First we must state that there is something which is actually real and unillusionary occuring at some level of existence; I’ll call this true reality. But we make no assumptions to the nature of true reality or to our ability to sense, experience or describe this true reality. In other words true reality remains a complete mystery untill we make certain assumptions.
Then there is the our experienced reality everything we experience whether it be true or illusionary. We inculde in this both the experieces as relayed through our senses ad our feelings. So for example the our perception of the colur blue and the resulting emotional responce are included.
Also we have our descriptions of reality. These are anything from are description to another person of the sun set we experienced to hours earlyer to the deepest description of energy/matter given by quantum field theory. These descriptions are always just symbols that carry a persieved meaning by the person who is resceiving them. Symbols can be written words, spoken words, sighn language, numbers etc.
Maybe pure subjective experience devoid of conjecture is what is truly real. The idea of ‘true reality’ is not necessarily metaphysical. The idea of independently existing realities (noumena, or ‘things-in-themselves’) is in fact a metaphysical assumption. There is no reason I can see that scientific inquiry into objective reality needs to rely on the belief in noumena - in fact I think it is possibly a hindrance. We can separate ‘facts’ from mere personal experience, but since it is people who invent the concept of ‘facts’ it follows that science is exploring common and fairly stable transpersonal subjective experience, but not necessarily a knowable reality completely independent of a group of knowers.
Now let us look at civilization,science,and all of philosophy as one big absurdity of noumena or things-in-themselves on a mythological dream of fancy where the illusion of “humanity” is our historical saga which we call ourselves “humans” being entirely noumenal.
Let us look at civilization the giant simulational array or hyperreality with all its mythological noumenal sequences.
Nature becomes the desert of the real where the only “true” reality is one categorized and fashioned by noumenal symbolic entity called “mankind”.
Eventually all of actual reality and nature beceomes entirely replaced by the metaphysical entity called “humanity”.
By what logic would true reality have to be metaphysical?
I said that we should make no assumptions about true reality’s nature.
“everything is an illusion” is surely a contrdiction. Consider the difference between the meanings of hallucination and illusion. A hallucination is when you are percieving something without there being any real stimulus whereas an illusion there is, by defination a real stimulus.
So for something to be a illusion it have a stimulus. I guess then we could say that the stimulus is also itself an illusion. But then what is its stimulus? Maybe theres some way out of this dynamic an infinte set nested of illusions or a loop of illusions. Maybe these are interesting ideas but they seem like wild assumptions to justify the statement that “reality is an illusion”. Maybe its true in some sense but then it depends on your exact meaning of reality and illusion.
As for the whole metaphysical physical thing. Lets make one assumption: dualism is wrong. Theres no physical or metaphysical realties only ‘true reality’. Of course we can describe aspects of reality as physical or metaphysical but we must bear in mind these are only descriptions.
Now lets consider experienced reality but where we simply experience ‘things’ without interrpreting them. I guess the first question is can we experiencing things without interpreting them? Or on a deeper level can we seperate experiencing from intrepreting? I would like to say the answer to these questions is ‘yes, but normally we do not seperate the experience from our interpretation’. Is this such a bad assumption. If I see something but I don’t understand what I’m seeing do I have to then ask the question ‘what is it?’. Could I not refraim and just experience the vision without trying to fit it to some pre-consieved conceptions? Lets call this mental state ‘bewilderment’ as supposed to a state of ‘confusion’ where we will be attempting to fit what we our experiencing to a pre-consieved concept.
If we are in this state of bewilderment then we are not attempting to concieve anything and thus be decieved by reality. This then means that by the defination of illusion we can experience an illusion in this state of bewilderment. So then if this state of bewilderment is possible, if we can be experiencing reality without refering to our pre-concieved descriptions for an iterpretation, then our experience is illusion free. Then by the previous defintion of ‘true reality’ ie what is not an illusion we must conclude that in this state of biwilderment we are experiencing true reality. Further we must state that all our raw experience are true reality it is when we attempt to force our concepts on this reality that we are then percieving something that may be an illusion.
This really just confirms what non-dualism is saying. It is not that we are experiencing true reality more that our experience is reality. What reality? the reality of what is happening in our brains. mind and brain our but one thing. The difference really is that the mind is true reality and the brain is but a scientific description of the mind.
Perhaps we cannot truly be bewildered insofar as ‘conscious-thought’ requires interpretation or at least, relation of concepts… Thus, you can say that once you become ‘conscious’ for the first time, reality becomes illusive. Further, you can say that perhaps ‘reality’ never existed in the first place, because that state of bewilderment requires concepts of ‘reality’ and ‘illusion’.
Once you take the first step, you can’t go back, but what exactly can you not go back to?..
I don’t know… just some thoughts… what do you think?
I think when we are thinking we are interpretating so ‘conscious thought’ leads directly to illusions. I think buddhism talks of non-thought as supposed to thought I think this is conected to my theory of bewilderment. Maybe its more of a sliding scale maybe we can never completely shut off our conscious thought but we can reduce it so that what we experience is closer to true reality.
Ok this is prehaps a major point. We should have no concept of what ‘true reality’ is. Thats to say no description of it. This is not the same as saying it doesn’t exist or its nature is not this or that. If we get rid of the notions of ‘reality’ and ‘illusion’ we are ineffect getting rid of the notion of ‘true’ and ‘false’ and without them we can’t really talk of philosphy at all. If we blur the meanings of true and false we can ineffect prove anything 1 = 0; we kiss logic goodbye.
Rather than that I suggest we understand that ‘truth’ can be experienced but not nessarily conceptulized or described. Thats not to say we can not describe reality to within certain approximations and limits. This is what science does but we must understand that its only ever an approximate description of certain characterstics of reality and not reality itself.
