Science<Philosophy<Reality

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Science: Speaking, action, and attachment to concepts.

Philosophy: Speaking, action, and attachment to concepts.

Reality: No speaking, no action, and no attachment to concepts.

[Dan Rowden]

Shut up, then.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

No you shut up!

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Sorry about that, I forgot you weren't actually speaking.

[Dennis Mahar]

Reality: No speaking, no action, and no attachment to concepts.

implicit in that is a massive world description.

concepts can be commentary or research.
give us the research lad.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

I actually wrote a slightly longer post but wasn't logged in... so I gave the short version.

Research: When you attempt to grasp something it fades away. It disappears when you try to understand it. No concept can capture it, all explanations and descriptions create conceptual limits that don't exist.

An example of reality/truth: Visualization creating the thing.

Another is spirits attaining what they desire without any action.

The truth is only what is real, not explained, reality is experience, not any particular experience.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

The truth is only what is real, not explained, reality is experience, not any particular experience.

Unexplained is what is not explained.
Experience is just experience.
Fake is the experience of the unreal.

The above is the truth but "reality equals experiencing" is idiocy.

SeekerOfWisdom is the Justin Bieber of philosophy or perhaps Justin Buber.
And yes, some things need to be ridiculed simply because they are that ridiculous.

[Pincho Paxton]

I actually wrote a slightly longer post but wasn't logged in... so I gave the short version.

Research: When you attempt to grasp something it fades away. It disappears when you try to understand it. No concept can capture it, all explanations and descriptions create conceptual limits that don't exist.

My theory doesn't fade away, it starts from nothing, and builds up. You are only talking from your own experience which you seem to think is the same for everyone else. Your experience of trying to understand things, and not being able to understand them is called.. being a bit thick.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Diebert I'm not a philosopher, philosophy is actually < reality if you read the title. And reality does "equal" experience, seeing as when you say the word "Reality" you are referring only to experiences of consciousness.
Or is there something else you are referring to? (Which btw is fully and absolutely impossible.)

And Pincho I wasn't talking about you and you understand nothing.

Also, anyone who thinks themselves knowledgeable or intelligent is only actually being egotistical, self-attached and delusional. You can't be either of these without being attached to concepts. I'm not talking about anyone in particular when I say this, it's up to whoever to decide if they fit the bill. Although Pincho would be a good example of 'attached to a false imagination', but it still is a general statement.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Diebert I'm not a philosopher, philosophy is actually < reality if you read the title. And reality does "equal" experience, seeing as when you say the word "Reality" you are referring only to experiences of consciousness.

You are not a philosopher but you are trying to sound like one. Philosophy is higher than (your notion of) reality simply because it's trying to differentiate between real and false, truth and delusion. Experiences happen but there's nothing to say about it being it "real" or "unreal". Once you do say something about it, determining true or false or anything really, one calls it philosophy at best, science other times or opinion at worst. But you don't want to do philosophy, you want to roll around in the mud of experiencing, like navel staring! You are worshiping the cow and try to pass if off as some profound thing because you like that type of warm mud. You refuse to leave the womb, Bieber. You are promoting that old hat instead but snap out of it, will you?

[Russell Parr]

Also, anyone who thinks themselves knowledgeable or intelligent is only actually being egotistical, self-attached and delusional.

How do you know this?

You can't be either of these without being attached to concepts.

When you use anything, like say, a toilet, are you attached to the toilet? No, and in the same way, you don't have to be attached to concepts to use them.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Like I said, you are just placing yourself above while thinking yourself intelligent due to self attachment and hence you put others beneath you as if you are competing and insult them based on some comments. Didn't I just say I'm making no attempt at being a "philosopher"? Whatever that means.

You always use a lot of weird metaphors Diebert, talking about warm mud and the womb, hundreds of others, it kind of puts me off reading what you write, you don't really say anything besides supplying unrelated metaphors about tools and animals.
If your definition is the distinction between truth and falsehood then you should have no issue, there are no guesses about things, and hence no false imaginations, coming from this mouth. I'm typing mind you.

