I wonder to what extent we should care about the second truth or the reality beyond our own. There may well be a Paramarthika Satya or ultimate realm beyond the empirical, but what of it? Can a good case be made that we should care about this and to what end — Tom Storm
I mean, there is no alternative. There are extreme nonlocal correlations in quantum mechanics; you cannot get rid of the strangeness. — Apustimelogist
↪boundless Thanks for the considered reply and interesting comments. I was connected the New Age movement and the Theosophical Society through the 1980's and into the 1990's, so I am moderately familiar with the thinking. Most of the folk I knew in those days were as anxious, status seeking, consumer obsessed and money oriented as any contemporary yuppie. But I guess the serious thinkers are always in the minority. I have never arrived at a reason to take this kind of metaphysics seriously. True or not, it makes no practical difference to how I conduct my life. I suspect a lot of this comes down to person's disposition. Some of us are unhappy in particular ways that seem to be ameliorated by philosophy and thoughts of higher consciousness. And perhaps some of us ruminate less and are more distractible. :wink: — Tom Storm
I am sorry for your bad experiences. — boundless
even if the bad practicioners, teachers etc were the majority, this doesn't a priori negate the validity of a particular tradition. — boundless
(and here I mean the unsophisticated kind which is IMO the true naive realism, not more 'refined' ones that are actually not naive realism), then one accepts automatically some kind of notion of 'two truths'. Naive realism errs in interpreting pragmatic 'truths' as ontological ones. — boundless
Naive realism errs in interpreting pragmatic 'truths' as ontological ones. — boundless
The people were 'bad' but I regret nothing. — Tom Storm
Of course - and if I argued that I'd be making a fallacy. I make no claim about higher consciousness as an idea, I was referring to who the subject seems to attract and the innate difficulty (perhaps impossibility) of persuing it a useful way. But I'll leave this to others who are more interested. — Tom Storm
I think phenomenology may do away with the need to pars the world into realism or indirect realism or idealism models, but I am not sufficiently versed in the thinking to articulate an argument. — Tom Storm
That's fair. I'm skeptical that we can access ontological truths, or that we should we be overly concerned to identify them. I'm content with tentative models of the world, which is all science can provide. But even an idealist becomes a naive realist when he leaves the house to go to work. That's paraphrasing Simon Blackburn. Which comes back to my take on all this. None of it much matters since the world we inhabit can't be denied in practice and for the most part it makes no difference to how we live if we believe that all is an illusion. — Tom Storm
But even an idealist becomes a naive realist when he leaves the house to go to work. That's paraphrasing Simon Blackburn. Which comes back to my take on all this. None of it much matters since the world we inhabit can't be denied in practice and for the most part it makes no difference to how we live if we believe that all is an illusion. — Tom Storm
To put it simply, it is not what the past has done to a man that counts so much as it is what the man does with his past. The psychotherapist can scarcely fail to be amazed at how differently two of his clients may make use of what has happened to them. If he is alert he will be aware of wide differences in the way they make use of him too. Men are not so much shaped by events as they are shaped by the meaning they ascribe to such noises. This is not to say that one is perfectly free to ignore what is going on. He is not. But man is always free to re-construe that which he may not deny.
We take the stand that there are always some alternative constructions available to choose among in dealing with the world. No one needs to paint himself into a corner; no one needs to be completely hemmed in by circumstances; no one needs to be the victim of his biography.
*But on the other hand, it somewhat makes my point. Yes, we tend to be naive realists when 'we leave the house to go to work' and when we are in a dangerous sistuation (and this is useful for our survival and the survival of our species as Hoffman might say) but at the same time we tend to be naive realists even with respect to the apparent movement of the Sun in most our daily life even if such a take is erroneous. But naive realism being 'useful' doesn't imply it being 'truthful'. And we instictively also seek truth. — boundless
Just for curiosity, has been treated the 'Wigner friend' scenario in stochastic realistic models?
