Our Sense of Reality

[Stroopwafel]

And for a balanced perspective, here's The Case For Reality.

[cdowis]

Kant == having a great deal of  difficulty finding a practical application of his ideas.

2 hours ago, Stroopwafel said:

all roads lead back to the observer

Leads me to my own view of reality ==>>  "I understand the difference between fact/ data/ observation  and conclusion/ opinion."  I trust myself to be able to distinguish between the two.  Just as we all have certain talents, I believe there are those who have a the remarkable gift of grasping reality.  Call it the "gift of discernment", and I find a failure of that gift in the case of Kant, et al,

Maybe it is just a case of my stupidity.

Edited April 29, 2016 by cdowis

[Ahab]

20 hours ago, cdowis said:

Kant == having a great deal of  difficulty finding a practical application of his ideas.

Leads me to my own view of reality ==>>  "I understand the difference between fact/ data/ observation  and conclusion/ opinion."  I trust myself to be able to distinguish between the two.  Just as we all have certain talents, I believe there are those who have a the remarkable gift of grasping reality.  Call it the "gift of discernment", and I find a failure of that gift in the case of Kant, et al,

Maybe it is just a case of my stupidity.

Maybe if you could somehow tell me something you see that it seems to you that Kant, et al, doesn't see I could somehow tell you whether or not I think Kant could see that. 

What someone doesn't see someone else sees at least sometimes. 

[cdowis]

1 hour ago, Ahab said:

Maybe if you could somehow tell me something you see that it seems to you that Kant, et al, doesn't see I could somehow tell you whether or not I think Kant could see that. 

What someone doesn't see someone else sees at least sometimes. 

" Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge."

I am a simple guy, and I won't be shy to say that this sounds like nonsense if I were to try to make a practical application from this statement.  I can look at Socrates' Cave analogy, and find some way to apply that to the real world, but Kant is outside my realm of any attempt to make practical sense from this.

I am at work, in a meeting with my fellow workers on a very complex project.  What now?  What insight does he give me for any assistance in my interaction with the other workers, to find a solution for the problem, to  plan for a victory party afterward, to keep my job, to find another job.

My simple view of reality that "I know the difference between facts and opinions" will help me in all these activities.

OK, Kant, your turn........

 

Edited April 30, 2016 by cdowis

[mfbukowski]

On 4/29/2016 at 6:10 PM, Stroopwafel said:

And for a balanced perspective, here's The Case For Reality.

The first sentence totally misses the point of the article criticized

Quote

The article puts forth the idea that we didn’t evolve to perceive reality accurately and that our perceptions perceive something that isn’t reality.

That begs the question from the beginning and is not what was said.  Hoffman is right.

Claflin repeats the same argument that scientists typically make, presuming that there IS a hard "reality" which is accessible from the beginning.

Same argument was made by Bogossian in Fear of Knowledge

It's like saying that relativism cannot be "true" because it denies truth.  The relativist answer to that is "Yep".  The argument doesn't work.

Rorty points out that scientism ENTAILS the belief in an external world, and his argument is irrefutable in my opinion.

The entire idea that there IS a "reality which can be perceived "accurately" is not even mentioned or alluded to in Hoffman's article.  

If you want that Rorty quote- I will look it up.

In fact my usual Rorty video says that.  Belief in a "reality" which is unseen and unexperienced is like a belief in God.  It is a belief in things unseen and unseeable.

Rorty's statement that he could believe in a God who was a friend to humanity places hsi "faith" on a sense of community, not metaphysics.  This fits perfectly with Mormonsm with our belief that God is part of the human community.

This makes our anthropomorphism a parallel for ontology.

 

Edited April 30, 2016 by mfbukowski

[MiserereNobis]

On 4/27/2016 at 2:08 PM, The Nehor said:

If this world is the best we can do with making sense of the chaos then we should really stop.

Now you're sounding like Voltaire

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, cdowis said:

" Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge."

I am a simple guy, and I won't be shy to say that this sounds like nonsense if I were to try to make a practical application from this statement.  I can look at Socrates' Cave analogy, and find some way to apply that to the real world, but Kant is outside my realm of any attempt to make practical sense from this.

I am at work, in a meeting with my fellow workers on a very complex project.  What now?  What insight does he give me for any assistance in my interaction with the other workers, to find a solution for the problem, to  plan for a victory party afterward, to keep my job, to find another job.

