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The Half-life of Facts.

 
 
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 09:16 am
@Frank Apisa,
What has gone on from your side of this thread is mostly vacuous waffle.

But I am not summarizing the thread. I will repeat my introductory remarks which you have ignored.

Quote:
As the so-called “expert” originator of this thread I feel, rightly or wrongly that I should summarize what I consider to be the salient dynamic points about “facts” and “reality” which I have gleaned from my reading . Those who think I am a philosophical windbag should leave now, but those who stay may understand some of the issues better.


Feel free to leave by all means.

Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 09:20 am
@parados,
Parados...you quoted Cyracuz writing:

parados wrote:

Quote:
Nothing, not even prediction, precedes experience.


This apparently is one of the tenets of Cyracuz's belief system. In any case, you replied:

[
Quote:
Of course things precede experience. Things exist before you experience it. Life is filled with multiple examples of people being surprised.


You gotta wonder what anyone ever experiences...if nothing exists before it is experienced????

Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 09:25 am
@fresco,
fresco wrote:

What has gone on from your side of this thread is mostly vacuous waffle.

But I am not summarizing the thread. I will repeat my introductory remarks which you have ignored.

Quote:
As the so-called “expert” originator of this thread I feel, rightly or wrongly that I should summarize what I consider to be the salient dynamic points about “facts” and “reality” which I have gleaned from my reading . Those who think I am a philosophical windbag should leave now, but those who stay may understand some of the issues better.


I haven't ignored it, Fresco. Apparently you do not understand what you yourself wrote. You are supposedly summarizing what you have gleaned (supposedly both from the wheat and the chaff)...in this thread.

You aren't. You are merely restating your position...and dismissing everything the rest of us contributed.

Yes, I understand you consider what many others say about your thesis as vacuous waffling.

Hey...you are not required to be open-minded to start a thread here in A2K!

Quote:
Feel free to leave by all means.


I wouldn't leave one of your threads on a bet.


fresco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 09:31 am
@Frank Apisa,
Wrong ! You missed the phrase dynamic points .
Such points are rife in the literature as anybody with more than a superficial interest would know.

Shall I hold the door open for you ?
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 09:40 am
@fresco,
fresco wrote:

Wrong ! You missed the phrase dynamic points .
Such points are rife in the literature as anybody with more than a superficial interest would know.


If you had said "the points that I made" rather than "the dynamic points"...I would have agreed.

Your ego is getting in the way of understanding here, Fresco...as it so often does on most issues.

But I have to acknowledge that when you lose it...you tend to speak more like what most human being's speak rather than a programmed robot. That is, as Martha Stewart might say, a good thing.

Quote:
Shall I hold the door open for you ?


If you are leaving...leave. I am staying.
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 09:59 am
@Frank Apisa,
Smile
Pull the other one Frank!
You haven't got a clue about the significance of the word "dynamic" as compared to your turgid static "is-ness". Its use is completely antithetical to your position.
Oh yes...I read vacuous note that "reality might change" and that change itself would be "reality". Bertrand Russell rides again eh? ...until the new boy Wittgenstein arrived in his demolition truck ! (Not that such references would ring any bells for you Laughing )


0 Replies
 
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 10:12 am
@Frank Apisa,
Frank it would have sufficed to say that the very reality of experiencing is required to be absolute, that is, not subject to the whims of imagination on what the experiencing itself can be said to be. Its not like I can experience non experiencing or even re construct the experiencing of experiencing...there is no need to social agreement or constructivism on experiencing, as intellectual agreement itself, requires experiencing so to come to any sort of agreement or disagreement on anything.
Fresco is full of bullshit. The existence of experiencing is not itself subject to language, nor to conceptualization, but rather is the basis, so language and conceptualization can operate in the first place.

I have state this very same thing in many occasions and in vary different ways, but Fresco seams to lack the intellectual capacity or honesty of character either to grasp or address the point.
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 10:19 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
You don't mean to tell me that you and Frank are communicating ! Shocked
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 10:25 am
@fresco,
I mean to tell you that agreement and communication are the product of experiencing and not that experiencing is the product of communication.
Ability to experiencing rather is the condition to communicate. Please note that I don't even attempt to define an "I", I am way past Descartes on this one.
Thomas
 
  2  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 10:34 am
@Cyracuz,
Cyracuz wrote:
So I ask you, in a reality where everyone was blind, would rainbows exist?

Yes. And even they may well figure it out eventually, because you cannot rule out that sometime in the future, some blind people will figure out how to build cameras, spectrometers and so forth --- just as we have figured out how to build mass spectrometers, oscilloscopes, and other artificial senses like that.

***

When Joefromchicago's friends tell him about the Taj Mahal and he concludes that it's real, he doesn't just passively import their perceptions into his own mind. He also forms a testable hypothesis. He's pretty sure that he could take a plane to New Delhi, hop on a particular bus, get off at a particular stop, and see a piece of architecture that looks just like the pictures on his friends' smartphones. And at some future date, he may do just that.

