the world is a composite of different (or all of it's) possible descriptions of the world – a complementary plurality – instead of a unity (i.e. univocity) — 180 Proof

There are an infinite number of possible descriptions of the world. This just seems like a trick to get people who are afraid to have an actual opinion about reality off the hook.

There have been times on the forum when there were three threads on free will or consciousness going at the same time. Last week there were two threads discussing whether quantum mechanics undermines the idea of reality. The moderators have shown no particular interest in cutting out the clutter by consolidating threads.

Except with discussions they have classified as "Life Sucks" threads. @Mikie jammed five of @schopenhauer1's "Series in Pessimism" discussions in to the "Life Sucks" one. I think I'm pretty much the most happy happy joy joy poster on the forum, so I often don't have much patience with anti-natalism and other themes I consider nihilistic, but that's beside the point. Schopenhauer1 generally has well thought out OPs and well argued points. He won't listen to me when I tell him we live in the best of all possible worlds, but, hey, nobody else listens to me either.

There is as much nuance and depth in pessimistic philosophy as there is in free will or consciousness, at least as they manifest here on the forum. So, moderators - @Jamal, @Baden, be fair. Maybe it was reasonable to consolidate all Schopenhauer1's threads into a single Series in Pessimism, I don't know, but chucking it into the Life Sucks dumpster just kills the whole thing.

I do intend to spend a lot more of my time doing volunteer work when I turn 60, so 2 years from now. — universeness

When my brother retired, he got heavily involved in volunteer work with old people. I respect him for that and he really enjoys it. I don't have any interest in that.

I have two questions:

1. Do you feel nostalgic? — javi2541997

Within the past 10 years I've noticed that my life has telescoped. It feels a bit like I'm living all of my life at once. Things that happened 50 years ago are just as real as things that happened yesterday. I still think of friends I haven't seen in 60 years as friends. My father died in 2001, but he's as much a part of me as he was when he was alive.

That's not nostalgia. No longing for or regrets about the past. It's almost as if there's no past at all.

2. How do you face the challenges/opportunities? The same way as you did ten or twenty years ago? — javi2541997

Ten or 20 years ago I had lots of things taking up my time. Two of my children were still at home. I was working full time. I was engaged in the world. I think my primary method for facing challenges in the past was not to face them at all. Avoidance. Now? I just sit here and wait to see what happens - in the world and in myself.

heh, fair enough. It may just be the wrong question, really. It's not that things cannot be poems, but rather, if it isn't one it's a sort of challenge for the poet to turn it into one. So there's no point in delimiting the category, given it's a creative category and will expand as poets continue. — Moliere

One of the things I like about the Billy Collins poem @mcdoodle posted is its everydayness. Low key, straightforward, not trying too hard, but with depth. I am attracted to poems like that. One of my favorite poets is Carl Dennis for that very reason. Example:

As If

Before dawn, while you're still sleeping,
Playing the part of a dreamer whose house is an ark
Tossed about by a flood that will never subside,
Its dove doomed to return with no twig,
Your neighbor's already up, pulling his boots on,
Playing the part of a fisherman,
Gathering gear and loading his truck
And driving to the river and wading in
As if fishing is all he's ever wanted.
Three trout by the time you get up and wash
And come to breakfast served by a woman who smiles
As if you're first on her short list of wonders,
And you greet her as if she's first on yours.
Then you're off to school to fulfill your promise
To lose yourself for once in your teaching
And forget the clock facing your desk. Time to behave
As if the sun's standing still in a painted sky
And the day isn't a page in a one-page notebook
To be filled by sundown or never filled,
First the lines and then the margins,
The words jammed in till no white shows.

And while you're speaking as if everyone's listening,
A mile from school, at the city hall,
The mayor is behaving as if it matters
That the blueprints drawn up for the low-rent housing
Include the extra windows he's budgeted,
That the architects don't transfer the funds
To shutters and grates as they did last year
But understand that brightness is no extravagance.
And when lunch interrupts him, it's a business lunch
To plan the autumn parade, as if the fate of the nation
Hangs on keeping the floats of the poorer precincts
From looking skimpy and threadbare.

The strollers out on the street today
Don't have to believe all men are created equal,
All endowed by their creator with certain rights,
As long as they behave as if they do,
As if they believe the country will be better off
If more people do likewise, that acting this way
May help their fellow Americans better pursue
The happiness your housemate believes she's pursuing
Sharing her house with you, that the fisherman
Wants to believe he's found in fishing.

