What else can that "more" be if not "more real"? — Pantagruel

Cogito

With regard to mysticism - there is a lot of different stuff called mysticism. If we regard mysticism as the experience of a reality that transcends our everyday reality, that is something I know nothing about. — Fooloso4

Mysticism is about the hidden knowledge. In Plato, truth is supposed to be hidden until it is disclosed (alethia). Does it mean truth is mysticism in Plato?

This argument just comes down to our definition of real. This definition of real is that anything that exists is real. Both fake and real are real because they exist. — Hyper

When you are using the definition of real as existing, you must supply what is real after the real.
For example, "Socrates was a real person." This sounds right.

It sounds ambiguous, contradictory and illogical to say, Socrates was real, or fake is real.

Thus the majority of gods are not omnipotent. — LuckyR

Why is it the case? How potent are they? or are they potent at all?

Your conclusion contradicts the law of non-contradiction. That makes it a fallacy, even though it has a valid form. — Relativist

The point was just to demonstrate how the valid logical arguments can have unsound conclusion, and not useful in practicality.

Validity in logic doesn't mean much apart from the fact that it proves the conclusion was followed from the premises, be it sound or unsound.

I think this is entirely not supporting your point. Which I do get. — AmadeusD

Again, your replies are just your personal claims saying my points are wrong, or you think it is not supporting my points. I am not seeing any philosophical arguments why my points are wrong and why not supported.

You need to give out your counter arguments on my points with some reasoning and evidence with your claims. If not, I cannot accept your claims as legitimate philosophical arguments.

If you have some supposed deduction that concludes "contradiction is truth", then your argument is invalid. — Relativist

If God is omnipotent, then God can turn contradiction into truth.
God is omnipotent. (under the definition)
Therefore God can turn contradiction into truth.

It may not be a true argument, but it certainly looks valid.

If you have some supposed deduction that concludes "contradiction is truth", then your argument is invalid. — Relativist

If you accept the definition of God with omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, then your omnipotent God can make contradiction into truth. He can do anything. Miracles, magic, afterlife and heaven and hell, resurrections are all possible and truths.

It was just to say that logic with contradiction doesn't give us truth. It falls into the circular nonsense.

I said that everything exists, not that everything has the same utility. — Hyper

Of course everything exists. No problem with that. Problem is your claim that fake is also real just because it exists in the real world. That is a leap of reasoning gone over the barrier of common sense.

Fake exists as fake, and real exists as real. Let's not confused about that.

It proves the being of you do exist albeit in different mode.

is your knowledge of your own being knowledge of something objectively existent? — Wayfarer

You cannot be the same being twice.

but it actually doesn't. — Wayfarer

Why not?

The Greek word psychē translates to "soul" and can also mean "spirit", "ghost", or "self". — Wayfarer

Suppose the ancient Greeks used to believe in the existence of souls, which are to be transferred to the world of idea when body dies. For the Platonic idealists, the world of idea would have been more real than the material world. Hence the reason why Socrates chose to die rather than accepting the offered pardon? He wanted to be in the world of idea rather than the world of matter. :D

'substances' (or is that 'subjects'?) can be understood as constitutive elements of reality. I think, for us, it is almost unavoidable to conceive of such purported constituents as being objectively real in the same sense as the putative objects of physics, but in pre-modern philosophy the meaning is much nearer to 'soul' or psyche. — Wayfarer

Substance as soul or psyche? Where does the suggestion come from?

If you accept God itself is a being with omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence, then it is not a contradiction. In the world of God itself under this definition, even contradiction is truth.

You need to accept there are many different definitions of God. Depending on the definition, proof methods will differ.

What is your definitions of God?

My definition of God was "God" in the word, and it is God itself.

OK. The passage caught my eyes, as I was just about to start re-reading some Heidegger books.

due to the fact that modern philosophy and culture has no concept of there being degrees of reality — Wayfarer

Doesn't Heidegger's concept of world in Being and Time include the concept of reality?

Words represent objects and entities in the world, but words themselves are not representation.

I don't think we have any grounds to say we have different modes of perception. — AmadeusD

I think we do. There are a plethora of different types of objects in the world for our perception. And our perception works in different ways for different objects in different situations. Sometimes we have to use microscopes, telescopes, radars, computers in order to perceive objects. Sometimes we just need a pair of bare eyes and ears to perceive. Sometimes we concentrate on the objects while perceiving, and other times we have flashing passing ideas and images for some new ideas, while walking or even in sleeping. It is a very rich and complicated system.

