Entropy is a good word because you can use it and nobody knows what you talking about. Some famous scientist said this and he was correct.

To be fair, you said "the second law" in the thread. The problem is that the second law applies to closed systems. Is the Earth a closed system? Is the Universe a closed system? This is debated endlessly.

That's about heat specifically, but somehow it applies to everything. No global warming is because we don't want to change the system we have - at least those in power. It's suicidal, but it's what's happening.

"Study nothing, except in the knowledge that you already knew it." - Clive Barker

"What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive... scanner... see into me - into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better.

Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too."

- Philip K. Dick

De Música Ligera - Soda Stereo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_FkEw27XJ0

:fire: :fire: :fire:

There's no doubt that patriarchal societies form a large part of our culture, dominant even, and for this reason, we have the world we have, at least in large part. Those aspects of competition, strength, prowess and such are commonly associated with masculinity.

A matriarchal society, as per your example, would solve some of the problems we have, maybe lots of them. Not all though, nor am I claiming you believe this.

I just wonder, in a large scale society, would a matriarchal society be amazing? I have doubts about that. I mean things like rape and violence would very likely be reduced. But it also looks to me as a way out of hard problems: if only women ran the world, the world would be much better in most aspects.

I think feminism has accomplished a lot in the West since 1960's. There's just much more to do.

You are right about fear, but that's the method used to control everybody.

One thing is to say that many people don't understand the political spectrum correctly, so they may call themselves "libertarian" when they in fact may be a conservative, or else someone calls themselves a socialist but in actuality they are "mixed-economy capitalists" and other examples.

But that there is a spectrum is quite clear.

You can take out "the reality" and, if you take out "surely" (certainly), then you can even take out "(for us)". We may turn out (afterwards) to be mistaken (in a waterpark, say), yet the world does not come crashing down--only our desire to be sure beforehand. — Antony Nickles

I can take away "the reality" only in the sense that reality can be honorific, as I've said elsewhere. If someone says "this is a real waterpark", they aren't implying that there are two waterparks: waterparks and real waterparks, it's a matter of emphasis.

I use "surely" as a word implying confidence, not certainty, we could remove it if you prefer. I don't have such high aims. Water looks transparent in small amounts and at night, it's practically black, not blue.

I can't remove "for us" in any meaningful sense. I don't think birds or panthers think about, cognize or speculate about waterparks or anything else. They may even be in one (what we call a "waterpark") and be oblivious to it, outside of finding plenty of chemically treated water, it's not an issue.

As I said, our ordinary criteria allow us to rigorously dig into these topics with specificity, precision, accuracy, distinction, clarity, etc. So there may be something else causing you to overlook philosophy's insights into color (which I mention above), and its ability to add to the discussion of justice. — Antony Nickles

That's fine. I don't have a problem with that. Only that in being philosophy, agreement is not as common as it is in other areas. Which is not bad, just the way philosophy is.

This is how philosophy removes the context of a concept in order to slip in the criteria that something be certain. The thing is that we don’t speak of anything without the specifications and implications of it in our lives, so if we don’t remove them but focus on them, they are what we intellectually can grab onto about something. — Antony Nickles

We could. But at this level of abstraction ("what is reality") as opposed to "what should be counted as real", the vagueness of the issue at hand can cause people to pursue different paths, with little by way of common criteria which could help establish agreement.

But not certainty. I think it's futile to chase this idea much.

given the definition that reality is the totality of all possible experience, and because the accumulation of all experience is impossible, it is clear the experience of reality is a non-starter. — Mww

If you take that definition, then you will end up with your conclusion. I wouldn't put it like that, but I can see the legitimacy of defining it that way.

The first makes explicit an object of experience as part of reality, the second suggests experience is the object of reality. Only one of these can be true. — Mww

If you want to think in terms of subject and object you can, it is often helpful. We can say that we are simultaneously subject and object. We can speak of events instead.

Call it an subjective affectation, a partial object, the disclosure of being. I think experience is part of reality.

It’s fine, no harm-no foul. We just each have quite diverse conceptions of reality, that’s all. — Mww

And that's why I wanted to talk to you, you force me to try to be clear. I don't aim to convince, only to get a better grasp of what I think is true.

So thanks. I do appreciate it.