Now while you're thinking you can make her happy
As long as she's willing to behave as if you can
The fisherman keeps so still on his log
As he munches a biscuit that the fish
Rise to the surface to share his crumbs.
And the heron stands on the sandbank silently staring
As if it's wondering what the man is thinking,
Its gray eyes glinting like tin or glass.

Bagels
Cream Cheese
cleaning rags — Moliere

Sesame bagels
Cream cheese with chives and onions
Cleaning rags and soap

See, now it's a haiku.

A good OP and an interesting topic. One I've thought about quite a bit recently.

Timelessness — in the sense of time never ending, never beginning — is a stagnant nothing. It is absolutely uninteresting. — javi2541997

I've experienced this since I retired three years ago. Cyclic time without waystations or progress. Stagnant? Uninteresting? Well, I know what he means but I think he's missing something. Living in cyclic time, with less external superstructure to hold my life together, has made me, allowed me to, fall back on my own internal resources. Sometimes it feels like looking out at a vast, flat, empty plain, but that's the challenge and opportunity.

Life is possessed by tremendous tenacity. Even so, its presence remains conditional, and as it had a beginning, so it will have an end. I believe that life, just for this reason, is exceedingly enhanced in value, — javi2541997

Something else I've been thinking about, since I'm within sight of the end of my life even without my glasses. There's a lot of talk these days about the end of death through medical technology or artificial intelligence. That seems like a bleak prospect. I don't want to die now. I'm having a good time. But I certainly don't want to live forever.

As I said, a good idea for a thread.

This absurdity disappears by restricting reality to a mere general metaphysical conception, re: ↪T Clark, constructed and apprehended by humans alone. Then those silly marks bracketing the word, which carries the implication it isn’t a valid conception in the first pace, can disappear as well. — Mww

The silly marks are there for grammatical, not philosophical, purposes. I was referring to the concept of reality, not reality itself.

On the flip side of a shopping list. This is by Billy Collins. — mcdoodle

First thought - a different poem if it ended at:

until I had passed through the electric doors,
where I stopped to realize,
as I turned the list over,
that I had forgotten Terry O’Shea
as well as the bananas and the bread.

I'll think about it and have more to say.

nice edit. — Banno

What edit?

I find the question interesting, actually. I feel like formal aspects of poems are a type of meaning, too (the main anchor of nonsense verse like the first stanza of Jabberwocky, for example). There's a back and forth, and in poetry, where the importance of those formal aspects is institutionally raised, the word meaning and sound meaning give rise to each other in a chicken-egg relationship, only more chaotic. — Dawnstorm

I like to nail things down before I make a foray out into the playground of philosophical discussion. I've been noticing recently that sometimes makes me rigid in my need to characterize and make distinctions and unwilling to make changes. In the case of your posts, I think I'm trying to force you to classify things the same way I do, which is not reasonable. There's not need for you to try to put your ideas in the boxes I've set out, especially given your greater experience.

We engage differently with a text if we think it's a shopping list than if we think it's a poem. (I've heard of a teacher providing a shopping list as an example of a poem, encouraging analysis. It's not something I've come up with. I wish I still had the reference, but it's just something I heard in a course a long time ago.) — Dawnstorm

Forgive a bit of self-indulgence, but here is my shopping list poem:

Sixteen Fortune Cookies

You have wasted your life.
Brush your teeth three times a day.
I am not Chinese.
You are going to die.
You are a fool.
Jump. Now.
Never buy Chinese food from a restaurant where the waiters are not Chinese.
Know yourself.
You will make love to an overweight, 67-year-old civil engineer.
You will never be happy.
Drink eight glasses of water every day.
I am closer to enlightenment than you are.
Listen to your heart.
Pay me back the money you owe me.
I love you very much.
Don’t eat the cookie.

although T Clark may be. — Banno

Not me.

It seems to me you have trapped yourself in a misguided approach to the topic. — Banno

No need to go around this again.

Yes. T Clark asked "What does 'real' mean?", and when faced with an answer, backtracked to saying, "No, I asked what does 'physically real' mean".

So now we have the pretence that what is real is only the stuff of physics. Scientism reinforcing itself with poor analysis. — Banno

You have misstated my position. I have said several times in this thread that "real" and "reality" are metaphysical concepts and are not subject to empirical verification.

True.But you have to acknowledge also that this is totally filtered by our human physiology,our senses and brain.
It would be too egoistic for humans to think that their physiology is the only "right" or possible one ,that can or has been created in this vast and timeless universe. — dimosthenis9

But the concepts of "real" and "reality" were created by humans for use by humans to describe a world of human experiences. They only have meaning in relation to us.