It hasn't but I talk about it in this post:
— boundless
Wigner — Apustimelogist
do you think that 'physical realism' is undermined by the fact that the 'fundamental building blocks' of 'physical reality' are not spatially separable? — boundless
I do believe that we have to reject the idea of 'fundamental building blocks' altogether BTW. — boundless
BTW, why do you think that the geocentrists in ancient times and middle ages were wrong? What was their mistake? — boundless
The stars and the Sun do orbit the Earth in the earthbound frame — SophistiCat
They do not. — AmadeusD
Essentially, there are always definite, objective outcomes but the statistics of the world are oberserver-dependent. This contextuality isn't specifically about observation but the statistical constraints when stochastic systems are coupled (e.g. a measurement device and system bring measured or any other kind of system-environment interaction perhaps). — Apustimelogist
No, if there is a reasonable explanation. Obviously explanations may seem reasonable or unreasonable to different people. — Apustimelogist
In what sense? I may agree in some sense and have thought about that, motivated by the hsrd problem of consciousness. But may not have been in the same sense you mean. — Apustimelogist
Geocentrism can be viewed as a matter of perspective, and as such it is neither right nor wrong - it is apt in some contexts and not others. But if you are referring to ancient cosmologies viewed (somewhat ahistorically) as scientific theories, they posited things that proved to be untenable when more and better observations (appearances) became available, and our analytical tools improved as well. — SophistiCat
.Kant speaks about "things in themselves" and these are the ground of appearances. We do not know how this grounding relation works….. — Manuel
…..only that it must be so, otherwise objects would relations all the way down, and that's incoherent for us. — Manuel
On the other hand, Kant speaks of noumena. — Manuel
Objects are relations all the way down, insofar as they remain intelligible for us. Given from the principle of cause and effect, it is only incoherent for us when we look for one of those without the other connected to it. So…don’t look there. — Mww
Positive or negative noumena don’t matter; each is noumena as far as understanding is concerned, and since understanding is the problem-child here, the exposition of its flawed or illegitimate functionality is paramount. Besides, positive or negative noumena have to do with intuition anyway, in which either there is a kind of it we don’t have, re: that kind which can develop its representations given merely intelligible existences, or, there is that kind we do have, re: that kind which develops its representations only because there are real existences. — Mww
hence the grounding relation of appearances is known to us. Cause and effect: for every sensation as effect there is necessarily a thing which appears, sufficient as a cause of it. — Mww
A question I have is, what is 'truth' as distinct from 'perceived reality'? — Wayfarer
This perspective is clearly 'holistic': a property of the 'whole system' (the conservation law of the total momentum) 'dictates' how the properties of the subsystems (the particles) behave. — boundless
Not only that: in the case of entangled quantum systems, there is a clear indication that what is 'more fundamental' is, in fact, the whole system of entangled objects, and this is not reducible to the subsystems. — boundless
Objects (…) must have a way of being, independent of us, in virtue of which they exist independently of us. — Manuel
I see a green tree. — Manuel
What is wrong here? — Manuel
I think your interpretation of Kant would be called a "deflationary" one? — Manuel
In Melbourne? I had a short foray in the area (intellectual area) and Melbourne was a hot bed at the time (circa 2010-2015). I still quite like the Thesophical Society Bookstore — AmadeusD
Yes, when I was thinking about fundamentalness in a different way in terms of how physics doesn't seem to paint a picture where there is a constant, fundamental set of objects at the bottom of the universe which just change arrangement over time. And then thinking about whether this helps some aspects of the hard problem. — Apustimelogist
Not sure I agree. Its a property of the interaction so I wouldn't say it is necessarily holistic, though I would say the two different descriptions were equivalent. — Apustimelogist
I think this is interpretation-dependent imo but I know many people do believe something like this. — Apustimelogist
My final twist here is that, astronomy, geology, still do not tell us about noumena. — Manuel
The problem is that it seems that there are no properties present in the insentient matter (that we are aware of) that might be able to explain in an intelligible way the arising of consciousness — boundless
Why these interactions behave in the precise way that ensures the conservation laws is left unexplained. — boundless
Well, this is an interpretation-dependent question. — boundless
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.