Not sure what "this" is (gonna assume everything I said, which seems like an oversimplification may be coming), but no, I am talking about everything. Juts not differentiating a "reality" from something we don't quite get at, or only get at rationally, or through "phenomenal properties". — Antony Nickles

"This" meaning your approach, as I understood it. Sure, I mean, if we look at the ocean, the blueness we see and the wetness we feel are surely part of the reality of the ocean (for us). But we can't study the blueness or the wetness. This doesn't mean they aren't important, I'm not saying that. What I am trying to say is that I think it's likely that we cannot study scientifically those aspects of the world which we find most interesting:

Music, colours, politics, most aspect of experience, history and so on.

We have some interesting ideas and categorizations, but not "theoretical depth". But surely these things matter a good deal.

What I am saying is that we do know how to look into ourselves and our world, if only we get past our paralyzing need for certainty (say by falling back to only genetics). — Antony Nickles

I agree. Certainty is not attainable for creatures like us.

The implications we find when we say, for example, "You live in your own reality." are more concrete than all the machinations about what "reality" is. — Antony Nickles

In a sense, yes, because in that phrase, reality is anchored more clearly as belonging to the way a person views and relates to the world. If we speak of "reality" without such specifications, the conversation will be broad as we aren't yet specified by what we agree to take as aspect of reality that are relevant.

Some may include God in reality or be dualists, etc.

Neither could I, it went a bit over my head and felt like a chore to get through. I'll try again some other time. — darthbarracuda

Yes, these authors tend to produce dense works that require persistence and patience, ideally, it ends up being worth the effort. Depending on the person, it can pay off in spades or it could be garbage. People have both loved and hated Pynchon and Wallace. Same with Gass.

Definitely not the type of book you'd pick up casually.

Do you think perhaps you might be using the word “experience” too broadly? — Mww

Yeah, I do use it very broadly, in part because consciousness is over used these days.

For me, the conscious part of the mental is experiential goings-on, at this moment. What goes through me or in me as I write these letters or think about the words I'm using. Or shut my eyes and listen to the fan, and so on.

....is meant to indicate? — Mww

The way I see it, it's not as if when I look out my window, it's "I" or "me" looking at this window. It's more like making sense of a green pattern and later on a complex process these sensations gets labeled as "a tree". Yes, it's always subjective.

If such is the case, and it is as well the case that what you experience is not the object itself that is in reality, then how can your experience be part of it? — Mww

I don't think we need to say that we experience "reality-in-itself" in order to say that we experience part of reality. Any experience whatsoever will be conditioned by subjectivity, so the "things in themselves" will remain an issue.

But my representations are part of reality, which are formed by my innate faculties in conjunction with sense data from the world. They may be a step removed from the realizing grounds of whatever appears, but this doesn't make them any less valid as a part of reality. But this is true of any creature and whatever world they experience. Whatever they experience is part of reality for that creature.

If experience is not part of reality as appears to us, I would have no reason to trust my manifest image for anything.

This looks to me as an attempt to (try to) clarify the phenomenal properties we add to the world. Yes, we grow into certain molds - set forth by nature - we don't know exactly how, aside from saying that genetics play a role.

But I think that novels explore these things you are speaking of quite well.

If as such you mean "in itself", no. Of course not.

Basketballs are the results of a complex interplay of the a-priori, which includes some aspects of concept formation, plus the recognition of sensible qualities with whatever is "out there" that results in me calling that thing "a basketball".

Most of the work is done by me, automatically and in large parts unconsciously. If I were to limit myself to what is "out there", minus the a-priori, I wouldn't know if I could even perceive anything at all, much less a basketball.

So reality would be essentially non-existent. As Cudworth put it "the book of nature is legible only to an intellectual eye". Only those things that arouse something "native and domestic" in us, can we call real.

I don't say much more than this.

what you experience is always contingent on circumstance and you have no promise of knowledge given from it, but that the experience belongs to you alone is undeniable, thus impossible not to know with apodeitic certainty. Doesn’t it then seem that the greatest acquaintance would be that which is inescapable? — Mww

If I follow, the "I think" that accompanies experience, would form a part of experience. And thus be a part of reality (for me).

Yes, I'd agree with your last sentence.

I should say that I use the word experience very broadly.

