Perceptions of Reality

I told you what my conclusion was. It was a very modest conclusion. I'll try yet again. Philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and a host of others condluded their examination on the question of God's existence by asserting theism not agnosticism (as you erroneously claim they must). It might comfort you emotionally to believe that they were agnostics, but they were not. Their logic did not force them "to agnostic[ism]" as you said it must. Further, I did not ever condlude that these theistic philosophers were right or that agnostic philosophers were wrong. I simply said that their examination of the question "Does God exist?" did not cause them to embrace agnosticism. My condlustion is quite valid. Why you continue to emotionally invest into my statement something I never said and then become emotionally inflamed by your own investment is very curious.
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle...were theists not agnostics. Your insistence that I concluded anything more than this does not make it so.You justify your refusal to answer my questions with the following statement:"If you can't see the glaring error, [what's the] point"When I was in the 5th grade, the bully in the school used to pick on me. His name was Floyd Leblanc. I'm sure you know the type. He was angry at the world, always sarcastic and rude. He would call people names, insult them, push them around call them stupid and laugh. (sound familiar?) I finally got tired of the insults and stood up to him only to discover that he was a coward: "I would fight you," he said, "but what's the point; I would only get my clothes dirty."Nice try. My opinion that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were theists not agnostics is a true and defensable opinion. On the other hand, the opinion (which you would like me to defend) that "Scocrates, Plato, and Aristotle were theists; therefore, this proves that God exists and the Bible is true" is silly, and no reasonable person would embrace it. Since neither you nor I embrace this silly notion, why not move on and converse like adults about important matters? Once again, you never even addressed my point. My point was that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were theists not agnostics. The only point you invalidated was the straw man that you constructed. In order to invalidate MY point, you must demonstrate that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, were agnostics. You are clearly wrong on this. They were theists. If you continue to insist that they were agnostic, then show your evidence or concede the point that you are wrong. I did quote correctly. I put quotation marks around the two words that you used in reference to atheism: "strong" and "logical." If you didn't mean it, you shouldn't have used these words. If you did mean it, then you shouldn't be afraid to respond and defend your statement (as you seem to be). If you're afraid to respond and defend what you clearly said, then (as you have so elequently stated elsewhere) "why should anyone be concerned with what you think?"Unfortunately, I have found that, perhaps like you, most people simply harbor cherished opinions and are afraid to submit those opinions to rational analysis. I wonder why you're hesitant to answer my seven questions? I'm perfectly willing to answer ANY question you ask.It takes the semantic sophistication of a 6 year old to figure this one out. I hope you wont run away like Floyd Leblanc did. I ask kindly once again for you to "Answer the 7 questions".P.S. "The glory of man is his intellect; the perfection of the intellect his greatest good."

No. That would be fairly consistent with modern psychology. I'm not sure, however, if it is sufficient to explain all such experiences. Several people talk about precognition experiences (warner for example on this thread), for example, and it is hard for that to come from {old} information eh? Or is there some universal subconscious that can be tapped by anyone?

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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It is the argument from authority and personal incredulity, not a conclusion. To be a conclusion it would have to come from a valid logical structure, which you have failed to present. To be a valid conclusion it has to be based on valid precepts, and you have totally failed to present ANY.Your argument is that two philosophers from over 2000 years ago concluded god, therefore god.You are also missing the middle precept that connects these two -- another logical failure.You fail to consider all the other philosophers that conclude {no god}, thus your argument is also a straw man argument based on part of the evidence, which is the logical fallacy of Illicit Minor. This is now an ad hominem logical fallacy, where you are attacking the person and not the message. This is the logical fallacy of equivocation. What you posted was not what I said, whether you included two words in it or not, you attributed the sentence to me. That is a misrepresentation of what I said.Like I said, your argument is laced with logical fallacies, and the need to proceed with any discussion of them is voided by their fallacy. Your point is invalid due to numerous logical fallacies, therefore it does not need to be addressed: it's a waste of bandwidth.Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Yeah, the precognition thing is interesting. I’m vaguely aware of an experiment where somebody sits in front of a computer and initiates an image appearing on the screen. They are wired up to record their emotional responses to each image, which are either disturbing or reassuring. The interesting point, as I’m sure you’re aware, is that the appropriate emotional response appears to precede the image appearing on the screen.Having said that, I guess this experiment suffers from the same potential pitfalls you highlighted regarding the work of Libet and Lau etc. I’m not aware of any other research that has managed to produce positive results, but it is clearly an area of interest.

