Both "Frodo" and "George" are expressions. They're both real in their respective frameworks, Frodo being a real Hobbit in LOTR, as opposed to a bad dream Gandalf had. — frank

As someone who finds this discussion somewhat lifeless, can you tell me why this matters? What are the practical consequences or implications of 'real' being used in these different ways?

My issue with some of this is we are often not in a position to know what is real about the real. With Washington, for instance, we have that well known 'chopping down of the cherry tree' story, which turns out to be as fictional as Frodo going to Mordor. How far does 'real' get us?

Just a question, and I am sure there is a ready answer; and then, I will be on my way, satisfied that the world is the world. Would someone please tell my why, when I greet my uncle Sidney, I am not "greeting" exclusively (!) systems of neuronal activity?
Troubled sleep over this. — Constance

I had a colleague who used to work as a mortuary technician - preparing bodies for autopsy. It got to be that he was unable to look at people or experience them in ways that was stable and orientated to the present. He could only 'see' what was underneath - organs, tissue, bones, blood... it made intimacy and connection very difficult. So he quit his job in the morgue and took up gardening. :wink:

Through meditative practice, we can access this pre-reflective state , and avail ourselves of ‘unconditionally intrinsic goodness', 'spontaneous compassion', 'luminosity', 'blissfulness', and ' a calm and peaceful life guided by the fundamental value of nonviolence'. — Joshs

Fancy encountering a set of foundational values like these through a system of groundlessness. Surely values can only be 'accessed' if you put them there in the first place?

Do you have a view on the practice of meditation, Joshs?

So, let's rephrase the question : are quality, structure, space, and change P or non-P? What is your take on the physicality of those features of Nature? Note : I'm not referring to the container, but to its contents -- not to a machine, but to its functions. — Gnomon

I think we're just repeating ourselves and playing with language. And as far as physics and neuroscience goes, we are both out of our depth. And I already said this:

I wonder if maths, time and space and all those tricky matters are just part of a generalized neurocognitive system that allows us to understand the world and they have no reality outside of experience. — Tom Storm

Also this:

Can we demonstrate that there is even such a thing as non-natural/super natural? What would the properties of non-natural be, I wonder? — Tom Storm

How would we be able to answer these questions? We can't really proceed until there are better answers as far as I can tell.

Again, the word "Mind"*2 is typically intended to distinguish the complex lump of tissue that controls the neural systems of the body from its functions or faculties : thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. Now, what is your take on the physicality of those natural phenomena? — Gnomon

As I said, we don't yet have a definitive explanation of consciousness. But I suspect neuroscience will get there. Until there is a better model, I am comfortable with the notion that mind (metacognition) is the product of brains. But putative answers to this matter will depend upon what foundational metaphysics one adopts. If you're an idealist, say, all this is irrelevant.

Can you empirically study Ideas, Feelings, & Concepts by dissecting the physical body/brain? — Gnomon

My understanding is neuroscience is close to being able to do so using equipment, not dissection. But even physical things cannot always be measured or be the subject of empirical inquiry. How would we use empirical tools to discover what I ate for lunch on March 4, 1991? Is my lunch to be understood in non-physical terms?

The OP questions our Ontological definition of Nature & Being : Physical (P) vs Non-physical (non-P) existence. That Either/Or distinction has boiled down to defining "substance" and "entity". So, I'll ask a few quibbling questions for clarification. This is not criticism, just a few pertinent open questions to think about.

[1] asserts an ordered universe, and [3] seems to attribute that logical organization to "principles & laws". Which category would you place those orderly forces into : P or non-P? If physical "Laws" (or regulations) are detectable only by rational minds, not by empirical methods, what is their Substance : Matter or Math or Mind or Aristotelian Essence, or Other?

Into which category would you place "Mathematics" [4] : P or non-P? If Math is a physical substance, is it Matter or Energy or Mind or Other? If neither Matter nor Energy, how can Math exist according to [2]? Supernatural existence has already been ruled-out by the topical question. So, if Math is non-P, in what sense is it Natural? — Gnomon

Hmm. These questions keep getting asked and 'answered' on this forum.

My own take is maths is an abstraction, a product of human minds. Minds appear to be physical things in as much as we have no evidence of a mind without a physical body. But there is no firm answer available to all this yet, right? (Let's avoid qualia too, while we are at it.) And intellects far more powerful than ours have been no closer to definitively answering this question, so perhaps it can be bracketed and set aside until there's a breakthrough. A few arseholes on the internet are not going to resolve this and win the Nobel Prize.