The problem I have with your idea is that I believe that for all human experiences to be meaningful, truthful, or some combination of both, there must be concepts. I wouldn’t call ‘true reality’ existing without concepts.
Ok. So far I don’t think ive really reached meaning in my discussion. I not sure on this. My point is very subtle. Our concepts, the ideas that we come up with so we may understand the world are just descriptions. If these descriptions are at all wrong or inaccurate then reality as we percieve it will be in some sense illusionary; what we think we see and what is actually there are not the same. I think we need concepts to understand the world but we must always bear mind that these are descriptions. But then the only way we can understand what it means is by these concepts. So we can get an approximate meaning of the world via our concepts.
I think your view is somewhat blinded by the human condition. I think as humans we always try to conceptulize what we experience so that it becomes secound nature to us. Maybe are brains are hard wired to do this. But I don’t think that animals use concepts. But maybe your right.( At the moment I’m just runninhg through ideas. I have no sold belief in any of these ideas.)
So to be conscious I must ask myself the question “what i’m I seeing?”. If I don’t ask the question I’m not conscious? I guess that makes sense.
But if an animal never asks itself questions is it then not experiencing the world at all? Maybe.
Ok a new born baby has no concepts of the world around it. But it must at some point ask itself a question, “whats going on here”. Therefore It must be experiencing before it has any concepts, unless we say babies are born with certain ‘inbuilt’ concepts.
Not sure where this leaves us…
If we assume(and I admit this is just a hypophetical assumption) that babies don’t have ‘inbuilt’ concepts. Are we not forced to the conclusion that the baby can ask the question ‘whats going on?’ before its conscious that its indeed asking the question. Only once it has attempted an answer to the question is it then actually conscious because then it has some concept, some map of reality.
I guess this all makes sense and to some degree tells us why we can’t remember being babies.
Coming back to what realunoriginal said.
I have a question. Lets say, as he said,
but if our experience is meaningless, is it still an experience? For us to apply a truth value or a meaning to an experience clearly we need concepts. But do we need to have these concepts to even experience in the first place?
I guess this is realunoriginal point? this point of view would contrdict my previous posts somewhat. I think I’ll remain open minded to the answer to the question. But I am moving towards changing my mind. Then again I’m not sure. Maybe it is more complex than with our without concepts. How seriously we take our concepts, if we’re willing to admit that our concepts are wrong. What if we have no concept to fit what we are experiencing? Do we just try to fit one as best we can?
I think all these are interesting questions. I don’t think the answers are obvious.
You’re right. Maybe an animal experiences the world without conceptual knowledge, but what does that mean exactly? We could say yes, the animal does ‘experience’ the world, but we are only stating this, because we have developed the concept of ‘experience’ in the first place. Then, we ask if the animal can differentiate between what is ‘real’ and what is ‘illusion’? There arises a problem, because since reality is illusive (coming from my claims), an animal won’t be anymore ‘in touch with reality’ than humans are. They won’t have the magical answers that we seek, because experience and reality as we know it, constantly remains illusive in the sense that we are often mistaken about our perceptions and certain truth/knowledge propositions always go unproven.
I am under the impression that babies mimic sounds and facial expressions as they learn and develop their brain. For example, when a baby says “dad da” for the first time, does it mean that the baby has a full conceptual understanding of the word ‘dad’? No, the baby only has a partial or very minimal understanding of the concept, because it is still developing. That can be applied to questioning the world by asking, “What’s going on?” For the baby to truly understand what’s going on, that baby must develop the concepts to handle the question. In a way, conceptual knowledge inefficiently creates our ‘reality’, because the truth/knowledge that we reference to ‘reality’ can constantly be questioned under skepticism. So, ‘reality’ becomes illusive.
How can experiences be meaningless when we need concepts to become conscious of the experiences we perceive? The problem with this question is ‘consciousness’ and ‘meaning’. Animals don’t have a problem with experiencing the world as they do, nor do they have the problem of finding the world ‘meaningful’. However, animals arguably do not have the same concepts as human beings–they may not have ‘concepts’ at all depending on how we define ‘conceptual knowledge’. This can turn into a tricky discussion… Anyway, animals don’t have the same problems as humans, because they have not developed the concepts that calls into doubt their supposed ‘experiences’ and ‘meaning’. They may have concepts, experience, and meaning, but without our own conceptual knowledge of the world, we wouldn’t be able to figure these things out in the first place.
In my eyes I assume that ‘illusion’ occurrs when there is experience rendering it distorted or illusory. I am not sure from experience that there can be an experience that is completely free from illusion. There is consistency. I see the same things every day and they do not change, almost like theres a constant. thats not the point I’m trying to make… bring ‘free’ from these illusions occurs when you no longer have the product or source of what makes those illusions possible. When the agent that makes illusion possible no longer functions you could be said to be free from illlusion quite literally.
I disagree. There is no necessity to state that there is something which is actually real and unillusionary occurring at some level of existence. We may assume that there is, but we should realize that this is only an assumption.
What is “true reality” in the sense you imply here necessarily remains a mystery even after we make assumptions about it.
For us, there is ONLY our experienced reality. Anything more is, as I think you agree, only assumption.
Actually what we describe ARE our experiences. Obviously, we don’t describe anything beyond our experiences because we do not know that there is anything beyond our experiences. We only assume that there is.
The illusion ; The Tolteca called it seeing life in a smoky mirror, the Hindu discribed it as seeing life through a veil
We create images of our friends, spouse, leaders, nation, god, and recipicately the self is created through relationships with others and events.
We thought all this up and we can unthink it.
Buddha prescribes the dissolvment all those images and the observer.
If you ever get there you won’t be able to discribe it.