I concluded no such thing. In fact, I specifically said that neither you nor I embrace such a rediculous notion, so why not move on like adults to important matters. This could easily be resolved by you showing me where I said such a silly thing. But you won't of course. You will continue to pretend that I said something that you know I never said. And, we both know why you are doing it. No amount of pedanting can change the facts. Nice try."It is to the glory of God to have as enemies men so unreasonable." Blaise Pascal

I concluded no such thing. Message 127That is your statement that "two philosophers from over 2000 years ago concluded god" and That is your affirmation that "therefore god" is a logical conclusion, it comes after a paragraph of why you find it amazing as well.You presented no other substantiation for said position. And you presented no counter arguement.Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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The reason you can't find anywhere on any of my posts the statement: "Plato and Aristotle were theists; therefore, God exists" is because I never said it nor meant to imply it as I have tried to clarify numerous times. What I said was: Plato and Aristitle were theists; therefore, they were not agnostics." You have spent needless time and energy proving that something I never said is false. As I told you several times, I am in complete agreement with you on this point. Just because Plato and Aristotle and a host of other great philosophers condluded philosophically that God exists, this doesn't prove that God exists. In fact I specifically told you that no reasonable person would embrace such a ridiculous notion. I went on to say that since you and I agree on this point, why not move on like adults to more important matters? You need not continue to say I believe something I never said. In fact, I am an expert at what I believe; let me take you there. To important matters:You seem extremely well versed in philosophy. Can you tell me--what is a contingent being?

Can you tell me what reality is? That's the topic of the thread (not whatever you want to talk about).

quote:

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re·al·i·ty -noun, plural -ties for 3, 5-7.
1. the state or quality of being real.
2. resemblance to what is real.
3. a real thing or fact.
4. real things, facts, or events taken as a whole; state of affairs: the reality of the business world; vacationing to escape reality.
5. Philosophy.
a. something that exists independently of ideas concerning it.
b. something that exists independently of all other things and from which all other things derive.
6. something that is real.
7. something that constitutes a real or actual thing, as distinguished from something that is merely apparent.
”Idiom
8. in reality, in fact or truth; actually: brave in appearance, but in reality a coward.

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Not much to go on eh?How do you know that you know what you know?Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Yes, that which exists outside the mind. To answer your question I must know what you mean by knowledge. When I say that I know something, I mean that I possess some truth about it.1. Is this what you mean?I think the two extremes that should be avoided is the extreme which says that nothing is knowable at all and the other extreme of saying that everything is equally knowable.I think self-evident truths (what the ancients called necessary truths) are the only truths we can know with certitude and finality, i.e. the whole is always greater than any on of its parts (50% of a thing is always less than 100% of that same thing). You know it and I know it.But there is also knowledge we can have that is not as certain as a self-evident truth- these are things we know with less certitude and incorrigibility as a self-evident truth- these are well founded opinions based on evidence and reasons and sufficient probative force to justify claiming the opinion we affirm is true even though it is not self evidently true, i.e., if you jump off a 500 story building you will be killed. The truth of this statement is based on a preponderance of evidence even though it is not self-evident.I think that science, history, and philosophy give us knowledge in this sense, well-founded opinion based on evidence and reasons and probative force.I think your question about reality is relevant here. I think William James is correct when he says that two things are necessary for knowledge to take place: One- a knower (that's you and I) and two- a thing that can be known (that's reality)2. Do you agree?3. Would you agree with me that the law of contradiction is an important test of truth?Edited by zaron, : typo errors needed correcting

