Reality is relative, not absolute.

EDITED for clarification.

Just keep this in mind J, I am not a dualism advocate, never was. I am just not to much inclined to attribute the word "creating" or for that matter "construction" any importance worth philosophical debate. I refute "mind" in the exact same ground Fresco claims to refute objects. They are useful coinage. Contradictory as it seams "things in themselves" are so in regards to context, and not to creation/dismiss flow on witch they are relative. The "film" "being there", for me is a frozen huge collection of pictures. They are things in themselves not timely speaking as they relate in contexts witch transit but because they are part of the web of reality which is a thing in itself. No doubts roads without cars could be the same thing. "Roads" have contextual functional value as they must operate in relation to something to fulfil their nature. Now the catch is, if you think that changes anything, it doesn't ! Roads and cars are a part of the same reality which for Existence is an ensemble with no time frame relational status. The relation we see is "perspectivism" but all perspectives are part of the same Meta object.

Good point.

Since, according to Quine et al, the meaning of any word is relative to all other words in its context (Quine) there comes a point when the antithetical rhetoric is valueless. That point has been reached in my opinion.

The most I would expect from the objectors here is to get them to think, irrespective of whether they agree with the relativity thesis for "reality" or not, as based on the context of normal usage of the word, and Wittgenstein's adage "meaning is use" ( maybe that solves Joe's "blurring problem" )

Further discussion of the video clips I have suggested would be welcome, but for now I am closing my comments on the word "reality".

Apologies but after several consecutive edits, once more I ask patiently for people to re read my previous post as clarification is a WIP for the time being given the depth of what I am trying to convey, hopefully with increasing degree of success as I go. Thank you !

In creative languaging the exercise of transforming nouns in verbs is well know, but doing the opposite is just if not more useful.
Establishing or recognising, no preference, causal relations between events operatively is just the ordering of reality which keeps being a ONE thing.
Minds in reality do relative ordering to the extent of knowledge and interactions they can frame. Such ordering is not an illusion which does not refer, it just doesn't refer to what it thinks it refers. That is to say that mistakes in perception in the great scheme of things are not a mistake, but a part of the overarching ordained frame of existence from which we are a part exactly as and where we are. Such is so that what they refer to is the context of interactions that frame the knowledge to a specific perspective, point of view, witch in its own right is legitimate, that is, it is "natural" within the whole of reality, the same reality where lacking awareness of a universal ensemble prevents the dissolving of any ACTUAL existing perspective out of existence, just like two forces with opposite directions would dissolve each other. But reality is all that without dissolving any more then what needs be dissolved by circumstance. Reality is a realm of relations which is one precisely because all perspectives don't convey at one point in space time but are sparced in their own "little realms" of possibility, their contextual justification.
More then saying that objects are functions in context one ought to realize that functions are a part of the object of web reality. Themselves an object.

This one sentence well states what and how we perceive our reality.

This next very long video is a collection of TTC audio lectures on Philosophy of mind. The lectures in audio, each are not complete but nonetheless the video serves the purpose of informing people on the body mind problem and can be useful for the context of this n other similar threads. There are other ways of getting TTC videos with complete lectures upon a diverse variety of subjects from all areas of science but I wouldn't recommend them here...for all purposes these video lectures can also be bought n that for most cases is the desirable thing to do.

The pseudo hard problem of consciousness from where questions like how its like being a bat arise remind me by comparison on asking how its like to be myself ten years ago considering memory is plastic...its nonsense, a pseudo question. I could just as well be asking why do abstract objects exist...

Subjective experience is unique not due to any particular miraculous subjective state of mind but rather due to a range a confluence an ensemble of multiple elements like embodied cognition chemical balance specificity all intertwining with perception and awareness contributing to the uniqueness of experiencing an integrated phenomena. Functionalism and integration is what makes it possible in the first place. There is nothing special regarding subjective experience like there is nothing special on explaining why different paintings still use the same range of colours.

Well stated; subjectivity is nothing special; we are the 'victims' of our own influences, memories, perception, and beliefs - and as you say, they're all plastic.