Do we have any good evidence to decide that the foundations of logic are transcendent? Can we demonstrate that there is even such a thing as non-natural/super natural? What would the properties of non-natural be, I wonder? While we may speculate about the nature of maths or logic and call them spooky because they are useful but not corporeal, it seems fairly likely they only exist if bodies with minds can conceptualize them. There's no real need for Platonism or woo just yet, is there?

I wonder if maths, time and space and all those tricky matters are just part of a generalized neurocognitive system that allows us to understand the world and they have no reality outside of experience.

? — Srap Tasmaner

If the real is so elusive, so difficult to establish, then many of us will continue to be seduced by the glib certainties of extremists, carpetbaggers, shills and sophists.

Who knows? There are arguments, there's evidence, and some empirical questions are hard to answer. — Srap Tasmaner

Sounds like we're fucked then and to a large extent doomed to be the playthings of the likes of Osama bin Laden and Trump. :wink:

Really? I would have thought imaginary entities don't exist and so don't need to be 'ejected' from the domain of discourse. There are no unicorns or hobbits for me to eject, are there? — Srap Tasmaner

How do we determine what counts as fictional and what does not? Is Allah fictional... Jesus?

I'm not sure what that is. — frank

Consider yourself lucky.

When you wrote this -

And there's deeper significance to the real/unreal opposition. — frank

I thought you were heading down a Kantian noumena/phenomena model of reality that's all.

From Austin, the key is to ask "if it is not real, then what is it?" Is Lloyd a ghost or a delusion? So your example seems to me to work in favour of Austin's account. — Banno

Good. I thought this is where I was heading as well.

Got you. I thought you might have been suggesting something more exotic, like idealism and the problem of ‘real’.

I assert that in some cases, "real" is meaningful when it's only known negation is "unreal.". Kubrick's Shining is an example. — frank

I agree with this.

Why? We're just looking at instances of use. — frank

I just have an issue with unnecessarily labyrinthine and contrived 'case studies' drawn from fiction. Just as I dislike the ridiculous scenarios spun for most thought experiments. I prefer the real. :wink:

And there's deeper significance to the real/unreal opposition. — frank

Tell me more about what you're thinking here.

I was aiming for the Kubrick version which is more ambiguous. — frank

Sure, which for me makes it a problematic example for any hypothetical testing of 'the real'.

There are drugs which can take the ability to distinguish reality from imagination off line. — frank

Sure, there are dugs for any old thing. But is it not the case that someone who is 'mad' or 'high' is not experiencing the real? Merely the real for them. In some happy cases they may rediscover the real through recovery. There is a therefore a 'contrary' - to address your original point. Tell me where I am off.

In the case of The Shining we are potentially talking about a speculative metaphysics (ghosts, demons, spirits) combined with storytelling which painstakingly cultivates the logic of dreams. What can this illuminate for us outside of film criticism and interpretation of the director's intention?

Jack thinks the bartender is real, but he's not.

What's the contrary in this case? — frank

Supernatural subtext of King's novel aside (are ghosts real?), is the contrary not Jack's recovered sanity (possibly via antipsychotic medication)?

I've worked with many people with psychotic illnesses who mark a demarcation between unreal experiences (psychosis) and real life (recovery).

Everything I know, think, feel, and believe reflects "personal context" rather than logic. No one comes to believe things because of logic. Logic does not generate knowledge or understanding. — T Clark

Yes. My mum used to say something like you can't reason someone out of a position that wasn't arrived at through reason. Is there much point in debate or dialogue if worldviews like pessimism are derived and held outside of reason? Some people plainly do change their positions, but I wonder to what extent this is driven by an internal process rather than exposure to argument. Probably off topic, right?

This would remove a lot of the 'chronic dissatisfaction and an inability to find joy,' you suggest is so currently prominent. — universeness

I was referring to those who embrace pessimism and antinatalism with some dedication, not to general dissatisfaction with culture and politics. A whole different debate, I suspect.

That could work too. :wink:

The existence of God is controversial also, nevertheless belief in God is kind of a prerequisite in many religions. — praxis

Yes, and it has often struck me that theists are not conceptualizing the same thing when they allegedly share this belief. The notion of god seems incoherent or 'diverse' enough to embrace everything from the 'ground of being' to a throne dwelling elder, with a flowing grey beard.

Yes, it's a response to -

wish you the best of luck in trying to understand the logic put forwards by antinatalists — universeness

I hold the view that people's professed beliefs often reflect personal context rather than logic.

Yes. Why did you take this as a criticism of a philosophical position?

The notion of a scientific method is fraught. What we have is a reasoned, social approach that engages with the world. — Banno

Yes, I only arrived at this in recent times.

