Everyone defines reality in terms of things ... a thing is given an independent functional existence when it is given a name..
Aren't we by any chance begging the question here, dear milum? (Don't worry, I'm going to stop here)

I think the question is more along the lines of -
"okay, we have things like concrete and we have things like love and we have things like dreams. It's a noun, so we know it's a thing. But is a 'force' a thing like love or a thing like concrete or is it something entirely different?"

"okay, we have this bunch of equations that describes something we're observing pretty well. Now of course those equations are real, per se, but are they *the* reality or is there something else that's *the* reality and these equations are just fortuitous?"

I guess Popper would say they are part of the third level of reality - objective knowledge. But maybe what we want to know is are they a part of physical reality. Maybe I'll just browse that book a bit.


k

i haven't been insulting says of-troy.

?

Hey, Kenny boy. Have you run out of words to put in front of your quotations? Not even a limerick or a song for us? Tut, tut.

Whenever will you join the land of the living? What a schmuck you are!

Dear Mind workers at large, I don't think I can shoot down wsieber's wild goose with a single-shot rifle, so here I go, bourbon in hand, with a shotgun approach to wsieber's question.

***The thing ~~//~~> selected sensory extraction from the totality of the environment. ~~//~~> the formulation of a vocal sound for the referent. ~~//~~> the creation of written symbols that represents the sound symbols that represents the selected sensory essence of the thing. ~~//~~> the integration of the spoken symbol for the referent into the mind-system of a sapient being ~~//~~> the integration of the written symbol into the belief system of the reader.

~~> = transfer of information
// = filtering of information.

Point: The miracle of communication is that it works at all.

***The howler monkey does not see the lion stretching and yawning over by the waterhole so he doesn't cry out the monkey signal scream for lion. What he sees is a big yellow furry mass rolling in the grass. A lion is something different. A lion has hungry eyes and moves with stealth and intent and can erupt any moment into a blur of slashing claws and gouging teeth. A snake is different. Dead or alive, slithering or sunning, when a howler monkey sees one of these sticks with a crook he screams with great bloodcurl the monkey word for snake and all hell breaks loose.

Point: In innate monkey philosophy a lion is merely an affect of the environment, while the snake is an entity that exists through time, the monkey beginnings of Personality Theory.

***Are words real? Yes. In every way we apply the term "realness". Physical electro-chemical processes occur in the brain and sound waves are emitted from the mouth. We can literally eat words if we eat a book. Are their meanings real? Gravity is real and can kill. Gravity waves have yet to be detected, we know gravity by it's effect. Turn on your TV and see the flames of the Mideast. Words and meanings by any definition are as real as a brick.

Point: I must leave and get a haircut but I will be back.

Will you bring back the haircut with you or do you leave the haircut there?

Is the haircut the hair remaining on your head in it's new shape? Or is the haircut that hair that is no longer an attached extension of yourself, now swept into the barbers' circular file? You could bring the cut hair back with you, and you would have the "whole" haircut with you. But, if the the haircut exists as two parts 'current hair' and 'cut hair', then the hair cut is defined by something of the past and present. We had the action and have the results of a haircut simultaneously. Not to mention (of course) that the hair is continually growing and the haircut fades is *gone at the moment of the next haircut.

If noone knows what you looked like before, don't you loose the "haircut" and gain a "style"?

Wow, musick i never though about all that before...When some one tells me they are getting a hair cut, i just usually ask Which one?

see http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=miscellany&Number=73229 (which I think applies here; I may be mistaken)

Of-troy's repetitive post, immediately below, simply proves my point once again.

the person know as Keiva, who recently posted on this thread, was banned, for flaming. he forced his way back into this forum by implied threats to Anu Garg, the founder of AWAD. this same person has also been know, for certain, to post under the names AphonicRants and KeivaCarpal.

Are words real? Yes. In every way we apply the term "realness". Physical electro-chemical processes occur in the brain and sound waves are emitted from the mouth. We can literally eat words if we eat a book. Are their meanings real? Gravity is real and can kill. Gravity waves have yet to be detected, we know gravity by it's effect. Turn on your TV and see the flames of the Mideast. Words and meanings by any definition are as real as a brick.

And bricks can kill--so be careful how and where you hurl them.

Keiva, go away. You are not welcome here.

