I am just interested to know how important people think that fantasy in the whole process of thinking and as mental states?

Fantasies are not only important for all the arguments you wrote above but also to leave from reality.
Sometimes, our days, weeks, months or even years are heavy. We have situations which are difficult to face and it makes us be depressed or sad. With fantasy we can, at least, leave for a moment from these negative feelings and then create a new scenario in our minds. This is one of the most surprising facts from humans. We can create fantasies or abstract worlds as refuges from our pain. I am agree with you statement that this is totally healthy but with some limits. We can't let fantasy being part of our lives so much. Nevertheless, I defend it can be the only output for children or another person who is literally suffering.

For example: Imagine a kid that when he turns back from school his family is somehow broken. Probably fantasies as playing football like the best or fighting against dragons in the book he is reading can give to him so chill vibes and not being sad all the time. So, thanks to fantasy he can be another person in another world.

Sorrowfully, I think this only works in Kids or Young minds because when you get older you start losing the ability of dream/having fantasies.

Jack, you must be reading my mind. I literally just read Max Scheler's take on "Metaphysics and Aesthetics" which culminates in the role of fantasy in metaphysics:

Because metaphysics, which is knowledge of the real...begins at the pont where possible direct and indirect sensory experience come to an end, all its concrete intuitively-derived settings-out...are works of fantasy.
(Scheler, The Constitution of the Human Being)

You suggest that 'when you get older you start losing the ability of dream/having fantasies'. I know that I fantasise in the same way that I did when I was a child. So, I wonder to what extent most adults change from the kind of fantasy life they developed as children and adolescents. I would guess that it probably depends on whether they changed their whole approach to thinking. I wonder if it depends on whether they follow an arts based perspective or another one. I also do question whether many try to live a life of embodied fantasy in real life rather than in their own minds. Perhaps, the ones who indulge in fantasy most, are those who have a less fulfilling life.

The book which you refer to sounds interesting and the quote which you give. It seems useful to think about fantasy in relation to the what is considered to be real. Many people may consider fantasy as the 'unreal' because it is in the mind primarily, but fantasy can be seen as symbolic structures for making sense of what appear to be facts.

Probably when we can still have fantasies as we were kids. But what I want to say is that these adult fantasies are less vivid than the infant ones because when we are kids we tend to have a limitless imagination and everything surprises us more than we are older.
Also, as you explained, I am agree in the fact that perhaps all these people who are more in fantasies are the same which their lives are not fulfilled. So, they need something to escape from the reality.
To be honest, I do not think this a problem since the moment can help them. But it is true that in the long run can be dangerous if they end up not distinguishing reality/fantasy.

Near as I can make out, Scheler is describing how fantasy is integral to the conative-creative power of the mind. He also discusses the connection between "wishing" and "willing".

"We can feel what we have never exactly experienced, and wish for something that we have never personally known....there is a gradual shrinking of the realm of wishing [as one ages]."

But conversely, eventually,

"there is a transformation in the realm of striving from what was originally a 'will'...to a 'wish,' when the impracticability is experienced, so, in each individual's old age what was once a 'will' becomes a 'wish.'"

His conclusion approaches what I'd call my own metaphysical position of "radical experimentalism":

"[The] original productive power of imagination...is subjected by the noetic acts of spirit to an increasing correction, critique, and selection."

I imagine that differences lie with how we are socialised and it seems likely that play is a big factor. I have heard that some children believe in fairies and witches as children. They probably get to a stage where they don't believe in these. Personally, I was never encouraged to believe in such ideas at all, but I was encouraged to play fantasy games. I used to pretend to be various rockstars, and I stopped such games when I was about 12. I didn't go on to wish to become a rockstar, which is probably a good thing because I can't sing very well. But, certainly rock music has remained at the centre of my narrative of life.

It is interesting to think about how some people go onto muddle their fantasies with real life. I have heard stories of people who seem to think that the characters in soap operas are real rather than actors. I have heard that the actors get antagonised for what they have done within the stories.