[Tenver-]

I think (and seem to agree with you) that everything defers to reality. From reality, we as humans can try to make philosophical statements of truth on which to base our further discovery. Our further discovery we can base on a practical and jagged instrument which we call science under which certain rules apply (such as the important rule of falsification).

In general, it should probably be best to try to always defer to reality, but that may be a spin of the imagination, since it would seem we have no other choice.

The image above is how I see the whole reality - phenemonology - experience thing. It is how I would currently define reality, and therein truth, in short terms.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Not really sure what to say Tenver, nice diagram, although I don't really understand your perspective. What further discover is there to be had if truth is reality and we experience it?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

You always use a lot of weird metaphors Diebert, talking about warm mud and the womb, hundreds of others, it kind of puts me off reading what you write, you don't really say anything besides supplying unrelated metaphors about tools and animals.

These metaphors, like all parables and faerie tails are perfect for the over-simplistic level you like to do philosophy. There's no way to have an abstract discussion with you or to apply logic to each of your statements at this stage of our exchange. In a more direct setting I'd suggest some exercises like putting furniture together or just a whack on the head with a light stick to interrupt your train wreck of a thought. But all I have here at my disposal are slightly offending tools and animals.

[Tenver-]

Not really sure what to say Tenver, nice diagram, although I don't really understand your perspective. What further discover is there to be had if truth is reality and we experience it?

The problem is we don't know if we experience it. We can only question it, but it seems to me no train of thought or argument with evidence can lead to a final conclusion. It's like Bertrand Russel's famed dilemma; can anyone prove to him or others that there is not a flying teapot somewhere flying about in the universe? The same with the phenemological world we can imagine that we experience and the abstract constructs of reality and truth behind them; can anyone prove that the chair I sit on (or anyone else sit on) is not an orange that has a form like a chair? Is it possible that I am delusional about it being a chair and not an orange? How can I prove that is not a delusion of mine in a way that does not prod more questions? Is it possible that the chair is actually a delusion of mine and there is not any chair but I am only laying in a digital reality instigated into my mind like in Matrix? How can I prove that it is not in a final way that does not prod more challenge from questions? Is it possible that there are whole buildings flying about in the universe that we humans are not aware of? How can I prove that is not the case? Experience and the world are only imaginative creations of our mind, probably not shared by inanimate objects that we also create as constructs in our mind, and as such we are forever constrained by the phenemological barrier between experience and reality (or truth). There can only be one truth. Otherwise it would not be true. This truth is the same as the one reality in my belief that is mostly an abstract concept which no man can ever have any access to in any shape, probably. A cannot be B. A is A. The problem is finding out what A is. There is a truth, which you can call reality, which is how things "really are". Something is what it is. It cannot be two things at the same time. It can only be what it is. Though, it probably lies beyond the ability of at least humans to exclude all possibilities except one for anything at all. A bird cannot be anything else but a bird, because it is a bird, but who says it is a bird and not an elephant that I imagine to be a bird, so to speak in rough human terms? How can I prove it is not? A thing is what it is. That is the base of truth and reality, but humans are nowhere the scope or border of accessing a final conclusion that can defy all questioning and challenging. So we are, in my opinion, really just souls flailing about in what could be called a phenemonological experience with an abstract construct of 'truth' or reality or how things really are (which is a boolean thing. It either is or is not. A is either this or not. B is this or not. Reality is in the end just a set of facts and concrete circumstances of which, it just seem to me, we have no access to)

[Diebert van Rhijn]

[can anyone prove that the chair I sit on (or anyone else sit on) is not an orange that has a form like a chair?

Hi Tenver, just slicing this little bit from your paragraph so if I misunderstand please correct me. The example of the orange and the chair indicate a possible flaw in your argument. When something is a chair it doesn't mean it cannot be an orange at the same time. The concepts are not mutual exclusive. Perhaps this is about likelihood. It's unlikely you are using an orange as a chair but you might be very tiny or the orange might be large. Not to mention the wide array of positions we call "sitting" and the ways objects can serve as "chair".