Dear wsieber,

Then perhaps the question is to ask what is meant by "reality." I mean that, first of all, in the true-blue awadian school: it's historical meanings and ethymology. Heidegger discusses this with reference the real in "What is a Thing?" Which, to the extent I can remember it, deals with the Kantian forumulation of the real, which relates to "realm" (something mapable (describable)? relating to property?). In Kant (as I remember) according to that reading (as I remember) the real is the entirety of all those things that can be known. To be known, in that sense (as I remember) would be to be described in terms of number or of cause and effect. The real, then, is the mechanical universe, and all it's parts (including thoughts) are things. That may not satisfy, however, and it is possible that the real is a concept that exceeds itself.

Dear Inselpeter,
and it is possible that the real is a concept that exceeds itself.
You perfectly understood my concern. Any attempt to provide a closed definition of the real will lead to a contradiction or a petitio principii at some point. Yet we cannot do without the notion of the unreal, i.e. the real does have a non-empty complement.
Kant also knew that perceiving 'the' reality is not a purely passive act, but involves us applying (putting) something to it.

You know, W, you make life worth living, sometimes, really.

Heidegger, as I understand him (and, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger, "I don't") took off from these observations of Kant's and limitations of his theory.

Dear wsieber and inselpeter,

Kant and Heidegger represent stages in human thought. Today any podunk college professor with tenure can slap out a word construction just as well or better. Now tell me, can you two restate Kant's and Heidegger's ideas on existence in succinct form here?


Milo

Milum,

I don't know if Kant had much to say on existence; he had a lot to say about epistemology and ethics which, interestingly, he may actually have grounded in aesthetics.

As to Heidegger, what I understand of him has to do with his readings (explicit or impllicit) of Kant, but I really give *any* account of what he may or may not have to say about 'existence,' per se.

Maybe wsieber can be more helpful.

As to your suggestion that these two represent stages in human thought, alright, if you must. But give them a *little* credit, there is nothing about either of them to be so slighted as to suggest any Phd from Podunk could go them one better.

Forgive me Inselpeter if my remarks sounded impertinent and brash. I usually venerate with the best of yall, but do you not think that the very worthwhile endeavors of Kant belong to the nineteenth century and should be given rest.

Just before writing my podunk post I was thinking about voo-doo. And Sigmund Freud. And the twentieth century when a hundred million people suffering from mental illness were treated by the empty but vogued words and ideas of Sigmund Freud. I was one, at first, that celebrated his writings as gospel.

The twenty-first century is upon us we need new words and ideas to reach the twenty-second.

The thing that bothered me most about philosophy was the ability of each new philospher
to demolish the ideas of his predecessors. And the abiguity of their verbiage gives me a
headache. I do not pretend to understand it.

<<Forgive me IP...and should be given a rest>>

Well, I don't have much use for Freud, either but I wouldn't call him a stage in human thought. (One thing about Freud, he doesn't understand Kant). I'm not really sure where all the suffering of the last century comes into the discussion. At any rate, I'm didn't mean to launch into a defense of his thinking -- only to suggest that one need not dismiss him. Poetry is also useless -- but I like some of it.

<<Forgive me IP...and should be given a rest>>

Forgive me IP, two more brief points and I will stop beating around your bush and give myself a rest.

...I'm not really sure where all the suffering of the last century comes into the discussion...-IP

(1) Three generations of freudian psychoanalysts were unleashed on a trusting public by the modern medical profession. After eighty years of treatment and untold billions of dollars spent by governments and desperate people, their cure rate was found to somewhat less than voo-doo doctors. Kant is considered one of the most influential people of the past millennium. So is Freud. Kant meant no malice. Neither did Freud. The danger of the sparkling ideas of Kant is that they are not being used as a base to build upon but rather as a jeweled navel stud for pedants to contemplate and quote.

Poetry is also useless -- but I like some of it. -IP

(2) By liking some poetry you give some poetry meaning.
And conversely, it is impossible to like something without that something possessing an evolutionary function. This, I think, is an extension of the thoughts of Kant.

<<...navel stud for pedants...>>

Were we talking about Kant or pedants?

Are pedants responsible for the suffering of the twentieth century.

Kant was, by the way, 18th Century.

<<...impossible to like...without evolutionary function...>>

Oh?

<<By likeing something, you give it meaning>>

Are you saying that meaning is a utile? (not rhetorical)

Responding to IP...


Were we talking about Kant or pedants?
You were talking about Kant and I was talking about pedants.

Are pedants responsible for the suffering of the twentieth century.
Yes. To the degree that their pedancy distracted from the good which they could have been doing to advance the cause of human comprehension of purpose.

Kant was, by the way, 18th Century.
But his ideas lived and flowered in the 19th.

<<...impossible to like...without evolutionary function...>>

Oh?
Oh yes.

