This definition is based in human experience. You define "exist" as what is not imaginary. So you base the definition in imagination, and say whatever is not imagination, exists. But that's self-refuting, because your definition is itself imaginary, you are imagining something which is not imaginary, i.e. exists, but by that very definition, it cannot exist. — Metaphysician Undercover
It means that we must go beyond experience if we desire to understand the nature of reality. Since many people believe that truth is limited to what can be known from experience (empiricism), but others do not believe this, then it is very important, and not pointless to note this distinction. — Metaphysician Undercover
Eventually I'll find the way out, through my trial and error, while you'd be still sitting there thinking everything's fine, until your dying day. — Metaphysician Undercover
You contradict yourself. — Janus
By what faculty other than experience could we know anything (apart from what is logically necessary) ? — Janus
Experience is not a faculty. — Metaphysician Undercover
The book explores how our "everyday" mind works as a device for selecting just a few parts of the outside reality that are important for our survival. We don't experience the world as it is, but as a virtual reality – a small, limited system that evolved to keep us safe and ensure our survival. This system, though essential for getting us safely across a busy street, is insufficient for understanding and solving the challenges of the modern world. But we are also endowed with a quiescent "second network" of cognition that, when activated, can dissolve or break through the barriers of ordinary consciousness. We all experience this activation to some degree, when we suddenly see a solution to a problem or have an intuitive or creative insight – when we connect to a larger whole beyond the self. By combining ancient teachings with modern science, we have a new psychology of spiritual experience – the knowledge to explore how this second network can be developed and stabilized. ...they emphasize the need to reflect on and explicate, both individually and collectively, the functional value of virtues such as generosity, humility and gratitude, and of service. These attitudes and activities shift brain function away from the self and toward an expanded consciousness – an experience of the world's greater interconnectedness and unity and an understanding of one's place in it. — God 4.0 - in the Nature of Higher Consciousness and the Experience called God, Robert Ornstein, Sally M. Ornstein
If all you're saying is that what we experience is mediated by our senses, our bodies and brains, then you are saying nothing controversial. — Janus
And that therefore empiricist philosophy errs when it seeks a so-called 'mind-independent object', as sense objects are, by their very nature, only detectable by the senses (or instruments) and cannot be mind-independent in that way. — Wayfarer
I don't know why you keep phrasing it as if the object is dependent on your mind when you should be talking about what you see or perceive. — Apustimelogist
Each of the five senses are perceptual faculties, as well as interoception and proprioception. All together they constitute the faculty of experience, not of particular experiences, but of being able to experience. — Janus
But it's not a rebuttal to the philosophical question: what is the nature of the reality we claim to know? — Wayfarer
specifically, that so-called “sense objects” are only ever known as appearances — Wayfarer
It’s the object's appearance as mediated by the particular structure of the apparatus. Likewise, our perception is not of the thing in itself, but of its appearance as structured by our perceptual and cognitive apparatus. — Wayfarer
What you describe as “information about the world” presumes precisely what is at issue: that the world is available to us as it is, rather than as it appears under our particular modes of access — Wayfarer
“if it works, it's real” — Wayfarer
it's a declaration of faith in the transparency of perception, which is precisely what’s being contested! — Wayfarer
Noodling around on the Internet, I happened upon a book by one Robert Ornstein, who's earlier book on the evolutionary roots of consciousness I bought in the 1990's. (He died in 2018). On Amazon, I find his last book (published posthumously) is called God 4.0:
We certainly do have the faculty of being able to experience. — Janus
So-called intellectual intuition does not give us reliable knowledge, it consists mostly of imagination applied to ideas derived from experience. — Janus
I would have put some of the detail slightly differently, but broadly I agree with that. It seems to me incontestable.Of course! That's what the whole thread is about. (Maybe I should have called it 'Mind-Constructed World'). It's about how cognitive science validates philosophical idealism. The realisation that what we think is the external world, is constructed, ("synthesised" to use Kant's terminology) by the magnificent hominid forebrain. .... It arises as a result of the interaction between mind and world. — Wayfarer
No one confuses the photo with the object, but neither is the photo the object “as it is in itself.” — Wayfarer
But could you explain to me what you mean, exactly, by the bolded phrases?It's not an hallucination or an illusion, but it does not possess the inherent reality that we accord to it. — Wayfarer
I realize that's standard way of putting it and I would love to agree with you. But the problem is that a representation implies an original. So to know that a given representation represents the original, we have to examine the original and compare it to the representation. Which we cannot do.When I see a tree, is there not something about the shape of that tree which veridically represents how it is? — Apustimelogist
Do you really want me to trot out the bent stick, mirages and Macbeth's dagger, or perhaps quantum mechanics and relativity?Well you have to explain why the world would not appear to us "as is". — Apustimelogist
I agree that "what happens next?" is important. Whether that's the whole story is another question. Could you explain what you mean by "reduce to" and "in some sense"?All understanding really does reduce to 'what happens next?' in some sense — Apustimelogist
I had never put things together in that way. Fascinating. You could be right that there must be common ground. At least they agree in rejecting common sense. But it isn't obvious to me that the two approaches are compatible. Have you found that it is?Followed by a rebuilding of mind and being assembled around a spiritual, mystical, or religious architecture. Rigorously developed over millennia, which similarly leaves the student a master of this approach to life and similarly isolated amongst their friends and family. — Punshhh
No one confuses the photo with the object, but neither is the photo the object “as it is in itself.”
— Wayfarer
It's not an hallucination or an illusion, but it does not possess the inherent reality that we accord to it.
— Wayfarer
But could you explain to me what you mean, exactly, by the bolded phrases? — Ludwig V
I realize that's standard way of putting it and I would love to agree with you. But the problem is that a representation implies an original. So to know that a given representation represents the original, we have to examine the original and compare it to the representation. Which we cannot do. — Ludwig V
Do you really want me to trot out the bent stick, mirages and Macbeth's dagger, or perhaps quantum mechanics and relativity? — Ludwig V
I agree that "what happens next?" is important. Whether that's the whole story is another question. Could you explain what you mean by "reduce to" and "in some sense"? — Ludwig V
The kind of world we experience depends on the kinds of senses we have—and, in our case, also on the concepts and structures we use to interpret them. This doesn’t mean the world is illusory. But it also doesn’t mean it exists independently of the properties and meanings our minds contribute to it — Wayfarer
The noumenal world does exist independently — J
How can I perceive something that transcends the category of existence? It's hard enough to perceive things that don't exist! Unless -- as I was trying to suggest -- "the world" and "the in-itself" are not the same. This was the distinction I was drawing between "our world" and "the world of noumena." — J
It's against my religion to dispute about how to use the term "exist" — J
All that we do is predict what happens next. All that we have to be able to do is know how to navigate. — Apustimelogist
The noumenal world does exist independently. — J
Wayfarer wants to insist that his own idiosyncratic definition of 'existence' is the correct one, which is absurd given that the meanings of terms are determined by (predominant) use. — Janus
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.