Why don't successful predictions like this surprise you, given that you think no part of reality is independent of our perception? Without some perception-independent factor, how does your worldview account for the observation that we can use past perceptions to predict future perceptions --- and that such predictions, although refutable, are actually refuted so rarely?
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 10:42 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
I suggest that "Fresco's talking bullshit" is the the only message Frank got because its the only one he wanted to get ! Laughing
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 10:51 am
@Thomas,
I see Parados made the point already.
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 11:05 am
@Cyracuz,
Cyracuz wrote:
Can you name one thing that has ever been predicted without having first been perceived in some manner or form?

The deflection of light by a gravitational field was never observed or measured before 1915. In 1915, Einstein published his general theory of relativity, which predicted that the apparent position of certain stars would change in a very specific way during a solar eclipse. When such an eclipse occurred in 1919, astronomers checked; their observations confirmed Einstein's theory. The gravitational-lense effect, then, was predicted without having first been perceived in any form. That's one answer to your question. There are many others.
Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 11:06 am
@Frank Apisa,
Quote:
I am arguing that an “absolute or ultimate REALITY” is a must. There is no way it can logically be avoided. Whatever IS…IS. That is the REALITY. There is absolutely no way to avoid it…because whatever the actual REALITY IS…that is what it IS.


This doesn't mean much, Frank. Even if it was conclusively proven that REALITY is merely a perception known only to those who have experience, you would just say that THAT is "absolute or ultimate REALITY".

Quote:
In that hypothetical…our understanding of gravity would simply be wrong. Whatever is discovered new would be the REALITY.


Ok. So what is reality now then, if the hypothetical future understanding will would be REALITY?

Are you suggesting that we are living in a fantasy world of our making, and that the world we are misunderstanding is more real than the reality we do know?

Quote:
That kind of stuff does happen in science. We think the world is pancake flat and at the center of the universe…and it is proven wrong. The REALITY was NEVER that the world was pancake flat and at the center of the universe…


So, again, the reality of those people who lived during the period of history when those beliefs were accepted as true was just a fantasy world?
I am talking about what they knew and experienced... that reality (as if there is any other kind...).

Quote:
Look at that sentence, Cyracuz, and see how close that comes to doing the kind of thing a theists does when cornered on some bizarre necessity of his/her belief system.


I could say the same about this:
Quote:
I am arguing that an “absolute or ultimate REALITY” is a must. There is no way it can logically be avoided. Whatever IS…IS. That is the REALITY. There is absolutely no way to avoid it…because whatever the actual REALITY IS…that is what it IS.


You name it "absolute or ultimate REALITY", and theists name it GOD. Their agenda is to establish the reality of GOD, to justify their entire way of thinking. Quite similar to what you are doing actually.

Your way of thinking isn't alien to me. I grew out of it, and know it intimately. What I am doing here is exploring alternatives.
But I don't need alternative perspectives to see that assigning the status of REALITY to the hypothetical "actual" rather than the concrete phenomenon we actually experience is backwards. It implies that the reality we experience is a fantasy world of our own making, based on our capacity to experience the "actual".
The conceptual meaning of idea is clear to me and entirely sensible. My only objection is that I would call what we experience REALITY, and the hypothetical ACTUAL the fantasy world.

Because that is the way it is. REALITY is what actually is, as determined by the immediate experience of being here. Even proof of what actually is in some far corner of space we can never experience directly cannot pass into our knowledge via anything but the immediate experience of reading the data on paper or pixels.
Even the concept "absolute reality" is only available to us through the immediate experience of thinking about it.
Even if it is there, just as you say, it does not merit the label REALITY. Even if it constitutes 90% of the whole phenomenon we know as REALITY, we cannot say that it is REALITY any more than we can say that air is BREATHING.

Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 11:09 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
Fil Albuquerque wrote:

Frank it would have sufficed to say that the very reality of experiencing is required to be absolute, that is, not subject to the whims of imagination on what the experiencing itself can be said to be. Its not like I can experience non experiencing or even re construct the experiencing of experiencing...there is no need to social agreement or constructivism on experiencing, as intellectual agreement itself, requires experiencing so to come to any sort of agreement or disagreement on anything.
Fresco is full of bullshit. The existence of experiencing is not itself subject to language, nor to conceptualization, but rather is the basis, so language and conceptualization can operate in the first place.

I have state this very same thing in many occasions and in vary different ways, but Fresco seams to lack the intellectual capacity or honesty of character either to grasp or address the point.


I would guess it is the honesty of character that is the problem, Fil. He seems to be intelligent, but he has this belief system in play and just seems unable to get out from under it.

I see this kind of thing often in theists...where the essentials of the belief system are so compelling they simply cannot acknowledge anything that would call them into question.

Fresco does not seem to be coming from a theistic position...and I do not understand the investment he has in the system he has created for himself.

But I agree that he does not (probably, will not) get it.

That won't stop me from posting in response to what he says, though!

0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 11:10 am
@fresco,
fresco wrote:

You don't mean to tell me that you and Frank are communicating ! Shocked


Ahhh...so Fil and I are communicating. And I suppose your belief system requires that you take that to mean everything you have said about REALITY is vindicated.

