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Author Topic:   Perceptions of Reality
lfen
Member (Idle past 4668 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


(1)
Message 6 of 305 (308533)
05-02-2006 2:32 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by Phat
05-02-2006 10:18 AM


Re: Reality: What a concept!
Phat,
And this is the best subtitle I can recall. I want the t-shirt!
For us at least reality is a concept, especially when we use language to talk about things.
Dang, I'm running out of time this morning. I hope this thread does well.
So some notes on lines of thought I want to develop. Can we know reality? If we can't what is it we know? The idea I'm working towards is the concept of reality as functionality.
Organisms function. Knowing for lower organisms is doing like drinking, eating, chewing, smelling.
At this human level we have language which requires an abstraction of our doing to model our doing so we can communicate about it. Words are used to manipulate abstractions but can also be used to point to and/or be confused with non verbal actual experience. Those experiences are a doing of our nervous system.
Can we ever really know what we do? Or do we just do it and talk about it?
Do we have a sense of being that is fundamental or is it conditional?
I think it would be accurate to say that I have faith in being. But I'm not sure if that is good model of what I mean.
lfen
ps After proof reading this I find myself wondering if I've read one too many Brad posts. I am really trying to make sense here. I do intend for my notes to parse.
ABE: off topic flash insight: Brad is doing to science what James Joyce did to literature!? Could be? yes, no, maybe?
This message has been edited by lfen, 05-02-2006 11:36 AM
This message has been edited by lfen, 05-02-2006 11:39 AM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by Phat, posted 05-02-2006 10:18 AM Phat has not replied

Replies to this message:
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lfen
Member (Idle past 4668 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 10 of 305 (308661)
05-02-2006 11:41 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Phat
05-02-2006 4:33 PM


Re: Reality: What a concept!
RAZDs model has faith as part of the equation, and faith cannot be proven, however.
I think faith is an important consideration in human psychology. We tend to focus on the content of a "faith" but I think it's more important to look at the function of faith itself and it is a significant aspect of human experience.
Most human functions look externally for support for "faith". I'm suggesting that an interior or contemplative or phenomenological approach yields a faith that is at once subjective and irreducible and also much more resistant to being exploited by authority. This is my personal bias.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by Phat, posted 05-02-2006 4:33 PM Phat has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 18 by RAZD, posted 05-03-2006 8:19 PM lfen has replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4668 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 28 of 305 (308931)
05-03-2006 10:58 PM
Reply to: Message 18 by RAZD
05-03-2006 8:19 PM


Re: Reality: What a concept!
Possibly the ground of faith is the organism/environment relationship? We evolved to walk on the earth so walk with a confidence? We evolved to breath oxygen so we inhale without concern?
We begin in faith. Conception and developement are faith. Only later do we lose faith and then we begin to discover a conceptual need to find faith, or rather restore it.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 18 by RAZD, posted 05-03-2006 8:19 PM RAZD has not replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4668 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 29 of 305 (308942)
05-03-2006 11:23 PM
Reply to: Message 21 by New Cat's Eye
05-03-2006 9:10 PM


Your saying that I can't know that in reality there's a beer in front of me and I just took a drink of it?
I'm not sure where DS wants to go. But I'm working on this idea of knowledge as function.
Knowing what is beer is knowing a lot of associations and knowing where to find, prepare , and drink it. Maybe even know how to brew it. Maybe know it's chemistry. But what is beer in itself? The external reality of beer, will it ever be somethng we can know? Can we ever know what anything in the universe is? And thus can we know anything other than that we function?
I'n exploring the notion that we can't know what anything is only that it is and how we function with it. What we call knowing is a kind of doing, or an abstraction of doing, or our concepts about our doing. Perception is a kind of doing, as is cognition.
lfen

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 Message 21 by New Cat's Eye, posted 05-03-2006 9:10 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 35 by New Cat's Eye, posted 05-05-2006 12:08 AM lfen has replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4668 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 37 of 305 (309261)
05-05-2006 12:29 AM
Reply to: Message 35 by New Cat's Eye
05-05-2006 12:08 AM


Well, you've made my point when you wrote:
Yes, but the simplest mongoloid could be handed a beer and told "that is beer". Then gven another beer the next day and know what beer is, without knowing anything except what lets him know that what he is drinking is the same thing that someone told him was beer the previous day.
As we get smarter we do more complex versions of this. So it's functioning. Knowing is knowing how to do something even if that something is very advanced math or theoretical physics. I doubt we will ever know what an electron is beyond the math and theory that describes it.
There are several applictions of this. Wittgenstein and the logical positivists use philosophy to point out to people when they are using sentences that seem grammatically to be good English but lack content. Thus they philosophically would demonstrate that the word God has no meaning so we can't even talk about it and then youu would go back to your physics and beer drinking.
Moreover, like Hume's distinction between matters of fact and relations of ideas, the principle leaves no room for anything other than verifiable empirical observations of the natural world and the meaningless but useful tautologies of logic and mathematics.
Thus, much of Ayer's book was negative, emphasizing the consequences of a strict application of the positivist program to human pretensions at transcendental knowledge. Traditional metaphysics, with its abstract speculation about the supposed nature of reality, cannot be grounded on scientific observation, and is therefore devoid of significance. For the same reason, traditional religious claims are meaningless since it is impossible to state any observable circumstances under which we could be sure”one way or the other”about their truth.
Logical Positivism
Or sometimes people get into arguments about what things are instead of how to do something.
Or language can lead us into a dangerous complacency such as people smoking around empty gasoline barrels. The empty barrels are much more dangerous as the residual funes can be explosive.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 35 by New Cat's Eye, posted 05-05-2006 12:08 AM New Cat's Eye has not replied

lfen
Member (Idle past 4668 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 51 of 305 (320579)
06-11-2006 4:38 PM
Reply to: Message 45 by New Cat's Eye
05-11-2006 10:11 AM


Apologies as I know this thread has grown cold. RAZD comment bumped it up and in back tracking I came across your comment:
Science cannot disprove anything, it doesn't even try too.
Do you think you meant to type "prove anything"? Or are you giving "falsify" and "disprove" different meanings. I had thought science worked that you can't prove anything but that one example could disprove a theory. I'm just scratching me head a bit in puzzlement.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 45 by New Cat's Eye, posted 05-11-2006 10:11 AM New Cat's Eye has not replied

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