Tent some people argue that nothing through the senses is real and that what’s actually real is incomprehensible to them.
Von I see that you’ve got some of the conventional understandings of what people mean when they say they know something but there’s the question of how you know that you know what you know. I wont do that to you man. But even then so you got knowledge, and only cause I’m stipulating, but how do you know what part of what you know is the real stuff?
In that case, knowing and reality kind of seem like the same thing. To know, is also to discern what is real.
Sure, but they’re the same people who can’t decide if they are sane or insane. They are in what I call the house of mirrors where regression is all there can be. It’s fine to question almost everything, but even if “real” is merely belief, you gotta have six square inches of dirt under your feet in order to function at all. One can take the reality question past absurdity - and many do. But at some point, you’ve got to be something somewhere. Intellectual lobotomies are possible, but stupidity in overdrive. The dreaming butterfly scenario is the allegorical story of the pointlessness of intellectual free fall.
Further comment…
If you have read any of my serious posts, it’s obvious that I have little tolerance for the “knowers”. I’ll grant anyone knowledge of when to eat and shit. I assume they’re spatially organized enough to find a chair and a keyboard. I’ll grant their knowledge within their sensate world, but that is all. Those who purport to know because they live in logic land, or science land, or any of the gazillion other lands have bought into the bullshit. What any of us can KNOW is extremely limited and local. All else is conjecture. People sagely nod their heads up and down when they hear the phrase “through the looking glass darkly” and then ignore that with all their knowing. We aren’t quite as special as we pretend…
I’ve never broken a bone. And I’m still not extinct.
I award no significance to any concept that has no affect on me. Whether fairies are “real” or not, they still have nothing to do with me. If they did, they would be significant to me, whether they were real or not.
That’s the whole point: this “real” concept has no significance.
I’ve flown many times, probably out my window at some point (though never to Neverneverland), and I understand myself to have done so separately to the life I lead after I wake up. It still affected me, had significance to me, “real” or not. And I still don’t expect to be able to do so after I wake up because my body feels so much heavier and I can’t seem to be able to do it. Having said that, I have woken up before and still been able to do it, but then I woke up.
When people have danced around a fire to try and bring rainfall, they’ve tended to do so at times when rainfall predictively should have come, but didn’t. And when it does because it’s consistently enough the kind of time when it’s going to according to experience, that’s what fed the whole causal theory. Nobody does a rain dance in the middle of the desert or on the moon with sincerity.
This whole process of attribution of cause and effect HAS NOT CHANGED.
All we’ve done is be more critical about nuances and testing counter examples, and ended up with identified consistencies that seem more reliable. And yet we still don’t always get rain when the weatherman says we should.
It’s gaps like these (which science itself, the term given to trying to find more consistent chains of events as best as we currently know how, even acknowledges is never complete and DEFINITELY known) that mean that real isn’t as reliable as more simplisitic people like to think.
Ought we then to call it real because it’s the “most real” thing we’ve got? Sure, why not - if you want to.
It’s not like I don’t gain anything from taking heed of consistencies. Is it because they’re real that I get by, or is it that I just have faith in their consistencies and value them - even if I don’t think they’re real?
Just because someone might not consider reality-or-not as meaningful, doesn’t mean they actively avoid listening to any of the things that are commonly claimed as real, and instead reactionarily actively pursue opposing scenarios that appear to not make any sense.
I don’t look ridiculous for pointing out that “illusory”, “virtual”, “hallucinatory” can have just as much significance to someone as “real” things, and “real” things can have just as little significance as “non-real” things.
Btw, are you REALLY a river to your people?
Did you even read my last post. I gave you a list of reasons why the concept has an affect on you.
What a crock of shit. The natives dance for rain when they want rain, why else would they dance for rain?
You’re not entitled to use any of those concepts. If you remove one half of a meaningful distinction, then you’ve also made the other half meaningless. You can’t fucking say, “yo, “real” is meaningless… but “unreal” or similar synonyms like “illusory” make perfect fucking sense”. That’s a crock of shit. If “left” is meaningless, it doesn’t follow that you have to turn “right” to get to everything.
Quite clearly yes. Did you even read my last post?
I am a river to my people.
Uh… yeah. It just had you saying you were a river to your people, without there being any people of yours.
Nor did you say anything worth “rivering” to any people beforehand. So not “quite clearly”, no.
That was my point… they dance for rain when they want rain, but you don’t see them wanting or dancing for rain when they have enough of it, or during periods when they aren’t going to get it, or in places they aren’t going to get it. They’re not stupid.
Yeah, and I summed up why “real” was irrelevant to them all.