<<By likeing something, you give it meaning>>

Are you saying that meaning is a utile? (not rhetorical)

Absolutely.

Were we talking about Kant or pedants?


I never liked Kant very much. Mostly because I don't understand him.

I've read Prolegomena three times and it's still a complete mystery to me. (The only other books, excepting comics, that I've read three times is Khun's Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Asimov's I, Robot.) I really felt stupid. Okay, I often feel stupid when I read philosophy - like when I read Martin Heidegger talking about the "nearness of the farness" - I'm never sure if this guy's serious or if he full of it.

Supposedly Kant was an able geometer and had somehow proven (not geometrically, of course, but through, I suppose his metaphysics) that Euclidean geometry was the only possible geometry. Gauss (a personal hero of mine) had meanwhile discovered, OTOH, that Euclid's fifth postulate (AKA Playfair's axiom) was a little different in that one could make other assumptions and develop other perfectly consistent geometries (none of which I know anything about, BTW). But Gauss didn't publish right away which might have been due to his few-but-ripe philosophy, but might also have been due to the fact that he had no interest in wasting time in a public brawl with the old man (they were contemporaries, but Kant was a deal older). This might be the origin of a comment I had heard about Gauss stating that everything Kant said was either trivial or false.

Heisenberg, in his autobiographical Physics and Beyond, talks about how after he and his buddies had published some of their results on QM, that they received a visit from some neo-Kantian professors who tried to convince them that they didn't really mean to publish what they said. I don't recall the details of the exchange, but it was pretty funny. I highy recommend the book for anyone who likes that sort of thing.

I guess my problem with Kant is my understanding of his idea of categorical imperatives. I'm guessing this is a formalized statement of what most people innately understand to be true about morality, even if they've never given it a moment's thought. My comic-book understanding of categorical imperative is that whenever multiple values collide there is always a higher value (that may or may not be known) to which one might refer for resolution. This is okay for Kant, because I'm guessing he also just assumed the existence of a god. Even before I was an atheist this was a little hard for me to swallow. Nowadays I look at it as a kind of brain pollution driving us to pretend (or at least to believe) we know more than we really do. Example: we have two conflicting values, espoused by two diametrically opposed parties. The temptation to just manufacture a higher value is tremendous.

I think it's easier for a believer like Kant to believe that somehow right and wrong are built into the universe than for a non-believer to believe such a thing. There are several takes (at least) and innumerable variations --

Absolute Right and WRONG (ARAW) exist. There *IS* *exactly* *ONE* set of principles corresponding to right and wrong. They exist externally to man and are imposed on man (by God, the universe, whatever).

RAW exists, but it is intrinsic to groups of people. It's not built into the fabric of the universe, but into the fabric of society. Some things just don't work and cause society to implode. Note that this is *not* absolute, because a change in environment can cause a change in what makes a society viable. This is sort of a minimalist view, almost utilitarian. A conflict can be resolved in either of several ways and any way that results in sustainable society can be viewed as right. (A trivial variation with major ramifications is that only the resolution that results in the most sustainable society is right.) I'm tempted to think a genetic view of right and wrong might be a variation on this -- or maybe it's a fourth category, I'm not sure.

ARAW do not exist. Only relative right and wrong exist. There are numerous, conflicting values. There may or may not be a resolution to a given conflict. There may or may not be a higher value that trumps the values in conflict. In some sense, right and wrong are completely fabricated. Very scary possibility for me because a clear implication is that we really have to be careful what what we work towards. No god will save us if we screw up. Even our own sense of survival (as a species) is circumvented.


ah, well, enough rambling...i gotta go.

k

A conflict can be resolved in either of several ways
Spontaneously this reminded me of a recent declaration, of UNESCO I think, that "the number of starving children should be halved by the year 2010" - My first reaction had been shock...

knowledge is not truth

Indeed, as Godel demonstrated and Hosftadter rephrased in Godel,Escher,Bach, "Truth is a stronger notion than provability," meaning that there are statements that are true but whose truth (or falsehood) cannot be proved logically.



There is a constraint on this, which while I don't recall the exact verbiage, goes something along the lines of "in any sufficiently complex logical system" (where "sufficiently complex..." means anything able to handle the integers).

A really curious effect of this simple statement is that say X is a true statement in our system that cannot be proven to be true. Let's say we just assume X is true. There will yet be another statement Y that is unprovable in the system. No matter how many assumptions you make, you will either a) continue to have unprovably true statements, or b) run into an inconsistency. (I've never actually read the details of the theorem - though I imagine it's similar to the computability theorems - but I think this only applies to consistent systems.)

