And how can you know that for real?

pun intended.... — A Realist

When one asks "What is real?", it implies that he / she feels the situation or object perceived could be unreal or fake.

Usually in this situation, one immediately starts some verification process on the object, or uses his / her intuition and susses out whether it is real or not.

Therefore being real implies that objects or situation has been perceived, and
1. inferred and judged as real via some verification
2. judged via intuition as real, not fake

Of course human sense organs are not perfect, and there is always the possibility of getting wrong, and the same goes with the verification process or techniques. 

For the question "What is real?", the answer would be, any object or situation, information or knowledge that had been gone through the verification / intuition process, and found (judged) to be not fake, not unreal.

Doubting the whole external world or existence just because something is not appearing as expected or different from what it really is (arguments from illusion) oversimplification on the situation caused by imperfect human sense organs.

:100: :up:

Having seen the tree, the brain will convert the image into the ideas of the tree in perception, memory or imagination i.e it will become a mental state which is totally different from the physical state of the brain. 

The tree couldn't possibly walk into the brain, and start growing in the brain as another tree or copy of it just because the brain saw it, and it is seen to be the representation or information of the tree :rofl:

Question is: If these experiences are representations of things in the outside world, why would I expect such a representation to be reducible to the brain activity that supports it? — Apustimelogist

The word "reducible" sounds problematic. Why do they have to "be reducible"?
Could they be viewed as "being caused by" ?

"If these experiences are representations of things in the outside world (OP), and are caused by "the brain activity that supports it" (OP) - Doesn't it sound more feasible? And it would be reasonable to expect such causal events.

If our experiences are always going to be irreducible regardless then how can this irreducibility be used as an argument against physicalism? — Apustimelogist

They aren't, hence it can't.

What are the differences between mater and energy?

Energy gets generated from matter's movement (e.g. fall), gravity, chemical process etc. Energy is a physical entity. Energy is not material. Matter is just stationery mass.

I read an article about Hegel, the author stated that "synthetic a prior knowledge regards the formal cognitive structures which allow for experience." is this really right??
My reading of Kant....I never thought that "synthetic a priori knowledge" “makes experience possible,” but basically gives us (makes possible) a lot of human knowledge (mathematical, geometrical, and metaphysical judgments, etc.). — KantDane21

Kant never said synthetic a priori knowledge makes experience possible.  What Kant did was, asking how synthetic a priori knowledge is possible.

It is possible by the operation of a priori judgment.  A priori judgment is possible by the presentation of a priori concepts, and the workings of intuition and imagination in mind.

Good point. There's a reason mathematicians begin their proofs with definitions. I wasn't tempted to read the long OP without being clear at the start what was being talked about. . — FrancisRay

:cool: :ok:

it seems that most people are incapable of thinking outside of their social context. Reading these replies has reinforced that idea. — Brendan Golledge

Another reply said that I ought to have defined God before talking about him, when again, that was covered in the first sentence of my post. — Brendan Golledge

Defining concept of controversy before discussion is an important and critical step in philosophy.  I am surprised that anyone would find unfamiliar with the request.
Definition has always been the main interest in philosophical tradition since the time of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle.

Defining the concepts makes sense, because it will be the case, when one starts talking about a garden, and what he meant was his backyard grass patch and plant and tree ground, but the other could be insisting that his garden is always and must be his favourite Chinese restaurant.  The discussion would end up somewhere in nowhere.

You say, your definition of God has been made already in the post as "your experience of highest value".  I didn't accept it was actually a definition of any God in philosophical sense. In philosophical debate and discussion, you must bring something that is objective and concrete, then try to convince your readers and audience to agree with your points. 

God is a religious concept, and one must at least make clear which God one is talking about - is it Judaism, Christian God? or is it Islamic or Hindu God? or would it be some Pagan Kabbalistic God?
You cannot bring something so subjective and a new age type definition of your experience, and expect others to see your points let alone understand what you are even talking about.

To someone, personal experience of highest value could be money, to others, it could be bodily pleasure, fame, power and authority,  friendship, health ... etc etc.  Your God as your personal experience of highest value sounds uniquely and excessively subjective to the extent to convince me that it couldn't possibly be a philosophical definition of God.

