Reality - thing or phenomenon?

@igm,

You wrote,

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I'm saying it is completely impermanent.

Who in this world do you personally know that believes everything can be permanent? Name me one person, and I'll show you an idiot!

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@Olivier5,

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Disagreements and differences of judgement exist, but quite often, it is possible to reconcile them.

EXCEPT in A2K, evidently... The permanence of some discussion threads here is AMPLE EVIDENCE that some people will never change their mind, under no amount of discussion. As I said, people change very little, when you focus on their core credo.

Meaning belief systems are very stable. For reasons of their framing / paradigmatic nature discussed somewhere else.

That's why nobody here including myself can remember a recent change of mind, an epiphany, or paradigmatic revolution he went through recently. (Challenge)

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Quote:
Disagreements and differences of judgement exist, but quite often, it is possible to reconcile them.

EXCEPT in A2K, evidently... The permanence of some discussion threads here is AMPLE EVIDENCE that some people will never change their mind, under no amount of discussion. As I said, people change very little, when you focus on their core credo.

Meaning belief systems are very stable. For reasons of their framing / paradigmatic nature discussed somewhere else.

That's why nobody here including myself can remember a recent change of mind, an epiphany, or paradigmatic revolution he went through recently. (Challenge)

I've gone through a change of mind in the past year or so; but it had nothing to do with the discussions on these forums. From what I've encountered, personally and with others, is that one never really changes their mind until they think about the arguments and philosophical systems presented, and takes them seriously. Hell, maybe even questions their own premises. This is never done in the heat of argument though. I've never seen someone change their position on the spot, even if they're clearly wrong. That's philosophy for you.

And then there are the people who will simply never change, or very rarely change. I think fresco and frank are two. Imo, it's not that big of a deal, but the discussion usually becomes stagnant after a while.

All in all, you're never going to see a change of mind on the threads, at least not immediately.

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@igm,

Quote:

Mostly impermanence is subtle but it is relentless it happens all the time we just don't notice it because it is so subtle but reality is impermanent...

Reality is a mix of (fairly obvious) permanence and (more or less subtle) impermanence. It's not totally unpredictable either; there's some objective continuity in structure, by and large. Objects like an armchair or a TV do not radically change shape, texture, color or smell, unless something is deeply wrong. People you know tend to react predictably to some situations. There are also patterns of change, eg cycles of change that point to some deeper permanence of apparent impermanence. Sun rises every 24h; cats breed cats, dogs breed dogs; a tree can lose its leaves but they'll grow again next spring with the same shape as before; the whole cycle of life...

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@Olivier5,

So factually true; change has both slow and fast events depending on what we are observing. Even then, since personal observation is subjective, we may perceive those changes in different ways. That's the reality of our reality.

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@Ding an Sich,

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I've gone through a change of mind in the past year or so; but it had nothing to do with the discussions on these forums.

Interesting. Could you say more about this change of mind?

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I've never seen someone change their position on the spot, even if they're clearly wrong. That's philosophy for you.

How long have you been here? I like your posts.

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@cicerone imposter,

What igm seems oblivious to is the ying-yang relation between permanence and change. Just because there is some change happening doesn't mean it's total chaos either! There is also a fair dose of inertia and structural permanence in this world. Including in change itself, which is cyclical most of the times.

There is some objective underlying order in this world (however relative and limited in time), the analysis of which (however subjective and limited) can be useful to make rational decisions. Call me naive but that's what I think.

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@Olivier5,

I don't think you are naive at all. I think many of us believe as you do about change and our observation of it.

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From some Buddhist* and pre-Socratic (e.g., Heraclitus) perspectives all is in process. We perceive change and motion (with respect to sensations) but conceive things and properties (with respect to categories of ideas). Because "things" change at different speeds their rates are subject to comparison: a faster changing "thing" is compared to slower changing "things" leading to the conclusion that changing things move within fixed contexts. But it is all fundamentally impermanent--maybe that's the only permanence.