Fake objects exist as fakes, and their properties are fake. Real objects have the real properties when examined and proved. Fake cannot be real and reals are not fakes just because they exist in the real world.

1. Evolution and trends
2. Trends and ethical principles derived from them (THIS POST) — Seeker25

What do Ethical Principles mean? What is the relationship between ethical principles and trends? Why are they relevant?

Ergo God does not exist.

If God does not exist, then God exists.
God does not exist.
Therefore God exists. :smirk:

These are all objects, hence the above. I think you're talking about perceiving our interactions with objects, which appears direct. True, and its possible we are 'directly' touching the cup. But our perception is not of that interaction. It is a representation of it. — AmadeusD

You are grossly misunderstanding what I said. I never said that perception is interaction. What I said was that we can interact with some objects we perceive. We can also access the perceived objects directly i.e. I can open and close the book in front of me, I can read it. If it is an apple, you can see it, but also peel it, and eat it. This is the real perception. You read the real book, peel the real apple, and eat the real apple directly. You are not seeing and reading the book in front of you indirectly, but directly because it is touchable, visible and readable i.e. accessible and interactable.

But if you are seeing a new book in Amazon, you are only seeing the image of the book with some info about it. You are seeing the book indirectly. You are still seeing the book, but it is not the real book.

If you see apples in your neighbor's garden apple tree distance away, then you see the apples, but not quite sure what type of apples they are. They could be cooking apple, or could be red delicious. You don't know if they have bugs eaten the apple from the distance. You only have prehension of the apple. Then you would add some of your imagination on your perception of the apples, and perceive them. This could be called indirect realist's account of perception.

But I feel this division of DR or IDR arguments in perception is pointless and fruitless. Because as I said already there are different types of perception depending on the situation, the types of objects perceived, and human mind can be fed with the perceptual info in different ways via different sensory organs.

You read time from your watch or clocks, but you also perceive time via your stomach when you feel hungry in the mid afternoon, you know it is lunch time etc. Anyhow, I could go on with a plethora of examples, but I hope you get the point.

Sleep is defined as a state of unconsciousness, making these claims a bit dubious to me. — AmadeusD

Sleep is not a state of total unconsciousness. Your body is fully functional in the biological level while asleep. And even mentally you are not totally unconscious. If you are totally unconscious, then you wouldn't know when to get up, or hear the loud scream or shouting telling you get up time to go to work.

In sleep, you are still perceiving the part of your bodily states, so you feel comfort or discomfort, and you are perceiving your dreams in the dream world, even if you might not be able to remember what your dream was about.

If we could, somehow, access an object in some way other than via the means of human perception (this appears metaphysically impossible - implicit in my wording), then we could compare the workings of both. But, we don't have that, so we can't make any 'a priori' claims. Though, it seems i meant "nothing to go on" apologies for that mis-step. — AmadeusD

But why would you do that? I don't think anyone was saying to access an object in some way other than via the means of human perception. You need to explain further on this.

I understand/understood hte claim, and based on my own parochial understanding of Kant, my replies flowed. My responses (you'll perhaps see after this) are direct responses to that position). I think the premise is wrong and so the argument unneeded. — AmadeusD

You need to explain why the premise is wrong. You cannot just say something is wrong without giving out the reason why. If there is no argument on your claim, then it is not a philosophical claim.

If anyone could prove the existence of God, there would be very few atheists. — Hyper

If God exists, then God does not exist.
God exists.
Therefore God does not exist.
:nerd:

It may be (as I think I lean) that human minds are literally empty at inception. We learn concepts through having them foisted on the mind. There's no reason to thinkt he mind is incapable of assenting to a concept like space, given it could not function without it, in the world (this, obviously, assumes space as a facet of reality outside of minds - which I think is uncontroversial, myself). — AmadeusD

Aren't some perceptions direct, and some indirect? It depends on the situations and also the objects of perception. Not all perceptions are direct, and not all are indirect. They are confused in thinking there are only one type of perception.

There are perceptions that we perceive the objects as they are (such as the objects which are accessible and possible to interact with, in which case perceptions of this kind could be described as direct), and there are objects that we perceive as our brain interprets from the sense data (which are not directly accessible and impossible to interact with), then perceptions on these objects are indirect.

Depending on the nature of the objects, we perceive and experience them in different way, not just direct realist way, or not just indirect realist way only.