And the fact that our (non-mathematical) world is not certain freaks us out so much we cut ourselves off from the thing-in-itself (from what essentially interests us) so that we can impose certainty onto the (our) world, even though we can't know (for certain) the "real" world. We kill the world before we even get started knowing each thing by their everyday criteria. — Antony Nickles

Hmm. I think that in our common sense folk science, we think we are studying "thing in themselves", that doesn't lead to theories. It can lead to very valuable stuff like art and the like.

I think the problem arises when we think that in studying say certain properties of trees or brains or anything else, many often assume we are studying a "tree-in-itself" or "the brain-in-itself". That's a mistake. However, we've gained lots of good information about the world this way.

I don't think "things in themselves" can be studied empirically. I think we can try and say negative things about it: what it's not and what it doesn't have, leaving very little room for positive contributions.

So I agree with the spirit of the argument, but I don't think we can study MUCH of "what interests us", in much depth. From phenomenal properties such as colors and sounds to political organizations. We just can't get much depth empirically about these things.

Ahhhh....but we can. We know it as thinking. And we do separate, by delineating that which is sensed, from that which is thought. — Mww

I think this is our main point of disagreement. Not at all that I think experience is an illusion, I'm averse to eliminitavism of most stripes. I think experience is the which we are most acquainted with out of everything. But I don't think it's the main a priori facet, that is inscrutable to us. It's part of a process of which we only become aware of a tiny part of. In other words experience only gives us a small part of what is termed "mental".

Case in point....if reality is conceived as that which contains all real things, reality cannot itself be conceived as a real thing, for then reality must contain itself, an impossibility. If reality is not a thing, but can be represented in thought, hence subsequently talked about, then it is nothing more than a conception, and the conceptions conjoined with it to form propositions about it, must themselves be either hypotheticals or altogether unknowable. — Mww

Ah. Well if you include "things in themselves" as part of the conception of reality here, it gets much more complex. However, for the purposes of this thread, I think it suffices to say something like, reality is whatever there is (for us).

Anything beyond that or whatever grounds this reality, is admitted as mostly unknowable.

Good speaking with you as well, and don’t sell yourself short. Nothing trivial about this stuff. It is what we do, after all. — Mww

Thanks. Na man, it's that if I don't understand this for myself then it's a problem. I avoid complexity as much as I can. But I agree, it is what we do.

I believe I'm saying something of the sort when I say that the a-priori is part of reality.

This can be spoken about in the language of computational theories of brain or neuroscientific models or cognitive models.

I don't have an issue with your thinking here, I think @Mww may be trying to make the distinction between empirical and epistemological knowledge such that the world is something we can point to, something which is "publicly available".

He'll correct me.

but I would disagree that these “filters”, or any conceptions a priori, are part of reality.

Reality is best conceived as an empirical domain; real is best conceived as a rational quality. Separate accordingly, I should think. — Mww

Interesting. And I can see your motivations from framing it as you do, for it is elegant. But I think things become fuzzy quite quickly in the a-priori vs. empirical domain.

Let me put it quite trivially: if whatever the a priori is that we have (in other words, whatever mechanisms actually come into play when we experience the world) is not a part of reality as such, then we can't speak of reality at all.

In effect, as you would probably agree, we can't experience the world from "a view from nowhere".

Even though we cannot see it (we cant go behind our a-priori mechanisms and see them in action) I can't say they aren't part of reality. Actually I could well be wrong here, no false humility, but I don't see how these can be separated neatly.

In any case, always nice speaking to you.

Hey! Haven't seen you around in a while. Or it could be that I've been away. I have a question for you:

What say you regarding a-priori knowledge and its status in regards to reality?

I mean, we can only have a posteriori knowledge if we have a priori "filters", so the a priori must be part of reality. But perhaps I am thinking wrongly about this.

Understanding my experience of ther world most fundamentally, I don’t see enduring objects with measurable qualities , Isee a flowing stream of constantly changing events. — Joshs

:up:

Not bad at all. And fits in with almost any field of enquiry, which is promising.

It gets tricky, quickly.

We don't know if the beaver builds a dam with intent, maybe it does is automatically, the way a baby turtle races to the ocean as soon as its born.