C'mon. You are way above that kind of nonsense.
0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 11:12 am
@fresco,
fresco wrote:

I suggest that "Fresco's talking bullshit" is the the only message Frank got because its the only one he wanted to get ! Laughing


It wasn't the only part...but it sure stood out as though it had been hi-lighted. I wonder why that is?
0 Replies
 
Romeo Fabulini
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 11:17 am
"Facts", "Reality", what the hell are they?
For example our senses tell us the bits in this pic are being sucked into the black hole, but it's really a STATIC pic-

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/illusion-fgw.jpg~original
0 Replies
 
Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 11:23 am
@fresco,
Good summary.

Quote:
Without such attempts, segmentation of the world via language into “things” is meaningless because such segmentation could be limitless without the functional focus of the human involved.


I just wanted to quote this because it expresses very well something I have been trying to express for a long time, both in this thread and to myself.
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Nov, 2013 11:27 am
@Cyracuz,
Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
I am arguing that an “absolute or ultimate REALITY” is a must. There is no way it can logically be avoided. Whatever IS…IS. That is the REALITY. There is absolutely no way to avoid it…because whatever the actual REALITY IS…that is what it IS.


This doesn't mean much, Frank. Even if it was conclusively proven that REALITY is merely a perception known only to those who have experience, you would just say that THAT is "absolute or ultimate REALITY".


For a very good reason, Cyracuz...because that is exactly what it would be. Congratulations...you have finally seen that REALITY has to be objective because whatever IS...IS no matter what it is.


Quote:
Quote:
In that hypothetical…our understanding of gravity would simply be wrong. Whatever is discovered new would be the REALITY.


Ok. So what is reality now then, if the hypothetical future understanding will would be REALITY?

Quote:
Are you suggesting that we are living in a fantasy world of our making, and that the world we are misunderstanding is more real than the reality we do know?


No...have you seen me write anything like that?

I am saying that REALITY is whatever it actually is. I am also asserting that it MAY HAVE absolutely nothing whatever to do with what humans (suppose) they experience. All of what I see may be an illusion. I may be the only thing that exists. I cannot establish your existence (or the existence of anything else) with any degree of certainty. I may be deluding myself.

Quote:
Quote:
That kind of stuff does happen in science. We think the world is pancake flat and at the center of the universe…and it is proven wrong. The REALITY was NEVER that the world was pancake flat and at the center of the universe…


So, again, the reality of those people who lived during the period of history when those beliefs were accepted as true was just a fantasy world?


It was not a fantasy world, Cyracuz...they were just wrong. They were relatively unsophisticated, under informed people making the best guesses about REALITY that they could under those circumstances.

Quote:
I am talking about what they knew and experienced... that reality (as if there is any other kind...).


This is gratuitous blather, Cyracuz. It was not REALITY...it was their mistaken notion of REALITY. Just as we are probably in the dark about things even now.

Quote:



Quote:
Look at that sentence, Cyracuz, and see how close that comes to doing the kind of thing a theists does when cornered on some bizarre necessity of his/her belief system.


I could say the same about this:
Quote:
I am arguing that an “absolute or ultimate REALITY” is a must. There is no way it can logically be avoided. Whatever IS…IS. That is the REALITY. There is absolutely no way to avoid it…because whatever the actual REALITY IS…that is what it IS.


So...say it. You'd be wrong, but you certainly can say it.

Quote:
You name it "absolute or ultimate REALITY", and theists name it GOD. Their agenda is to establish the reality of GOD, to justify their entire way of thinking. Quite similar to what you are doing actually.


Not even close to what I am saying. You are getting desperate.

Quote:
Your way of thinking isn't alien to me. I grew out of it, and know it intimately. What I am doing here is exploring alternatives.


The very last thing in the world you are doing is "exploring alternatives", Cyracuz. You have made a decision about what REALITY is...and you are even rejecting the tautologies being offered about it. And you are defending your guesses to the exclusion of any alternatives.

Quote:

But I don't need alternative perspectives to see that assigning the status of REALITY to the hypothetical "actual" rather than the concrete phenomenon we actually experience is backwards. It implies that the reality we experience is a fantasy world of our own making, based on our capacity to experience the "actual".
The conceptual meaning of idea is clear to me and entirely sensible. My only objection is that I would call what we experience REALITY, and the hypothetical ACTUAL the fantasy world.

Because that is the way it is. REALITY is what actually is, as determined by the immediate experience of being here. Even proof of what actually is in some far corner of space we can never experience directly cannot pass into our knowledge via anything but the immediate experience of reading the data on paper or pixels.
Even the concept "absolute reality" is only available to us through the immediate experience of thinking about it.
Even if it is there, just as you say, it does not merit the label REALITY. Even if it constitutes 90% of the whole phenomenon we know as REALITY, we cannot say that it is REALITY any more than we can say that air is BREATHING.




Figuratively, you are nearing the Kuiper Belt...you have passed Pluto in your "reasoning."

0 Replies
 
 

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