Reality - thing or phenomenon?

@igm,

We were both actually responding to

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There is also a fair dose of inertia and structural permanence in this world.

But, "structural permanence in this world" has already been explained and described; their are slow and fast changes happening all the time. It's about the perceptions of humans that observes "structural permanence," but we already know it changes.

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When we say that someone never changes his mind aren't we saying that he stubbornly refuses to be changed by our arguments? For example, over the years Fresco has provided us with a list of thinkers who have--and explanations of how they have--influenced him. In doing so is he not referring to changes he has undergone?
I even think that Frank may have undergone shifts (or variations) in his fundamental "insight" on the is-ness of "Reality". Sometimes he presents it as if he sees it only logicallly (his grand tautology); at other times, however, I suspect his stance is intuitive and basically ineffable (which is why I cannot confidently disagree with him).

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@JLNobody,

Nobody has argued the point that anyone doesn't have the right to agree with Frank.

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Those who advocate that both permanence and impermanence constitute the nature of "reality" are totally missing the point, that both of those terms are concepts in the mind of human observers. There is no evidence of any "celestial referance frame" aginst which change can be measured. (Einstein threw out the one advocated by Newton ) We can only meaningfully speak about observer specific reference frames and agreements between observers for common purposes.

Now if this very point is what some of you want to claim "reality is", it must be obvious that such a point is totally antithetical to how the word is used in everyday transactions.

This is intended to be my last contribution to this entertaining thread.
I'm sticking with two of Wittgestein's adages.
1.Meaning is use.
2. The limits of my language are the limits of my world.

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@fresco,

Quote:

This is intended to be my last contribution to this entertaining thread.

Your contributions have been very enjoyable. Thanks, fresco.

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@cicerone imposter,

C.I. asserts that "Nobody has argued the point that anyone doesn't have the right to agree with Frank"

Not at all. You can lynch him if you wish. But I do think that we are not able to engage every subjective insight others have. Some times our insights are not completely communicable, and that might apply to some experiences Frank has when sensing the reality of Reality.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Those who advocate that both permanence and impermanence constitute the nature of "reality" are totally missing the point, that both of those terms are concepts in the mind of human observers. There is no evidence of any "celestial referance frame" aginst which change can be measured. (Einstein threw out the one advocated by Newton ) We can only meaningfully speak about observer specific reference frames and agreements between observers for common purposes.

Fresco, you are absolutely committed to thinking that REALITY is dependent upon humans, using human language, being able to describe it or comprehend it. I do not know where that comes from…and I consider it to be an arbitrary and gratuitous assertion. Such arbitrary and unnecessary thinking limits you in ways you ought not to be limited.

There is a fairly decent possibility that we humans are not just that hot stuff, Fresco. Our ability to describe it or comprehend it MAY have absolutely no impact on the REALITY whatsoever…and that is something your arguments never take into consideration.

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Now if this very point is what some of you want to claim "reality is", it must be obvious that such a point is totally antithetical to how the word is used in everyday transactions.

HERE IS A STATEMENT: I do not know if REALITY is dependent in any way on human ability to describe it…or to comprehend it.

Tell me what word or words therein I am using outside of how the word(s) are used in “everyday transactions.”

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This is intended to be my last contribution to this entertaining thread.

If you stick with that intention…it will be a loss to the thread. I hope you reconsider.

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I'm sticking with two of Wittgestein's adages.
1.Meaning is use.
2. The limits of my language are the limits of my world.

If Wittgestein actually said that…he was an ass. You ought discard him.

In any case, the notion that the limits of one’s understanding is the limits of that person’s world MAY BE CORRECT…but to assert it as a fact is beyond absurd.

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@Ding an Sich,

Pretty serious list you got there. I haven't read a fifth of them and haven't heard of most of the others... Tells you something about how (un)seriously I approach philosophy myself. Sad

I agree Hegel is a charlatan. I don't see how he would be worth reading - his prose is just too sloppy (on purpose of course, it's a way to hide his vacuity). I could only envisage reading him in order to debunk him. But his gravest sin IMO has been to create this fake persona of the thick-worded, convoluted philosopher whom nobody actually understands and who seems to be saying all sorts of absurdities but that's just because he's soooo deep, ya know? Since then, philosophy became an exercise in deceiving and and mocking the lay man. With exceptions of course.