A cell is way more sophisticated and complex than a particle. Would we say the cell has intent? Most would not.

I think I get your point or the gist of it. It might send you down the "wrong picture" of the world to think in terms of natural vs. artificial. I think speaking of complexity and sophistication make is somewhat easier.

So we can say a mountain pass is much less complex than a beaver. A beaver's damn is more complex than a mountain, but less than a beaver, as this creature consists of billions of particles plus all the relevant biological stuff, which is quite complex in itself.

Essentially yes.

Yeah, sure. We can also be the dream of God, or the tears of a cosmic turtle or anything else. You've stipulated that there's no organic life, contrary to what we now know.

There may be places in which non-organic life exists. This just complicates things uneasily. I think it is more simple and straightforward to acknowledge that we are part of nature.

Anything else could be the case, but we are just adding unnecessary complications.

Yeah.

I don't even understand what an alternative to "natural" means. By "natural" I mean belonging to nature,
not meaning reducing everything to science, just to avoid that misunderstanding.

"Nature" is a pretty abstract term. I am not convinced the mind is part of the so called material world. — Yohan

Sure. But mind is too. Unless you assert that consciousness is only mind or exhausts the mental. If there is more to mind than experience, then mind is a broad term too.

Brains being physical and/or being the source of minds is, to me, questionable. I believe intelligence produces the appearance of so called matter, rather than the reverse. — Yohan

Produces the appearance of matter as opposed to what other appearance? It's not as if there is mind in one ontological basket and matter in another.

That is a serious flaw we continue to have regarding our intuitions: that of thinking we know what "physical stuff" encapsulates or even "mental stuff" for that matter.

Why isn't the mental natural? The mind is a part of nature.

The mental being immaterial is questionable. It arises out of brains, which are physical systems. Physical stuff is at bottom, quite insubstantial. But we still call it physical. And physical stuff is natural stuff.

Artificial things are modifications of things found in nature. Therefore, artificial things are natural things too, only that we intervened in bringing them about. But not by using some process outside of nature.

Natural explanations are those explanations that give some insight into how the world works via theoretical constructions. But far from everything can be explained theoretically, despite talk of "political theory" or "economic theory". That's another story.

Yes. Even our brains are models spun up by our experience, so it is counter-intuitive.

Believing that the ocean is blue can be said in an epistemology discussion, but like you said, it's too trivial. And it shows the impreciseness of the word "belief".

I think "understand" is a slightly better word.

This is the only Pynchon novel I've "withstood" long enough to finish. Enjoyed it though. At the time, I was also reading William Gass' The Tunnel which I very much preferred. Ever read David Markson's "novels"? If not, I highly recommend Wittgenstein's Mistress (and Springer's Progress too). :up: — 180 Proof

I couldn't finish The Tunnel when I first tried. Wasn't in to it back then, am going to have to give it another shot.

Yep, Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress is great. Will check out Springer's Progress, that I have not seen.

Thanks!

That's the best way to read novels.

There are whole guidebooks for GR. Once it gets going it's crazy: characters appearing left and right, changes in prose from paranoiac to authoritative to funny all in a few pages. You have to be determined to finish the book, at least that's how I read it.

Mason & Dixon, on the other hand, took him something like 25 years to write, to get the language right and the like, it reads beautifully - a total mastery of the English language. But it's also very hard.

IJ is curious. Obviously Wallace could write very well, but I think he was much better in his non-fiction essays by a lot. The end notes did not enhance the experience for me.

Since this is a philosophy forum, you might want to check out Novel Explosives by Jim Gauer, it is amazing. Better than GR, imo. I have to do PR for that book, since you mentioned these two novels. ;)

I also want to try those big difficult American classics, Infinite Jest and Gravity's Rainbow. Until now, just as the thought of being stuck in an upper class manners-infested house for a whole book has put me off Jane Austen, so getting bogged down in anything to do with tennis has put me off Infinite Jest. Maybe it's because I myself was a promising tennis athlete for a short time in my adolescence, before throwing it all away. — jamalrob

It varies. Gravity's Rainbow is quite difficult. You need to be able to withstand not understanding almost anything for 240 pages, then it takes off for a good while. But the last 100-ish pages go back to obscurity. It was quite a feat finishing that. Feels like an accomplishment. But at least most things you read afterward become easy or they cease to intimidate. A unique experience, no doubt about that.