zaron writes:
Plato in the tenth book of his dialog entitled the Laws, and Aristotle in the eighth book of his Physics and the twelfth book of his Metaphysics and in all three texts the philosophical conclusion reached by purely rational thought is that God does exist. One final comment on this. I did indeed say that. It was to show the error of your thinking that philosophy only ended in agnosticism. History clearly shows that it had not. I showed you that. The reason for this question was to try and understand why you held the opinion that philosophy ended in agnosticism. You apparently have the opinion for a reason. I was simply wanting to know it.I told you that two philosophers concluded God after you told me you believe philosophy ends in agnosticism. Don't you understand why I would ask that final question? You assumed my beliefs by a question that I asked you.If I told you that some people think frogs are green and you responded with "I don't think some people think that."If I then named those that do hold that belief and then asked you why you think that frogs are not green, does that automatically mean that I believe frogs are green?How foolish.

The problem is to validate that truth externally - just thinking you 'possess' it doesn't mean that you do. I think we'll find that this {set} is small and rather inconsequential, and that with a little effort one can find exceptions to any such rule. These are observations that have been replicated innumerable times in different places by different people at different times. To me this indicates a reality independent of those variables. Being able to eliminate personal opinion is necessary to move from opinion. I would add someone who agrees with the knower. The more agreement between observations that have been replicated innumerable times in different places by different people at different times is why I'd agree: But it is not sufficient in cases where certain things cannot be contradicted.Let's take your series of posts on the relation between Plato, Aristotle, and the conclusion that god exists.To my view anyone reading those posts see you change your position from one side to the other, changing what you are arguing FOR, and that it appears that the sole purpose is to "catch me out" with some statement.I see your position as either being false at the start or false at the end, because(1) you did not really in good faith present your FULL opinion at the start, but were playing a semantic game of entrapment, OR
(2) you changed your position after it was shown to be logically inconsistent with reality -- including the fact that there are other philosophers that have concluded "no god necessary" -- so that you could then try to claim your purpose was some other stand afterwards. One that now has no point.My position on these boards is that the only thing you have to evaluate the position of people are the words they post.You seem to be arguing that I've made a mistake in your position, and feel obliged to point it out so that this can be acknowledged for some kind of empty acclaim.There was another recent poster that has tried this gambit: "DominionSeraph" ending with Message 230, who claimed a rather pathetic victory after taking a long number of posts to discuss something that was irrelevant to the thread, and where he was, simply, by the evidence, wrong.Obviously both these views cannot be true, yet one truth is mine and one truth is yours. How do we test this?Can I trust an honest answer from you given the conclusion I've drawn?Can you demonstrate that my conclusion is false?Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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hey!!! I'm back! Finally. You guys keeping it "real" in here?
Wherever "here" is and whatever "real" is! LOL!

You didn't answer my first question: "When I say that I know something, I mean that I possess some truth about it. Is this what you mean?" If your answer is "Yes," then we can continue.
If your answer is "NO," then you must tell me what you mean by knowledge.1. Again, when you say you know something, do you mean you possess some truth about it? Yes or no. You seem to reply "yes."You say : "I think ... this set is small and inconsequential, and that with a little effort one can find exceptions to any such rule."You say you can "with little effort" find an exception to these necessary or self-evident truths; but you failed to give me your example.2. Can you give me once example in which 50% of a thing is not less than 100% of that same thing?You say: "I would add someone who agrees with the knower."
Even if no one from Lucretius to Newton agreed with Einstein that the atom was divisible, did that effect the facts of the matter? Why would anyone have to agree with Einstein for his assertion to be true?3. If no one believed Einstein about the divisibility of the atom, would it still be true that the atom is divisible?You say "But it is not sufficient..."My question to you was "Would you agree with me that the law of contradiction is an important test of truth?"You didn't answer my question, but you implied "yes."4. Am I correct in assuming that you think that the law of contradiction is an important test of truth but you, in addition, believe there are other tests of truth?5. Can you tell me: What are these other tests of truth by which we can obtain knowledge of a reality that exists independantly of the human mind?You say: "How do we test this?"We're getting there. Be patient and answer my questions.You say: Can I trust an honest answer from you..?"Yes.You say: "Can you demonstrate that my conclusion is false?"Yes. Truth is discoverable by reason.Sincerely.