Frank, I'm glad I put quotes around "seeing reality". I must add that that is especially when I'm silent or passive (as when adopting Krishnamurti's "choiceless awareness". It is then that I am tempted to use the mystical terms for the paradoxically nameless Tao or Dharma sometimes depicted by a Great Empty Circle-- as metaphorical as one can be.
I agree with Fresco that we cannot and need not refer to some grand "thing" called Reality (even Ultimate Reality) in just about any social context imaginable. But we can, and do, and must, refer sometimes to things and situations as real or unreal and ideas as realistic or unrealistic. But this has nothing to do with the great metaphor. Perhaps this (nameless and transcendental) "Tao" is the ground (or an Ultimate Substrate)* of, rather than a synomym for, any conceptual Reality Frank or I can conjure (as a product of our efforts as social beings).
* goal of any hypothetical effort to go all-the-way-down)

Very interesting, JL.

But whether you or Fresco "refer" to it or not...

...whatever actually is...IS.

Is this "is" the same as this "is" ?

I don't know how defensible this is, but I am inclined to think that THOUGHTS about Reality (including those of Science and Philosophy) are relative--they address how formal aspects and facets (such as abstract variables of an analysis) of the World are related. But EXPERIENCES of the World are absolute in the sense that their "suchness" stand by themselves complete and concrete".

Perhaps, but that I think is where Heiddeger departed from Husserl with respect to phenomenology. Husserl thought that "experiences" were examinable whereas Heidegger seemed to say that there were only particular episodes when Dasein (self) was evoked as an observer contemplating its position as part of the flux. Most of the time"experience" was not operating. (I think Dreyfus called this "seamless coping").
Now it MAY be that what we want to call "suchness" (the transcendent state in which self and world are inextricable) is simply a transcedent glimpse of "seamless coping", but in that case it would not be about "experience" since by definition the coping involves no "observer". According to Heidegger, it is only when the coping is interrupted that "experience" starts operating in terms of segmenting "the world" relative to "self" in terms of "things ready-to-hand" or "things present-at-hand" etc. These neologisms are attempts by H to overcome the idea of language as representation.

It is called "process", and it flies in the face of needing an observer everywhere for things to be, thank you very much. Consciousness is just a superficial layer in the process of what is happening. But then this hardly is news for anyone living out of a cave in the XIX century.

None of it changes the fact that experiencing refers to what is the case as far as experiencing goes.

That's a Frankism ! Your intellectual need is to look for a "bedrock"....you've already said so. I might agree with you on the "consciousness point", but as far as science is concerned all proposed "entities" however small, are entities conceived in consciousness. There is no theoretical limit as to boundaries (large or small) in science, irrespective of attempts to establish a ToE. (Theoery of Everything)
As far as philosophy is concerned Rorty (for one) argues that philosophers have no authority to talk about fundamental substrates and should delimit themselves to particular contextual "needs to know".

You might enjoy this clip from Penrose where he tries to put "consciousness" on a physical footing. Note however his rejection of "computational solutions" as far as "consciousness" is concerned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WXTX0IUaOg

Play all you want, Fresco...call in all the authorities you can.

But the bottom line is...WHATEVER ACTUALLY IS...IS!

Are you implying that Fresco is saying that what actually is isn't... what ever that is?

Forgive me, I'm just in a silly mood this morning

You'll have to ask him...and then get an interpreter to suggest what he might be saying.

He simply is unable to conceive of the difference between understanding and communicating about REALITY...

...and REALITY.

Is it not interesting that a fresco-free context can get you admitting to others what you would never admit to fresco himself !

You just wrote elsewhere.....


You have also admitted that when you are in mantra mode you are referring to Absolute Reality, which (even) layman has spotted is a pseudo-religious position.

Don't worry about it ! We've covered how a unified self is an illusion and that selves are evoked by context ! Don't tie yourself in knots trying to justify anything. Just stand back and watch.

I do not know what a "pseudo-religious position" is...nor why you suppose anything I say constitutes a "pseudo-religious position"...but I suspect this is just you grasping at straws.