Reality - thing or phenomenon?

@fresco,

Quote:

"Slow change" implies "continued functionality".

Very good. Thus some aspects of reality are indeed continuous over time, not eternal of course, but essentially unchanging or changing very very slowly over some period of time. Like a tree, or a river, stays the same all the while it is changing. It's this sense of relative, limited permanence of most things that I want to emphasize. Like your ownership relation with some things, a car or a house. Note that it's not only a legal matter. You have a PSYCHOLOGICAL sense of ownership and intimacy and expectation with your car. If it was to disappear, you would not doubt its existence, nor your rightful propriety claim.

If your car was stolen, after a second wondering what happened to it (was it towed, eg if poorly parked?) you probably would report it stolen to the police and to your insurance, like anybody else.

If your self does not exist, however temporarily, and if cars are only "discussion currency", how do you account for your continued sense of ownership of your car?

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@cicerone imposter,

The philosopher here is dealing with the question whether "appleness" has "reality" other than the sum of our possible self-apple relationships like "consumability".
Others who want to know are for example IT guys working on whether a machine could emulate human functioning.

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@Olivier5,

We can play the trip-up game ad infinitum.
Self 1 loves its car..., self 2 hates certain aspects, ...self 3 (the Marxist) says "property is theft".....self 4 does not want to use it because it needs to exercise....etc.
Consider the chain of the relationships and notice how self-car is in ephemeral flux. Ownership is that chaun.
(UK bedtime).

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@fresco,

and self 7 the philosopher cannot account for his sense of ownership. Good night...

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

We can play the trip-up game ad infinitum.
Self 1 loves its car..., self 2 hates certain aspects, ...self 3 (the Marxist) says "property is theft".....self 4 does not want to use it because it needs to exercise....etc.
Consider the chain of the relationships and notice how self-car is in ephemeral flux. Ownership is that chaun.
(UK bedtime).

Certainly seems to be blather to me. Reminds me of the nonsense the ancients created to justify the notion that the Earth was at the center of the Universe...that all the cosmos (such as they imagined) circled it. They developed all sorts of explanations that had no reason for being other than that it appeared they bolstered the geocentric assertion.

They would have been much better off supposing the geocentric model as a hypothesis...testing it...finding it wanting...and saved 1500 years to arrive at the "Copernican" (and more advanced) models.

So continue with your "self 1...self 2" thing if you must, Fresco, but if you put your intellect to work on it, you would see you are creating scenarios just for the sake of preserving your assertions about REALITY.

Or don't.

This is lots of fun also.

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@fresco,

I don't need to question the reality of apples. That's for you philosophers who have difficulty with simple concepts about apples.

It seems you have already forgotten about "Law of Identity."

You know, A is always A.

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@igm,

Someone mentioned removing the subjective-objective distinction. Okay, I tried this, and I disappeared. Then I found my way back through a Wormhole, I guess that's what it was, but it was only after having a brief conversation with a being who said he was God, and I don't know whether he was or not, but he picked up on some advice I tossed his way during our conversation and he took my advice and made reality disappear; but I remained. I suppose that was a miracle, but I was not fully convinced this being was God as he did not show his social insurance card when I asked to see it, and not even a driver's license; and so anyway, after making reality disappear I then had absolutely nothing to think about and absolutely nothing to look at. Even God disappeared. But somehow I found my way in the darkness to the Wormhole, crawled my way through it, and now everything is just find again. Reality! What a relief.

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@Cyclops,

Quote:

...and he took my advice and made reality disappear...

Actually, that illustrates the beauty of my position, Cyclops. ("Beauty" used the way a mathematician would use it to describe a mathematical construct.)

If REALITY disappears...that becomes the objective REALITY.

I cannot get over someone ostensibly as intelligent as Fresco not getting it. His "not getting it" is more a mystery to me that some of his absurdly worded posts.

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@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

REALITY MAY BE COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT OF HUMAN PERSPECTIVES AND PERCEPTIONS.

But whether it is or isn't...whatever it actually IS...that IS what it IS.

But aren't we limited to concepts that can be constructed in the mind. A concept like "reality" came out of the mind and is meaningless when taken out of that context. I will guess that REALITY MAY BE COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT OF PERSPECTIVES AND PERCEPTIONS is not an actual possibility [I left out human because that seems arbitrary].