My simple view of reality that "I know the difference between facts and opinions" will help me in all these activities.

OK, Kant, your turn........

 

Unfortunately he didn't care about your job, and YOU were the one who said he did not want to get into philosophy.

Do you or don't you?  Do you want to get into it or not?

As a starter, tell me what "red" "Really Is".

Is that color in your mind or is it waves and particles of photons at a certain frequency?

Clue: trick question.  Both those alternatives are made by the human mind, one in scientific LITERATURE (man made) and the other in your head 

The question itself is the problem.

Reality is that red IS the reality.  It's all there is to say about red in common discourse.  So ultimately your common sense approach works just fine for common sense problems.

But of course that's what Hoffman says too.

[mfbukowski]

But going back through the Hoffman article, he himself is confused.

Quote

 The world presented to us by our perceptions is nothing like reality. 

 

Quote

The experiences of everyday life—my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate—that really is the ultimate nature of reality.

 

This is obviously problematic.

Perhaps the first quote was inserted by the interviewer in incorrectly categorizing Hoffman's position.

[cdowis]

49 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Unfortunately he didn't care about your job, and YOU were the one who said he did not want to get into philosophy.

Do you or don't you?  Do you want to get into it or not?

I am not interested in engaging in a meta-discussion.  

As a starter, tell me what "red" "Really Is".

Is that color in your mind or is it waves and particles of photons at a certain frequency?

Both a fact and an opinion or individual perception.  You are playing word games -- just look it up in the dictionary.  
AGAIN, "I know the difference between fact and opinion."

Clue: trick question.  Both those alternatives are made by the human mind, one in scientific LITERATURE (man made) and the other in your head 

The question itself is the problem.
Look in the dictionary  =====>>>>>>>>  It has more than one definition.  It is a word game, a puzzle, an exercise in rhetoric. 

Reality is that red IS the reality.  It's all there is to say about red in common discourse.  So ultimately your common sense approach works just fine for common sense problems.

Yawn.  Perhaps this has been entertaining for those who enjoy rhetorical fireworks, but I prefer to watch NCIS.

 

Edited April 30, 2016 by cdowis

[TreeOfJesse]

Oh, c'mon, cdowis, contemporary philosophy is not just rhetorical fireworks.  You can disagree with mfbukowski for sure (and I'm sure and would hope! that even he would say that there are many arguments against post-modernism and relativism) but a wholesale dismissal in favor of NCIS means you weren't really interested in the first place

Me, I think we're still stuck in the hole Descartes dug... how can experience be anything but private?  But dang... that sure has caused suffering over the ages.  Isolation, alienation, loneliness.

Let's all take a moment to reread Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

(so... do you think I've adequately shown off for my first post here?)

Jesse.

[cdowis]

19 minutes ago, TreeOfJesse said:

Oh, c'mon, cdowis, contemporary philosophy is not just rhetorical fireworks. 

Didn't say that.  Socrates has very real world applications -- think of his Templates, very LDS applicable.  And the caves with the shadows, etc. 

You can disagree with mfbukowski for sure (and I'm sure and would hope! that even he would say that there are many arguments against post-modernism and relativism) but a wholesale dismissal in favor of NCIS

I don't dismiss it anymore than I dismiss monster truck competition.  I just do not find Kant very useful.  

means you weren't really interested in the first place 

A very astute observation, especially since I already admitted that in my post.  He asked for my opinion, and I was not shy in giving it to him.  But I did warn him that I was ignorant of such things.  I was hoping he would show me how it made any practical sense, but I guess he had to admit that it did not.

Me, I think we're still stuck in the hole Descartes dug... how can experience be anything but private?  But dang... that sure has caused suffering over the ages.  Isolation, alienation, loneliness.

Let's all take a moment to reread Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

(so... do you think I've adequately shown off for my first post here?)

If you are fishing for a reputation point, forget it.  But you got guts.  I've seen someone who quoted a very lengthy post, and then say, "I agree".

 

Edited April 30, 2016 by cdowis

[TreeOfJesse]

8 minutes ago, cdowis said:

Didn't say that.  Socrates has very real world applications -- think of his Templates, very LDS applicable.  And the caves with the shadows, etc. 

Socrates (Plato) isn't contemporary philosophy

I agree that Plato offers much (and much and even more!) but mfbukowski was talking about post-modern philosophy, which at its heart has a very strong disagreement with Plato.