:up:

...and here we go back to T-sentences... Philosophy goes around in circles. — Banno

Great, thank you for the clarifications. Very useful.

A favourite. Fun for beating falsificationists with. — Banno

What's your view of Feyerabend's work?

Consider how you phrased your question: "something in science is a fact by consensus until it is falsified in some way"... well, no. there's a difference between consensus and fact. Scientists can - and have - agreed on stuff that was false.

Its a fact if and only if it is true,

Similarly, a statement's being objective does not render it true. — Banno

Cool. I know little of science. I read around half of Against Method and found it hilarious and touching in a way.

Philosophy goes around in circles (in my head, anyway). Is it not the case that matters we have called a fact are sometimes later demonstrated as being wrong? Does this mean that it was not ever a fact then? How do we tell the difference between a fact and a holding statement?

Agreement, yes. Much better than "shared subjectivity", whatever that might be — Banno

You may well be right.

How do you think about certain scientific facts (especially in the context of fallibilistic understandings of science) as a community of agreement (i.e., scientific consensus)? If something in science is a fact by consensus until it is falsified in some way, does such a 'provisional' fact count as objective? Or is it just an agreement?

nirvana must be right here, neck deep in the midst of all the shit. — praxis

I like this line. :up:

It depends on how you define "objective". The closest we can get to objectivity in my view is the view from nowhere in particular, or the most generalized and informed view, — Janus

Isn't one account of objectivity simply a 'shared subjectivity' or perhaps that of the intersubjective community of agreement. The view from nowhere is the same as the Punctum Archimedis, right?

That's one, perhaps simplistic, interpretation of the meaning of nirvana. Buddhists have also said that nirvana just is samsara. Do we know what that experience is for adepts? Must it be the same for all, in any case? — Janus

Indeed. I'm not someone who has reason to believe in the existence of Nirvana/enlightenment (except perhaps as metaphor), but what can we meaningfully say about such a nebulous conceptual artifact if we are not actually there? I had read and heard that the experience of attaining (if that's the verb) enlightenment can arrive as a great shock.

I can only wish you the best of luck in trying to understand the logic put forwards by antinatalists.
I personally find it one of the most ridiculous idea's a human has ever come up with. — universeness

I think for some people with mood issues and negative life experiences, it might make sense (in theory) never to have been born and to surmise that all lives are irrevocably marred by suffering and futility - the byproducts of living in a cruel world we didn't devise or choose to enter. There are a lot of folk out there living with chronic dissatisfaction and an inability to find joy. This corrosive anhedonia easily trumps optimism and hope and is readily attracted to philosophical justifications for pessimism. And frankly, look around, it's not hard to see how some people might regard the world through shit colored glasses.

:up: Yes I like Ravel - I'm very fond of Daphnis Et Chloé, Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte, and the G Major piano concerto.

As I've read, what this is about entirely rests with what kind of person you are. Putting it very plainly, either you are inclined toward a "spiritualist interpretation", or you are not. — Constance

Yes, I agree with this too.

I think the essay I attached explains it. But it will take 10-15 minutes.

From one of Australia's great poets Les Murray

"An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow"

The word goes round Repins,
the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,
at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him.

The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile
and drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk
and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets
which minutes ago were busy main streets, pointing:
There's a fellow weeping down there. No one can stop him.

The man we surround, the man no one approaches
simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps
not like a child, not like the wind, like a man
and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor even
sob very loudly - yet the dignity of his weeping

holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him
in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow,
and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him
stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds
longing for tears as children for a rainbow.

Some will say, in the years to come, a halo
or force stood around him. There is no such thing.
Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him
but they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood,
the toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us

trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected
judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream
who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children
and such as look out of Paradise come near him
and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.

Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops
his mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit -
and I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand
and shake as she receives the gift of weeping;
as many as follow her also receive it

and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more
refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance,
but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,
the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out
of his writhen face and ordinary body

not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow,
hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea -
and when he stops, he simply walks between us
mopping his face with the dignity of one
man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.

Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.

Les Murray

I've generally thought of life as a brief flickering of light in the infinite darkness. External factors aside, it's up to the individual how they wish to inhabit this brief flash of illumination - the transitory nature of life is neither good nor bad. Generally I think it helps an individual to get out and do things and not dwell on their own needs or thoughts too much. Rumination leads to endless potential forms of dissatisfaction. In my view, doing things for others is more likely to lead to satisfaction and personal transformation.

