Contra Clark, the imaginary is "real" — Bitter Crank

You have misstated my position. I wrote:

Example - an apple is real. A memory of an apple, an imagined apple, or the taste of an apple may or may not be real. — T Clark

The expansive physical properties of the world which make up the 'solid ground of our being' are real. Our "reality" is tested on those properties. "Testing" has, over time, reduced the scope of the "imaginary world" of spirits. — Bitter Crank

I think this expresses the position I was advocating very well.

Sherlock Holmes and the old fashioned Celtic 'fairies' are not real because (per Clark #2) they have no existence independent of mind. Zeus, Brahma, Allah, God, Beowulf, Hogwarts, et al are hatchlings of the imagination. They are not real -- they have no existence apart from mind. — Bitter Crank

I wasn't necessarily endorsing any of the definitions in the list I provided. I was just trying to give an idea of the range of what people normally mean.

Would you not then say that elections and other particles are not real since they do not concern our day to day lives? — invizzy

A case could be made that phenomena that don't behave according to classical principles don't exist. I'm not sure I would agree with that.

One of the reasons I came up with the criteria for reality I did was that in several discussions posters claimed that quantum behavior at atomic and subatomic scale called into question the reality of phenomena at human scale. I reject that idea.

Even within philosophical discussions, I think "real" is generally just a term to describe the inner world of the person speaking. It's a projection of a personal predisposition unto a public conversation about private experience. This perhaps goes back to my critique of your interpretation of the Tao Te Ching. — Noble Dust

Are you saying there is no external world outside human experience? I don't think you are, but I'm not sure. I could make the case that is true if I had my Lao Tzu hat on, but that wasn't my intention in this thread.

In discussions of the Tao Te Ching, I remember you commenting that any interpretation by a modern westerner would not be credible. I don't remember any other critique you made.

That is not how I see philosophy. I don't do it that way either, not when I do it right.

What do you expect to receive as responses and get as a product from this discussion? — Alkis Piskas

Have you read the rest of the posts on this thread? If not, why are you pontificating here. If you have, I think you'd see what @Universal Student is getting at.

But, no. Y2K didn't happen, 2011 didn't happen. Therefore, this is just more hype, you can safely ignore it. — hypericin

My point was only that you should have contingencies in place in case the world as we know it doesn't end.

Perhaps knowledge that is overly identified with, held fast to and solitary instead of used wisely as an aspect the whole navigation process through life is the danger?

An idolization of knowledge, if you will. — Universal Student

I was an engineer for 30 years. I've got knowledge coming out of my butt. I know lots of things and I take pleasure and satisfaction from that knowledge. I don't see any contradiction between that and the quotations from Lao Tzu. Why not?.... Good question. I'm not sure I have a good answer.

Awareness comes first. I guess it comes down to whether your knowledge makes it easier or harder to be self-aware. That's the best I can do for now. I need to think about it more.

I'm late to the game in getting around to these responses but the energy and effort is still bouncing around in here and wants to move! — Universal Student

For some reason, none of your tags of my name show up in my "Mentions" page. If I don't respond to a comment of yours, that may be why.

I feel a smidge out of my league. — Universal Student

It doesn't seem that way to me.

I have the sense that I am on the younger end of the spectrum of folks here — Universal Student

The average age of forum members is 86. We call anyone under 60 a youngster. Anyone under 45 is a whippersnapper.

If I may, how would you describe the experience of awareness from the outside? — Universal Student

Your opening post and most of the other posts on this thread are looking at awareness from the outside.

This is interesting. I'll have to think more about these distinctions. How did you come to the...awareness, that awareness is pre-verbal? This brings up quite a bit for me. — Universal Student

I can experience something without putting it into words. Wait for a second.....There, I just did it. From there, I can either just let it go or I can put it into words.

Would we say then that awareness is the knowing that there is something occurring within ourselves — Universal Student

I don't think awareness has anything to do with knowing. For me it has to do with paying attention.

Is awareness in whatever degree of clarity you happen to experience it really yours or are you experiencing awareness and privy to something outside of yourself, within yourself? — Universal Student

It's happening in my mind. Yes, it's really mine.

I made no mention of your motivation. I indicated your position's similarity to Christianity and then pointed out the well known difficulties with that position, namely its inability to adequately condemn unresolvable evil. — Hanover

I thought about that when I was writing my response, but I wanted a way to show you and Universeness are similar. I figured that would annoy you.

What I should have responded was "I remain skeptical of your sincerity."