I covered the rain one, but could spell out why the same thing applies to each of them if you need it?
Another example for you with the sickness thing:
Sickness is a product of certain sensations, for example pain and/or discomfort, and predictions about how this will affect you in future based on consistencies drawn from people studied in the past. It doesn’t matter if the pain and/or discomfort is “real”, or whether the prediction turns out to happen or not, it just matters if the sensory symptoms matter to the person. If they were thought to be real, but then found not to be, or vice versa, this would not change the sensory experience of the person. Turning attentions to the “reality” of something is misdirection from valuable substance.
A common error here: coming across umbrella terms such as medical pathologies and turning attention to the “reality” of the pathology rather than the symptoms they are supposed to represent. The King of France one is another example of this. Doesn’t matter if the earth is flat and has edges, or is round, it matters if you fall off or if the prohibition of either point of view stunts the progression of the current state of knowledge.
Oh, please. How else would I be qualified to reject the notion of “reality” unless I understood what it meant for anyone who still takes it seriously?
Of course I’m entitled to use those concepts - I just use what you call “scare quotes” to make it clear that I’m quoting terms that mean certain things to other people, yet not hypocritically using them myself when I say I’ve rejected them. This goes for “illusory” etc. as well as “real” - hence the consistent use of quotation marks for all of them.
I read some of the first posts, not the whole thread yet.
It’s not that I’m half assed, it’s that I want to save some time.
How do we know? The sensation and ideas and belief of knowing is an internal kind of thing.
As usual, people take it literally. I try not to.
If we would realize that knowledge isn’t literal, the problem of ‘Truth’ and ‘pure truth’ would reduce.
When we make pure truth, we take a lump of human processes and human states, then name them and view them as if they were literal true things, and also something else other than what they originally were.
Knowledge is judged sensation. If you didn’t make all kinds of transformations and judgements on a sensation, it would not become regular knowledge.
“I know the sky is blue” should be replaced by “I sense the sky as blue”.
That would be more proper and more philosophical, but not many people care or see it.
What a quack. A rain dance is an exercise in rainmaking. The dance itself is supposed to create rain fall. In reality, dancing to create rain has nothing to do with why rain falls. But that’s not the experience of those people, and that’s not what they sense----but the reality is that rain does not fall because they dance to invoke it. If you are denying that, you are a fucking quack. And if you are agreeing with me, then you have to rethink your claim that “reality is whatever you want it to be”. Because wanting rain to fall does not make rain fall. Take your pick, Sir.
You don’t seem to remember what you’ve written a few lines after you’ve written it. It should strike anyone else as incoherent to say something like, “‘real’ is a useless term…oh but of course I’m going to use it all the time”. —Time to wake up my friend.
Yes it does fucking matter. Do you think you’re going to cure this-or-that pain by doing a fucking “pain dance”? You don’t cure a fucking cancer by making someone not feel it in their head. That’s because the cancer has a referent in the real world, whether they fucking feel it or not.
Sometimes it’s a relief to read your posts, Dan.
Knowlege is familiarity. “Judged sensation” is a good way to put it.
Reality is what we call our shared “judged sensation”.
Silhouette, for what it’s worth I’m on your side in this one.
On which point my friend? —That reality is whatever you want it to be? —That ‘real’ is a meaningless or useless term, and really does not help us distinguish or clarify our language or anything?
Sometimes I think you disagree with me just because you don’t like the box I wrap my insights in. It’s superficial on your part. Am I always polite? No, of course not. Am I cantakerous? Yes, guilty. Am I a river?
Yes, I am a river.
As much as your name-calling adds to your point (it really doesn’t btw), you have to consider the experience of a bunch of people who exercise such rites. They will have noticed that every time they do a rain dance, they don’t necessarily cause rain. Believing in rain gods/spirits and the like, who would appear to have the final say in whether they do their thing or not whether or not you want them to, they will have learned humility and thus treat their rituals as prayers. It is the luxury of us guys in the modern developed world that we get to think we “really” have harnessed direct cause and effect, such that the cause will always have the exact desired effect (which is STILL false to any perceptive being) - we now believe the tables have turned and we are now the ones with the final say. The rain dancers will not be thinking their dance necessarily creates rain, and since we are merely exercising the same desire for predictive control but we’re just at a more advanced point, we also ought not to think our causes necessarily create the predicted/intended effect.
The fact that you don’t get this just shows you don’t understand the scientific attitude, nor one of the most elementary concepts in philosophy: skepticism.
Good work.
Ah, nice conflation of “useful” in the sense of valuable, and “use” in the sense of presentable - in order to make another dud point.
