Quote: (04-03-2015 09:12 PM)RexImperator Wrote:
Yes, I was thinking a bit off the cuff and I figured some other posters would help me clarify things.
I can see why philosophers spend so much time defining terminology. It's necessary to be precise.
We'd have to start with defining terms like "real", "objective" and "subjective".
Or not. As I was trying to point out, language is a tool. You are the master. In this case, you are making yourself a slave to already existing terms and try to figure out what they mean. But that's impossible since they per se don't mean anything, they are just sounds that we may or may not associate with something.
Quote: (04-03-2015 09:12 PM)RexImperator Wrote:
While doing some self-inquiry I was questioning what we really "know" about "reality".
Reality is a word that was used with some intent in mind. Google "etymology of the word reality" and it says:
late 15th century: via French from medieval Latin realitas, from late Latin realis ‘relating to things’ (see real).
Things are objects in space and time on whose existence we can agree.
Yeah, it could mean something else. Like banana. But it's pointless to first create a word with a purpose in mind and then - with time - infest it with a zillion other associations and then try to find out the essence of what reality is. Reality is a word. The fascination that may occur from not grasping what reality is comes from confusion about the word's usage / definition.
Quote: (04-03-2015 09:12 PM)RexImperator Wrote:
We have been brought up in this "scientific" age and yet when you look at science, which can only deal with things that are observed or measured in some way, it's quite limited. So that's where the metaphysics come in.
Yeah, true. May I propose the idea that we are only bothered by those limitations because we feel an overwhelming need to agree upon everything? To validate our perceptions?
If we were to take a different - let's say very selfish - perspective, we would stop caring about words like "real", "objective" or "subjective" and would instead, as individuals, start to care about how a certain word can serve a certain goal that we have.
When we tell a lunatic that something is not real, is our intention not merely to say that he can stop worrying about a threat because we do not perceive it?
May I propose that the obsession with science is merely a control mechanism over our minds that keeps us from thinking independently from those words? That science could just as well be called flying spaghetti monster?
Is it not obvious how extremely manipulatable we are through these words reality and objective nowadays? All we need is a group of people tell us that something we perceive is not objective and we are prone to lose our minds. We say we lose the connection to reality. Is the resulting panic not rather a fear of losing the connection to a group of people and people in general and our shared perceptions with them and thus endangering our survival by detaching?
Should we, as individuals, then not devalue the words and use them merely for purposes of connecting and sharing something with others? And thus personally experience the world in a let's say more intimate way, not assigning labels unless necessary or useful?
The first individual who used the word science, what did he really do? He provided methods and techniques to distill and isolate patterns in which reality (things) behave. Thus we have the law of gravity. What is it really? It is a pattern with a limited usage. It doesn't explain everything nor does it attempt to. It's easy today to live under the illusion that science can explain everything. The new God.
Quote: (04-03-2015 09:12 PM)RexImperator Wrote:
I was reading how Kant made a distinction between "phenomena" and "noumena". The first being things we can sense directly (empirically) and the second being those things that are more theoretical or at least one step removed from our senses. I'm not sure I totally understand it yet, but has me thinking.
If you were to coin those terms out of nothing, what would you have them mean?
Quote: (04-03-2015 09:12 PM)RexImperator Wrote:
Thoughts are interesting because they fall in that category where they may be real, but can only be observed indirectly. For instance, we could do an experiment on thinking about certain thoughts and then measure hormone levels and see how they change. But we won't know the subject's thoughts other than what they tell us about them.
If a child has an imaginary friend, we'll laugh because we know it's not real, but a figment of the mind. But we might consider that the thought of having the imaginary friend is real.
The first part sounds a bit weird. You do experience your thoughts, so how can you say they can only be observed indirectly? I assume you mean other people's thoughts.
Then true. Even if we could read all the electrical data and possibly visualize it, it wouldn't be the same as having the thought ourselves.
Why is that interesting to you? (curiously googling the etymology of the word interesting)
Want to be a mindreader or magician?
Quote: (04-03-2015 09:12 PM)RexImperator Wrote:I bet there are a dozen other terms out there which are supposed to mean the exact same thing. Who you are is really (haha) only how other people see you. Outside a social context, identity is really purposeless. It is indeed freeing to not obsess over that, yet we need social acceptance, thus it is folly to completely disregard it unless we are financially independent.
To answer your other question, part of the reason I'm interested in this is that I have been reading about the Buddhist concept of annata, which refers to no-self or emptiness. And I have been experiencing some of this myself. This is not a negative emptiness which is lacking something but more like a tranquil spaciousness. Basically, the way to understand this is that when you look inside yourself, your "ego" or your belief of who you are, your self-conception is actually just another thought itself, which like all thoughts is impermanent and subject to continuous change like everything else. There actually is no fixed self. There are recurring and repetitive thought patterns, but even those can change.
When you meditate, you are able to stretch out the periods of time where you are aware, but are not thinking anything at all, and begin to experience yourself as this sort of empty awareness. Eventually you bring it into everyday life. Your thoughts then lose the power of having any "self" invested in them.
I reckon the importance here would lie in owning the self-investment in identity. If we subconsciously believe that something forces us against our will, we don't like the investment and feel like victims.
Quote: (04-03-2015 09:12 PM)RexImperator Wrote:
On the psychological level, it seems to me that you really don't need anything else at all. You are already complete once you are at peace with mere existence/being itself, which is really the only thing you'll ever have. Everything else you will lose, eventually.
But that state of peace is also temporary. That's the problem I have with such philosophies. You may be inclined to lie in your bed and think "Oh damn, I don't need anything." Then you go out and see a hot girl and think "I need to have her! But hell, I want peace instead and be one with myself."
I like a compromise: To be able to be in peace at will when alone. Thus I can engage in any distress during the day, knowing that I can always return to that state of peace in the evening.
Maybe you can reach a state where you run around in complete peace all the time. But I don't really see the point. Isn't the appeal in the contrast to the stress and the healing qualities of peace? Without stress, peace becomes boring.