Many moons ago, we believed that if we knew the start state of the universe in sufficient detail and all the rules governing the system, that we could theoretically predict the future (or describe the past). Now we know it aint so.

In the past couple centuries or so we have been bombarded with a bunch of crazy ideas. Not that I'm in the mode of patronizing our forebears. Had I lived in some other time, I would probably be one of the guys who thought the promulgators of these deviant notions were complete loons.

Gauss told us that playfair's axiom (statement of euclid's 5th postulate) is different than the first four. That we can assume other things and get other, perfectly consistent geometries. (Historical comment - for centuries everyone *knew* the 5th postulate was different. They thought perhaps that it was derivable from the first four.) But..but...I can draw a line and a non-colinear point on a piece of paper and it's very obvious there's EXACTLY ONE line I can draw through the point that is parallel to the line! SEE! SEE!

Cantor told us that there are some infinities larger than infinity, i.e. there are orders of infinity. There are more real numbers than there are integers. In fact, there are more irrationals (numbers like pi and square root of 2) than there are rationals (numbers like 6/1 and 3/7 and 23/444 that can be expressed as the ratio of two integers in lowest terms). How could someone even think that infinity could be such a thing as there could exist more than one of them?

Einstein told us, among other things, that distance varies with an object's speed. But distance is distance, dangit. How can a distance not be exactly what it is? If X != Y, then either the distance is X or the distance is Y. It can't be both!

Heisenberg told us that we can't measure an object's speed and momentum simultaneously - that the act of observing changes the system.

Goedel told us that even if we knew all the rules, we still wouldn't be able to know everything.

Turing (a personal hero) did the same thing for computer problems. He says there are some computer programs, the input for which cannot be proven in advance to halt.

These last three are just nonsense. Crazy talk. All of it. Madmen's musings. These are some of the prominent loons, but there were many other loons, some of lesser, some of equally loony stature who contributed to our common loony "understanding" (if you want to all it that).

k

I was rambling and was not clear.

My post was an attempt to categorize, on a very gross level, views about right and wrong and what some of the implications of those views were. Obviously there are uncountable variations on each of these and there is some overlap. No after the fact taxonomy will be perfect.

(Also, I just realized that the "things" thread is different than the "right" thread, but somehow we got onto Kant and whenever I think Kant I think "right vs wrong". But anyways ....)

The views are:

1. ARAW (absolute right and wrong) exists. I think maybe Kant would go in this lot.

2. ARAW does not exist, but there may be a right and wrong that exist de facto if we take social sustainability as a primary value. Jeremy Bentham?

3. ARAW does not exist. All values are artificial or man-made. Nietzsche?


Again, I know the taxonomy is seriously flawed (incomplete map as well as overlapping taxa). Regardless of the taxonomy, however, there are a number of things that don't make sense to me in the details of what certain philosophers (and those who use their writings) expound as well as their reasoning.

Example: That many religious people are in set 1 is not surprising, but I know many atheists who are in group 1. I don't claim that the atheists I know is representative of the general lot, but still, I don't understand this.

Example: C. S. Lewis would clearly go in both groups (not as stated, but in the nebulous areas described by 'minor' variation). His Abolition of Man was like a chicken bone going down sideways, but there's still some merit in it. ARAW exists. Not only that, but we can actually know it - we *do* actually know it. It strikes me as a very humanistic view in that everyone and every belief has access to this spring of moral knowledge.

Ah, boogers. I've taken to rambling again. It's difficult to speak or write clearly on a subject that suffuses me with confusion.

k

doesn't it come down to naming? as soon as we call something something, we suddenly open up that ground on which it sits, giving us a whole new "thing" to name.

infinite infinities, indeed...

doesn't it come down to naming? as soon as we call something something, we suddenly open up that ground on which it sits, giving us a whole new "thing" to name.

infinite infinities, indeed...


Well, I reckon that's part of it. It starts with our perception that there's a "thing" to name in the first place. So we name it and then we realize that the "thing" we named is actually several things that are distinguished by some quality.

But there's also the entire mindscape that gets opened up to us. New thoughts, new ways of thinking. I've always been fond of Ecclesiastes "There is no new thing under the sun," but I think it's a bit of an exaggeration. (True writ small in that there's not a whole lot of new things, but not writ large in that there certainly are *some* new things, or so I believe.)

The more experience we have with the object and with the label the more we come to understand how well the label corresponds to the object (or how the *real* object corresponds to our connotations about the object). "Oh, wait! This doesn't work how we thought it worked! Do we come up with a new label or do we revise our definition?"

k