I felt your post is a very well written article. I have no problem with the length of the post. I just liked Wittgenstein's quote regarding God and faith in @Ciceronianus post.

The only point I was going to ask was, would it not have been better, if it started with the definition of God, and as the main issue with God in Philosophy is Ontology, i.e. the existence of God, i.e. PROVE does God exist? Where is God? What is God?, then progress into experiencing God, and all the rest?

Maybe you did define God and proved the ontology in the post I am not 100% sure. At the time I quickly scanned the post while having my lunch.

:100: :up:

Critique of Pure Reason by I. Kant, Translated by J.M.D. Meiklejohn printed by J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd. GB First published 1934.

I have had CPRs translated by Norman Kemp Smith and Max Muller. For the first time managed acquire a copy of CPR translated by Meiklejohn. It is a translation for the 2nd Edition of CPR.

You are most welcome. :)

The point here is that, truths hide more truths, and one should try to look beyond what is told, heard and seen for more truths. Don't accept even A=A or 1+1=2 as truths. Doubt, analyse, reflect and criticise where there is even 1% of room for uncertainty.

That's interesting. I didn't know that a computer program could have 1+1= 257 or -35 etc. — Truth Seeker

This is a simplest example of such cases in simulation scenario just to explain.
A software can be written to calculate how many hours are left for you to finish your project. Let's say the project requires 37 hours to work to finish.  The app asks you to input total hours required to complete the project. You type in 37.

First night on the activation of the app, it is written, so it will ask you 2 inputs a day for morning and evening hours you worked.
App:  How many hours have you worked this morning?
You:  1
App: How many hours have you worked this evening?
You: 1
It calculates ... (-37 in the hidden register)+1+1=  -35
You have 35 hours to work to finish the project.

Next time you activate the app again.
App: How many hours have you worked this morning?
You:1
App: How many hours have you worked this evening?
You:1
App: Calculates  (-35 in the hidden register) + 1+1= -33
You have 33 hours to finish the project.

Thank you for clarifying what you mean. I agree that people before Galileo and Copernicus used to believe that the Sun orbits the Earth but that didn't make it true. They were simply ignorant of the truth that the Earth orbits the Sun. I don't know what you mean by 1+1=X. Please explain what you mean. Thank you. — Truth Seeker

You are welcome. :)

You come to the conclusion true or false by  your thought process. But it is always your judgement which tells you something is true or false.
Truth is not something that exists out there independently itself without the judgements.
When you say 1+1=2 is true, it is too self evident.   It does not extend any knowledge already known or gives you anything meaningful for saying it. 

1 2 3 4 .... are just numbers.  Numbers on their own don't have any meaning of philosophical truths. Numbers are used in real life to denote the amount of something, measurement of size of the real objects, ... tangible things.

In real life, there are many cases where 1+1 does not come out as 2. For a simplest example, you can write a software program which does some extra calculations to give you the answer, 1+1= 257 or -35 .... depending on what functions you implement in the coding.  The software would be a totally closed world itself from outside, in which only the software writer knows how it operates.  In that world 1+1=2 would be false.  Therefore saying 1+1=2 is true is not a 100%  correct judgement. 

Trump brags that he grabs them by the pussy. Surely he would not lie. — Fooloso4

Grabbing sounds like aggressive wilful act of one sided touching.
But it could also mean "trying to get attention of something or someone" e.g. "How does that grab you?", or to make an impression on - Google

If one had been in a coma for a long time, and suddenly woke up, I would imagine that he wouldn't know what time it is. But he could still perceive all the material world around him without having to know what time it is, or trying to know what time is.

I have read many contradictory definitions of free will and don't agree with any of them. That's why I came up with my own definition. If you don't agree with my definition that's ok with me. I don't ask anyone to agree with me about anything. This is an excerpt of an interview of Robert Sapolski https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaxHTYtSavc It is 19 minutes 52 seconds long. You can watch it if you want to. It's fine with me if you don't want to watch it. He is a professor at Stanford University. Please see https://profiles.stanford.edu/robert-sapolsky if you want to know more about him and his research and publications. — Truth Seeker

Fair enough. Thank you for the link, and information. :)

I don't think of statements as judgements. 1 + 1 = 2 is true. The Earth orbits the Sun is true. The Earth orbits Mars is false. These are not judgements. These are truthful statements. An example of a judgement would be: X is guilty of murdering Y. — Truth Seeker

I have never said that statement is judgement. I said truth is judgement. 1+1=2 is a statement. To say it is true is a judgement. "The Earth orbits the Sun." is a statement. To say "It is true." is a judgement. Please bear in mind that the statement was not a true statement before time of Galileo and Copernicus. There are still lots of people out there who believe that The Earth is flat, and the centre of the universe.
And there are many cases in reality where 1+1=x depending on the circumstances, situations and the subjects and time spans, and have you thought about the case of "possible worlds"?