I am happy to present the term “real” as a term without value because there is no hypocrisy here. I recognise it as an existent term, though one without meaning - an example to help you understand: say I have a tool that’s useless, let’s call it a “vonriver”. I can speak of this useless tool that doesn’t mean anything to anyone, and use it in a sentence and talk about it - even though it’s useless and without value to anyone!
Well it’s reassuring to know that at least someone out there knows exactly how and how not to cure cancer. Many illnesses have at least an element of influence by one’s mental state. Even “real” illnesses! The rest is just noted consistencies in things like chemicals that sometimes have the desired effect when interfered with, and sometimes they don’t. It’s like you’re so desperate for things to be “real” to you that you’re ignoring the evidence against it.
Thank you, Stuart.
And I’m sure you’re not just responding to the box I wrap my points in either - clearly I’m not the most agreeable of people either. I assume it’s the actual content of my argument? At least I hope so.
The content, especially the post from 11 hours ago, I share the your sentiment exactly but never can explain it quite as well.
Yes, yes and yes.
This isn’t about you, I have certain views that I express from time to time, rarely does someone come along and simply agree full-heartedly, there’s usually controversy with whatever I say, so when I find someone making one of the same arguments as I would I like to follow the yellow-green vomit colored rule.
I appreciate that you have an entirely different world view as me, and that you won’t hesitate to tell me when it seems more as if I deficated my words than spoke them. I appreciate that you feigned stupidity that time I emailed you, I mean I deserved it, it was delusional of me to think that you were telling me your honest opinion. I also like your use of metaphors.
What I don’t appreciate is how you got real silent real quick when I asked you certain particular questions… I think you know what I’m talking about.
Great, let me ask you a simple question: Do you think wanting something just makes it real? —I want world peace, the elimination of hunger, and other things. Reality isn’t conforming to what I want. But you think that reality is whatever you want it to be. Explain this, please…
I have no fucking idea what question you asked, or what you are talking about. But if you list the questions directly below this, in a numbered list, I will be happy to answer them directly. Sometimes I think you’re a bit delusional.
Haha, I’m hungry, therefore food is real. Thanks for that. 
VR, you just asked me:
…which differs from your first question you asked me:
So while I said yes to the question directly above and stand by it, the other is somewhat different.
If I want to eat and there’s no food, then I’ll go hungry, that’s a common sentiment I find myself thinking.
But, reality is whatever I want it to be. I think I want a reality, for the most part, very similar to the one you want. I want to be hungry and I want to eat when I’m hungry and I want to recognize all the terms involved in this statement. But, if I didn’t want to recognize any of that I wouldn’t have to. If I have a pain in my stomach; I would be able to satisfy that pain by eating, assuming I recognized that what I had was ‘pain’ and that I wished for that pain or the projected consequences it may bring to be alleviated.
I realize that I would starve if I didn’t eat, that is I wouldn’t last long. We both agree that’s no good but we aren’t compelled to take that view. And even if I don’t recognize all the terms involved: ‘hunger’, ‘stomach’, ‘food’ etc., it wouldn’t mean that I would never eat. I got by for 20 years just fine without knowing how molecular biology worked, and to be honest I got by just fine for 3 or 4 years without knowing that eating food was anything more than an unpleasant chore I being was given.
These questions are based on the assumption that you believe a happier world is possible and you believe that the actions that you and others take can bring that to achieve that.
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What do you do day to day to achieve that?
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What have you accomplished in the past to achieve that?
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What are your immediate goals to achieve that?
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What have you sacrificed, if anything, to achieve that?
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What do you plan on sacrificing in the future, if anything, to achieve that?
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Would you please list a number of stereotypical situations a person can be in (nationality, income, health, intelligence, etc.), then give me some idea as to what they should be doing day to day, what immediate goals they should set and what they should be willing to sacrifice to achieve that?
And that is the case regardless of how bad you might want to skip meals and not go hungry. You aren’t changing that part of reality with your sentiments. You aren’t choosing to go hungry; you’re choosing to not eat. The hunger is unavoidable.
You clearly would have to. Hunger comes whether you want it to or not. That’s what prompts you to recognize the fact that you need to eat, regardless of how inconvenient it might be.
People naturally want to alleviate their suffering; That’s just our nature. You aren’t driven to satisfy hunger because you choose to be. It’s part of what you are.
But you clearly are. You’re compelled by your physiology and everything you know about being human. If nothing else, you are compelled to avoid suffering and death because of the sort of animal you are.
You accepted that unpleasant chore because it was a part of reality that you couldn’t change.