Comments

  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    Imaginary, nonexistent, or nonactual things such as ghosts are not real in the sense that molecules are real, nor in the sense that colours are real. Ghosts are fiction.jkop

    When you say ghosts are not real, does it mean that there are the real ghosts? If there is no real ghosts, then how do you know ghosts are not real? To know "not real", you must know "real". Would you agree?
  • Animalism: Are We Animals?
    Are each of us numerically identical to an animal?NOS4A2
    We are undeniably animals in bodily nature having the biological functions, desires and system.
    However, we are also different from the other animals in respect of having sophisticated language and reasoning capacity .

    Intelligence is not same as being rational. I was in deep shock finding out that some folks think those are the same in the other thread here. A dog can be intelligent in doing some tasks and chores and tricks when trained. But no other animals than humans can be rational. And even some humans aren't rational.
  • Existential Self-Awareness
    Does having the capacity for existential self-awareness imply anything further than this fact?schopenhauer1
    Being aware of one's own inevitable death sometime in the future.

    entail anything further, in any axiological way?schopenhauer1
    Desiring to be morally Good.
  • The Biggest Problem for Indirect Realists
    Hmmm, you don’t perceive a thing-in-itself: it is, logically, the thing which your senses produced sensations of; and your understanding cognizes those sensations—not the thing-in-itself.Bob Ross

    You got it upside down here. Your senses don't produce sensations, but sensations are caused by the external objects, which are phenomenon. Thing-in-itself is not sensible entity, but cognisible entity via reasoning. It is the entity from the reasoning point of view, which must exist, but is unavailable to your senses, hence unknowable via normal perception. It is the entity that must be reasoned, and postulated. It is a different type of perception you need to perceive Thing-in-itself.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    You CHOSE words and COMBINED them together to make sentences.night912
    Yes, I did. But I chose the words consciously reflecting the contents of my thoughts. In dreams, I have no consciousness of real world, hence things appear without my choice, and I have no control of the dreams.

    Happy?night912
    Philosophical discussions are not about being happy. It is about trying to come to the agreed conclusion via good arguments.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    They experience days and nights following previous days and nights, not the time in which they follow each other.jkop
    If they say, we are going to meet in the cafe in 1 hour, how do they know when to meet, if they don't perceive time?

    They see the Eiffel tower, its extension and relations to other buildings, not the space that its extension and relations occupy.jkop
    Every part and corner of the space is mapped with the co-ordinates, so drones can pin-point the objects in them, and airplanes can reach the location. If space is not perceivable, how can it happen?

    If they are real, then we can experience them systematically, also by those of us who don't expect them to be real. But since we don't, there's little reason to assume that they're real.jkop
    When you say "they are real", what do you mean by that? What do you mean by "we can experience systematically"?
  • A -> not-A
    Thanks, but no thanks.
    Thanks.
    No thanks.
  • The Biggest Problem for Indirect Realists
    Kant begins with the presupposition that our experience is representational and proceeds to correctly conclude that knowledge of the things-in-themselves is thusly impossible.Bob Ross

    Isn't Thing-in-itself a postulated existence, rather than perceived existence? Hence you need faith to perceive it, rather than knowledge?
  • In praise of anarchy
    You think in a democracy you get decent, good people in charge?!? You get thugs. Sophisticated thugs. You get in charge those who want to be. Good people don't want to be in charge.Clearbury

    :up:
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    What exists for us to experience of God, souls, spirits etc. are our own and other people's descriptions, pictures, sculptures, plays performed by actors, movies with special effects, churches or art museums designed specifically with an ambience that tends to evoke sacred or otherworldly experiences.jkop

    But how do we experience the real God, souls and spirits? Not other people's descriptions, pictures, sculptures, plays performed by actors, movies with special effects.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    Time and space may not be objects of perception, but we can use our knowledge of descriptions and theories of them in order to evoke relevant experiences of duration, extension etc.jkop

    If time is not an object of perception, how do they know today is a Saturday night? If space is not an object of perception, how do they know where the Eiffel tower is located?
  • A -> not-A
    And from a contradiction, anything and everything follows. This is the principle of explosion.