The clear example of people becoming confused where real life and fantasy can be distinct is when people become psychotic. I had a friend who thought that one particular female singer was talking to him personally in her songs. He used to write letters to her and take these to her fan club in person. I have come across people who were convinced that they were going to have romances with famous people. My psychotic friend who used to think the singer was communicating with in her songs, used to phone up his mother and tell her off if his records jumped because he thought that she was interfering with them psychically.

I wonder how much is magical or wishful thinking, but, of course, they are a bit different. With wishful thinking we may wish for certain things to be true to the point where we believe they are. Possibly, most of us can get carried away with certain fantasies, but it is probably the point at which a person gets too carried away that makes people realise that someone 'has lost the plot'. It can be quite difficult to burst someone's little bubble. In psychiatry, the way a person's 'delusions' are often challenged is by it being explained that others do not see things in the same way. When I come across people with psychotic ideas, I often wonder if some magical thinking developed during an earlier developmental stage. However, it does seem that people often have periods of stability, with episodes of delusion. However, it may be that becoming withdrawn and becoming too immersed in fantasies which leads people to the dangerous position of muddled thinking.

Yes. I exactly lived the same experience as yours when I was a kid. Everybody played a role as a child because was just fun. My case was a warrior because back in the day I used to love having fantasies in nowhere fighting against anything. But this fantasy, as many others, was fading apart passing the years by.

Nevertheless, I think it was related to me since the moment I always been someone who was force to fight against the circumstances. So I guess this is why the warrior fantasy. Interesting how our brain can help us in our path of life.

Also, it is interesting how you considered the people who cannot make a difference between reality and fantasies are psychotic. I am agree with you but it surprises me how they reflect it in art or whatever representation. I going to put an example I experienced recently related to this.
We were in a room with just a white paper and then a tutor told us to draw a house. Simple.
I drew a normal or regular flat, other a simply house with their symbolism. Nevertheless, one person of the room surprisingly drew a circular house without zero criteria in logic realism. When I saw it I thought this is true imagination
But somehow this ended up as a conflict because it results according to the experts that this person is not connected with reality when he draws circular shaped houses so probably he was psychotic...

There is a big difference between wishing and willing. It makes sense that it is in earlier and later life that most people stuck with wishes. It probably is about awareness of what is possible. I wonder if it is also about strength of ego consciousness, with willing being so much stronger than mere wishing.

I'd like to provide some more details on Scheler's "more radical" version of the transcendental reduction if you are interested Jack. I'm not sure they fit entirely in the scope of this thread though.

I think people live their fantasies, they just don't know they are fantasies. This would include people being exactly as we believe they are, if we like them, love them, or think they are really terrible, for all practical purposes, they are as we think they are. I think a good fantasy of family life is very important, and it is very important for people to share their fantasies of family before marriage or a child is conceived. And does the fantasy end in 10 years or last a life time? When people's fantasies of family are not compatible the displeasure will surely follow. When the fantasy is a short one, the marriage will end at about mid-life. But if the fantasy includes growing old together, that is likely to happen.

"Don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there."
~Miles Davis

I am just interested to know how important people think that fantasy [is] in the whole process of thinking and as mental states? — Jack Cummins

"Fantasy" (in contrast to wishful/magical/group thought or delusions or psychosis) is indispensable for thinking – the greater part of which is ex post facto confabulation (e.g. Nietzsche, Lakoff, Kahneman, Metzinger). But "fantasy" can be, at its best, playing with counterfactuals (i.e. "what if?" daydreams – gedankenexperiments) or poetic/musical reverie; at its worse, though, it's just BS-of-the-gaps literal just-so stories that, in effect, fetishize – infantilize – the ego; and, more often than not, it's a mixture of both. For me, the imaginary (expressed – experienced –through fantasy) is synonymous with 'the spiritual', which might be why saints & gurus often appear to be savant fantasists who are very child-like.