"X is guilty of murdering Y." can also be a belief or inference too.

There is no universally accepted definition of free will. My definition of free will is a will that is free from determinants and constraints. I clearly don't have free will because my will is both determined and constrained by my genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences. I clearly have a determined and constrained will instead of a free will. — Truth Seeker

OK, if you say, there is no universal definition of free will, that is your judgement. I was not talking about the universal definition of free will. But I was suggesting the concept of free will in the most logical sense.

Free will is only applicable, if you have the option to choose by your own decision not forced or controlled by any other external means, situations or conditions.

Your decision based on your mental operation, be it your logic, desire or biological condition whatever on something that you decided to do or not do. This is the only logical sense of free will to me.

We are not talking about some superhuman magic helping and saving troubled people or bringing back the dead from the ancient times ... etc, and say that is your free will. It sounds like some Harry Potter movies.

No, I don't know that name. I don't watch TVs or the Internet. In my spare time, I would go out and do some gardening, or read old books.

Truth is not one's judgement on something. Truth is what is real. If I say that I went to the Moon for a holiday when I actually did not go there, that's a lie. If I say I live on Earth and I actually live on Earth then that's a truth. Hallucinations and dreams are true in the sense that they happen to us and they affect us. — Truth Seeker

But all your sayings sound like your judgements.   You say something is a lie. It is your judgement.  You say something is true. It is your judgement.  I don't know whether you have been to the Moon for your holiday, or whether you are from the Moon.  The sayings are your judgements. Until you ask me about them, I am not even aware of these stories.  When you asked me, then I will make my own judgements if they were true or false.

When you are dreaming or hallucinating, you are not concerned if they are real or not.  You only judge them as real or not, when you are fully conscious.

What I really want to do is go back in time and prevent all suffering, inequality, injustice, and deaths and make all living things forever happy but I can't do it. I am doing things I don't want to do. I can't do what I want to do. So, how can I have free will? — Truth Seeker

Free Will is for the freewill to choose or decide on given options. For example, you choose to drink coffee or tea or beer or nothing. You decide to go home instead to the shopping centre.

Free Will is not the freewill to play God like an omnipotent being doing superhuman things, magics or saving and helping others who are in troubles. :)

Truth is your mental judgement on something ONLY when you are fully conscious. Therefore when you are dreaming or hallucinating, truth does not apply as an issue.

Why would touching be considered impossible? — elucid

Touching is an object coming into contact with another object, and that is it. 

Digressing into

which perhaps requires the objects occupying the same space. And occupying the same space is considered impossible by nearly everyone. — elucid

sounds illogical.

Touching has nothing to do with space.  Space means there is nothing.  When something exists in the space,  the space disappears, and the object appears.

Therefore touching is possible. I am touching my coffee cup. My hand and coffee cup came into contact physically. The space around my hand and the coffee cup disappeared, as the two objects came into contact. When I took my hand away from the coffee cup, the space reappeared.

I agree with you. News reports and history books often include selected 'truths' while omitting inconvenient truths. — Truth Seeker

I agree with you too. My position is to leave open minded for conclusions and judgements on what cannot be directly seen, heard and proved with my own eyes, ears, feelings and thoughts. :)

I agree with you but it is still possible that your perceived reality is a simulation or dream or hallucination or illusion. That's why I said I am 99.99% certain that my perceived reality is actually real — Truth Seeker

Illusions, hallucinations and reality like dreaming are possible in perceptions. But one normally has the ability for judgement on the state of the perceptions, as truths or falsity.

That is why I said, truth is one's judgement on one's perception.

