The Half-life of Facts.

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
How is this useful in you showing there is no absolute REALITY?

It is useful in establishing reality as a phenomenon of relationship.
It is useful in explaining why anything outside that relationship would be outside the domain or claim to relevancy of any fact known to humans.

One: If what IS...IS that if reality is defined as a relationship (very arbitrary, by the way), then that relationship is the absolute reality.

Two: Even if it were correct...you would be saying that the ABSOLUTE REALITY is that REALITY is a phenomenon of relationship.

You would be defeating your own thesis, Cyracuz.

Quote:

That is why we can say that without humans, there would be no objects or events. We are not speaking about whatever is perceived as objects or events.

That is a very interesting, but bizarre guess...which makes humans to be exceedingly important in a universe in which it may not be very important at all.

Not that you do not have a right to make bizarre guesses.

Quote:

What it means is that the categories and criteria we know and use would not exist without us. And without these categories and criteria, how do you propose to identify anything as object or event?

Yeah. Catholics have no trouble understanding the Trinity either...or Transubstantiation...he said facetiously.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

That is a very interesting, but bizarre guess...which makes humans to be exceedingly important in a universe in which it may not be very important at all.

Make no mistake. Our facts have absolutely no relevance to the universe. They only have relevance to our understanding of it.
It is a fine point, but an important one. We simply do not know what is important to the universe, and even if we did it would matter less than what is important to humans, which is the only thing we can know.

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@Cyracuz,

Quote:

What it means is that the categories and criteria we know and use would not exist without us. And without these categories and criteria, how do you propose to identify anything as object or event?

Still, even if our mind is involve in coding and decoding the world, our own existence as human beings cannot be explained without the hypothesis that a universe - something - existed before us which gave rise to us humans as a species. In practice, for those accepting Darwin, it means we had ancestors who were not human.

It works at the individual level to: each and everyone of us humans was born at some point, before which we as individuals did not exist but our parents did, when they were young and beautiful... We can verify this when we have children ourselves. It starts as a f..k, goes through a phase of seeming animality before starting to speak and the next thing you know, they'll argue that reality does not exist... Having children is a great experience to convince oneself of the materiality of one's existence.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

I would argue that having experience, or existing, is the first and foremost basis for making fact-like statements. What other way of making fact-like statements do you suggest?

None. If your experience is all you have, you have no way of making fact-like statements at all. Indeed, that's what I understand to be Joe's point about brains in vats. True, fact-like statements are only possible if your experience is an experience of something outside your brain, accessible to brains other than yours.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quite so. The best I can do is describe what I experience, then compare that to what others have described, and so we arrive at the most efficient descriptions and truest statements.

What "others"? Do you mean to imply that there is a world outside the vat you're in, populated with brains independent of yours? If yes, that's a reality existing independently of your brain. If no, then those "others" are figments of your overexcited forebrain, talking about other figments of your overexcited forebrain. What do you care what they say, and in what terms could you possibly measure the efficiency of your communication? If there's nothing to talk about, in what sense can you talk about it efficiently?

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@Olivier5,

Open the window.

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TO ALL
There are various terms here that are being bandied about as though their meanings were set in stone, such as "existence", "origins", "time", and perhaps the most interesting,"explanation". They all have a lay usage as specified in dictionaries but are open to deconstruction from a philosophical point of view.

In addition to the aforementioned is the word "is" itself which is considered so ambiguous and problematic to some philosophers that they have attempted to eliminate it from philosophical discourse by advocating the use of a synthetic verb termed "E-Prime".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime

I suggest that many of the disagreements on this thread have occured becuase participants either ignore, or are not aware of such semantic issues.

3 Replies

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
That is a very interesting, but bizarre guess...which makes humans to be exceedingly important in a universe in which it may not be very important at all.

Make no mistake. Our facts have absolutely no relevance to the universe. They only have relevance to our understanding of it.
It is a fine point, but an important one. We simply do not know what is important to the universe, and even if we did it would matter less than what is important to humans, which is the only thing we can know.

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
That is a very interesting, but bizarre guess...which makes humans to be exceedingly important in a universe in which it may not be very important at all.

Make no mistake. Our facts have absolutely no relevance to the universe. They only have relevance to our understanding of it.
It is a fine point, but an important one. We simply do not know what is important to the universe, and even if we did it would matter less than what is important to humans, which is the only thing we can know.

I'm not interested in what you or anyone else can know...and we were not talking about that in our side discussion. We were talking about REALITY…and more particularly, about whether there would be “objects” or “events” without humans.

You had written: “That is why we can say that without humans, there would be no objects or events. We are not speaking about whatever is perceived as objects or events.”

That is a guess…and it is, in my opinion, a rather bizarre guess…necessitated, it seems, by your devotion to that belief system of yours. Listen to the arguments of Neo and some of the others devoted to a belief system…and hear the insistence on stuff that exists as argument for no other reason than to prop up the initial guess (the belief system). That is what you are doing, Cyracuz. You are not actually arguing logically…you are arguing because the initial “belief” (your guess) requires that you say the things you are saying.

That kind of thing is one of the reasons I so often stress that if you are making guesses…call them (and accept them as) guesses rather than beliefs.

Under any circumstances I return to where we left off when you started this diversion from our initial diversion:

Try making "There is no absolute REALITY"...work...without making that the absolute REALITY.