    That is to say, "1. A -> not-A" is impossible; when the impossible can happen, anything can happen.
    unenlightened

    Impossible cannot happen, therefore nothing can happen?
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    Our empathic ability. It's the ability to mentally construct, visualize, and actually feel things that we are not directly exposed to. So if you know what it feels like to see things, then you probably have the ability to evoke the same or similar feeling when you don't see anything. The same areas in the brain are activated when you see something and when you imagine seeing it.jkop

    Does it mean that we could mentally construct, visualize and actually feel the image and existence of God, souls, spirits too? What about time and space? How do we perceive them?
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    Otherwise you're going to get stuck and never evolve intellectually.Christoffer

    Not all science is nonsense.  But saying that images  in our seeing are formed by prediction sounds illogical and nonsense.   You see a cup of coffee in front of you. You are seeing it vividly and solidly. But you also predict how it will look? Why? Prediction is a conscious act of telling the future of events which are uncertain or unknown.

    Also you saw an image in your dream which you claim from your past memory, but you don't recall what the image was about, and the image you saw in your dream is the result of your hallucination sounds not making sense.  If you saw an image in your dream for the first time in your life, then how could it be from your past memory? If something is from your memory, then why do you have to hallucinate about it?

    Moreover, insisting that those points are from the scientific research, therefore we must accept them no matter how absurd they are, sounds blind and nonthinking. 
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    I think you are severely misunderstanding how this works. I suggest that you engage with the scientific material surrounding predictive coding theory.Christoffer
    That is a peculiar way to use the concept of prediction.  From my idea, prediction is always for the unknown future.  You don't predict how a cup of coffee will look like, when you are seeing a cup of coffee.   The cup of coffee is sending you a vivid and forceful image to your eyes.   You are perceiving it with certainty and realistic assurance for its existence.  Why do you have to predict it?   It is just a logical flaw and nonsense.
    OK you say, you are using the concept of prediction differently to describe how you structure the images in your perception, and it is Scientific research.  But why would you do that?  Why do you have to change the meaning of the concept prediction in order to describe the perceptual process in that context?  

    Here you are also looking at the concept of "hallucination" in the textbook description of it, not as what it means as a mental process. Our entire experience is a hallucination that our brain is constructing, it is perception itself. The hallucination of dreams and psychedelics is only the version of that hallucination that isn't grounded by our real time sensory data grounding it through correlation.Christoffer
    Again, it is a simple basic logic of remembering something. If you are seeing a cup of coffee from your memory, then logically you cannot fail to recall the factual past content of your memory when you are seeing it. If you are seeing an image from your memory, it wouldn't be just the object of the image, you would also see the background, material detail of the cup, the type of the coffee and where it was lying on etc etc.

    You don't have to hallucinate the image to see it, and insist it was from your past memory, because the images you see in your memory are conscious and intentional and factual. If you are hallucinating images in your perception, that cannot be from your memory. If you read "The doors of perception" by A. Huxley, you will find more about Hallucination. Again your writings have the basic logical flaw in the argument insisting it is hallucination from your memory, which is not acceptable.

    You are looking for an answer to a faulty question and the only thing anyone can do is to answer the real question; how these imagined concepts form within us, which I have answered to the best of my ability out of the entire scientific field that researches this very question.Christoffer
    As I said, the OP is not about how we form and see images from some scientific research. It is about how we see non existing images sometimes, and what is the nature of non existing objects. I have asked a few questions on the nature of non existing objects and perceiving non existing objects in my previous posts, but you have not answered any of them, but just kept going on about the prediction and hallucination.

    You must be aware of the fact that scientific research explanations and theories are not all eternal and infallible truths. When new research and experiments prove otherwise, the present scientific theories and principles are destined to collapse. That is the way scientific explanations work, and you have to be always open minded on the scientific explanations and answers on the abstract topics.

    Philosophy is not about accepting and adopting the scientific explanations into their inquiries without analysis, logical and critical reflections.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    I'm not sure what else you're asking for, because with this field of science in mind, the answers are somewhat clear or at least rationally explained enough by the current understanding of our consciousness and how we function.Christoffer

    You say, that your explanations are from the scientific research on the topic, but it seems to have basic logical flaws in the arguments. Blindly reading up the popular scientific explanations on the topics, and accepting them without basic logical reflections on their validity appears to be unwise and unhelpful for finding out more logical explanations and coming to better understanding on the subject.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    The prediction function is not a detached function of our brain like the visual cortex, it is the fundamental function of the entire brain. It fundamentally is our brain.Christoffer
    Predictions are overtly conscious and intentional on the events, movements of objects or functional processes which are uncertain in their results. It sounds illogical and unsound to suggest that our brain keeps making predictions on everything it sees, just because it is their nature to do so.

