Can we ever really know reality?

@layman,

Heh.

I was going to add a postscript in edit but it's too late. I'll just say it here: even if I only succeeded in boiling down 14 pages of commentary to a succinct expression of a particular viewpoint in a short post by a single author, there's something laudable in that: and if even that is too much to hope for, if he disagreed he could have discussed what I actually wrote. It wouldn't surprise me if he has no individual opinion to express. He seems likee the Woody Allen of philosophy, only without the humor.

2 Replies

@puzzledperson,

Quote:

I only succeeded in boiling down 14 pages of commentary to a succinct expression of a particular viewpoint in a short post by a single author

Lemme see if I can boil Fresky down to one word, eh? Hmmm, kinda tough. How about:

Poseur

0 Replies

@puzzledperson,

On the contrary, your 'criticism' merely indicates possible gaps in your own familiarity with seminal texts. My own thinking usually preceded that of the authors I cite, and they reinforce and illustrate the position I had arrived at. It is normal (or even mandatory) academic practice to reference personal positions to the literature, and I have continued over my many years here to stress that point with respect to the mission statement of A2K regarding 'expertise'.

Rather than shunning 'humbug' , I suggest a competent thinker such as yourself should not go down the path of 'personal waffle' which tends to be all too common on philosophy threads. Such waffling can be nipped in the bud by pertinent references (such as Derrida on 'text' which has occupied you elsewhere). Of course, if you are merely here for 'idle chatter' ( or Geschwatz as Wittgenstein put it) as many are, you will no doubt be content to continue running in first gear

1 Reply

@puzzledperson,

BTW My own 'succinct view' was suggested in my first post, that 'reality' is a word denoting or requesting social agreement as to 'what is the case' in specific contexts. Metaphysical speculation beyond that pragmatic definition tends towards pseudo-religious chatter. Note too that 'social' can minimally signify internal 'discussions' in one's own head via the social medium of an acquired language.

This view has been consistently explained and referenced by me on this forum since 2002, during which time I have encountered reinforcing ideas from Heidegger, Nietzsche, Rorty, and Derrida, some of whom have been prompted by other members posts.

1 Reply

@puzzledperson,

puzzledperson wrote:

Here is what you (fresco) wrote on the very first page of the thread:

"Check out the philosophy annals of A2K. Opinions range from "no", to "don't know" to "reality is just a word used in contextual negotiation". The seminal reference is of course Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in which he argues we cannot have access to noumena (things in themselves). More recently, Richard Rorty has dismissed the realism-antirealism debate as futile."

Citation is not debate . You may find this sort of vague "exchange of references regarding the celebrated 'thinkers' on the subject" to be informative, but I find it to be a lazy substitute for individual reasoning from first principles. I often find that those who advocate argument by footnote (or in your case mere name dropping) have a superficial understanding of the both the fundamentals and subtle distinctions, and are liable to offer false equivalencies, especially in claiming that an earlier writer has said the same thing, when in fact he said something else. This habit is especially bad in classicists, who seem to believe that the writers of antiquity have already said it all (though I do not call you a classicist -- I simply find your graduate student sensibilities redolent of musty humbug).

As Layman already told you, Fresco is A2K's master of the fallacy of appeals to authority.

He may be an intelligent individual...but he is stone-headed as a carving on Easter Island...and if it weren't for Rorty and Heidegger...he would have nothing to post.

But we dearly love every knuckle in his head. He may indeed be a master of the fallacy of appeals to authority...but he is our master.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

But we dearly love every knuckle in his head.

Do we???

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Quote:
But we dearly love every knuckle in his head.

Do we???

I guess I shoulda said "I do."

But I suspect you do also.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Errr... no, sorry.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Errr... no, sorry.

I guess I just have an easier job of loving people than you.

No problem.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Love is not a job for me, it's a feeling. If I don't feel it, I don't force it. I'm capable of it though, least you think of me as a machine, and I love a few people here. Fresco is just not part of them. It takes a bit of respect to love someone.

0 Replies

@fresco,

Quote:

My own thinking usually preceded that of the authors I cite, and they reinforce and illustrate the position I had arrived at.

Yeah, Fresky woulda writ all them books if only he had been born just a tad bit earlier and/or if he hadn't been so preoccupied with posting **** on a2k.

He's probably the one who schooled Rorty, and then Rorty begged his permission to "illustrate" and "reinforce" Fresky's profound insights within the academic world, and thereby achieve the high status in those circles that Fresky contents himself with holding on a2k.