We don't know the status of matter that isn't being measured. If that fits your conception of reality, then you're good to go. — frank

What is the status of the apple when I pick it up and take a bite?

As to your thread question,for me our reality is a form of the actual reality indeed.But there must be numerous of other forms also.Depending from the observer.
So we are sure that there is "Something" that we see as real.But it is real only to us.Notice that doesn't make it less real.Still is!But it is just one way of how that "Something" can be presented to the observer.
What we humans call real is ,imo, just a version of what actual "real" can be. — dimosthenis9

I have argued against the idea of objective reality in the past. Even so, I think it is reasonable to believe, or at least to act as though, there is a reality which is mostly stable and enduring for everyone under everyday human conditions.

I don’t disagree with your definition but is it not somewhat limited? What does it give you – the realness of quotidian objects like apples, chairs and presumably bananas? — Tom Storm

Yes, it is definitely limited. Intentionally so. I think this sets a lower limit on what usages of "real" and "reality" can be considered meaningful. If a conception of reality doesn't include everyday objects, it's useless. It's a test I can apply. Applying that test, I can reject the idea that quantum mechanics undermines the idea of reality not just for subatomic particles, but also for apples and orangutans. And that is what set me off down this path.

The big fights about what is real seem to happen in a different space – Platonism, UFO’s, the voices inside the heads of people with psychosis, demons, gods, etc.

I’m looking at a glass of water in front of me which is presumably real. Last night I dreamed of a glass of water. I picked it up, I drank from it and I put it down. It seemed real too. Until I woke up. — Tom Storm

I recognize the issues you describe here as worthy of discussion, but they are not the ones I set out to address in this thread.

If you twist my arm, I will say yes, itches are real. It's just that when I talk about reality I'm usually thinking about material things. That was the main theme of this discussion for me - we can argue about what is and what isn't real, but at the very least physical things, including apples, have to be considered real or the word "real" doesn't mean anything. — T Clark

I was thinking more about my previous response to you. I wasn't really satisfied that I had said what I meant. I think the bolded text in this response I made to a comment from @Mww is the best summary of my thoughts I've written.

Most fun I’ve had with a thread in ages, so, thanks for that. — Mww

Thanks and you're welcome. I've really enjoyed it too.

Very well. But then, do you not have to resolve the logical dilemma of material things connected with a immediate and necessary causality, but itches, and the like, that are not? Seems the more consistent to reject as material reality that which has no connection to a causality, while acknowledging its being real, insofar as if it wasn’t real, with respect to the case at hand......where would you know to scratch? — Mww

If you twist my arm, I will say yes, itches are real. It's just that when I talk about reality I'm usually thinking about material things. That was the main theme of this discussion for me - we can argue about what is and what isn't real, but at the very least physical things, including apples, have to be considered real or the word "real" doesn't mean anything.

Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!, Kenzaburo Oe
Asleep, Banana Yoshimoto
Hunger; Pan, Knut Hamsun. — javi2541997

Where in Japan is Knut Hamsun from?

No deal. The driving force behind anyone's OP is always of interest to me. — Amity

As I noted previously:

It's nasty, snotty comments like these that make me avoid your posts. — T Clark

Just wondering whether the itch you had...assuming you admit to it....was real. And if it was, would it at the same time, be a member of reality in the way a statue or a ‘57 DeSoto, is. — Mww

I haven't really taken a position on which specific phenomena I consider real and which I don't except for apples. I guess I tend to think of reality in material terms, but that doesn't mean I reject the reality of things like itches.

Ever had an itch? — Mww

??? Ever been bit by a dead bee?

First the last sentence: my post is more about how I read the poem than about the what the poem did. I've experienced time and again that the same words can be read differently. — Dawnstorm

I intended my comment to be complimentary, even if my characterization of your post was inaccurate. I found it very helpful.

It's nasty, snotty comments like these that make me avoid your posts.

Eliot provided his own notes, — Cuthbert

Yes, the version I have has the notes, although I haven't read them. I will. Thanks.

The first goes a long way in supporting the second, I’ll wager. — Mww

Well, my post was intended as tongue-in-cheek. I doubt Banno sees me as particularly rational. As for me, I can be rational, but I'm often not, although I don't think I'm ever irrational.

The only context which I took as relevant is the one mentioned in the OP: (mis)usage vis-a-vis onrology on TPF. All the "ordinary language semantics" blather these last several pages seems to me besides the point raised in the OP. — 180 Proof

Sure, but it's clear @Banno sees his responses as relevant, so I have no objection to his bringing them up, I just don't understand how they are.