This is a Christian notion of evil within humanity, which relies upon an ever present love of one's enemy, turning the other cheek and viewing all as capable of salvation.

I know you didn't suggest all that with your simple comment above, but it is part of that tradition. — Hanover

You're the second person today I've had to ask to respond to my argument, not to my motivation. You and Universeness are peas in a pod.

That is, to the extent we must understand our enemy, let us understand they are evil. It could be that simple. — Hanover

And yet it's not.

I have always preferred that the solution to Schrodinger's cat, at any instant of time, is to open the freaking box and describe what you see. — universeness

Schrodinger intended his cat analogy as a joke.

oui mes amies? — Agent Smith

Votre essayer a Francais parler sont tres annoying. Je voudrais si vous les arrete.

Pardon my very bad French.

I can arrive at some additional counter examples to your comment if you'd like. — Hanover

Please don't go to any trouble for my sake.

you seem to feel protective towards Christians, perhaps because, according to your earlier typings, you married one. — universeness

I'd rather you focused on my arguments rather than my motives.

If I don't accept that 'evil' has a supernatural source (as you seem not to) then what is your response to a Christian theist who states with personal certainty, (the kind of personal certainty you object to me displaying) that the devil is the source of evil and you are one of the damned if you don't accept the Abrahamic god as your saviour. — universeness

I generally don't feel any need to respond.

We need to look Beyond Good And Evil (Nietzsche)? — Agent Smith

I haven't read what Nietzsche wrote.

I usually don't see what we do here on the forum as competition. I have an idea I believe in or want to examine. I give my thoughts. I try to think them through before I do. Others respond.

Actually, maybe it is a competition, but it's between ideas, not people. Survival of the fittest.

If you remove 'evil' from religion and you don't see evil as a religious thing, then what do you leave the Christians (for example) as their main tool of judgement. — universeness

Why would it be my job to determine what Christians' "main tool of judgement" is. Why would I care.

Why do you jump so quickly to their defence, if you think one of their most important tools is being used by them, falsely? — universeness

Unlike many here on the forum, I respect people's religious beliefs. It doesn't have anything to do with their specific beliefs. I don't think the idea of "evil" is false as such, just not useful. It's not a word I use very often.

Is this irrational of me? Or is this a rational confrontation of what is? Is the collective turning our heads away the true irrationality, the enabler of this crisis? — hypericin

There are always stories of predictions of end times leading people to disrupt their lives to get themselves ready. Then, when the end doesn't come, they're left holding the bag.

This is a crucial point for me, there are no supernatural scapegoats available, there never has been and there never will be. Humans must own evil and only by fully understanding why humans do what they do, can we successfully combat evil, in all the ways humans demonstrate it. — universeness

You and I agree that evil, to the extent it exists at all, is human. Maybe that's the difference between us - I don't believe there is such a thing. Evil is just something we call the worst human behavior. I've never seen it as a religious thing.

the model of voluntarily exchange for such services has been in effect since time immemorial. — NOS4A2

Name an effective comprehensive implementation of such a model. There hasn't ever been one in any but the smallest societies, if then. It's just another anarchist pipe dream.

Is this because childhood is commonly viewed as a state of innocence and therefore unaccountability? If you cannot be held responsible for your actions you cannot have done wrong or right? — Benj96

Not exactly. For me, at the heart of all moral questions is the need to protect the vulnerable. Beyond that, I think the purpose of human society is to raise and protect children. Why else go to all this trouble?

I just can’t see how man in his government form is the only one capable of providing or funding such services. — NOS4A2

And I can't see how it can be otherwise.

Who do you propose would:

• Provide schooling
• Build roads
• Protect property rights
• Fund fire departments
• Enforce contracts
• Protect the vulnerable
• Provide a reliable medium of exchange
• ....

Perhaps much of this could be addressed voluntarily in a simple, isolated agrarian society, but I find it hard to imagine it could in one like what we have now.

I personally do define evil as a purely human measure/judgement of behaviour. — universeness

I agree. I think the idea of evil is generally not a useful one. It often leads to responses that are not effective in addressing the behavior in question. E.g. revenge rather than prevention and deterrence. "Evildoers" are human. If you want to stop them, you have to understand that.

That being said, the worst thing a person can do is hurt a child.

The claim is that ‘cause’ refers to a relationship between the WORD for the cause and the effect rather than between the cause and effect itself. — invizzy

Seems like I didn't understand the distinction you were trying to make. To be honest, I still don't. I don't think we need to go any further.