I don't think we can make this claim, because sans experience of an object without human perception, we have nothing to go on. It may be (as I think I lean) that human minds are literally empty at inception. We learn concepts through having them foisted on the mind. There's no reason to thinkt he mind is incapable of assenting to a concept like space, given it could not function without it, in the world (this, obviously, assumes space as a facet of reality outside of minds - which I think is uncontroversial, myself). — AmadeusD

I was trying to understand points in the passage here, but I couldn't. I am not sure if it is linguistic structure or the philosophical point which are complex and abstract.

What do you mean by "sans experience of an object without human perception, we have nothing going on"?

Human perception is always operational even in sleep according to the posters' and my own experiences. The only time human perception stops is when mind falls into unconsciousness, and when the body dies.

I am not sure if mind keeps working after death of the body, but no one alive had been dead, hence no one can certify on the mystery of mind after death.

I'm quite unconvinced we can make any kind of claim like this, and is principally why I can't get on too much with Kant (along with his boiling-down to God for his fundamental conclusions, in terms of regression). — AmadeusD

Good point. This article on Causality of Hume and Kant has a through explanation on the concept.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-hume-causality/

The OP's point was to explore the claim from Hume and Kant, our perception need external objects or excitement from the objects on our minds to operate. The OP is trying to argue that this claim is not necessarily true. Because there are cases that human perception operates even without external objects existing or external excitement on the mind (like Kant's claim). We perceive non-existence objects at times without any objects existing in front of us.

The OP's purpose of argument is to prove a possibility of another mechanism of mind which operates behind the scene being able to perceive the non-existence objects, which can offer explanation of the workings of causality, space and time and other metaphysical entities.

An old book has been on the desk for few weeks. I saw the book every evening when I came into the room. But this evening, it disappeared from the desk. I didn't notice it until I was looking for the book. Someone might have moved the book from the desk, or maybe it was moved to some other location in the house when I was moving some other books into the other room.

The bottom line is that, the book has disappeared from the spot it was on. I cannot see it anymore.
So, the book is now a non-existent object to me. But I am still seeing the non-existent book on the spot it was on the desk. It is not my imagination of the book. Imagination is mental images made up of false existence. But what I was seeing was the book which is now non-existing book on the spot in the space where it had been. It is the non-existence of the book which I was noticing. Not the book itself.

In reality I am not seeing anything on the spot where the book was on the desk. There is only empty space on the desk. But I am still seeing the non-existent book, which should be on the spot in the space. Am I seeing nothing? How can you see nothing? Nothing is invisible visually. Nothing doesn't have mass, weight, colour or shape physically or metaphysically or even logically. Or am I still seeing the book which is now a non-existence book? If it was a non-existence book I was seeing on the spot in the space where it had been existing for past few days, then how could be a book be also non-existence book?

Huh? I've spent considerable energy in this thread arguing against the concept of physically "proving" metaphysical entities, like gods. — LuckyR

Is God a metaphysical entity? What is the proof for that? Is word God a proper name for God? What does God mean, and which God does it mean?

And yet, you didn't understand that, "the bricks that make up the sentences are not the actual words themselves," was a figure of speech :chin: — night912

You didn't understand what the figure of speech meant, and kept repeating "the representation of the word". So I gave you the explanation what figure of speech means, and the concept of simile which was in the figure of speech.

You didn't prove that the word exists. All you did was proved that the representation of the word exists. — night912

I am not sure what you mean by "the representation of the word". What is the difference between word and "the representation of the word"?

Huh? I've spent considerable energy in this thread arguing against the concept of physically "proving" metaphysical entities, like gods. — LuckyR

I was just suggesting a direction for you to take in case you are interested in seeing the physical proof of God's existence.

So, no, I don't need to define anything, since I'm not proving anything. — LuckyR

Since you have joined the thread, and spent your considerable energy arguing, you still need to prove why you are not proving anything.

You? — LuckyR

I already gave out my proof.

As to whether gods are metaphysical, they are by my understanding, — LuckyR

You need to clarify what your definition of God is. Your proof of God would only make sense when you have a clear definition of God. The premises of your proof can only start from a solid definition. Then the logical proof could progress.

And then you must define what you mean by existence. Does everything you say as existing, exist in physical entity? There are also many objects which exists in conceptual entities. Then what you do you mean by existence?

the bricks that make up the sentences — night912

For your information, "brick" was a figure of speech called simile in my sentence.

Simile is
"a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g. as brave as a lion )." - Oxford Dictionary.

In emotivist's ethical principle, morality is for emotions, not beliefs or facts. Therefore when you say something is morally good means same thing as saying "boo" or "hooray".

So, which ethical principle were you talking about here?