I am new on this board and do find it shitty debate-wise, with many posters too immature, in spite of their grey hair, to actually discuss things honestly and fairly. Many people seem to be here to bitch about other people. But it ain't going to get better until good, sensible posters take a firmer foothold and sense of propriety. So please keep posting.

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@fresco,

You wrote,

Quote:

that both of those terms are concepts in the mind of human observers.

But those are the essence of our reality; they are concepts of the human mind.
We also "know" that humans are subjective animals who can "see" and "interpret" their observations in various ways.

I thought all along that was the topic of this thread; human reality.

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@cicerone imposter,

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which agrees with my opinion about our genes and environment - that includes the language we use, and the politics under which we live.

Indeed, try to change anything serious in politics and see how the system reacts... Politics is all about change alright, but much of that change is just smoke and mirrors. Never underestimate the capacity of any human system to resist change, e.g. to go along with the motion and pretend to change, while not actually changing anything of import.

But I had in mind simpler things, such as the permanent shapes of solids. Or the permanence of rivers, of their course never changing much and of each and every part of a river having its character, its dangers, its pools and its rapids, good spots for fishing or for swimming, etc., even though the water flowing through the river changes all the time.

Al this to say that change is often more of an illusion than a reality. But it's the illusion that people like, cause nothing is more boring than permanence.

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@JLNobody,

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"Inertia" is the slowly moving stuff I was referring to, and "structural permanence" is essentially a cognitive pattern, one's idea about the organization of some "thing." True, they do provide much of our "reality"-- together with the more ephemeral faster moving stuff. But when we look carefully do we not realize that everything is in process at one rate of speed or another?

Everything is a cognitive pattern if you go this route, even change and process. You cannot even think of change without thinking of permanence.

And process can be pretty permanent and predictable. It can follow a pre-fixed order, like day-nigh-day-night-day-night. That is change but it's not really change. It's a cycle.

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@igm,

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Doesn't Oliver use the word 'permanent' and assert that it is an actual state... often in his posts against impermanence?

1st, it's OlivIer. Second, I said permanence and impermanence are linked, two extreme of the same gradient (or the two sides of the same ying yang if you prefer). I never said that nothing ever change, just that 1) not everything thing changes at the same speed; 2) that some change so slowly that for all intent and purpose, it's like they don't change; and 3) that a lot of changes are actually a form of permanence, e.g. cyclical change.

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Quote:

When we say that someone never changes his mind aren't we saying that he istubbornly refuses to be changed by our arguments? Over the years Fresco has given us a long list of thinkers who have influenced him. In doing so is he not referring to changes he has undergone?

I am pretty confident it's true he never changes his mind, here or elsewhere. Fresco never read a philosopher he could not misconstrue to retroactively fit his views. The guy reeks of egotism.

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@Olivier5,

When I refer to the yin-yang structure of the world my reference is not ontological, it's epistemological. As Fresco noted, most thinking is with reference to the poles of a dualistic perspective. Permanence and impermanence, truth and falsity, reality and illusion, etc.etc. are not descriptive of experience itself (meditate and you'll eventually realize that); but we feel that they are good to think with.
A reason we are always in such disagreement--aside from the fact that it is fun--is that we are usually not referring to our lived experience, only to inherited models about reality. Regarding Fresco's appreciation of Wittgenstein, I totally accept the latter's operationalism, but less his notion that, like B.L. Whorf's, that the boundaries of human language constitute the horizons of human experience. Obviously, we are always influenced by our grammar and vocabulary, but we also "think" with, often paradoxically complex, unconscious psychological forces that give rise to art and poetry that, ironically, transcends the logic of language.

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@Olivier5,

It is strange how our experiences differ.

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Fresco never read a philosopher he could not misconstrue to retroactively fit his views.

One might argue that this is all anyone does. Anyone's views are merely articulations of themes we ourselves determine the importance of.
We tend to go with what we know, and if there are options, we stick to what intuitively feels right, or to what yields the best results.

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@Cyracuz,

You say that "we stick to what intuitively feels right". This is a trivial but profound psychological principle, and it's what I was trying to say regarding Frank's infamous tautology.,

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Quote:
Doesn't Oliver use the word 'permanent' and assert that it is an actual state... often in his posts against impermanence?