When perception is not 100% certain for its reality or truth, one will go through doubting, observations, verification processes to re-evaluate the perception, if it is not directly inferable for truth, and will come to judgement on the perception whether it is true or not.

Truth can change through time. Even scientific truth can change to falsity by new discovery of the evidence or facts by repeated observations or changes of the conditions and situations in the environment.

Situation or knowledge you always believed as truth can change due to change of mind by your friends or partners. Only your judgement can tell you whether you have 100% certain truth or not.

I believe that philosophy is the study of doubting, observing, evaluating, thinking and verifying perceived contents.

Great points, thanks. Will mull over the points with CPR.

Acc. to Kant we can't have experience about ideas like "society", "freedom" etc. We can think these ideas but we don't have knowledge about them. We have "only" beliefs concerning them. "Society" can't be appearance in space and time. This means also that ideas like that are outside the realm of verification or falsification. The idea of freedom can't be verified or _falsified_ scientifically. — waarala

Would they belong to "Ding-An-Sich"? or would they be just invention of human mind? What do we have to do or what can we do with Thing-in-itself?

My interpretation of the meaning of Kant's philosophy, in this respect, is that space and time (or extension and duration) have an inextricably subjective dimension — Wayfarer

Very interesting point. I had been thinking that way at one point, but was wondering, if I was being too idealistic.

One must be 100% certain of one's daily life sensory perception be it visual or sound. If not, then one will be in trouble leading a normal life. Imagine if you cannot trust your visual image of a bus on the road dashing into the pedestrian crossing, when you are just about to cross the road? If you feel that it is not a real bus, but just an image of a bus or a huge lump of chocolate sponge disguised, made up to look like a bus, and just keep on walking crossing the road, how long would you last in this world?
One must be 100% certain with one's own direct sensory perception even just to lead a normal life, let alone being scientist or telecom engineers what have you.

There will be times when one's direct sensory perception can be wrong due to the possibility of illusion e.g. I was seeing this black object on the ground beside the tall fern in the garden. From a distance, it looked like a black cat. But when I opened the blind fully, and had another look into the black object, it was a black bucket placed beside the fern, which looked like a cat. This type of perceptual illusions can happen, which have been re-observed, verified and corrected.

But indirect knowledge or information via television news, reports or interviews, rumours told by your neighbours or friends, or the contents of history books cannot be verified directly by oneself. Or you could, if you have time and finance and inclination to do it. You could fly to Ukraine, and observe and verify all the situations you hear on the media, by yourself. But would you?

It may be too wide for all that the human intellect can do, sure. But with respect to space and time, experience is only ever going to be whatever they allow. — Mww

If we think about the cases when the object of perception are the mental contents such as images in the past memories or imagination, which doesn't need space and time as precondition for the process to happen. In these cases, space and time cannot be the preconditions for the experience. Or maybe Kant said, or would say that space and time still applies to the memories or imaginations for their content? (I am not sure on this point.)

Would you not agree that space and time only applies as the precondition of perception, only when the objects of the perception are the external material objects?

Please explain why you think: "All the sensory perception I have through my own senses must be taken as 100% truth until they are found, and proven as otherwise via self verification, logical thinking process or repeated observations." Thank you. — Truth Seeker

You are welcome. The reason why I think that, is because I experienced in real life that my sensory perception is the most accurate source of truths. It has the possibility of getting wrong sometimes, but in most cases it has been accurate. If any truths I thought were found as falsity via verifications, observations and thought process, then they could always be corrected.

But all other sources of information are indirect, and it is often difficult to verify the truths. And in many cases, even what I read in the textbooks, history books, and watched on the mainstream media ... etc were found to be either as controversial, inaccurate or simply wrong. With repeated happenings of this, one learns to realise that the indirect information and so called objective knowledge is not reliable, and then I stopped buying them altogether being very cautious and doubtful in accepting the facts and information publicly available.

To cut the long story short, the old saying "Seeing is believing" summarises my points. :)

I confess never to having gotten through the entire volume. I find most of what resonates with me in the very first sections, but I'm pressing ahead. (Currently reading the section on the Ideas.)