It cannot be done, Cyracuz. Whatever IS…IS. That is the REALITY…the absolute REALITY.

1 Reply

@fresco,

Quote:

In addition to the aforementioned is the word "is" itself which is considered so ambiguous and problematic to some philosophers that they have attempted to eliminate it from philosophical discourse by advocating the use of a synthetic verb termed "E-Prime".

Ah, thanks for dredging that one up from buried memory. In turn it relatedly stirs recollection of some Whorfian-like linguistic experiments in fictional works of the past: The Languages of Pao, 1984, Babel-17, Heinlein's Gulf, etc. Over the last 20 years Sapir / BLW -ism even garnered a revival, and less trigger-happy evaluation / firing squad this time around.

"It was found that the background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual's mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade." Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Quote:

Make no mistake. Our facts have absolutely no relevance to the universe. They only have relevance to our understanding of it.
It is a fine point, but an important one. We simply do not know what is important to the universe, and even if we did it would matter less than what is important to humans, which is the only thing we can know.

Somewhere along the way the "real" cosmos became an invisible, meta-psychological version of itself rather than the one of outer sense that originally inspired it. We should have a lot of good agreement on the latter and even the "esoteric" phenomenal levels that science later added to the "exoteric" everyday stuff that is easily apprehended by anyone (or exclusive education club and its mathematics / technology not required). If experience is conforming to the same rules for all of us. But truly oddball cultures could diverge in their interpretations of appearances, especially during primitive eras where the door was wide open to a diversity of mythological stories as explanatory offerings.

I'd like to reflexively pin the blame on "external" being alienated from our interpersonal system of perception and understanding largely on Plato, but even Kant extended the "culprits" back further.

"The dictum of all genuine idealists from the Eleatic school to Bishop Berkeley, is contained in this formula: "All cognition through the senses and experience is nothing but sheer illusion, and only, in the ideas of the pure understanding and reason there is truth."

The principle that throughout dominates and determines my [critical] Idealism, is on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth."
Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics

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@fresco,

Why don't you speak in e prime, Fresco? Maybe you'll make better sense.

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@G H,

Quote:

"It was found that the background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual's mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade." Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality

That must be why the French are so much better at philisophy... Smile

1 Reply

Some facts will always be facts; for example 2+2=4 will never change no matter how much philosophers may huff and puff.. Smile

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http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/swag80_zps72962e87.gif~original

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Quote:

That must be why the French are so much better at philisophy...

Nah! ...it's their access to Gauloises, Absinthe and windows through which they can hurl themselves into oblivion, that allows them to think they are. !

1 Reply

@Romeo Fabulini,

Quote:

Some facts will always be facts; for example 2+2=4 will never change no matter how much philosophers may huff and puff..

Alas that "fact" depends on the assumption of the operational meaning of "+" and the base of the number system. (2+2 = 11 in base 3).
Philosophers and cognitive psychologists known as "embodiment theoerists" (Lakoff and Nunez: Where Mathematics Comes From) claim that all mathematical operations are reflective of bodily functioning.

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@fresco,

Quote:

I suggest that many of the disagreements on this thread have occurred because participants either ignore, or are not aware of such semantic issues.

If not all.
The word "reality" for instance. What does that word refer to? The experience we have, or the world in which this experience takes place?
It seems to me that both might qualify.
A dictionary definition of the word will not settle this debate, as it allows for reality to be both the world in which experience happens and experience itself. It is not clear from the definitions.

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Our brains tell us these wheels are turning even though they're not, so can we ever trust our brains to give us a true understanding of "reality"?

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/rotsnake.jpg

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
I suggest that many of the disagreements on this thread have occurred because participants either ignore, or are not aware of such semantic issues.

If not all.
The word "reality" for instance. What does that word refer to? The experience we have, or the world in which this experience takes place?

It seems to me that both might qualify.

A dictionary definition of the word will not settle this debate, as it allows for reality to be both the world in which experience happens and experience itself. It is not clear from the definitions.

Anyone using "the world in which this experience takes place"...is doing so only because the belief system of "humans are necessary for anything to exist" is so compelling for that individual, using anything else would be offensive to that GOD.

All along the people arguing on the other side of that artificial dichotomy you presented have noted that it is possible there is something (are things) outside of what humans experience. And of course, that is a possibility.

You, on the other hand, are arbitrarily defining REALITY as only that which humans experience...in order to make that question even worth asking.

It is completely close minded to arbitrarily limit REALITY to only what humans can experience. It arbitrarily decides that matter and beingness outside of human understanding CANNOT exist.

Why would you do that?

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@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

Try making "There is no absolute REALITY"...work...without making that the absolute REALITY.

Like I said, this is semantic trickery. "Absolute reality" is the idea of the existence of things irrespective of humans experiencing them.
Materialists name this reality more fundamental than any experience of existing in this world.

Your rant about whatever is actually the case would be absolute reality is nothing short of sophistry, and it drains all meaning out of the concept "absolute reality".

I am not pushing a belief. I am questioning the belief that this paradoxically unobserved eigenstate is more real than the experience by which we know of it.

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@Frank Apisa,

The limitations you are making to bolster your thesis, Cyracuz, is kinda like limiting sound and light wave lengths only to the ones that human eyes and ears can detect...for no good reason.

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The Half-life of Facts.

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