1st, it's OlivIer. Second, I said permanence and impermanence are linked, two extreme of the same gradient (or the two sides of the same ying yang if you prefer). I never said that nothing ever change, just that 1) not everything thing changes at the same speed; 2) that some change so slowly that for all intent and purpose, it's like they don't change; and 3) that a lot of changes are actually a form of permanence, e.g. cyclical change.

Let's take cyclical change e.g. day followed by night... when the sun sets do you really believe that the same exact sun rises in the morning? It's temperature, size, luminosity, age, distance from earth etc. etc. have all changed and will never be the same again. There is no such thing as an exactly repeating cycle... all cycles are similar but not the same... they have subtly but completely changed.

The speed of change is irrelevant what is important is that all things change... all the time.

There is no permanent/impermanent ying and yang because there is no permanence if there was there could be no impermanence... reality depends on there not being permanence because it would be unchangeable thus preventing any change whatsoever.. and all around is evidence of change.. at whatever speed you perceive it.

We haven't touched on the fact that for example the sun is an image created by mind and your body and its ability to perceive the sun is also constantly changing... your eyesight... your optic nerve... retina.. are all changing constantly and need to, in order to see that object called the sun.

All is impermanent there is no permanence.... and the ying and yang...fast and slow etc analogies are just a way of distracting yourself from that realization.

Eventually impermanence can be refuted... and we are left with the 'ineffable'.

Reality is 'ineffable' but it is useful to see that 'first' it is not permanent.

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@igm,

Yes, there are no identities in nature--as far as we can tell. Like all cycles, pennies only look the same, and their "sameness" is only formal, in actuality they are unique.

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@Olivier5,

I was talking about politics on the macro level where the government has great influence is how much freedom or restrictions are offered its citizens.

I remember the first time when I visited Russia in 2000 when the staff on the riverboat we were on were serviced by professionals such as doctors, professors, and lawyers who were multilingual. They earned more working on those boats then the practicing of their profession. I visited again on a similar cruise from Moscow to St Petersberg in 2006, and the staff on the boat were multi-lingual college students.

I have traveled extensively around the world (over 190 countries with about 87 unique ones), and have seen the standard of living in many countries that have been influenced by their governments.

Look at what's happening in China and India - but their real progress to achieve any semblance of a standard of living that matches the already developed countries will be very slow.

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@igm,

igm wrote:

Olivier5 wrote:

Quote:
Doesn't Oliver use the word 'permanent' and assert that it is an actual state... often in his posts against impermanence?

1st, it's OlivIer. Second, I said permanence and impermanence are linked, two extreme of the same gradient (or the two sides of the same ying yang if you prefer). I never said that nothing ever change, just that 1) not everything thing changes at the same speed; 2) that some change so slowly that for all intent and purpose, it's like they don't change; and 3) that a lot of changes are actually a form of permanence, e.g. cyclical change.

Let's take cyclical change e.g. day followed by night... when the sun sets do you really believe that the same exact sun rises in the morning? It's temperature, size, luminosity, age, distance from earth etc. etc. have all changed and will never be the same again. There is no such thing as an exactly repeating cycle... all cycles are similar but not the same... they have subtly but completely changed.

The speed of change is irrelevant what is important is that all things change... all the time.

There is no permanent/impermanent ying and yang because there is no permanence if there was there could be no impermanence... reality depends on there not being permanence because it would be unchangeable thus preventing any change whatsoever.. and all around is evidence of change.. at whatever speed you perceive it.

We haven't touched on the fact that for example the sun is an image created by mind and your body and its ability to perceive the sun is also constantly changing... your eyesight... your optic nerve... retina.. are all changing constantly and need to, in order to see that object called the sun.

All is impermanent there is no permanence.... and the ying and yang...fast and slow etc analogies are just a way of distracting yourself from that realization.

Eventually impermanence can be refuted... and we are left with the 'ineffable'.

Reality is 'ineffable' but it is useful to see that 'first' it is not permanent.

Can you get it through you head that what may not be permanent...is human perceptions and comprehensions of REALITY.

I have no idea of what the REALITY is...an I strongly, strongly suspect you don't either.

I will grant you that it may or may not be "useful" to see that your blind guess about REALITY is that it is not permanent. But to take that from there to "...it is useful to see that 'first' it (REALITY ITSELF) is not permanent."

The really funny thing is that you can accept that about REALITY...but have so much difficulty seeing that whatever REALITY actually IS...it actually IS.

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Reality - thing or phenomenon?

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