    I don't see how this isn't answered? How we perceive non-existing objects has already been answered. It's a hallucinatory flow of predictions detached from sensory inputs and composed by a collage of previous experiences and concepts of objects that we have stored in memory. The nature of them is that they are hallucinations detached from sensory information or minorly influenced by it while imagining or hallucinating in an awaken state. Internally they differentiate to existing objects in that they are pure memory information formed into prediction calculations by the brain that detaches from sensory grounding, transforming memory representations of real objects into a malleable conceptualized mental model that can be reshaped internally. During dreaming, this process happens without our ability to control it, since the flow of this collage of memories flowing together is influenced by the brain's process of fusing long term memory with the new short term memories.Christoffer
    Prior to your seeing something from your memory, you must be conscious of the content of your memory, or know what you are remembering about. You cannot see something from your memory, if you cannot remember what they were.

    Seeing hallucinatory images from one's past memories is what is happening in one's dreams doesn't quite assuredly explain the nonexistent objects appearing in dreams, if the dreamer has never seen, encountered or experienced the object in his / her life ever.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    And the third part is the prediction function which they don't even include.Christoffer

    Predictions usually happen when the result of some events, movements of objects or processes are unknown to the predictor. But in visual perception of a cup of coffee, result of the perception is irrelevant with the unknown-ness or uncertainty. This tells us prediction is not relevant in most daily visual perceptions. It looks more so, in seeing the objects in dreams.

    The OP is also about "non-existing objects" and existing objects. How do we perceive non-existing objects, and what are the nature of non-existing objects? Do non-existing objects exist? If they do, how can they be non-existing? If they don't, how could we see them? Are seeing a reliable evidence for existence of objects? If not, what are the evidence of something to exist?

    How are they different from existing objects?
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    In essence, when you see a cup of coffee, it forms a constant stream of information that holds in place and time that shape and form while your memory has categorized what a cup of coffee from past experiences and the interplay between them forms a hallucinatory state of predictions about the next step in time we experience.Christoffer

    Do you mean that we never see a real cup of coffee, but images of constant steam of information from your memory, which is a hallucinatory state of predictions?

    I recall debating on this topic before. The direct realists would say, you are seeing a cup of coffee in front of you, and indirect realist would say, you are seeing a sense data of a cup of coffee which seems sounding similar to your suggestion.

    You say it is a scientific facts, but is it tested, and proven fact? Or would it be just another hypotheses how seeing works?
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    A very interesting and detailed post on the topic. Thank you. I will read it over, and get back to you, when I have some ideas about your points. The images in the posts are very interesting too. Later~
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    If Hegel and Kant used the term, "see" when talking about dreams they are misusing terms too. You seem to be making a plea to authority here, when it is just as likely that Hegel and Kant could be wrong, especially when they did not have access to the scientific knowledge we have now.Harry Hindu

    I didn't say Hegel's idea was absolute truth. I found Hegel's term "inner impressions" for seeing images in dreams interesting. In Hume impressions come from the external world objects. When the impressions come into your mind, it becomes ideas. There is no such a thing as "inner impressions".
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    You did not see a tiger. You dreamed a tiger. This is how you are misusing terms.Harry Hindu

    When I was in sleep, I was seeing a tiger. When I was awake, I recalled the dream of a tiger. They are both images, not words or sounds.
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    But then, I just don't understand what you mean by these comments. Reason and truth are not the same thing. But they are connected. You seem to recognize that, but then deny it. I must be missing something.Ludwig V

    I think I have tried to clarify the points enough from my side. There is nothing much more for me to add here. You seem to keep going around circle of deviation. I will leave you to it.
    I am bowing out from this thread. All the best.
  • Am I my body?
    Ok. Yah. Splice that sentence from our entire exchange, and you and I agree generally on what Mind is and how it's different from Body, though it emerges therefrom.ENOAH

    :up: :cool:
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    I think the consistency of normal experience and our ability to compare to perceptive fabrications (e.g., hallucinations, dreams, etc.) are evidence that something normally is exciting your senses; but what that thing is in-itself is impossible to know. It very well could be a mere idea (like ontological idealists say) or a concrete object (like materialists will say) or an object (like physicalists will say) or something unimaginable.Bob Ross

