The Half-life of Facts.

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

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.

Now you are not making any sense.
Are you sure that was what you intended to say?

I mean, "the world in which this experience takes place" is how you and anyone else who believes "experience independent reality" is a meaningful idea understands REALITY.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
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.

Now you are not making any sense.
Are you sure that was what you intended to say?

I mean, "the world in which this experience takes place" is how you and anyone else who believes "experience independent reality" is a meaningful idea understands REALITY.

You got me on that one, Cyracuz. I musta copied and pasted the wrong quote...and never checked before hitting "POST." You are absolutely correct that I meant to use the other part of your comment.

I screwed up.

It shoulda read:

Anyone using "The experience we have”...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.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Wittgenstein said "meaning is use". If we look how the word "reality" is used in normal (non-philosophical discourse) it refers to disputes about what is contextually the case.
e.g. "She thinks she can cook but in reality her meals are awful". or "Food aid in famine areas seems to alleviate a problem, but in reality it is only a temporary solution which exacerbates the long term problem".

But when philosophers "take that word on holiday" (Wittgenstein phrase for out of normal context) it can differentially refer to Kant's noumena, or Heiddeger's Sein (being) or indeed to any number of concepts whose significance is embedded in whole and often unstated philosophical positions which have evolved over time as offshoots and contrasts with each other. This point is reinforced by GH's Benjamin Lee Whorf citation above.

The problem here is that we have a claim about "facticity" which is antithetical to views associated with the technically defined position "naive realism" ...a position which we all pragmatically tend take on a daily basis, because we parochially gloss over the distinction between functional persistence and structural permanence Attempts are then made to remove or reduce that (uncomfortable) antithesis by suggesting for example that the claim is about "description of reality", not "reality" itself. But for those (like you and I) who argue, contrary to dictionary/lay useage, that what we call "reality" is culturally experiential and ephemeral rather than independently ontological, there is no antithesis. On the contrary, there is a justification of our position.

2 Replies

@Frank Apisa,

That's what I thought. **** happens.

My reply is that anyone using "the experience we have" realizes that claiming that REALITY is anything more than that would be making a guess.

1 Reply

@fresco,

I see it in a similar way. To argue "that what we call "reality" is culturally experiential and ephemeral rather than independently ontological" seems to me to be more honest in terms of what we can actually determine. In a way, it is not a matter of adding assumptions to what we already understand. It is a matter of removing them.

0 Replies

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Wittgenstein said "meaning is use". If we look how the word "reality" is used in normal (non-philosophical discourse) it refers to disputes about what is contextually the case.
e.g. "She thinks she can cook but in reality her meals are awful". or "Food aid in famine areas seems to alleviate a problem, but in reality it is only a temporary solution which exacerbates the long term problem".

But when philosophers "take that word on holiday" (Wittgenstein phrase for out of normal context) it can differentially refer to Kant's noumena, or Heiddeger's Sein (being) or indeed to any number of concepts whose significance is embedded in whole and often unstated philosophical positions which have evolved over time as offshoots and contrasts with each other. This point is reinforced by GH's Benjamin Lee Whorf citation above.

The problem here is that we have a claim about "facticity" which is antithetical to views associated with the technically defined position "naive realism" ...a position which we all pragmatically tend take on a daily basis, because we parochially gloss over the distinction between functional persistence and structural permanence Attempts are then made to remove or reduce that (uncomfortable) antithesis by suggesting for example that the claim is about "description of reality", not "reality" itself. But for those (like you and I) who argue, contrary to dictionary/lay useage, that what we call "reality" is culturally experiential and ephemeral rather than independently ontological, there is no antithesis. On the contrary, there is a justification of our position.

What actually IS...IS.

Invite those other guys to come to A2K...and I'll explain that to them also.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

That's what I thought. **** happens.

Thanks, Cyracuz. Yeah, **** does happen. I try to be careful...but...

Quote:

My reply is that anyone using "the experience we have" realizes that claiming that REALITY is anything more than that would be making a guess.

Absolutely...and we agree on that completely...as I have done often in this exchange.

But it MAY be.

You are limiting REALITY ONLY to what we experience. You are leaving no room for REALITY being anything but that.

If you are saying that "humans MAY BE necessary to the process and may not be"...we are in agreement. I have made that concession to your arguments on many occasions.

But you are not.

Unless, of course, you finally want to change your position.

2 Replies

@Frank Apisa,

Gotta take the aunts food shopping now. 87 & 93. A major ordeal, but I love 'em. I'll be back!

0 Replies

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

You are limiting REALITY ONLY to what we experience. You are leaving no room for REALITY being anything but that.

True. But we cannot know if reality is anything but that. It seems rather likely, but we cannot know.
Which brings us to the point that my view requires fewer assumptions than yours, not more.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

Invite those other guys to come to A2K...and I'll explain that to them also.

I did ! They said "Tell him to go and read the E-prime article and stop talking Geschwätz". Smile

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
You are limiting REALITY ONLY to what we experience. You are leaving no room for REALITY being anything but that.

True. But we cannot know if reality is anything but that. It seems rather likely, but we cannot know.
Which brings us to the point that my view requires fewer assumptions than yours, not more.

No, it does not.

We cannot know if REALITY is anything but what humans experience...but assuming there may be more is a valid, reasonable, and logical assumption to make.