*Indeed, it is not too much of an exaggeration to equate "enlightenment" with the perception of impermanence.

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@JLNobody,

It's fundamentally permanent AND impermanent.

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@Olivier5,

O.K., each notion requires the other (dependent origination).

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JLN is philosophical correct about the co-dependence of polarities.

Our psychological need for "permanence" as an antithesis to (thermodynamic) change is undoubtedly one of the factors behind the religious concepts of an "eternal deity". Similarly I argue that statements about the "is-ness" of "reality" where "is" denotes a static state are equivalent in kind to a religious belief.

When Olivier claims that realty is fundamentally both "permanent and impermanent" he should remember that that is-ness is also assigned by human observers. (It is related to my example of the A/H ambiguity described above, and also to Derrida's discussion of aporia)

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

JLN is philosophical correct about the co-dependence of polarities.

Our psychological need for "permanence" as an antithesis to (thermodynamic) change is undoubtedly one of the factors behind the religious concepts of an "eternal deity". Similarly I argue that statements about the "is-ness" of "reality" where "is" denotes a static state are equivalent in kind to a religious belief.

When Olivier claims that realty is fundamentally both "permanent and impermanent" he should remember that that is-ness is also assigned by human observers. (It is related to my example of the A/H ambiguity described above, and also to Derrida's discussion of aporia)

You thrown in wording like "religious and "deity" to qualify our position but as far as I am concerned both classifications are exactly even as polarizing standing points...its amazing that someone with your intellectual sufficient competence can be that biased ! You are throwing these exact same insults at yourself can't you see just on what difficult situation you bring yourself into ?
Its a petty that people like Ding a Sich n others don't participate more often because of this unneeded simpleton linearity in debates...we all could do much better. I'm certainly not here to outright disagree with people...but I get immediately pissed that most people are not willing to any honest starting fruitful point...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

fresco wrote:

JLN is philosophical correct about the co-dependence of polarities.

Our psychological need for "permanence" as an antithesis to (thermodynamic) change is undoubtedly one of the factors behind the religious concepts of an "eternal deity". Similarly I argue that statements about the "is-ness" of "reality" where "is" denotes a static state are equivalent in kind to a religious belief.

When Olivier claims that realty is fundamentally both "permanent and impermanent" he should remember that that is-ness is also assigned by human observers. (It is related to my example of the A/H ambiguity described above, and also to Derrida's discussion of aporia)

You thrown in wording like "religious and "deity" to qualify our position but as far as I am concerned both classifications are exactly even as polarizing standing points...its amazing that someone with your intellectual sufficient competence can be that biased ! You are throwing these exact same insults at yourself can't you see just on what difficult situation you bring yourself into ?
Its a petty that people like Ding a Sich n others don't participate more often because of this unneeded simpleton linearity in debates...we all could do much better. I'm certainly not here to outright disagree with people...but I get immediately pissed that most people are not willing to any honest starting fruitful point...

Fil,

Apparently Fresco, brilliant though he may seem, is unable to see that if impermanence is part of REALITY…then that IS part of what IS. That would not create a contradiction.

He apparently is unable to see that “is-ness” may include a lack of stasis and an inclusion of human perception participation. He apparently is unable to see that I (arguing the “what IS…IS” side of this issue) have never suggested otherwise...and that such a possibility also does not create a contradiction.

I SUSPECT he is “unable to see” these things because recognizing and acknowledging any of that would mean acknowledging some tiny bit of error in what he has pontificated here…and THAT is something that simply cannot be allowed to happen.

As I’ve said…there is the humor factor to some of this back and forth…and ya gotta appreciate that aspect to get full benefit from these discussions.

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@JLNobody,

My point entirely. No need to over-emphacize one aspect if the ying yang over the other.