The idea is, I think, very Buddhist, and Husserl does call it a "method" rather than just a theory. He holds that the object before your gaze is generally thick with the "naturalistic attitude" which refers to our everydayness affairs, but it is grasped with such spontaneity, it seems direct and natural. The epoche is a method of reducing this perceptual encounter to its bare presence, such that the object itself (back to the things themselves! is his rallying cry) in its intuitive purity is revealed. — Constance

I've been interested in epoche for some time. Since I was a child I have often found myself regarding the world around me as unfamiliar and strange and wonder at this. It leave me feeling light and unshackled. In the quotidian life we inherit/develop a way of seeing that seems to be primed by conceptual schemes. You seem to agree.

we never can observe actuality itself, because the understanding is essentially conceptual. — Constance

I agree with Husserl on the essential epoche as a way to self realization. His epoche is a less radical version of meditation. — Constance

That is an interesting idea. Self-realization seems to involve a type of self-shedding, no?

Enlightenment is the wonderful feeling of experiencing the world free of implicit "knowledge claims, keeping in mind that knowledge never was just a conceptual tag hung on a thing; it is a conditioned response to the world established since the time of infancy, and it is settled deep into experience as a default acceptance of things. — Constance

That's a striking description and resonates with me.

I think it means, as per Bernardo Kastrup's words, that Schopenhauer's Will is without metacognition; it is instinctive and striving.

Brief essay.

https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/03/12/vindicating-schopenhauer-undoing-misunderstandings-of-his-metaphysics/

That's great, appreciated. I'll mull this over.

I guess, making this a little more realistic.. Is being a good "company man" (meeting/agreeing with the boss/manager/owner's goals and exceeding them) the dominant value in today's society? — schopenhauer1

I'm no expert on this but I don't think we can move easily from what makes a good company man to what society values. There is some overlap, but I would not make them identical. For one thing what a 'good company man' looks like will vary and may not even make sense in some workplace settings.

I manage a medium sized team of around 40 people. How I work with them and assess their worth or capacity is dependent on a range of factors which are in constant transformation - e.g., external environment, stakeholder pressure, changing needs, outcomes, personalities, resources, surplus funds, developmental needs, ages, gender mix, workplace culture, complaints, mistakes, health, education. A worker who is not productive but a really nice person is moved on fairly quickly. Someone who is not nice but gets results will be tolerated for longer. Most companies don't exist to baby sit people, they have jobs to do, goals to meet, contracts to deliver on.

Managers generally need to delver on organizational/company KPI's identified in a strategic plan. The extent to which this overarching goal influences culture will depend on many variables, particularly the extent to which profit unpins the work.

Let's say that even though he's an arsehole, everyone else is indifferent to it because they have become used to it. Everyone is humming along nicely and just shrug their shoulders at Larry's propensities. He's good at what he does, so maybe they simply take that as a good enough reason to tolerate it. They even are quite amused by his asshole antics because sometimes it appeals to their base humor as well.

I would probably keep Bob and put him on a performance improvement plan with a timeline of 8 weeks. If he did not improve, I would remove him and advertise the role.

If this were a real situation, it would heavily depend on what country, industry, culture you are referring to here as these factors can greatly influence how HR issue play out.
— Tom Storm

Bob is bad at every job he did/does/ever will do. He's a great friend though, good at lifting people's spirits, and a bunch of intangibles that can't be monetized or even be used for workplace productivity. He's kind, agreeable, and some other innocuous, amenable, "nice" traits. — schopenhauer1

I guess then I would probably retain Larry on the basis that he is meeting the organization's priorities and its strategic plan, which is what a manager is supposed to serve.

So, you think abstract concepts are not merely alive and have a will of their own, but also have agency and power to manipulate people? Ho-kay... — Vera Mont

You bet. Ideas animate people. Ideas are dangerous.

I'm one of those cynics — Vera Mont

Ok - understand. Cynics tend to dismiss things other people don't. That's fine. Arguing this point would probably be like debating the meaning of Nostradamus quatrains.

It's a no win situation so the choices are 1) work with an arsehole, which in itself can take down an entire workplace or 2) tolerate someone who is lovely but incompetent because it is less painful to have them around.

I would probably keep Bob and put him on a performance improvement plan with a timeline of 8 weeks. If he did not improve, I would remove him and advertise the role.

If this were a real situation, it would heavily depend on what country, industry, culture you are referring to here as these factors can greatly influence how HR issue play out.

But they all had to begin with a human being attempting to communicate ideas to another human being. — Vera Mont

Sure, and then interpretation. And around we go. :razz:

Sure. Christianity goaded Spain into invading America so that it — Vera Mont

You're almost there. Ideologies must have power to embed their ideology - getting money, resources, land and populations are critical key strategies in consolidating an ideology's status.

Are you one of those cynics who thinks that no one believes in anything, it's just about money?