:fire:

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. — G.K. Chesterton

Imagination is more important than knowledge.For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. — Albert Einstein

Daydream transports the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that bears the mark of infinity. — Gaston Bachelard

Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty. — Albert Camus

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace. — Sylvia Plath

Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can! — J.R.R. Tolkien

If we must "escape" through fantasy, then, I say, let's escape 'outward to reality' via ekstasis rather than escape 'away from reality' via solipsis.

:cool:

Blues music is an aesthetic device of confrontation and improvisation, an existential device or vehicle for coping with the ever-changing fortunes of human existence, in a word, entropy, the tendency of everything to become formless. Which is also to say that such music is a device for confronting and acknowledging the harsh fact that the human situation . . . is always awesome and all too often awful . . . But on the other hand, there is the frame of acceptance of the obvious fact that life is always a struggle against destructive forces. — Albert Murray

:death: :flower:

But "fantasy" can be, at its best, playing with counterfactuals — 180 Proof

Yes. Scheler even describes a scenario in which the ultimate counterfactual (that the principle of non-contradiction is false) can be proven true based on an aesthetic metaphysics:

There are even attempts to see aesthetic principles of pleasing relationships
and configurations in subjects such as logic. Certainly, as far
as mathematics is concerned, Poincaré expressly stated that the highest
measure of mathematical achievement was not logic itself, but an aesthetic
value, whereby a unity and harmony of thought and proposition
were reached. Poincaré sought to prove, against the opinion of pure
logicians, that there were an infinite number of mathematical representations
of some logical problem, all of which could be equally correct,
and that it was infinitely boring, and scientifically pointless, to go
through all, or even most, of the proofs. The achievement of a creative
mathematician lay exclusively in being able to select that sort of proof,
from among equally correct candidates, which was the most ‘elegant’,
in terms of a harmony between axioms, consequences, theoretical
principles and proofs. This selection of aesthetic, valuable and elegant
proofs constitutes, according to Poincaré, the only and ultimate way
of measuring the value of mathematical achievement. Even illogical
and contradictory propositions can, and should, conform to the same
value of maximum unity and harmony as proposed for logical ones,
according to him. Above all, the principle of the non-contradiction of
a proposition – if A = B then A = non-B cannot be true – would be
deniable [if its denial were couched in more aesthetic terms than the
actual proposition itself ].

Jack, I think you and I bruited about the concept of "elegance" a while back.

:up:

Callin' on the dogs
Callin' on the dogs
Oh, it's gettin' harder
Callin' on the dogs
Callin' in the dogs
Callin' all the dogs
Callin' on the gods — JDM

or riding a beam of light ...

*

@Jack, isn't this the heart of philosophy: concept(ual) fantasy? (re: the real)

Thanks for the further details of Scheler's ideas. It does seem that the themes on the various threads overlap frequently. I am also quite interested in your new thread, but I have a book with a few chapters on Dennet, so I may have a look at that first. It is sometimes hard to find the time to write informed comments to other people's thread discussions.

Thanks for the further details of Scheler's ideas. It does seem that the themes on the various threads overlap frequently. I am also quite interested in your new thread, but I have a book with a few chapters on Dennet, so I may have a look at that first. It is sometimes hard to find the time to write informed comments to other people's thread discussions. — Jack Cummins

Yes, I am reasoning backwards in that thread, Hypothetically, if the belief that AI is possible is not un-selfcontradictory, then our consciousness must also possibly have been created. That is, possibly being created must be a property of consciousness. So there possibly could (a fortiori) be a creator of consciousness, which is more or less consistent with a universal description of "god."

So all I said was IF Dennett does espouse hard AI (which I looked up, he does) then his whole "reasons for believing" argument at its foundation collapses because his conclusion is self-contradictory, in that it necessarily posits both the falsity and the possibility of god.

I do think that we are constantly living fantasies and many people don't stop and think about that. Life is constant myth making. When I was studying art therapy, I had person therapy with a Jungian therapy. I am usually some one who dreams a lot and remember my dreams. However, a strange thing happened. My dreams seemed to disappear and, instead, all sorts of dramas happened in my waking life. In discussion, with the therapist, we explored how it seemed as if what was emerging was symbolic manifestation in real life experiences. Perhaps, some forms of therapy focus too much on the archetypal dramas of dreams while the mythic is so evident in what happens to us in our life experiences.

