@Fido,
Fido wrote:
Fido wrote:
The definition of the word Cat is the concept of a Cat...
Definition is a proscriptive activity, conception is an inclusive one. Thus the concept of "cat" may include the historical oddity "reportedly sucks the breath from infants" while the definition rightfully excludes it.
Fido wrote:
All concepts are man made out of bits of knowledge and truth. If a concept does not tell us truth it is worse than no idea at all.
That is not to say that all of those bits of knowledge are true...many concepts are made of "facts" that are not verifiable, certainly not experimentally or experientally so, -- its "truth value" aside.
Fido wrote:Definitions exclude no fact essential to our understanding..
Well, perhaps...i'm not inclined to disagree, in this (or some ideal) circumstance, but what makes you think that concepts exclude all facts essential to our "understanding"? i simply don't think that "definition" and "conception" are cognates.
Fil Albuquerque wrote:
I thought you would have noticed the role of concrete and abstract in that particular sentence...it was an ironic double spin...mind you that I am sympathetic with the idea that reality is Information and that all abstract concepts are therefore very real concrete things...means by which all those things that are potentially real are after all very much factual and the so mentioned "abstraction" ends up being the hypothetical denial of the phenomena we use to call cat, a word without meaning...you see from my point of view concepts are nothing else but reductive sets of information about information that suit the extent of our needs in the asking...whether the "world" is internal to a subject, or a set of subjects in the subject, or as a set of subjects that itself behaves as a subject, or simply includes subjects in its informational process, the world keeps up being a relational entity no matter what...not has the product of intention and conscience and thus not as a rational orchestrated construction given away by minds or a great mind...but some place where mind or minds are allowed to be the case from the potential to the formal and phenomenal...The world keeps up being the world after all and subjects a part of it...mind does not justify mind although it explains the world somehow, the same world that mindlessly, gives away something as beautiful as a mind...
Well...let this mark the first time that we are in some sort of accord. Not that we are entirely in agreement -- but mostly because i am willing to be vague rather than
meta-. (That was a backhanded compliment, but one that i hope you will be willing to accept, since the respect was as sincere as the objections.) i agree that an idea/"representation" does not have to resemble its stimulus; and i also agree that mind is a product of world. But the relationship would have no significance if there were no difference. i am not so sure that reality can be reduced to information, or information about information The mind must check info against info in order to make sure that new "information" is accessible from the world. Information derived from correlative information is not necessarily reliable. Oi, am i even making sense at this point?
Fido wrote:
Fil Albuquerque wrote:
You are addressing Ptolomeu´s conception of the world for scholars, while I was simply and merely speaking of the far older intuition that we have when we look into the sky...your quick lesson serves nothing on that regard...as for quasi concepts that sort of abstraction does n´t make any sense....what you mean is that people have a salad of beliefs, and on that we certainly agree...
The Greeks had Helios driving a flaming chariot across the sky, and then, presumably going home for a bath, supper, and tube with the folks... The idea that he was at work all the time going around and around never entered their minds...
You should be careful when referring to "the Greeks" when referring to the ancient Helenes. The concept of "the Greeks" is a late one, and their homogenization as a single culture or mind-set is a gross error. Ptolemy, and quite a few astronomers and navigators had a strong idea of the Earth as round and suspicions of a helio-centric system in place before the demise of that culture.
Fido wrote:
I am not an idealist, but I do know we need to form an idea of reality before we can turn it toward our survival... As far as quasi ideas; it is enough to keep them from being turned toward our destruction, and if you think of it, the many who have died for quasi ideas is out of all proportion to their value...
i'm curious about your use of the plural in this case. Ideas are important, considered collectively; but in light of the idea of survival, which is actually an "individual as species representative"-type situation, ideas seem to take a backseat to instinctual impressions. As for "quasi-concepts"...well, i'm not even sure what this sort of nomenclature means in your terms. Either a concept is definitive, or it is extraneous , it seems. Is this the same as "true" and "false"? And does an impression (which should combine perception [interpreted or otherwise] and reaction) fail to be true if it is accurate (definitive) and yet fail to be successful?
north wrote:
my point is which came first , the object or the mathematics ?
the object came first
Fil Albuquerque wrote:
@north,
...they ARE the same !
...you don´t ask which came first me or me do you ? Rolling Eyes
@ Fil...well, you don't quite mean they are the same, or else why recognize the difference?
Mightn't it be quite enough to recognize that they originate from the same "reality"? I.e. that the perception of the object and the mathematical measurement of the object spring from the same reality; that one registers in observable experience and the other in rigorous mathematics? That is to say, both are verifiable but neither are identical? To say that they are the same seems to imply that one is reducible to the other, but reality (the origin of both types of impression) does not seem to be reducible to either or to their contentious combination.
As to all of this,while i see how it relates to the OP, but i'd like to give my statement to the original question:
north wrote:I am trying to figure out if theist have any criteria that has to be met before something can be called reality and if there is, what is the criteria needed for something to be called reality?
There are some very good, long winded, philosophical discussions about reality in this forum but I was hoping that we could keep this in layman's terms being that I'm a layman.
“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough” Albert Einstein
I may have reality all wrong but as an atheist I tend to think reality is something that all people should be able to sense in some way. Do not get me wrong because I do think that there are some things that we can not sense but we do have tools that allow us to detect them and in some cases we may only be able to use theory. There are probably some things that we are not able to detect yet, but one day we will.
Now even though there may be some things that exist that we do not know about, most atheist do not start speaking of these things as if they absolutely exist without having evidence.
Please share your point of view theist or atheist.
i think that all theists must locate the concept of reality as lying within the concept of God, and i think that the most persuasive proof of god, in reference the idea of reality, is St. Anselm's:
St. Anselm wrote: 1. We conceive of God as a being than which no greater can be conceived.
2. This being than which no greater can be conceived either exists in the mind alone or both in the mind and in reality.
3. Assume that this being than which no greater can be conceived exists in the mind alone.
(3a.) Existing both in the mind and in reality is greater than existing solely in the mind.
(3b.) This being, existing in the mind alone, can also be conceived to exist in reality.
(3c.) This being existing in the mind alone is not therefore the being than which no greater can be conceived. (See statement 1 above.)
4. Therefore, this being than which no greater can be conceived exists in reality as well as exists in the mind.
In my reading, this "proof" is not a guarantee of god's existence, but precisely the establishment of a "criterion" for establishing the verity of reality (and therefore god). By establishing the idea of god as the outer limit of known reality, this line of argument preserves both the possibility of a creator god while justifying the growth of both knowledge and experimentation.
Doubt may (and i would argue, "must"), of course, cast its shadow on the former, but if it is not to stunt the latter, it must perforce resemble a sort of faith (even if only as its negative image).