    Yes, this is it. The thing in-itself which is impossible to know or something unimaginable is what we hope to find out.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    I'm not sure where you're going with the OP question, what you are aiming for, but there's not much more to it than what I described. Our experience is an hallucination bound by a flow of sensory data. Cutting that flow makes us hallucinate freely and our memorized concepts start to merge into new forms, shapes and concepts. The combinations of concepts stored in our memory has an almost infinite amount of combinations. A white tiger included.Christoffer

    Yet again, isn't Hallucination totally different way of seeing non existent objects? You see images of the objects which are existent or non-existent in the external world, but the cause of the seeing is the abnormal state of your brain due to the chemically induced condition? I am not too sure on the details of technicality of hallucination on why and how it occurs. But that is my idea on it. Anyway, it is not the OPs interest here.

    Asking and discussing on seeing non-existence images in dreams and also daily life could tell us more on our perception how it works, which could allow us to explore on the way mind works.

    If you think it has no more scope of discussion than talking about hallucination and making predictions, then maybe you are not interested in the topic of the workings of mind and perception.
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    It is true that one can believe something on rational grounds, and be wrong. But if you are wrong, you didn't know it. Knowledge cannot be wrong. If someone believes that it will rain on Tuesday, and it doesn't, they didn't know that it will rain on Tuesday.Ludwig V
    Checking out you knew or not, that is the work of reason. Reason itself is not truth.

    You seem to be misunderstanding me. I didn't modify your post at all. I simply presented to you my own definition of intelligence, which is different from yours.Ludwig V
    It is a very peculiar way of putting down your own definition on someone else's writing, making out as if it was written by someone else.

    If reason cannot deliver truth, then it cannot verity my belief or knowledge.Ludwig V
    Does reason deliver truth? It sounds not making sense. The sentence "Reason delivers truth." sounds not correct. Reason brings truth to you at your door step? Like a Amazon delivery van delivers what you have ordered from Amazon? I am not sure if that was what you meant. Hope not. You find out truth or falsity on something using reason.

    Clearly, we have different concepts of rationality. If rationality has nothing to do with truth, what is the point of it? How does it differ from reading tea leaves of consulting an astrologer?Ludwig V
    Rationality is a method to finding truth, but rationality itself is not truth. We do have different ideas not just on rationality, but also truth. All the best.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    Which is a good explanation for our cognitive biases becoming more rigid the more we focus on just information that aligns with what we already know. And why broadening our knowledge is key to becoming truly wise.Christoffer

    A detailed and good post on the topic. Thank you. However, the OP was more interested in discussing and find out the nature of the visual images we see in our dreams, rather than how dreams work, and why we dream.

    Clearly what we see in our dreams are images of the objects in the external world. But some of the images are the ones that we never came across in daily lives, or have anything to do with our experience and memories. The white tiger I have seen my dream for example, was a clear vivid image of a tiger, but I have never seen it in my entire life in real world.

    So where does it come from? How is it different from the images we see in daily life from the real objects? Are they same type of images? Then how it does not have its real existence of the object?

    It was more the epistemological angle the OP was trying to orient the discussions.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    Imagine imagining something when you don't have the world imposing itself on your senses and mind. The imagining would seem real, like your dream does. The dream would take the place of the world precisely because the world is absent when you are asleep.Harry Hindu
    I saw a tiger in my dream. I do vividly remember the image of the tiger, so that I can even draw it on a piece of paper how it looked. It is a visual experience, which is similar to the visual perception you have in your daily life.

    It has nothing to do with making predictions or imagining something for the reasons I have put down on my previous post. Please read it again, if you haven't.

    You're not seeing anything when you dream. Seeing is the process of using your eyes to take in light. The existence of light is a necessary component of seeing. Can you see anything when the lights are out? You are simply misusing terms.Harry Hindu
    Hegel and Kant have written about the images we see in our dreams as "inner impressions" which are different type of impressions coming from the external world.

    I have not used any vague terms or fancy words in my posts, but just said seeing images in dreams are different type of images we see when we are awake in daily life.

    You seem to be misusing the word "misuse" without knowing what the word "misuse" actually means.
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    Doesn't "verify" mean something like to demonstrate the truth or accuracy of something, as by the presentation of evidence? In that case, we must be talking about truth. Though you are right that it is possible to believe something on rational grounds and be wrong.Ludwig V
    Truth emerges when your belief or knowledge is examined and verified by reason. Reason itself cannot deliver truth as you claim.

