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Please, share your concept of reality

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Please, share your concept of reality

Willowz
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Posted 06/08/09 - 11:22 AM: Subject: Please, share your concept of reality, here.	#1
Hello, Could you share, what kind of philosophy you belive in, that explains reality? Why so? Lately I had the feeling that I am trying to make my own philosophy of reality without reading about any others. I do have some opinions and ideas, but I'm sure that someone before me would have came to same or better conclusions. Now I would like to look at the people I know from comments on the forum and see what they belive in. Thank's P.s: The sense of the question might sound ambiguous. So could we discuss along the lines of ontology?
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unenlightened
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Posted 06/08/09 - 03:11 PM:	#2
I guess I can share some beliefs and concepts - thoughts and talk - and that is a bit of reality in a way, in that they are my thoughts and concepts and I am a real person, but I'm not sure, if you want to talk about the concept, or if you want to contact the real? Ontology - the words of thingness. Reality is what ontology merely talks about; the word is not the thing. It gets hard to keep that in mind sometimes. Does it need explaining? Is it improved or are we benefited thereby?
...most of our actions are the result of the past, or according to a future ideal. That's not action, that is just conformity. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

Joe1919
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Posted 06/08/09 - 04:15 PM:	#3
I don't have much time so I will give you a quick reply. In one sense, I don't think you can fully separate ontology from epistemology in that when we say 'what is', we are really only talking about what we 'can say is'. Does this make me an idealist? In one sense yes. But then I, say, get a toothache and realise that this toothache will not go away...I can not 'think it away'. So pain is real, probably the most real thing that we know of (perhaps along with desire). And so, I am not an idealist but a realist. Edited by unenlightened on 06/08/09 - 04:28 PM. Reason: spelling, punctuation.

Archaic Robert
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Posted 06/08/09 - 07:04 PM:	#4
A big question that doesn't often get addressed when people are asked to "outline their beliefs about reality" is the mind-body problem. Do the mind and brain exist independently of each other? Most would say they must be related to some degree, because if you physically damage someone's brain, you also damage their mind. If they are related, then to what extent do they correspond? If you had a perfect mathematical model of someone's brain, could you predict their emotional and mental state at all times? How does free will exist within this question? Would a computer, emulating perfectly every logical function of an organic brain, participate in the subjective experience of consciousness? Spinoza answers this question by saying that thought and physical extension are two different corresponding attributes of the same thing ("substance", if you will). We experience a baseball hitting a bat through the sound it creates, and the light it emits. We do not say that the light IS the sound, or that the sound is the result of the light; rather, we say they are both corresponding representations of something else entirely. Substance obeys the laws of physics in a determinate way, and it manifests itself in mental thought and physical occurrences. One interesting implication of this is the idea that all things, no matter how simple or inorganic, have some existence in the realm of thought. A billiard ball is fundamentally no different from a human being; rather, as billiard balls are not complex physically, they are not complex mentally, and we do not recognize any sophisticated thoughts in them anymore than we recognize sophisticated physical output from them. The human mind is conscious because the human brain can contain a representation of itself and still retain its identity. I feel this very elegantly solves the mind and body problem, and I suppose this is the "view of reality" to which I suscribe.

Willowz
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Posted 06/09/09 - 12:12 AM:	#5
unenlightened wrote: I guess I can share some beliefs and concepts - thoughts and talk - and that is a bit of reality in a way, in that they are my thoughts and concepts and I am a real person, but I'm not sure, if you want to talk about the concept, or if you want to contact the real? Ontology - the words of thingness. Reality is what ontology merely talks about; the word is not the thing. It gets hard to keep that in mind sometimes. Does it need explaining? Is it improved or are we benefited thereby? If you have some time I would like to read how you distinguish the both. I am trying to describe what is the "object"/entity(I don't know how to call it) that we try to label meaning(through ideas and cognitive processes) to when we see it. I can only call it an object because I don't want to concentrate on the concept(ideas, cognitive processes by the mind and conscious) of the object. I would rather talk about the object itself. Object: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_(philosophy)
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wuliheron
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Posted 06/09/09 - 09:09 AM:	#6
So you are asking about reality in the sense of that-which-exists-with-or-without-conscious-awareness-of-its-existence?

yiuchi
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Posted 06/09/09 - 10:11 AM:	#7
Archaic Robert wrote: A big question that doesn't often get addressed when people are asked to "outline their beliefs about reality" is the mind-body problem. Do the mind and brain exist independently of each other? Most would say they must be related to some degree, because if you physically damage someone's brain, you also damage their mind. If they are related, then to what extent do they correspond? I'm not sure if it's uncontroversially accurate to say that damage to the brain gives rise to damage to the mind. A dualist (substantival or property, at least) could argue that you've merely damaged the interface through which the mind communicates with the body. The mind may still be operating at the same capacity post-trauma as pre-trauma, but we simply perceive the person's behaviour as deficient or somehow different because of the damage to the brain cells and arrive at the (possibly wrong) conclusion that the mind is damaged.

Willowz
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Posted 06/09/09 - 12:31 PM:	#8
wuliheron wrote: <p>So you are asking about reality in the sense of that-which-exists-with-or-without-conscious-awareness-of-its-existence?< ;/p> Yes
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richrf
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Posted 06/09/09 - 12:40 PM:	#9
I think of reality as an ocean (call it the large consciousness) with waves (the individual consciousness) and these waves are intersecting and constantly creating new waves. Everything is in motion. Everything is changing. Everything is connected, yet each wave can be distinguished from the rest. We are creating, by moving in new directions and creating new intersections. Today, for example, I moved to this forum. We learn and create for our own amusement. Sort of like a baby laughing at an image of itself, or giggling with a game of Peek-a-Boo (a variant of Hide-and Seek). My views are a cross-section of Heraclitus, Laozi (Dao De Jing), and Itzhak Bentov. I just a starting blogging about them, if it is interest to you. Rich
http://www.MeaningOfLifePhilosophy.com

Archaic Robert
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Posted 06/09/09 - 01:18 PM:

#10

yiuchi wrote:

I'm not sure if it's uncontroversially accurate to say that damage to the brain gives rise to damage to the mind. A dualist (substantival or property, at least) could argue that you've merely damaged the interface through which the mind communicates with the body. The mind may still be operating at the same capacity post-trauma as pre-trauma, but we simply perceive the person's behaviour as deficient or somehow different because of the damage to the brain cells and arrive at the (possibly wrong) conclusion that the mind is damaged.

But what is the nature of this interface? If mind and body have nothing in common, and can exist independently of each other, then how can the mind in any way "control" the body? Also, what about causality? Does the matter in our brain behave in a fundamentally different way from most matter? If our brain gives its output based on the mechanisms of some disattached "mind" entity, then will we eventually discover particles in the brain that simply ignore the laws of physics, because they act as the "bridge" between the mind and the body?

I find this view problematic, because the mind is in face clearly subject to the same form of causality as the matter. Certain stimuli will make a mind angry, while other stimuli will make it experience happiness. If you have two twins grow up in two opposite environments, their minds will operate in noticeably different ways. The very fact that the mind contains representations of things in the physical world shows very clearly that it is imposed upon by something other than itself. Many would make the argument that as the mind reacts to certain stimuli and becomes angry, at that very same moment, the brain is responding to physical stimuli, and releasing hormones that alter its output.

Mind and body must correspond directly. It can't be the case that they are unrelated, and it makes very little sense that they could operate in conjuction with each other and yet still somehow be seperate substances. Rather, they are in fact two different attributes of a solitary thing.

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