we take to be volitional actions (including with regards to interpreting experience) may turn out to be ad hoc rationalizations: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/abs/nn.2112.html

http://videolectures.net/eccs08_haynes_udofdithb/

(This is dated. There is newer stuff been done on this.)

ah, ever the advocate for un-freedom...

To what end the rationalization of involuntary action?

2 Replies

@Razzleg,

Razzleg wrote:

ah, ever the advocate for un-freedom...

Huh? When have I advocated for "un-freedom" to the extent to deserve "ever the"?

Quote:

To what end the rationalization of involuntary action?

Did what I posted rationalize involuntary action? That's an odd interpretation.

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Speaking of freewill, I am willing to acknowledge the phenomenon of CHOOSING, but not that of CHOOSERS. Deeds without doers is easily denied because of the grammar of perception. I even began this post with the grammatical use of a subject-predicate construction (i.e., I am willing....). To paraphrase Nietzsche, Grammar is the metaphysics of the masses).

1 Reply

@JLNobody,

I admire your perseverance in trying to communicate these issue of language shaping what we call "reality". I have decided that the point is over most respondents' heads (with the notable exception of FBM).

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@fresco,

Thanks, Razzleg, one of the brightest among us, has challenged the value of attending to "bare awareness" in meditation. I understand what I believe to be his position as a reminder that we look not with immaculate perception but with (ad hoc) interest and even culturally conditioned presuppositions. That is one reason that meditation is so difficult: we have to dig through a lot of preconditioning before we can see what is before/within us. As one student of Buddhism has said to be "prereflectively aware of the primordially given" or bare awareness. Otherwise we are just barely aware.

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@Razzleg,

Razzleg wrote:

FBM wrote:

JLNobody wrote:

Good. Nietzsche's epistemology is helpful. For him everything is a matter of interpretation and perspective. I find that useful despite the fact that in meditation one merely need be mindful (bare awareness) of the raw sensual data--pre-reflectively--before proceeding to "cook" it interpretively (keeping in mind that many of the resulting "understandings" are culturally/conventionally available).

It goes even deeper, too. What we take to be volitional actions (including with regards to interpreting experience) may turn out to be ad hoc rationalizations: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/abs/nn.2112.html

http://videolectures.net/eccs08_haynes_udofdithb/

(This is dated. There is newer stuff been done on this.)

ah, ever the advocate for un-freedom...

To what end the rationalization of involuntary action?

You should turn that question around...To what end voluntary action can be rational if it is no the rational establishing what you perceive as being voluntary ? Agreement means nothing...Where does volition springs from if not from the order and ratio of things ? It must be a miracle of no causation causing something else for a change of flavours...It seems to me in your view the Universe has whims and moods...

...the good thing about you is that you are always half way into something. While some dandy new millennia scientia aficionados old enough to have some good sense don't even get at the door step...

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Speaking of causation, is just a mode that in description, and if accurate represents what is the case, in the least of what is the case you perceive...it ties up in the same end. Everything that is the case, like making descriptions on what one might think it is the case, is in itself a display of the rational and order of factual reality. You don't need to describe description while you are describing whatever you have wants to describe. You, not a person, but history made action in a tale, just ARE !

PS - Volition is just another character playing its well established part in the play which IS .

1 Reply

@JLNobody,

Razzleg has a point underscored by Maturana's argument that all we call "observation" is verbal/reported. (M rejects the concept of "raw sense data")

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

Volition is just another character playing its well established part in the play which IS

Very Shakespearean ...the play within the play ! Smile

Attempts at ultimate "is-ness" (as you suggest by your capitalization) are of course futile. Logically we are confined to functional "is-ness", and that functionality is defined by dynamic social context. Hence the pragmatists view that the word "volition" may be useful within such contexts as establishing "culpability", but not say when choosing a shirt. And that is all we can say about "the reality of volition".

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@fresco,

Yes, I suppose something cannot be both raw and data. Purely sensual "experience"--like the first time one tastes a complex flavor, hears a musical effect, or sees forms in anthoroughly non-representational abstract painting, etc. is not "experience" (i.e., meaningful data) until it has been interpreted, made-sense-of, or processed. But that does not mean it is undesireable, even in its "transcendental" condition; it is just not communicable. I confess a certainly carelessness in my use of the metaphorical raw-cooked distinction.

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If by "real"...you mean "the true nature of the REALITY of existence"...

...I will acknowledge that I do not know.

I suspect that nobody here does either...and there is at least the possibility that what we call "the human mind" is not capable of knowing it.

Whatever the true nature of the REALITY of existence actually is, however...IS the REALITY.

All the rest of the stuff offered here (which goes beyond "whatever IS...IS) is almost certainly little more than well-meaning guesswork.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Quote:
Volition is just another character playing its well established part in the play which IS

Very Shakespearean ...the play within the play !
Attempts at ultimate "is-ness" (as you suggest by your capitalization) are of course futile. Logically we are confined to functional "is-ness", and that functionality is defined by dynamic social context. Hence the pragmatists view that the word "volition" may be useful within such contexts as establishing "culpability", but not say when choosing a shirt. And that is all we can say about "the reality of volition".

I could just swap those two words order and make up the same argument you just did to get my point across.

Either the wording"functional" has base value "substance" or its meaningless...I explained you this long long ago. You wont have any relativity without grounding the whole castle somewhere. Now I get that you don't.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Dynamic context shifting is the antithesis of grounding.

3+3=6 today in the context of "base 10".....
3+3 =10 tomorrow in the context of "base 5".....
and as with "numbers" so with all semantic tokens we call "words".

What your word "grounding" boils down to is "agreement about context"/"agreement about axioms". You erroneously assume that "relativity" needs to be divorced from "observer reference frames". In short.you are arguing for a concept of fundamental or absolute reality which I reject.

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@JLNobody,

Instead of "sense inputs", or "raw data" Maturana argues for "perturbations of existing structure". That structure then "adapts" to deal with the perturbation and that adaptation is the fundamental nature of "cognition" (which for M. equates to "the general life process"). No "external world" is assumed.

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@fresco,

M (is he alive ?) will eventually end up wording nonsense such as breading concepts like artificial Biology into AI as he goes in very slow pace assimilating the concepts of information theory. Very Happy

"Life" or "my life" means zilch is just useful mundane talk...convenient focal constructs, O.S., that as any other construct focus on a particular starting paradigm...Descartes loved the "I" and M loves "mind"...they must be cousins...

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