10 minutes ago, cdowis said:

I don't dismiss it anymore than I dismiss monster truck competition.  I just do not find Kant very useful.  

Well, comparing philosophy (Kant or the post-modernists) to monster truck competitions is a dismissal.  Perhaps there are philosophers out there who put their discipline on par with monster trucks... but I haven't met any.

12 minutes ago, cdowis said:

If you are fishing for a reputation point, forget it.  But you got guts.

I wasn't fishing -- I was just pointing out that after just reading the forum for awhile I finally decided to get an account and respond, and that was my first post.  But thanks for the compliment about my guts

Jesse.

[Calm]

34 minutes ago, TreeOfJesse said:

 

(so... do you think I've adequately shown off for my first post here?)

Jesse.

Love the avatar

[mfbukowski]

54 minutes ago, TreeOfJesse said:

Socrates (Plato) isn't contemporary philosophy

I agree that Plato offers much (and much and even more!) but mfbukowski was talking about post-modern philosophy, which at its heart has a very strong disagreement with Plato.

Well, comparing philosophy (Kant or the post-modernists) to monster truck competitions is a dismissal.  Perhaps there are philosophers out there who put their discipline on par with monster trucks... but I haven't met any.

I wasn't fishing -- I was just pointing out that after just reading the forum for awhile I finally decided to get an account and respond, and that was my first post.  But thanks for the compliment about my guts

Jesse.

I always have to top Calm.

ABSOLUTELY love the avatar.   Very cool.

 

[cdowis]

1 hour ago, TreeOfJesse said:

Socrates (Plato) isn't contemporary philosophy

I agree that Plato offers much (and much and even more!) but mfbukowski was talking about post-modern philosophy, which at its heart has a very strong disagreement with Plato.7

You do know what forum you are in.  Perhaps not.

Well, comparing philosophy (Kant or the post-modernists) to monster truck competitions is a dismissal. 

Believe me when I say that fans take those competitions very very seriously.  Perhaps even more so than fans of post-modernistic philosophy.  Now you tell me, which group of fans could fill up a large stadium and spend so much money in one night.

Perhaps there are philosophers out there who put their discipline on par with monster trucks... but I haven't met any.

You made my point.

I wasn't fishing -- I was just pointing out that after just reading the forum for awhile I finally decided to get an account and respond, and that was my first post.  But thanks for the compliment about my guts 

It was not a compliment.  I noticed that they were hanging out, so I was making an observation.

 

 

Edited April 30, 2016 by cdowis

[deli_llama]

1 hour ago, TreeOfJesse said:

(so... do you think I've adequately shown off for my first post here?)

I concur with the previous replies. Love the avatar  

In fact, I had to do a double take and a click through to be sure. I have a very similar...um...indelible avatar. 

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, TreeOfJesse said:

Oh, c'mon, cdowis, contemporary philosophy is not just rhetorical fireworks.  You can disagree with mfbukowski for sure (and I'm sure and would hope! that even he would say that there are many arguments against post-modernism and relativism) but a wholesale dismissal in favor of NCIS means you weren't really interested in the first place

Me, I think we're still stuck in the hole Descartes dug... how can experience be anything but private?  But dang... that sure has caused suffering over the ages.  Isolation, alienation, loneliness.

Let's all take a moment to reread Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

(so... do you think I've adequately shown off for my first post here?)

Jesse.

Well it's private but language makes it inter personal.

Multiple observations vocalized,  of the "same" phenomenon makes it definable as "objective".  You see a pink elephant, it's private.  But if I see it too, it is "objective".

If a bunch of people verify the same thing verbally it becomes a "phenomenon" perhaps along the likes of a UFO in credibility.  If many many people see it and it is possible to replicate the observation it becomes "science"

So essentially the more private observations there are, communicated through language, the more "objective" and "scientific" it becomes.

But the important thing is to realize that it is private observations multiplied which make science, and those observations are shared intepersonally in language.  Science therefore becomes a social construction forged by human agreement, all based on private observations.

Again, it comes down the the Rorty quote in my siggy.

But each of those private observations is as "real" as any other.  Those private experiences are events which "actually happened" historically.  Theoretically you could log them in time- "3:14 PM Thrusday- saw a UFO".  The EXPERIENCE actually happened- it is either shown to be objective or not.

 

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, cdowis said:

" Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge."