1 Reply

@layman,

Oh cummon Layabout .You're just jealous !
What a shame Einstein was too early to benefit from your own 'schooling' !

BTW For some reason you seem to remind me of Jethro Bodine..... 'He dun graduated third grade'.....maybe it's the English skills or the adolescent reference to 'wimminz' !

1 Reply

@fresco,

Quote:

BTW For some reason you seem to remind me of Jethro Bodine

Don't go round dissin no Jethro now, hear!?

Him and me usta be homeys for a spell. He was a nice guy, and all, but not too interestin. I wouldna had no truck with his fool ass but for I wanted to meet (or at least be in a position to peep on) his sister.

That Babe was HOT!

0 Replies

Lets put it the other way around shall we ? We, and I am not qualifying "we" as subjects, or agents, or whatever, ARE Reality !
Descriptions of reality can't but be part of reality, they are events about reality. Incomplete by necessitty if they HAVE TO refer...
Reality doesn't have to refer to anything...it is its own and per se meaningless !

0 Replies

@fresco,

fresco wrote: "... 'reality' is a word denoting or requesting social agreement as to 'what is the case' in specific contexts. Metaphysical speculation beyond that pragmatic definition tends towards pseudo-religious chatter."

Surely questions about reality might exist for solitary individuals: for example, a desert traveler wondering whether his observation of water indicates something he can drink or a mirage; or a long-haul trucker trying to make out figures seen at night or in the fog; or Plato's cave-dweller attempting to figure out and categorize the shadows on the wall.

Even the idea of soliciting social agreement as to the true nature of things (reality) assumes both an underlying (what you call metaphysical) reality and the ability of others to correctly perceive it. I also doubt whether the average person, confronted with a crowd who insisted that it's daytime when the stars are visible, the sun isn't, and it's noon at an equatorial lattitude, would readily accept the consensus claim. Such an observer might wonder if the group had colluded to play a trick or joke or experiment, or even, if the phenomenon was widespread enough and apparently sincere, whether he was "really" dreaming.

So clearly, except insofar as practical arrangements are concerned, the term "reality" assumes a metaphysical ontology, whether and to what degree it is known or knowable being separate issues.

Perhaps if you spent more time on reflection and less in fussy academic allusions, you might be better served?

1 Reply

@puzzledperson,

You have ignored my point above that internal musings are social insofar that such 'conversations' take place via a socially acquired language which has already contextually selectively segmented what constitutes 'the world' with respect to particular observers. The 'committee nature of self' also contributes to that point.

Perhaps if you spent more time in reading and understanding what I have written ( which you will also find reflected in Heidegger's view of 'reality') you would not waste your time trying to circumnavigate well established ideas.

2 Replies

@fresco,

Quote:

You have ignored my point above that internal musings are social insofar that such 'conversations' take place via a social acquired language...

If that's "social" then EVERYTHING is social. The word is meaningless if that's the definition.

0 Replies

@fresco,

I didn't ignore your point, I demonstrated its irrelevance. One need not have any "socially acquired language" to experience any of the examples I gave of individuals wondering about reality. Nor is language acquisition necessary for thought. An individual abandoned at a young age without ever having learned a spoken language could still have thoughts and still speculate about the nature of reality. So too could members of a race of beings who lack both spoken language (because mute) and written language.

More to the point, you continue to ignore the fact that, whether individually or socially, the concept of reality presupposes an underlying (metaphysical) truth. If it didn't, there could be no possibility of misperception, delusion, or misapprehension, or any methodology for acquiring "accurate" knowledge.

3 Replies

@puzzledperson,

Quote:

If it didn't, there could be no possibility of misperception, delusion, or misapprehension, or any methodology for acquiring "accurate" knowledge.

If there's on thing you'll learn about Fresky, PP, it's this: This is what he aint:

Quote:

Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that some aspect of our reality is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, perceptions, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism

He aint no realist. There's a reason why he ends up spouting self-contradictory nonsense, eh?

1 Reply

@layman,

But note that a solipsist has a use for metaphysics.

If I were born into a computer simulation a la The Matrix, I might mistake the apparent humans around me for other people, when in fact they only exist in my head. Perhaps even as computer simulations they don't reflect the mental states of any extant beings but are simply fabrications.

If I realize that my perceptual universe is fake, I'd know they aren't "really" humans or sentient beings at all. And if I concluded that the world is fake but that material causality is nonsense (and hence computers and computer simulations are too) that would be a different kind of metaphysics.

1 Reply

Can we ever really know reality?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know