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@fresco,

Quote:

When Olivier claims that realty is fundamentally both "permanent and impermanent" he should remember that that is-ness is also assigned by human observers. (It is related to my example of the A/H ambiguity described above, and also to Derrida's discussion of aporia)

I was only using JL's words, adding permanence to his sentence about reality beind fundamentally impermanent. Therefore, your "is-ness" was wrongly assigned to me when it should have been is-nessed to JN.

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@fresco,

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Our psychological need for "permanence"

Yours is evidently very strong. You never change your mind for instance.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

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I've gone through a change of mind in the past year or so; but it had nothing to do with the discussions on these forums.

Interesting. Could you say more about this change of mind?

During my transition from community college to a university I became enthralled with logic and the logical positivist school of thought. To top it all off, I was somewhat of a Kantian prior to that, which makes sense, given that logical positivism is an offshoot of Kantian thought (if you read Wittgenstein's TLP carefully, you'll notice the Kantian underpinnings). This was all around the summer of 2010. I then took symbolic logic, which only bolstered my already positivistic philosophy. And then I went on to second order logics, in particular modal logic. This really changed my views. This was around 2011. I pretty much ate up every worthwhile text and monograph on possibility and necessity. This lasted for about a year or so.

But then I completely rejected possible worlds talk, and a good number of things for that matter, when I started reading A.N. Whitehead, Spinoza, and Rescher. Now I'm more aligned with process philosophy, which recognizes that talk of modality is ultimately epistemological, involving stories and suppositions based on what we know about the actual world, not some possible world.

Thankfully, by taking on such a process view, I've come to realize, thanks to the philosophers mentioned, that philosophy is of the utmost importance, contrary to what other philosophers have said. And not only is it in itself important, but it is also important to build a system of philosophy to go along with it, however out of fashion that may be in current philosophical circles today.

So, yeah, that's that.

Olivier5 wrote:

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I've never seen someone change their position on the spot, even if they're clearly wrong. That's philosophy for you.

How long have you been here? I like your posts.

I was originally part of philosophyforum back in 2009, before some of the moderators made the executive decision to merge with this shitty website. But all is not lost, I suppose.

I'm glad you like my posts. I try to keep my posting to a minimum, since I don't really care that much for this site. But you'll see me chime in every once in a while.

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@Olivier5,

Oh, and there's more to my change of mind than I wish to add, for brevity's sake. I will, however, list the philosophers that have impacted me along the way:

Robert Nozick
Ayn Rand (yes, I consider her a philosopher)
Quentin Meillassoux
Martin Heidegger (through all of his empty profoundness, there are a few gems in his philosophical thought)
Arthur Schopenhauer
Jean-Paul Sartre
Ludwig Witttgenstein (However pernicious his philosophy may be, he does make you think)
Richard Rorty (same as Wittgenstein)
Saul Kripke (total badass)
Alvin Plantinga
Quentin Smith (the dude who got me into modal logic. He's a platonist, but not too bad in my book)
Merleau-Ponty (eh, he's okay)
Edmund Husserl (another badass)
G.W.F. Hegel (a charlatan to the nth degree, but still worth reading)
Friedrich Nietzsche (love his prose and parts of his philosophy, provided that you can get past the "mask" he puts up)
Aristotle and Plato (gotta give credit to the giants of philosophy, Aristotle in particular)

There are others whose names I can't think of, but they're included too (at least in spirit).

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@Frank Apisa,

Frank Apisa wrote:

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…. and leave it at that or at least don't say you will repeat yourself a thousand times if you need to... in order to 'convert' others because... 'you know'... you're correct... it's plain silliness.

Quote where I said that! (Hey, don’t bother looking for it, because I never said it. You just made that up, because you are getting frustrated.)
Doing that, igm...is plain silliness on your part.

This reply by you is what I'm referring to:

Frank Apisa wrote:

Olivier5 wrote:

Seriously, how many time may one repeat a tautology before it starts to become a tiny bit tiresome? 1000 times? 2000 times?

I do not know. But if the person to whom it is being addressed simply does not get it...I guess the number can be great.

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Reality - thing or phenomenon?

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