Anyway, stipulative, or working, definitions, I think, suffice for non-fallacious (non-equivocating) philosophical discussions. It seems, more or less, you agree, TC? — 180 Proof

I do agree, but, as I noted, I think Banno sees his definition as ontological, which makes me think I don't get his point.

Tom's question cuts to the chase. — Amity

If you don't analyze my motivations, I won't analyze yours.

Always found it interesting that the creator of the most ruthlessly rational figure in fiction was himself a flake. :razz:
— Tom Storm

I don't know how to explain that.
— Agent Smith

Just noticed this while replying to TClark. — Banno

Are you implying that I'm the most ruthlessly rational figure on the forum?

I don't agree. I think I have shown you how to turn the intuition expressed in the OP into something substantial, but that you haven't quite seen it. Please, have a read of the article. — Banno

It is not unusual that you and I don't see eye to eye on this type of issue. I don't see how your or Austin's formulations contribute to my understanding. Let's leave it at that.

So can you please explain to me what that difference is? — Banno

No, I don't think I can. I think we're both in the same situation. Neither of us has shown we really understand the others position. Our arguments have sort of run in parallel without ever really crossing.

YouTube has some good recordings of people like Alec Guinness reading it out. For me it helped get into the rhythm of Eliot. — Tom Storm

Thanks. I'll take a look.

Do you suppose otherwise? Or are we in agreement? — Banno

As I noted when you first brought this up earlier in the thread, I don't think it necessarily contradicts what I've written. It think it deals with a different set of issues related to real and reality.

While browsing for poems -- I have never before ventured down the path of The Wasteland until now. And I really did love it. I read an essay beforehand, knowing that the poem is notoriously difficult, and she suggested to sit at home with the sound of the poem rather than starting out with the analytic approach of trying to understand all the references, or even all the images! I can feel the cohesive mood in the poem, but the ending mystifies me. — Moliere

With your inspiration, I just read "The Wasteland" too. To paraphrase Charles Montgomery Burns - I don't know poetry, but I know what I hate, and I don't hate that. I started out using Kindle to look up references and foreign phrases, but I quit after a couple of stanzas. I figured I would just plow through without trying too hard. If I read it again I'll dig in more.

I have an association with the first stanza:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

This is from "Two Tramps in Mud Time" by Robert Frost, one of my favorite poems:

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

They share a theme in a sense, but with different tones and frames of mind.

As for the poem as a whole, it doesn't seem tricky, at least on the surface. It's clear there's depth there, but I'm not sure I think it's worth the trouble to go deeper. Frost is more accessible without sacrificing complexity. That's more my style. The main story has a similar tone and outlook with Prufrock. Passive, unsatisfied people stuck in the tarpits of stifling middle class social expectations. I don't find that very attractive, but I recognize it's not supposed to be. Maybe I'll read some interpretations if I can find some that are worth it.

T Clark said he has nothing more to say to me, because I stated that things that are not material do exist, and not at all supernatural things. I said some things that exist without material body are nevertheless dependent on material things for their existence. T Clark replied he and I have nothing more to say to each other. — god must be atheist

I assume you are talking about our exchanges in the "Does quantum physics say nothing is real?" thread. You have misstated my positions and put words in my mouth. I went back and looked at all our mutual posts in the thread to make sure I didn't misremember. I'll let @180 Proof speak for himself.

That being said, have at it.

Let's look at "Does quantum physics say nothing is real?". Austin's strategy is to ask about the use of the word "real" here, looking for an alternative phrasing that sets out what is being said - as explained previously. — Banno

The words "existence," "being," and "reality," are valuable to me. I don't want to get rid of them. There is a world I live in everyday. It exists. It is. It's real. There are other ways of looking at things and I even find some of them helpful and interesting. I think I've shown that with my interest in the Tao Te Ching. But when you get to the bottom, when it's lunchtime, there is a world. I don't see that Lao Tzu would have any problem with that.

Have you changed your thinking in any way about 'real' as a result of this thread? — Tom Storm

What a good question. No fair. I don't think it so much changed my thinking as made it clearer what I actually think. It tested my ideas by making me use them in different contexts. I started out with a fairly limited claim - that what we mean by "real" and "reality" only has meaning in relation to everyday human experience. I think that's a metaphysical position, so I wasn't looking to see if it was right, but if it is useful. I gained confidence that it is.

That's how I use a lot of the discussions I start. It's like putting a canoe I just made in the water to see if it leaks. No, I don't make canoes. But I do make metaphors.