It seems most people who write about causation take causation to be ‘in the world’ in some way, as some sort of force or a relationship (e.g. perhaps regularity as per Hume) between things in the world or something like that. I think probability raising would be covered by this seeing as we’re talking about probabilities of things in the world.

What are the alternatives?

Perhaps causation is a relationship between a WORD for a thing in the world and the FACT of another thing in the world. — invizzy

Two lines of thought.

First, you write about a kind of linguistic creation of causation as a phenomenon that somehow doesn't "really" exist. I understand what you're saying, but I think it's true of many, maybe most phenomena. The physical process I usually think of is force, which is really just a relationship between mass and movement. Speed is just a relationship between distance and time.

Second, the idea that causation is not real, or more accurately is not a useful way of thinking about interactions between phenomena, is not a new one. Bertrand Russell wrote an essay - "On Causation" - in 1912 that claimed it was no longer needed. We've had discussions on that several times on the forum.

I've always liked "The Song of Hiawatha" by Wordsworth. A link:

https://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=288

The poem is capital "R" Romantic - it tells the legend of a hero in the golden age of his People - and small "r" romantic - it tells the story of the love between a man and a woman. The meter is trochaic tetrameter - four metric feet of two syllables with emphasis on the first.

By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.

It's a very long poem and I guess that sing-songy rhythm could be tiresome to some, but I like the way it pushes the story along and draws me into the poem. My favorite section is the verse "Picture Writing" about how Hiawatha invented writing.

"Face to face we speak together,
But we cannot speak when absent,
Cannot send our voices from us
To the friends that dwell afar off;
Cannot send a secret message,
But the bearer learns our secret,
May pervert it, may betray it,
May reveal it unto others."
Thus said Hiawatha, walking
In the solitary forest,
Pondering, musing in the forest,
On the welfare of his people.
From his pouch he took his colors,
Took his paints of different colors,
On the smooth bark of a birch-tree
Painted many shapes and figures,
Wonderful and mystic figures,
And each figure had a meaning,
Each some word or thought suggested.

My favorite part of this verse:

Nor forgotten was the Love-Song,
The most subtle of all medicines,
The most potent spell of magic,
Dangerous more than war or hunting!
Thus the Love-Song was recorded,
Symbol and interpretation.
First a human figure standing,
Painted in the brightest scarlet;
'T is the lover, the musician,
And the meaning is, "My painting
Makes me powerful over others."
Then the figure seated, singing,
Playing on a drum of magic,
And the interpretation, "Listen!
'T is my voice you hear, my singing!"
Then the same red figure seated
In the shelter of a wigwam,
And the meaning of the symbol,
"I will come and sit beside you
In the mystery of my passion!"
Then two figures, man and woman,
Standing hand in hand together
With their hands so clasped together
That they seemed in one united,
And the words thus represented
Are, "I see your heart within you,
And your cheeks are red with blushes!"
Next the maiden on an island,
In the centre of an island;
And the song this shape suggested
Was, "Though you were at a distance,
Were upon some far-off island,
Such the spell I cast upon you,
Such the magic power of passion,
I could straightway draw you to me!"
Then the figure of the maiden
Sleeping, and the lover near her,
Whispering to her in her slumbers,
Saying, "Though you were far from me
In the land of Sleep and Silence,
Still the voice of love would reach you!"
And the last of all the figures
Was a heart within a circle,
Drawn within a magic circle;
And the image had this meaning:
"Naked lies your heart before me,
To your naked heart I whisper!

Talking of poems about poems--and apologies to Moliere if this is off-topic--I recently read the "The Thought Fox" by Ted Hughes. It's a poem about writing poems, or about creativity, and foxes:

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed. — Jamal

I like poems with vivid visual imagery, and this one certainly has that. I also really like foxes. We had a pair in our back yard. They kept the groundhogs away and their kits rolled and play-fought back by our garden.

I also like the poets self-awareness about his writing process. Watching his ideas sneaking closer and closer. It's a different way of thinking than mine. Especially now that I'm retired I can wait for inspiration. I don't have to work to coax my words out into the open.

I'd forgotten about it but searched there for a memorable poem posted by tim wood': — Amity

Another poem of his I like, for a certain visceral vividness, that's longer, is Home Burial, here.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53086/home-burial — tim wood

I just reread "Home Burial." It had been a long time. I love the way Frost writes about men and women. I think of "West Running Brook" and "The Death of the Hired Hand." I don't know anyone who does it better.