    You should trace back what you said in this thread. You said that your belief and knowledge are rational because you believe and know something. I said, no it cannot be rational or irrational until they are verified. Then you deviated from the point, claiming that rationality delivers truth. I am not sure what that means. You need to give more elaboration on that point what it means.

    We were not talking about truth, and truth as a property of belief or knowledge has nothing to do with rational thinking. Your knowledge on something can be rational, but still be wrong.

    Intelligence means knowing something, or being able to do something in coherent way. It is not same as The ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledgesomething, which are what rational thinking does. — Corvus

    I thought it was something like the ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledge. That would make it something different from knowledge but more about how to acquire knowledge.
    Ludwig V
    You have modified the content of my post with your own writing. That is not what I wrote in my post on what intelligence means. It would help clarifying the points if you could go over what intelligence means, and what reasoning means in general terms, and think about the difference between the two.
  • Am I my body?
    I'd like to. Please show me, where is that organ Mind?ENOAH
    It is not a physical organ, but conceptual and functional organ. All your thoughts, feelings, emotions and senses i.e. the bundle of perceptions are your organ of mind, which emerged from your brain.
    You cannot see it of course. It is conceptual and functional, hence even Hume couldn't see it, and he had to conclude the existence of self doesn't exist. There is only a bundle of perception when looking at the idea of self.

    I will do some thinking for my reply to your other points. Later~
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    Rationality is what delivers the truth, so there can be no question whether rationality delivers truth. It would be like trying to measure the standard metre in Paris in order to find out whether it is a metre long.Ludwig V
    We were not talking about truth here. We were talking about whether your knowledge or beliefs were rational or irrational. For that, you need to verify your knowledge or beliefs if they are not from deductive reasoning.

    H'm that's a bit quick. What about people like Aquinas or Descartes who believed that they had rational arguments for belief in God? That's quite different from belief from blind faith. True, most people (but not all) believe their arguments were not valid. But they certainly weren't blind faith.
    There are theologians who take as their starting-point the "presupposition" that the Bible is the word of God. It has something of the status of an axiom. Something posited as true, but not capable of being proved or disproved. Their theology follows by rational process. Sometimes rational thinking has irrational elements.
    Ludwig V
    Aquinas and Descartes were the people who used rational thinking to prove the existence of God. They were not the religious authorities who punished the general public based on the faiths and religious social codes.

    My problem is that I've never been able to grasp a clear meaning for the term "intelligence". So I mostly ignore it, especially in philosophy.Ludwig V
    Intelligence means knowing something, or being able to do something in coherent way. It is not same as reflecting, analyzing, criticizing and proving something, which are what rational thinking does.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    What it is like for you to make a prediction and to imagine things when you are awake?Harry Hindu
    Seeing images in your dreams and making predictions are totally different things happening in your mind. They are not the same activities. Seeing something is visual. Predicting something is imagining. There are two types of prediction. One by your hunch, and the other by inductive reasoning. Both activities involve your intention, will and inference.

    Seeing visual images in your dreams is random events happening without any of above. Plus it is visual operation with no imagination, guessing or reasoning.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    You just proved that you're wrong. You combined letters above, resulting in sentences. :up:night912
    I didn't combine anything at all. I just chose words to make up sentences. Anyway, it is not the same thing as seeing the images in your dreams.
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    So it seems that even if I believe my perceptions without any grounds, I can justify them - that is, provide reasons (grounds) for believing them - after I come to believe them.Ludwig V

    You could, but if it is irrational, then others will not agree with your justification. Being rational means also it has to be objective. Your problem seem to be confusion between intelligence and knowledge with reasoning and being rational. They are not the same.
  • Am I my body?
    Mind craves an afterlife because the mechanism of the subject creates the illusion of continuing. I think, harsh as it is a pill to swallow, the so called subject doesn't really exist, and as for we tge body, it dies and is reborn in tge incessant present. If we want to put it into religious terms, There's God's gift to us, the eternal present, life, our fall is ignoring life and opting for knowledge and our own world that we built with it.ENOAH

    It is a bit strange that you seem to acknowledge the existence of God, and creation of the universe and humans by the God. But at the same time you deny the existence of souls and spirits, and brush aside death as the final page of the chapter for the beings.

    Souls and spirits are the essential elements in most religions. They are not for those non-believers. But if anyone is religious, then souls and spirits are the important existence which are real as the mind and body in the real world.
  • Am I my body?
    The body is plainly real in every sense of the word real. You're offering that in your statement.

