the philosophy of cartoons and anime

it seems pretty obvious that our world is ‘truer’ than those created by us…specially stuff like cartoons…
but if we say, ours is more real and that is only a creation of ours…
then this is an absolute proof…
and here is the disprooff of relativism and the triumph of absolute truth…

i hate to think about it this way since i like relativism better…but i can’t find a way around this, can anyone help?

i know it sounds very crazy and maybe even pointless and irrelevant maybe silly…but to me it seems like a profund question,…

has any philospher touched this subject?
:astonished:

Unfortunately our worldly experiences are dominated by extreme individual experiences and realities. Anime or whatever is just another individual reality like the others. If 6 billion people see a tree ( your version of natural reality ) and one of them sees only an anime movie his whole life long, does that logically mean the one is more real than the other, just because more people see the one reality and not the other? I’m sorry, the relativity is still with us. However, not entirely. To the six billion people the one reality can not but be more real than the anime movie, but for the one hypothetical loner the anime movie is total reality. This leaves you in my personal sphere of thought, namely that everything is both real and unreal at the same time. If you even say my statement is not real, then it is real that it is unreal. Also, to delve into another reality, my statement is real in one sense ( it exists on philosophy.com ) and unreal in another sense, it is not true. But which truth is true/ultimate? confused? So am I, so I’m off to eat cake and drink tea…to make it more true than this reality! : )

I think one of the pitfalls that people make with regards to relativism is an undue emphasis on vagueness.

Whitehead argued that the four variables (I’m not sure that there are really 4 though) of a harmonious system are: triviality, vagueness, narrowness, and width.

Triviality is distinction for the point of distinction, difference for difference’s own sake. Multiplicity without direction

Vagueness is where the differences between things becomes unimportant for the overall order of the system.

Narrowness is a positive degree of focus on one thing or a small group of things at the expense of the rest, so trivializing one area and making the rest vague by comparison.

Width is the degree of coordination that occurs within the differentiated objects.

I would argue that your view on Anime vs. real world has too much vagueness, and seriously lacks the other three variables. I think we can meaningfully trivialize the difference between the created worlds, especially if we actually focus on what those worlds entail and coordinate the similarities and differences into a meaningful system.

You perceive the cartoon as simulacrum since you can see the process behind it. Assuming the catholic creationist and if you were external to “this world” and coexistant with “god” you could perceive this “reality” as you see cartoons right now.

You are commiting the same “mistake” as Descartes. “I think therefore I am”, but maybe it isn’t you who is thinking, but something thinking through that something you “think” to be you. As if we were all one “artist” that creates a thousand characters and lose it’s own “self” in multiplicity of the personas it created. Maybe we are all cartoons to an external reality.

If you believe in god as the creationist force, then this world would be truer since it was created by the “absolute idea”, then all of our “creations” would be true simulacrum to a the True creation of such being. Your thought would be correct in that scope, assuming there is something that makes our reality the one “true” as created by “god”. But that would be, as said Nietzsche, “finding in the things what you put in them”. If you believe in creator god, then you are absolutist already.

Discussing this in different scopes, such as an ungodly reality, could spawn books and books of discussion. I suggest you read Jean Baudrillard or other postmodern philosophers for more information - specially “Simulacrum and Simulations”.

I’ll stop for now so it’s easier to read :stuck_out_tongue:

edit: this is a mess, but I think you can get the point I wanted to make for now. Of course, I am assuming lots of things and waiting for you to clarify as is the guy before me

if nothing is truer, then you eating cake and drinking tea is truer compared against what? :stuck_out_tongue:

I got it. Great post. =D>

My now drinking coffee and eating a strawberry muesli bar is more true than your experience right now because it is a reality I am experiencing, so it is truer to me, and yet your reality is more true to you and untrue to me. So in that type of sense the one is more true than the other, but at the same time not. Even to you yourself you must admit that you have doubts about the fact that you are experiencing a truth right now, wherever you are, because you know/suspect that it is more your truth but less mine.

The universe it seems needs opposites in order to form one another. What is nothingness, if there exists not somethingness? The existence of the one exactly defines the existence of the other. This is a difficult concept to grasp because you are likely to think that a thing defines itself, but its opposite is exactly that which defines what it is not, hence defining it in a sense. This is very tough to understand and a lot of people don’t understand what I mean with this, I myself have trouble with it. How an opposite can define a thing is bogus, they say. For example, I say, how do you define matter? I would say as a lack of nothingness/empty space. Others will say bull it is also defined by its own properties, if not totally. But neither me nor my opponent can really escape the fact that both definitions are true. Two realities. Serving to shape one another, as well as to detroy one another.

Look, I know it’s messy, it’s very difficult, and I am working on it, especially now that I have a holiday. But remember I’m blonde, so it’s a long and colourful journey to wisdom… :sunglasses: O M G my coffee exploded again…this time there is even foam involved. Reality hates me…

Thanks :slight_smile:

Musi:

Great ideas here

No, WE need differences to form one thing in our minds. If there are things we can’t tell because they are constant in our microreality, they would exist in the universe, but we would only be able to tell when we have something to compare it to - in future, past or present.