Reality from the view point of theists

If I have the nominalists correct, then the being comes before conception, and it is not conception that brings something into existence... But if we should say cosmos, or existence, or God, or reality, even humanity then these are word labels for concepts that work only so long as the human mind is there to hold them as a certain meaning....

Whether or not a thing exists cannot be said to rest upon a single human life, but existence is itself a concept, or a quasi concept that has meaning because we exist, and not necessarily because it exists...Now, I can agree with the nominalists that the object must be for people to conceive of it, but that does not stop people from using their imaginations to conceive of spiritual values, moral forms, or transcendent concepts that have no value or being other than as meaning, and it is the meaning that gives them their value...

If you look at knowledge you are not looking at an actual thing but the means of represnting what we know of a thing; and a concept, say, of an atom is all that we may say is true of it... And we can have knowledge of it in the finite sense because we can conceive of it as a finite object... If we say existence, we are talking of an infinite- since we cannot see the end of our own, or of the cosmos to make a certain judgment, as Kant would say: knowledge is judgment... In any event, whether one considers finite knowledge alone, or with infinte quasi forms representing spiritual knowledge these forms exist within us, within our culture, and so long as we exist as meanings....

What all forms have in common is meaning... Finite physical forms have a being with a meaning... What quasi moral forms have is meaning only... Ask yourself: Will a man's meaning when he says: Justice, live on after he dies??? Since all knowledge of reality exists within humanity as certain meanings; will they exist apart from humanity when humanity is gone???...

I have known people who talked almost their entire lives who after having a stroke could laugh, or cry, but speak no words...Perhaps if they can still conceive of something they could find a means of relating it, but with their loss of words they are denied one of the tools of thought, and most of the means of communication... If it is possible that in some part of their brain they could hear speech as Socrates heard his Deamon, then he might think words exist; but what could he say if words were totally lost to him??? What if life were lost to him???

You see, things exist without our knowledge as germs once existed, and though they had the power to kill they had no meaning, and because they had no meaning we had no power over them... It was not their meaning that brought them into existence, but their meaning which made them real...

I know it is a fine point, but from our standpoint, our perspective, being is a secondary question to meaning because knowledge does not exist as an abstraction... Some people do not like morals because it is impossible to abstract them... Every conscious choice can be framed as a moral choice...

Frank; the choice to believe that all of reality exists apart from our humanity to witness it rests on its creation and witnessing by a higher power, a God... And our saying it exists, and God exists apart from humanity is really a denial of the ability and greatness of human life that can almost bring things into reality with a thought, and we do so everytime we take an idea like Justice and make from it a social form like Law... To me, the only question of being that is valid is of our own being because it is upon our being that our perception of reality exists... Life is meaning, and it is living humanity that decides the meaning and value of all things...We do not hold the scales... We are the scales...

Fresco...there is an element of "theism" in this discussion, but it is coming from people like you, not from me.

I am an agnostic. I do not know the answers to ultimate questions...and I am willing to acknowledge that I do not know. I have no problem, however, offering what I have on the "objective REALITY" issue, because that resolves itself in common sense.

But...don't use REALITY if it offends your sensibilities.

What IS...IS, however...and if you use that, you should end up at the same station.

"What IS", Fresco, is objective...even though we apparently cannot know it; describe it; or, in a sense, even appreciate it. What actually IS...ACTUALLY IS.

I think by now you actually realize you have been wrong all along on the question of whether or not there is an objective REALITY. Unfortunately, your ego is preventing you from acknowledging it. That happens often in these kinds of discussions...no problem As I said earlier, it doesn't make you a bad person.

There is, by the way, a "cuteness" to trying to shape the product of this extensive discussion in words like: "...advocates of 'an objective reality' can be seen as the equivalent of theists." I truly thank you for the laugh I got from that (less than effective) attempt at irony.