This thread is excellent. — Amity

Yes. Thanks to @Moliere for starting it.

tim seems to have taken a lengthy break...for whatever reason. — Amity

Tim told me he is bowing out of the forum. There's always a chance he will rejoin us.

Well, Yeah, that's fleeing poverty and misery in their home countries. — Xanatos

So, if I move from Boston to Cleveland, where my brother lives, to see if I can get a better job, I am fleeing poverty and misery.

I agree with you. I love the forum. I appreciate your comment.

As I've written to you previously, your English is good. You shouldn't be shy because of that. On the other hand, if you just want to read and not participate, that's fine.

Interestingly, while many would agree with these principles and endorse legislating to protect these rights for human beings, they seem far less concerned with the rights of other species. While the UN can observe that "disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind", I would say the same in regard to the treatment of other species. — Graeme M

Your seeming disregard for the difference between humans and other animals from a moral point of view makes your argument hard to take seriously.

This is quoted text I've posted before. It's from R.G. Collingwood's "The Principles of Art." I have an affinity for Collingwood's way of seeing things. His writing says things I've been thinking better than I can say them myself.

What is meant by saying that the painter ‘records’ in his picture the experience which he had in painting it? With this question we come to the subject of the audience, for the audience consists of anybody and everybody to whom such records are significant.

It means that the picture, when seen by some one else or by the painter himself subsequently, produces in him (we need not ask how) sensuous-emotional or psychical experiences which, when raised from impressions to ideas by the activity of the spectator’s consciousness, are transmuted into a total imaginative experience identical with that of the painter. This experience of the spectator’s does not repeat the comparatively poor experience of a person who merely looks at the subject; it repeats the richer and more highly organized experience of a person who has not only looked at it but has painted it as well.

This was lovely to read. It's the exact sort of thing I'm looking for. Meiner Deutsch ist Kerput ;) -- but I remembered enough to get the phonic structure out of it, and it was nice to be able to read two renditions of lines for the purpose of preserving the meaning found in the original language -- the adjectives you use, I get exactly what you mean when you say them, though they are often physical metaphors: a line being "heavy", or debating between two translations on the basis of the way they "feel" in each language. That's exactly what I'm after. — Moliere

I took one year of German more than 50 years ago. Back in 2014, my brother and I went to Europe and I refreshed my memory so I could use it when we went over. I love the language. I feel at home in it, even though I am very far from fluent. The gutturals just feel right in the back of my throat, like a mildly bitter IPA.

There's an imaginative poetic subtlety involved in Taoism that can't be readily described - hence the The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao I think that's what you've been getting at. — Tom Storm

It's true that I tend to talk about the Tao Te Ching with the same kind of language I do about poetry. I think that's why Lao Tzu's poetic language works so well. For me, both poetry and the Tao Te Ching are about the experience.

Do you deny that developing countries are, on average, poorer, more miserable, and more oppressive than developed countries are, with the difference between them being quite stark in some cases? — Xanatos

I think people try to come to this country for economic opportunity. They think they will be better off here, and it seems reasonable to think they may be right. That's not the same as what you wrote.

So whatever I said about the translation above wasn't actually meant to denigrate the translation. — Dawnstorm

I've reread what you wrote about your translation. I don't think I expressed my enthusiasm enough in my first response. I would love to hear any more you have to offer if we have any more German poems.

How does this play out in your appreciation of the Tao Te Ching? — Tom Storm

I was looking at my previous response to your question:

For me, it's a circular process. Iterative. Without any real feeling I'm trying to get anything right. I try not to try too hard. — T Clark

I'm afraid I somehow gave the impression I have some deep insight into the Tao Te Ching. I don't believe that at all. Lao Tzu was clear that knowledge was not the way to follow the Tao. Maybe that's why I like Taoism so much - it's a lazy man's philosophy. I doubt many would agree with that.

How does this play out in your appreciation of the Tao Te Ching? — Tom Storm

I've read lots of translations. When I'm fiddling around with a verse I'll usually read four or five. I see each one as looking at the text from a slightly different angle. I try to look at them all impressionistically to try to build up an understanding.

Also, I come at it from the other side. I think Lao Tzu is trying to describe an experience, help us share it with him. If I start with an idea of what that experience is like, I can try to work back to the meaning of the text. For me, it's a circular process. Iterative. Without any real feeling I'm trying to get anything right. I try not to try too hard.