What is the ultimate currency, the ultimate validation of belief to the believer?

You should feel the sense that your belief, your philosophy, is shaping your experience of Life.

And if you do, then your belief is at least that valid.

So there possibly could (a fortiori) be a creator of consciousness, which is more or less consistent with a universal description of "god." — Pantagruel

This does not follow. Besides, you're begging the question – the creator of the consciousness creator's consciousness, etc ...

Life is constant myth making. — Jack Cummins

:up:

It is interesting that you speak of escaping outwards to reality. I am not convinced that the outer or inner aspects of life are more real. I think that most Western philosophy assumes that the world around us the supreme aspect. I am not saying that I reject this and my main frame of reference is that too. However, I think it is complicated and I do think that the symbolic world, or even 'spiritual' is often undervalued. The quotes you give are by people who do seem to value imagination and it is interesting to know that Einstein does because sometimes it seems that fantasy and imagination are seen as the realm of the arts.

However, going back to your idea of escaping outwards, it does seem that the arts and music are a form of going outwards, because the ideas and vision are made manifest in life. I remember having a college tutor who said that ideas do not exist if they remain in our minds rather than being expressed and shared in some form.

This does not follow. Besides, you're begging the question – the creator of the consciousness creator's consciousness, etc ... — 180 Proof

No, it is premised as the position of a Strong AI proponent that consciousness can be created, that's all. It is a hypothetical, applicable in the case of that position.

IIRC, Dennett is simply saying that if nature produces – evolves via natural selection – "conscious systems", then there is no reason in principle within the bounds of natural laws that using natural sciences we cannot engineer "conscious systems" because the mechanism itself (i.e. evolution) is natural. No "creator"-of-the-gaps – appeal to ignorance – needed.

Could be. How does that relate to what I'm proposing? I am discussing beliefs qua beliefs, which may or may not accurately represent the mechanisms involved. But the beliefs as beliefs have meaning. If not, then what does?

The type of the fantasist is the architect. A type so dangerous to authority that he has to apply for "planning permission" to even begin her fantastic imaginings. Her castles in the air begin in the void between her ears and waft out onto blue paper prints, and from there the steel fabricators and brickies, live out the fantasy as true believers and realise it on the ground. Buildings are social constructs; ask any termite.

How does that relate to what I'm proposing? — Pantagruel

You propose precisely what?

Wrong thread for this. Sorry. I shouldn't have rambled.

You speak of the architect as a fantasist dangerous to authority and I wonder where the Freemasons lie in that picture because I understand that they began in the building trade. It makes me wonder about the whole nature of the symbolic within building design and the imagery underlying traditions, including the esoteric.

Buildings are social constructs; ask any termite. — unenlightened

:lol: :up:

It is interesting that you can think how you began playing the warrior role and how it is connected to fighting. One aspect of my playing rockstars which has resonance is perhaps the idea of the shaman. Many of the rock singers who were part of my childhood world, such as David Bowie, seem to be living the archetypal shamanic role. I have felt the shaman archetype to be central to my life, the idea of healing oneself and others.

I do agree with you that it is potentially problematic if the experts have the ultimate word on what is real and what is not, in being able to label and diagnose what is 'psychotic'. Having worked in a psychiatric hospital, I am very familiar with that way of viewing. At the moment, I am taking a bit of time out of that area and enjoying freedom from a view which can be fairly rigid. I have some experience of running therapeutic art activities and do believe that gives more scope for a wider scope for viewing. I see it as very questionable if any 'experts' try to define a correct way of seeing.

I wonder where the Freemasons lie in that picture because I understand that they began in the building trade. It makes me wonder about the whole nature of the symbolic within building design and the imagery underlying traditions, including the esoteric. — Jack Cummins

The freemasons developed from the master stonemason/architects that made an international business of building castles and fortifications, but more especially cathedrals. "the great Architect" features in their rituals and measurement instruments in their logo. I don't know much more than that...