Infinite Jest, on the other hand, is much easier to read and has some creative and fun moments. But the endnotes killed me. Sure, you can skip them if you wish, but then I felt like I was cheating the book. But going back and forth all the time just became a total slog. And I wasn't enjoying it, not because it was hard, but because it was unrewarding despite some nice pages and passages. Stopped at p.400.

But some people swear on this book.

You don't know what the people who post on here do or do not do regarding the global warming issue. You also don't know how many people who don't themselves contribute read and and are influenced by what they read on this site. :roll: — Janus

:up:

Exactly.

Assuming the attitude you are replying to also tends to imply that we shouldn't really talk about anything, we're only here to kill time.

So why talk about climate change or war or the foundations of reality or knowledge or anything else? Any talk is as good as any other.

And most people browse, not posting anything.

Ducks, Newsburyport by Lucy Ellmann

Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality by Frank Wilczek

It's a problematic word as it is honorific in English. Like you can say there is the real deal or the real truth or even the real news.

This doesn't mean there are two different kinds of deals, truths or news. We are emphasizing something in these cases.

Would you want to exclude fictional entities from reality? Why? Fictional entities play an important role for people all over the world, so they have a kind of reality to them. Also, nature is colourless, odorless and so forth. These aspects are things we add to the stuff of nature. Yet we would not want to say that a flower is a colourless, odorless thing. So, things quickly become insurmountable.

Given these considerations, I don't think you can give a definition of "reality". All you can do is to say which aspects of reality are those which you are interested in clarifying.

Yes. Technically we can agree that we take it to the case that the ocean appears blue to us under certain conditions - not at night, for instance.

I only caution against succumbing to skepticism or skeptical arguments too frequently. Skepticism cannot be refuted. It need be acknowledged and moved on from, otherwise we will have to seriously entertain solipsism or other fruitless avenues, such as thinking that every instance of perception, we may be misperceiving everything.

We wouldn't move our fingers, much less our legs, if such were the case.

It would be better to rely on using belief too much (not never), due to its religious connotations.

It's a curious word. In other languages, there are no good translations as it is almost always attached to religious aspects of the world. At least in Spanish, this is the case and a few others.

For instance, you can say you believe in angels or God, but if you literally say, I believe the ocean is blue, something is off because belief doesn't enter into it. You understand the ocean is blue, you see it. It's not an issue of belief.

This might be one of those words that gets you stuck in a fly bottle.

I changed it today, funnily enough. Yeah, life feels like that often enough Sisyphean. But to go to anti-natalism to these extremes seems to me to color one's vison in a way that fundamentally distorts everything.

Sounds like a plan. :ok:

It's not necessarily a diversion. My point is survival and the limitations of being humans in a world, make it a non-starter that one can change the game. Transhumanism, or whatever utopia, just doesn't seem to come about any time soon, if at all. — schopenhauer1

Perhaps. It's plausible. I wouldn't hold my breathe for transhumanism. It's a noble goal. But I think they think science is like I don't know God or something. They tremendously exaggerate what we have achieved and have very confused notions of "uploading minds", that fall apart easily, I think.

But you didn't answer the question at hand which was about what you liking the game has to do with bringing more people into the game. Can't we be creative enough not to assume what others should want in such a drastic way? — schopenhauer1

You and I can, because we don't want children. You, because you are an AN. Me, because, I don't like them.

But it's a natural instinct in people. Like creativity or looking for patterns in nature or wanting company or doing something meaningful. Look, ask most teens (assuming they don't have severe mental deficiencies) if they want to live life even if life WILL include death, loss, frustration and anything you can think of. Most will say yes, they're grateful for being in the game.

You can call it delusion if you want. I call it life. But if life IS suffering, then what are we discussing here? We'll go back to you saying people are forcing others to play the game, whereas I'll reply by saying most people don't think life is "forced" on them. Granted, some do, like you, but you're an exception. Which is fine.

I have before discussed what might be deemed as "intrinsic goods". — schopenhauer1

If you can provide a link or point me to a thread, I'd look at it.

You're good! :blush: — Ozymandy

Thank you.

And welcome to the forums. May you have fun and share ideas.