Hear from you after the holidays I suppose.Have a good one friend.

From The Forest and the Sea, by Marston Bates, 1960, Random House.

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(p 197 - discussing behavior as response to stimulii and instinct, reflex and learned behavior)
"And this leads in turn to the problem of the nature of the real world, the nature of reality.

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Man has been preoccupied with this question of the nature of reality for so long that he has succeeded in getting the issues thoroughly confused. One way out is through the philosophical position of Plato - that the real world is the world of the mind, of ideas. But this, in science, doesn't help us a bit. It is the basic assumption of science that there is an external reality, and that this external world can be described, analyzed, 'understood.' "

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So we can take two routes - one the sophist narcism of Plato that denies an external reality and that leads to solipsism or last-thursdayism or mind-games - and the other that leads to scientific investigation of what shadows of an external reality that can be described, analyzed, "understood" through the scientific method ... and the premise that this external reality obeys certain deducible "natural" laws that describe how things behave in a consistent manner.

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ibid
"This external world is the environment in which organisms live - or is it? I suppose we might define the environment three different ways: as including only the elements perceived by the organism; as including only the elements with affect the organism, whether perceived or not; or as including all elements that can be detected or inferred, whether they influence the organism in any way or not. We might call the first the perceptual environment of the organism; the second the effective environment; while the third, I suppose, is the total reality that worries the philosophical mind.

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Biologists are mostly concerned with the first two types of environment, leaving the third to the physical scientists - and the philosophers. By setting up a radio receiver in a forest (or anywhere else), we can translate a certain kind of radiation into sound, which we can hear. The radiation is always there - nowadays much of it music or speeches which human transmission stations have contributed to reality; but always there is static, radiation from the stars and from electrical disturbances in the atmosphere. But we know of no way that this affects any organism; of no way in which an organism can perceive it except with the intervention of instruments devised by man. The biologist never thinks of it as part of the forest, even though it is there."

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Thus we have a situation where we know we have an aspect of reality that is not measured - described, analyzed, "understood" - within the science of biology or ecology. But is this a known aspect of {biology\ecology} or is it due to our human inability to perceive radio waves without assistance? Perhaps because we are "deaf" to radio waves we cannot see how organisms could perceive them, and may not even consider testing for it.Since this book was written there have been some claims that cows are affected by power lines due to radiation of energy\radio waves. As far as I know this has not been confirmed, but it raises the possibility that there are organisms that can sense, make some use of, radio waves.

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ibid, p 180
"For our present purposes, then, we can forget about total reality. In ecology we are concerned with the effective environment - the parts of this total reality that in some way act on the organism. On the other hand, in analyzing behavior, we must study the perceptual environment - the factors in the external world that the organism perceives and reacts to. These two kinds of environment are probably similar for most animals: they need to be if the animal is to get along in the world. If man had evolved in an environment in which electrical wires carrying high voltage currents were common, he would presumably have developed sense organs enabling him to recognize "live" wires. But this isn't necessarily the only solution. Pathogenic microbes ae an important part of man's effective environment, but he can't see them, smell them or hear them. He has, however, developed resistance to their effects. Maybe, in the case of the previous example, man would have developed immunity to electrical shock.

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This sounds like quibbling, but I think it is important because we so easily make the mistake of assuming that our world - the world perceived by human senses - is the "real" world. A particular bit of forest is a very different place to a caterpillar, a bird, or a man living there. We naturally describe the forest in the way that we see it - which works for most human purposes. But it doesn't necessarily work if we are trying to understand the behavior of the bird or the caterpillar."