But that sort of things is desperation...and is going nowhere. JL already sees, and is willing to acknowledge, the definitional problem with the assertion "there is no objective REALITY." Not sure where you are on the issue, but obviously you are not at the point where you can acknowledge the problem if you do see it.

Too bad that.

Quote:

If I have the nominalists correct, then the being comes before conception, and it is not conception that brings something into existence... But if we should say cosmos, or existence, or God, or reality, even humanity then these are word labels for concepts that work only so long as the human mind is there to hold them as a certain meaning....

Whether or not a thing exists cannot be said to rest upon a single human life, but existence is itself a concept, or a quasi concept that has meaning because we exist, and not necessarily because it exists...Now, I can agree with the nominalists that the object must be for people to conceive of it, but that does not stop people from using their imaginations to conceive of spiritual values, moral forms, or transcendent concepts that have no value or being other than as meaning, and it is the meaning that gives them their value...

If you look at knowledge you are not looking at an actual thing but the means of represnting what we know of a thing; and a concept, say, of an atom is all that we may say is true of it... And we can have knowledge of it in the finite sense because we can conceive of it as a finite object... If we say existence, we are talking of an infinite- since we cannot see the end of our own, or of the cosmos to make a certain judgment, as Kant would say: knowledge is judgment... In any event, whether one considers finite knowledge alone, or with infinte quasi forms representing spiritual knowledge these forms exist within us, within our culture, and so long as we exist as meanings....

What all forms have in common is meaning... Finite physical forms have a being with a meaning... What quasi moral forms have is meaning only... Ask yourself: Will a man's meaning when he says: Justice, live on after he dies??? Since all knowledge of reality exists within humanity as certain meanings; will they exist apart from humanity when humanity is gone???...

I have known people who talked almost their entire lives who after having a stroke could laugh, or cry, but speak no words...Perhaps if they can still conceive of something they could find a means of relating it, but with their loss of words they are denied one of the tools of thought, and most of the means of communication... If it is possible that in some part of their brain they could hear speech as Socrates heard his Deamon, then he might think words exist; but what could he say if words were totally lost to him??? What if life were lost to him???

You see, things exist without our knowledge as germs once existed, and though they had the power to kill they had no meaning, and because they had no meaning we had no power over them... It was not their meaning that brought them into existence, but their meaning which made them real...

I know it is a fine point, but from our standpoint, our perspective, being is a secondary question to meaning because knowledge does not exist as an abstraction... Some people do not like morals because it is impossible to abstract them... Every conscious choice can be framed as a moral choice...

Frank; the choice to believe that all of reality exists apart from our humanity to witness it rests on its creation and witnessing by a higher power, a God... And our saying it exists, and God exists apart from humanity is really a denial of the ability and greatness of human life that can almost bring things into reality with a thought, and we do so everytime we take an idea like Justice and make from it a social form like Law... To me, the only question of being that is valid is of our own being because it is upon our being that our perception of reality exists... Life is meaning, and it is living humanity that decides the meaning and value of all things...We do not hold the scales... We are the scales...

Obviously I have to reduce the discussion even further.

DO YOU KNOW that when we humans cease to be, the world will no longer exist?

Yes, you KNOW it...or No, you do not KNOW it?

I guess this is your form of acknowledging that there is an objective reality after all...you throw in the problem of knowledge as a smoke grenade which is clearly beyond the point up on the table as means of getting a soft landing conciliation...

Just ask yourself: Do I know what I have forgotton??? I do not say I know anything, and Setanta will be happy to agree with me... Since we know with our brains, I think it very much impossible to know when our brains have turned to dust... When humanity says it knows about that bit of finite reality it can be said to know, it never means we know all there is to know, but only that we are reasonably certain of some of the details, and that is to say that we have a working analogy of reality... At least of one small element of it...At least... The beginning of wisdom is to not know, but to have some grasp of what you may never know because that will give you some sense of the limited range of knowledge we may have with effort...