Here are some other resources: Project Gutenberg Online Version - both the HTML and .pdf versions are good. — Wayfarer

Great resource links. Thanks !!
I have managed to find my old Schopenhauer books along with the other philosophy books, Greek philosophy, Kant, Hegel, Hume, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein ....

1. The World as Will and Representation Vol. 1 & 2 - translated by E.F.J. Payne 1969 Dover Publications NYC

2. Schopenhauer - On the Character of the World: The Metaphysics of Will by John Atwell.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Schopenhauer-Character-World-Metaphysics-Will/dp/0520087704

3. Schopenhauer by Julian Young, Routledge, 2005 Oxford UK

4. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer by Bryan Magee 1983 Clarendon Press Oxford UK

I am glad that I still have above books. I lost interest on readings lately, but seems I could go back to the readings again.

You can have a true description of something that is nonetheless misleading due to its lack of detail. E.g., "North Korea invaded South Korea because of Acheson"s equivocal response re defense of the First Island Chain."

While it is true that the Soviet archives show that the speech was taken as evidence that the US was unlikely to expend significant resources defending the ROK, which in turn led to the Soviets greenlighting the invasion, it's also fairly misleading. The war was likely to happen, maybe in a different form, regardless of the speech and it also seems like the speech was simply used to justify the position of the hawks in reports, who could have swayed the situation either way. Still, the speech has become a part of all histories of the war because it's an easy to pinpoint misstep by an administration that was otherwise one of the best at grand strategy in US history (Containment doctrine being formed under Truman and winning the Cold War mostly peacefully). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I tend to mistrust all the information I read in the books and magazines, or said in the mainstream media recently due to lack of credulity on these sources, possibility of bias, and prejudice. I tend to rely on my own reason to judge either the information is true or false, or just discard them as non-sense.

But I cannot mistrust the perceptions of my own senses in my daily life, and knowledge about the world from my own inductive reasoning such as every life on earth will die eventually, or the Sun rises in the east.

All the sensory perception I have through my own senses must be taken as 100% truth until they are found, and proven as otherwise via self verification, logical thinking process or repeated observations.

Might I suggest Kant meant for space and time to be the pre-condition for experience? They are that which makes experience possible? — Mww

Yes, great point thanks.
It is definitely written in CPR as "precondition for experience" - Norman Kemp Smith Abridged Edition 1952 MacMillan & Co Ltd, London CPR p.44

But I am wondering if Experience is a far too wide concept even covering the other mental activities and perceptions which take place with the internal mental contents such as memories and imaginations which don't associate with space and time.

Do some more reading on him. That’s all I could recommend. — Wayfarer

Thanks for your recommendation. I was going to try philsophising from my own reason and reason alone for a while, but I think I better pull out all my old philosophy books from the cupboard again. :) I am sure I have a few Schopenhauer books including his main text books in 2 volumns.

“…. For as the world is in one aspect entirely idea, so in another it is entirely will. A reality which is neither of these two, but an object in itself (into which the thing in itself has unfortunately dwindled in the hands of Kant), is the phantom of a dream, and its acceptance is an ignus fatuus in philosophy.…”

So, yeah, one might call that a criticism. — Mww

:100:

His idealism is much more interesting than his pessimism in my view. — Wayfarer

Sure. But I was wondering if it would be even more interesting if his idealism and pessimism could be studied together i.e. what was the ground for his arriving at the pessimism. Could his idealism had contributed to his pessimism? or the other way around?

We know nothing better than we know our own will. If the world is will, then there is nothing we couldn’t know about the world. Kant’s “epistemic limitation” disappears.

While it may indeed be a credible philosophy on its own, it is an altogether illegitimate transfer of conceptual correspondence when juxtaposed to Kant. — Mww

I used to think Schopenhauer disagreed with Kant in many areas, and just mentioned Kant's "Thing-in-Itself" to criticise him, and clarify for his points.

It’s true that Schopenhauer’s philosophy is described as pessimistic, but he never said those things. And he did say that there could be freedom from suffering. Maybe a good place to start would be the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy entry which has been cited a number of times in this thread. — Wayfarer

"What does Schopenhauer say about death?
Schopenhauer interprets death as the aim and purpose of life. He maintains that to live is to suffer, that the triumph of death is inevitable, and that existence is a constant dying." - Google

He sounds awfully pessimistic even in quick Google search.