Excluding that possibility is only reasonable if you are defending a belief system at all costs...and logic plays no part.

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Quote:
Invite those other guys to come to A2K...and I'll explain that to them also.

I did ! They said "Tell him to go and read the E-prime article and stop talking Geschwätz".

Cute, Fresco, but somehow, I doubt it.
Wink

0 Replies

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

Excluding that possibility is only reasonable if you are defending a belief system at all costs...and logic plays no part.

Now you are not being consistent.
You are claiming that me refraining from making an unwarranted assumption is in defense of a belief system, when you agree that there is no factual or logical grounds to state that assumption as fact.

If you were assuming god existed based on this, and I said your assumption was unwarranted, would I be the one in defense of a belief system?

How am I the one defending a belief system by criticizing a belief on a basis which you seem to agree on.

How justified or useful such a belief or assumption might be is beside the point. You have already agreed that "world independent of experience" is an assumption, since it is impossible for a human being to know anything "outside of experience".

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
Excluding that possibility is only reasonable if you are defending a belief system at all costs...and logic plays no part.

Now you are not being consistent.
You are claiming that me refraining from making an unwarranted assumption is in defense of a belief system, when you agree that there is no factual or logical grounds to state that assumption as fact.

If you were assuming god existed based on this, and I said your assumption was unwarranted, would I be the one in defense of a belief system?

How am I the one defending a belief system by criticizing a belief on a basis which you seem to agree on.

How justified or useful such a belief or assumption might be is beside the point. You have already agreed that "world independent of experience" is an assumption, since it is impossible for a human being to know anything "outside of experience".

Cyracuz...you are in effect saying you know what the REALITY is...because you are excluding the possibility that humans may play no part in the Ultimate REALITY. You are saying that humans are essential to REALITY...that REALITY is dependent upon them.

Why you see my calling attention to this defect in your thinking as inconsistency is beyond me...and beyond logic.

I am not making any assumption about REALITY other than...whatever IS...IS. The implications of that obviously are that REALITY is objective.

Your wording in this argument is so cumbersome and elusive, I cannot address it directly.

I will once again ask you to refute my assertion that REALITY is absolute and objective by challenging you once again to:

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

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

Cyracuz...you are in effect saying you know what the REALITY is...because you are excluding the possibility that humans may play no part in the Ultimate REALITY.

What is the Ultimate REALITY?

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
Cyracuz...you are in effect saying you know what the REALITY is...because you are excluding the possibility that humans may play no part in the Ultimate REALITY.

What is the Ultimate REALITY?

I don't know...and I suspect neither do you.

But you are saying that one thing it cannot contain is the possibility that humans play no part in its entirety.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

I am saying that the only reality I do know, humans seem to play some part in.
Any idea of reality which we play no part in is by definition inaccessible to us, and therefore as inexplicable and impossible to justify as "god".

I try to relate to a reality that is possible to experience, since any other kind of reality would be fictional.

1 Reply

@fresco,

Quote:

Olivier5 wrote:
That must be why the French are so much better at philisophy... Smile

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.!

Aha, I knew Ted Honderich's choice of animated metaphors would be clarified someday.

"One thinks of French philosophy that it aspires to the condition of literature or the condition of art, and that English and American philosophy aspires to the condition of science. French philosophy, one thinks of as picking up an idea and running with it, possibly into a nearby brick wall or over a local cliff, or something like that." --Poked into ears across the Channel by BBC Radio in the late '90s.

Quite kind compared to the roasting that analytic philosophers in the UK gave Derrida prior to him still getting the Honorary Doctorate from Cambridge a few years earlier.

2 Replies

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

I am saying that the only reality I do know, humans seem to play some part in.
Any idea of reality which we play no part in is by definition inaccessible to us, and therefore as inexplicable and impossible to justify as "god".

No one is saying that REALITY has to be known or understood by humans to be REALITY...perhaps except you and a few others here.

The fact that distant galaxies may be inaccessible to us does not make them any less a part of REALITY.

The fact that we do not know what lives besides us, if anything, does not make any that does exist...any less a part of REALITY.

All that has been made abundantly clear throughout this discussion.

Quote:

I try to relate to a reality that is possible to experience, since any other kind of reality would be fictional.

I honestly do not care what you "try to relate to"...and we are not talking about what you try to relate to.

You were making statements about REALITY...about what exists.

Now, rather than simply fess up that you have been wrong all along...you are trying to divert the discussion and make it seem something entirely different was being discussed.

Rise above that, Cyracuz.

1 Reply

@Romeo Fabulini,

Quote:

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"?

Theoretical physicists even exclude the flow of time from a "scientific realist" version of the phenomenal world, consigning it to feature of consciousness. Or emerging from a brain / memory organization as it would be understood in the future, like an extended, continuous worldline embedded in spacetime, rather than our 3D snapshot of it as neural structure in only a present moment.

I was rather startled by how pervasive and entrenched this "flux nihilism" has become among this generation, these thinkers no longer as formerly agnostic for the sake of avoiding the "crazy" tag from the other, naive-realist prone physical sciences. So much so that Lee Smolin has almost been quasi-ostracized or treated as some kind of crank-case by his recent opposition to the so-called "block universe" view (and I mean solely in that area, not his other published work).

1 Reply

The Half-life of Facts.

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