I am a simple guy, and I won't be shy to say that this sounds like nonsense if I were to try to make a practical application from this statement.  I can look at Socrates' Cave analogy, and find some way to apply that to the real world, but Kant is outside my realm of any attempt to make practical sense from this.

I am at work, in a meeting with my fellow workers on a very complex project.  What now?  What insight does he give me for any assistance in my interaction with the other workers, to find a solution for the problem, to  plan for a victory party afterward, to keep my job, to find another job.

My simple view of reality that "I know the difference between facts and opinions" will help me in all these activities.

OK, Kant, your turn........

 

It should be quite obvious to you.

You believe that a private experience of a private reality which no one else saw was "real".  You believe that something not a fact- that was a private observation in ONE person's mind ONLY is a "fact"

Was it a fact or an opinion??

We call that "Joseph Smith's Vision"

There were no "OBJECTS" of the vision.  Where is God?  I do not see him, so unless Kant is right that perceptions alone can be called "real"- without any objects perceived which can be verified by others, Joseph is a fraud.

If nothing "in your head" is "real" then the vision was not "real". and you waste a lot of tithing money.

Is that practical enough?

Fact or opinion?  Did old Joe make a mistake?

Where is your evidence for God?  Where is your evidence it is wrong to kill people for fun?

Edited April 30, 2016 by mfbukowski

[cdowis]

6 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

It should be quite obvious to you.

Obviously not.

You believe that a private experience of a private reality which no one else saw was "real".  You believe that something not a fact- that was a private observation in ONE person's mind ONLY is a "fact"

You are very adept in putting words into the mouth of other people. 

Was it a fact or an opinion??

I know the difference, but I have noticed that others do not.  And you can quote me.

We call that "Joseph Smith's Vision"

There were no "OBJECTS" of the vision.  Where is God?  I do not see him, so unless Kant is right that perceptions alone can be called "real"- without any objects perceived which can be verified by others, Joseph is a fraud.

Of course.  And I have a certain knowledge of this event through personal knowledge, through a personal experience that I cannot deny.  I cannot prove to it to anyone because they have to experience it themselves.

If nothing "in your head" is "real" then the vision was not "real". and you waste a lot of tithing money.

Is that practical enough?

Fact or opinion?  Did old Joe make a mistake?

Where is your evidence for God?

You're getting hysterical.  I have already answered the question.

Where is your evidence it is wrong to kill people for fun?

The day will come when each of us will suffer the eternal consequences for our decisions in mortality.  God will give you the "evidence" that you seek.

 

 

Edited April 30, 2016 by cdowis

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, cdowis said:

 

Ok well we have zero understanding here so best wishes 

Just try to understand that I am on your side even if you do not understand a word I say

 

Edited April 30, 2016 by mfbukowski

[Ahab]

On 4/30/2016 at 11:56 AM, mfbukowski said:

Ok well we have zero understanding here so best wishes 

Just try to understand that I am on your side even if you do not understand a word I say

 

What we have here is a problem of communication. 

And you are not helping him to see what you see which it seems to you that he does not see. 

To fix the problem what we need now is better communication. 

Not your "oh I give up this is too hard" mentality.

What I see that maybe cdowis doesn't see is that Kant, et al, was talking about communication. 

The "what the heck are you talking about" that needs to be understood before people can understand each other.

You used the example of red, although not very well.  Suppose now that who you were talking to about "red" didn't know what the word "red" meant but that it was possible to teach him what the word "red" really means. And to make this easy let's suppose the person who doesn't know what the word "red" means is NOT blind.

Suppose now that you tell this person,  let's call him Ed, that red is the color of a tomato.

Now let's suppose that he doesn't know what the word "color" means and he thinks you are talking about the shape of the tomato, which he is familiar with.

And on and on and on it goes as you try to communicate your thoughts to Ed but without your "I give up this is too hard and I have other things to do" mentality. 

Edited May 2, 2016 by Ahab
typo

[Ahab]

On 4/30/2016 at 6:05 PM, cdowis said:

" Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge."

translation:  We can't communicate with people unless they know something about what we are talking about otherwise they won't be able to make any sense of any object we try to tell them about.

Look again at his phrase "objects must conform to our knowledge" as if you are the one someone else is trying to talk to about some object.

The word "God", for example.  How are others supposed to know what the heck we are talking about when we talk about "God" with them?  Answer: By comparing the object we refer to as "God" with something they are more familiar with.  The kind of being we are, as a starter. 

 

Edited May 2, 2016 by Ahab