Contradictions are more in the realm of logic, not so much usable in complex observations or names. But there are practical situations like "it's noon" meaning it's not midnight (the opposite). Or 1+1=2 and not 3 within the rules of ordinary mathematics. Or just 2 is not 3. The moment I declare that 2 is also3, I'm ripping out a fundamental axiom which is part of how "2" and "3" were defined.

Applying any abstract logic onto uncertain and shifty, empirical observations can become a contradiction onto itself. There are not many, if at all, "clear cut" things in our daily affairs, so attributing clear cut states or attributes to any of them is already including ambiguity. But the more we are addressing more abstract topics, non-contradiction becomes the lifeblood.

[Tenver-]

[can anyone prove that the chair I sit on (or anyone else sit on) is not an orange that has a form like a chair?

Hi Tenver, just slicing this little bit from your paragraph so if I misunderstand please correct me. The example of the orange and the chair indicate a possible flaw in your argument. When something is a chair it doesn't mean it cannot be an orange at the same time. The concepts are not mutual exclusive. Perhaps this is about likelihood. It's unlikely you are using an orange as a chair but you might be very tiny or the orange might be large. Not to mention the wide array of positions we call "sitting" and the ways objects can serve as "chair".

Contradictions are more in the realm of logic, not so much usable in complex observations or names. But there are practical situations like "it's noon" meaning it's not midnight (the opposite). Or 1+1=2 and not 3 within the rules of ordinary mathematics. Or just 2 is not 3. The moment I declare that 2 is also3, I'm ripping out a fundamental axiom which is part of how "2" and "3" were defined.

Applying any abstract logic onto uncertain and shifty, empirical observations can become a contradiction onto itself. There are not many, if at all, "clear cut" things in our daily affairs, so attributing clear cut states or attributes to any of them is already including ambiguity. But the more we are addressing more abstract topics, non-contradiction becomes the lifeblood.

I would be in agreement with you. It does seem like a flaw. The problem is reducing the complex obscurity and kaleidoscopic mix of forces into the non-contradictional on which any structure can be build, which would then be an enduring base that one can hope endures falsehoods and resists challenges.
That moves away from what can be called the ontological reality though or truth in which even the perception of a chair would be questioned. In this reality, there are only a set of facts, in my opinion, that do not contradict because there are no possibilities, only existence. This is what the likely deterministic way of Nature also springs from in my opinion. When there is only existence and no possibilities, then everything is given pre-hand. Compare it to our perception of the forces and concept we call 'gravity'. Gravity seems to work pretty similar and pretty constant all around the globe. That must be because there is something constant or an existence. We don't know what it is and we don't know if there is any such thing or if it is just a strange interplay of rare forces, just as we must question our perception of everything that seems to be affected by gravity and question the effect of gravity itself. Still, gravity indicates that there is something that exists and does not have a choice whether it should be affected by gravity.