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(note: = angstrom = 1/100,000,000 millimeters)

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ibid - skipping to p 182
"We perceive light with wave lengths between about 4000 and 7200 ; in color terms, from violet to red. Light with a wave length of more than 7200 we call infrared; of less than 4000 , we call ultraviolet.

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A honeybee perceives light from about 3000 to 6500 , which means that it can distinguish colors in the ultraviolet that are invisible to us, but that it is blind to reds that we can see. Insects in general, insofar as they have been tested, see further into the ultraviolet than we do, which has many consequences. We can make photographic plates that are sensitive to ultraviolet light, and from this it turns out that many things, like flowers and butterflies that seem plain white to us, have distinctive patterns invisible to us but significant to insects. The whole business that I have called ecological coloration - protective colors, mimicry, signal colors - needs to be looked at in terms of perception. What we see is not necessarily what other animals see.

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As we have seen in the Peppered Moths and Natural Selection birds also see in ultraviolet AND they see more colors (they have four or five cones compared to our three -- see Message 98 in the thread (and later discussions) or Ecology of Vision - Exploring the Fourth Dimension) We also saw that ultraviolet pictures of the moths showed they were visible in ultraviolet on the backgrounds where they were camouflaged to the human eye, and that the behavior of the predatory birds showed the moths were ALSO camouflaged to the birds.This leads us to the conclusion that the tetrachromatic birds eye was not predominated by ultraviolet, but that the view is a blend, and that in that blended color view the coloration of the moths still gave beneficial camouflage ability.Another conclusion is that other moths - with their shifted trichromatic vision - may also be able to see other moths easily, so they could be visible to each other and invisible to birds. This may not apply to these moths (they fly and mate at night) but it could be significant to other insects.We may be able to test some of these concepts, as there are some tetrachromatic people: So we see that human perceptions of reality are hampered by our normal senses, that we are blind to the colors that some birds and insects (and reptiles etc) see, both in range (spectrum seen) and in depth (numbers of colors seen).We also see this with hearing. Again from Bates:

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p183
When we move from radiation to sound - to mechanical vibrations in air, water or other substances - the perceptual world of many other animals is utterly different from out own. The most striking and carefully worked out case is that of bats navigating by means of echo-location. A bat in flight is constantly emitting a series of very high frequency sounds and hearing the echo that bounces back from solid objects, so that it finds its way swiftly and accurately in complete darkness.

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p185
We have only recently come to appreciate the importance of sound in water. Sound travels faster and more easily in water than in air and is an important factor in the behavior of fish - as well as the behavior of such marine mammals as dolphins and whales. Slight changes in water pressure and slight water disturbances are more significant for marine animals than similar changes in the less dense medium of air are for land organisms. The lateral-line organ of a fish us an elaborate sense receptor for pressure changes, which seems to have no counterpart among land animals.

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People that cannot see with "normal" (human) vision are labelled color-blind, blind, or partially blind. People that cannot hear "normal" (human) sound ranges are labelled deaf or partially deaf.We have words that {label\describe} impairment in these senses, but there is one sense where we have no such {label} word for impairment below "normal" (human) sense levels:

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ibid
We can taste and smell, but clearly we live in a poor and limited chemical world compared to many animals. We can easily see the difference, in this respect, between our world and that of our dogs - all of the things that have to be investigated and savored in the course of a walk; the canine ecstasies borne by breezes during a drive through the country.

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We are all {blind\deaf}impaired in taste\smell sensing. Certainly in this regard there is a "radio tower" in any forest or field, broadcasting "radio waves" that we are unable to sense, but that other animals are completely aware of.It is entirely possible that there are other "towers" that we are totally unaware of, because we are unable to sense their output in any way, we cannot sense them with our "normal" (limited human) perceptions nor with our {mechanical\electrical\chemical} instruments - in part because we don't know where to look.These "towers" are as much a part of the external reality - Bates' third level of reality, that is also the reality of this thread that we are trying to perceive - as his radio tower in the forest that showed radio waves were a part of that environment, whether organisms were aware of the waves or not.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.