    All of the enumerated things mind can do are what we (mind) ascribes to itself as proof of its reality 'beyond' the physical body. But these are just functions being carried out by a system of stimulus and response. Just happens the functions have evolved to act in such a richly complex and sophisticated way, with a narrative form, mechanisms like the ones we call logic, grammar, reason, etc., that the body observing these functions and responding, triggers good feelings when tge system classifies itself as "real"
    ENOAH
    Your problem seems to stem from conflating mind and body at times, and then looking at mind and body separate entities as you go along. Constancy and coherence are lacking in your argument.

    Mind and body are the same. Mind is is a part of the body. You are born in your body with little or no mind, then as your body grows, your mind emerges from the body. If you look at the mind as one of the organs of the body, then things get clearer.

    Body has different parts, and the different parts do different things. Mind and body work together to function properly. If you had no eyes, then you won't have sights. If you have no ears, you won't hear. If you had no mind being unconscious, you will not see or hear even if you had eyes and ears. It is that simple.

    We are a conceited ape. The conceit is the illusion that our imaginations are special beyond their function (yes, that is impressive) but somehow as an eternal truthENOAH
    Yes, humans have logic, grammar and reasoning, which are handy for delving into more sophisticated tasks for survival in nature and the real world. All other animals which are non-human lack the capacity, and even humans have different levels in logic, grammar and reasoning. It is just a fact, nothing to do with conceit.

    You can call humans as apes, because they share some biological mechanisms in life. They both have to be born, eat and drink, sleep, get old and die eventually. But that is where the common features exist and end as beings with the biological bodies. But they are not the same, when you look into their capacity of minds i.e. logic, grammar and reasoning. Saying that they are the same sounds over simplification of the beings in categorization trying to brush them under the same carpet for some peculiar reason.
  • Am I my body?
    unwittingly giving it lofty designations like spirit and soul, imbuing it not just with reality, but a higher reality, eternity;ENOAH

    If mind believes in God, after life, resurrection, the heaven and hell etc, then it needs to postulate the existence of soul or spirit, so that it will unite with divine when it dies. We could say that soul or spirit is a postulated entity for a mind, like Thing-in-Itself is a postulated entity in Kant's system.
  • Am I my body?
    I agree that we have gotten it all wrong. We have privileged the Mind (unique to humans), unwittingly giving it lofty designations like spirit and soul, imbuing it not just with reality, but a higher reality, eternity; relegating the flesh to a category shared with 'animals' as if we are superior to 'them', and worse, relegating it as the source of evil. Yet, prima facie, any animal born into this world has no 'cause' to question it's reality nor that of the natural Universe. Then why do we question reality? Because the 'we' doing the questioning is not our bodies, but this process of constructing and projecting (emerging out of our real imaginations--a thing we presumably share with primates, elephants, and sea mammals for e.g.) which has developed over generations, is transmitted with socialization, and has displaced our natures with--admittedly very functional--fictions.ENOAH

    I am not sure if the emergent mind is not real.  It is utterly real in that it knows, observes, feels, predicts and feels.  How can the mind be not real? 

    Enoah has a mind and body.  The body has a head, arms, feet and hands etc etc.  The mind can feel, know, observe, recall, predict, reason ... etc etc.

    The mind is a part of the body, which is invisible not only to other minds, but even to the mind itself.  But it is as real as the body so long as it operates with its expected functions.
    Mind dies when the body dies, because it is a part of the body.

    Mind asks about the world and also about reality, because it is one of the nature / functions of mind i.e. curiosity.

    Saying other animals are not the same as humans in reasoning is not placing the animals into the lower level out of arrogance of the human mind.  It is just telling the truth and reality out of observations on nature and the world.  It would be like saying the Sun is brighter than the Moon.  It is just stating the fact, not making the Sun any superior to the Moon, or trying to make the Sun feel proud.
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    I think this matters because I think a democracy needs to be clear about the difference between fact and fiction. A democracy must have education for rational thinking based on facts and understand what this has to do with morality. If we believe a God made us closer to angels than animals, or if we believe we have evolved along with the rest of the animals, it really matters. That is the center of our understanding of reality and decisions that must be based on reality.Athena

    You should be very careful not to be deceived by the word democracy. It could mean, that you must do anything irrational to justify the word. It would be wiser to stay critical and analytical on these fancy words which can be hollow inside, but can force people to irrational actions and thoughts.