In this way, reality and truth is an abstract concept only, because we would be in forever uncertainty as to which possibility of phenomena is true. In the same way, something can only be what it is, though it should not necessarily be defined or understood well in human terms. For example, I cannot both be a human and an elephant. If I am a human, I am not an elephant and vice versa. Though, nonetheless, 'human' and 'elephant' are very base concepts for the groupings of atoms and forces that makes a human or an elephant. Likewise, a carbon molecule cannot be an argon molecule, it is what it is, whether it is a carbon molecule or argon molecule, but we cannot exclude the possibility that there are other possible realities than what we use to determine what a carbon molecule is or an argon molecule is (or what a human and an elephant is, to continue that example). In that way, reality or truth in the way that it is, which can as per my understanding only be one thing, is not necessarily anything that we can ever access, but only glimpse at through the layer of phenomena without every reducing the possible alternatives for anything to only one, which could then be defined as "the absolute truth" or real existence or the ultimately defined truth.
Just as some animals perceive other wavelengths of light than we do and hear sounds differently than we do, it would be hard to define an absolute truth from the phenomena of a cat, a snake or a human. We can only make rugged and base perceptions and try to find theories and its accompanying arguments and evidence which resists counter-arguments the most and thereby becomes a prefered alternative from a multitude of possibilities.
It would be interesting to know what the actual existence of the universe (or multiverse, or anything else) is as you would check the source-code of a computer program (and then the computer to see how it reacts to the functions in the program and so on...), but the actual existence is far beyond any comprehensibility and far beyond even base perception, nevermind understanding, of any human being. Still, something can only be what it is, an existence can only be one existence, whether it is a chair, a computer-program or an atom (or anything underlying (or even light)). Therefore, reality is in my opinion only an abstract concept, which I would define as how things are, the pure existence of positive entity from which no possibility springs but only inevitability. Still, it would be hard to argue, which hits closer to this real existence, the vision of a human or the vision of a snake? And such we can try to make theories which resists objections the better, but any theory will always be open to an argument which it cannot disprove by ways of inevitability. In that way, we are stuck in this phenomenological experience in which we cannot exclude all possibilities for anything at all, it seems. For example, I cannot disprove that there is a being somewhere in outer space with a large white beard and a robe. The same thing with Bertrand Russell's teapot. I can nonetheless make theories with has better arguments (simpler, more logical, easier, less complex) with more evidence for that argument (empirical, viewed throug human eyes and mind, subjective) and therefore only come to a phenomenological conclusion without though having reached inevitability in which A is A. As I would see it probably.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

How could there be a train wreck if there has been no train? I'm happy to discuss some things although I prefer experience related discussion, differs from some of the philosophical discussion.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Gravity seems to work pretty similar and pretty constant all around the globe. That must be because there is something constant or an existence.

It's looks certainly like something pretty consistent. But one could also argue it's our location on the surface that's relatively constant. Gravity like all other things in existence is therefore also a "conglomeration" of circumstance? The lack of noticeable variance might be deceiving, like the distant stars in the sky were seen as "fixed" for a long time.

In this way, reality and truth is an abstract concept only, because we would be in forever uncertainty as to which possibility of phenomena is true.

Perhaps we could say all concepts are abstract by design :-) But you're clearly hinting at a difference between observational truths which are convenient, transient and "whatever works" at a given time and the possibility of a more universal truth, a meta-truth. Something to say about truths.

For example, I cannot both be a human and an elephant. If I am a human, I am not an elephant and vice versa. Though, nonetheless, 'human' and 'elephant' are very base concepts for the groupings of atoms and forces that makes a human or an elephant.

What if a human brain would be transplanted in an elephant body? Imagine it would work. Would the brain and memories make it "human"? What if identities in terms of memory and personalities (are those identities?) could be downloaded in computer memory and modified and mixed with other downloads. At which stage it has become inhuman? It all depends on definition in the end.

Likewise, a carbon molecule cannot be an argon molecule

True, but this is equal to saying that the number 12 cannot be the number 18. Essentially, atomic. This is why some scientists wonder if a mathematical reality would be "underneath" somewhere. Just because the way things tend to group in quanta, in discrete and distinct quantities. But others might say that this is because that's the only way we can measure it, to count. And by the act of counting we create a countable universe, but perhaps just as the one aspect we can be aware of?

In that way, we are stuck in this phenomenological experience in which we cannot exclude all possibilities for anything at all, it seems. For example, I cannot disprove that there is a being somewhere in outer space with a large white beard and a robe.

The question is if you cannot disprove this being would also be uncaused, taking no part of any causal order and still "exist" in any meaningful fashion. Or the possibility that nothing exists whatsoever. For some reason the moment we participate in thinking about anything, even just sensing or imagining, we already have a contrast going. This is what I think is meant with absoluteness.

[mwolf]

Science attempts to understand philosophy.

Philosophy attempts to understand reality.


Or...science is the pursuit of the understanding of what philosophers seek and their thoughts.