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@tomr,

Once more you hit the nail on the head, but I doubt whether it can penetrate Frank's bunker ! Smile

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@cicerone imposter,

If you don't want to "do philosophy" I fail to see why you are here. I commented of the "law of identity" above, pointing out that it was questionable from the point of view of recent philosophers. One of the tasks philosophers set themselves is to question everyday assumptions. In a sence they are following Plato's observation:

Quote:

"A life unexamined is not worth living"

Philosophers have moved on since then to sub-analysis of the words in that sentence. In particular. the word "is" has been put under scrutiny with respect to the word "reality". My reference to "E prime" above is one aspect of such focus.

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(apologies for typos above...wrong glasses)

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@tomr,

tomr wrote:

Quote:
REALITY MAY BE COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT OF HUMAN PERSPECTIVES AND PERCEPTIONS.

But whether it is or isn't...whatever it actually IS...that IS what it IS.

But aren't we limited to concepts that can be constructed in the mind. A concept like "reality" came out of the mind and is meaningless when taken out of that context. I will guess that REALITY MAY BE COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT OF PERSPECTIVES AND PERCEPTIONS is not an actual possibility [I left out human because that seems arbitrary].

Thank you for showing that I was correct. You have arbitrarily discounted the possibility that REALITY can be completely independent of human perspectives and perceptions.

And I truly do find it incredible that someone as ostensibly intelligent as you can do that without cringing from it.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

If you don't want to "do philosophy" I fail to see why you are here. I commented of the "law of identity" above, pointing out that it was questionable from the point of view of recent philosophers. One of the tasks philosophers set themselves is to question everyday assumptions. In a sence they are following Plato's observation:

Quote:
"A life unexamined is not worth living"

Philosophers have moved on since then to sub-analysis of the words in that sentence. In particular. the word "is" has been put under scrutiny with respect to the word "reality". My reference to "E prime" above is one aspect of such focus.

I find it hilarious that you would consider a sub-forum of forum A2K as an appropriate spot to "do philosophy" of the sort you appear to be pretending to be doing.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

(apologies for typos above...wrong glasses)

The typos are not the problem...the substance is. Changing glass won't help that.

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@Frank Apisa,

You don't seem to have noticed that the majority of posters here (and I include Olivier in that) are actually "doing philosophy", not stating platitudes which attract successively less attention with each repetition. (See work on degradation of repetitive neural signals over time for empirical evidence of this).
Yet, you may have a point that this "fresco the poster" may be wasting its time on this forum casting pearls (occasionally artificial) before swine (occasionally real). Maybe "fresco the martyr" and "fresco the lazy" are swaying the fresco committee. And perhaps "fresco the public speaker" has a hand in it too

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@fresco,

Quote:
"A life unexamined is not worth living"

Then you should examine your sense of ownership. If you find it's an illusion, I trust fesco the philosopher will give away everything he owns... Wink

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@Frank Apisa,

I disagree. Find one of my errors in reasoning and point out where I've made a mistake and how you know it is mistaken?

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@Frank Apisa,

Frank Apisa wrote:

Quote:
...and he took my advice and made reality disappear...

Actually, that illustrates the beauty of my position, Cyclops. ("Beauty" used the way a mathematician would use it to describe a mathematical construct.)

If REALITY disappears...that becomes the objective REALITY.

I cannot get over someone ostensibly as intelligent as Fresco not getting it. His "not getting it" is more a mystery to me that some of his absurdly worded posts.

How about all the other eminent philosophers who don't agree with you.. arrogant still... Frank... arrogant. You know that they are all wrong... how? Your position is a layman's guess.

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@Olivier5,

Why? Fresco the philosopher is merely one committee member of the fresco board. And this "sense of ownership" you speak of is rarely present. I am not talking about nebulous abstractions which are evoked from time to time. I am taking a Heideggerian line on existenz in which neither "self"(dasein) nor focal object have "actuality" in most of the flow of living. As Heidegger points out, it is only when such a flow is interrupted that "self" and "thing" appear in consciousness. (Read up on his "hammering example" for more on this).

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Reality - thing or phenomenon?

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