Dialectic: The Nature of Reality

In the Issue of Non-interference thread

Reacher wrote: Issue of Non-interference Thread[/url]]Plato's pupil Aristotle contrasted Plato's idea of Forms by saying that anything we know can ONLY be based on empirical , sensory observation.

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One of the big issues stemming from the idea of Forms is categorization. We can neck down animals from Kingdom, Phylum...on down...but how do you assign less ordered things to Forms...like beauty? Two vastly dissimilar things might fall under an intangible category of 'beautiful.' So yeah, issues abound.

I think I'm kind of in agreement with Aristotle to be honest, I wouldn't go as far as to say that that anything we know can ONLY be based on empirical , sensory observation, but I'd say that it is PRIMARILY based on this.

Categorisation of forms only works on clearly definable, less subjective, forms. We can both probably agree what requirements a creature needs to meet to be considered an animal, so much so that when we come across a new species we've never seen before, we could both look at it and say 'yes, that's an animal'.

Beauty is much harder to categorise. Not only because it covers such a wide variety of things (from sunsets, to people, to cars), it is also far more, if not entirely, subjective. We would probably struggle to clearly define what requirements have to be met for something to be deemed beautiful. We could look at the same piece of art, maybe even both being able to appreciate it for what it is, but I may think it the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, whereas you may find it utterly repulsive to look at. So I see the issues in that.

Reacher wrote: What you're talking about with perceived reality is akin to Social Construction . It's the idea in sociology that there is no objective reality, only what we perceive and how social dynamics orient us to those perceptions.

Though I think I agree with this too. Well no, maybe not quite. I think there has to be some kind of objective reality, in the sense that if i removed all 5 of my senses, the world around me would still exists, but I would have no knowledge of it, no way of 'accessing' it. But it would still be there. But my entire understanding of reality exists through my experience with it. So I don't believe its possible for me to ever 'see' this objective reality. I can maybe look at the world from a greater of lesser degree of objectivity, but my view will always be obscured by my subjective opinions and perceptions.

Reacher wrote: You understand the role as independent of any one person and have incorporated it into your construction of reality. This applies to father, brother, car...everything. "The central concept is that people and groups interacting in a social system create, over time, concepts or mental representations of each others' actions, and that these concepts eventually become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other."

Now I agree with this pretty much entirely. Though, I wonder, using your example of extrapolating what MY 'mom' does to mean what 'moms' do, how do people with 'bad moms' come to realise that their mom is 'bad'. They must extrapolate from their understanding of 'other people's moms' to what 'moms' do and then see that their 'mom' doesn't fit into that role?

Reacher wrote: ...those who go to war in Sun Tzu fashion are attempting to attune reality in a way they see as most harmonious. They have different dispositions as to what that means. They implicitly recognize that realities are in contest.

I find this truly fascinating, the idea of war relating to two perceptions of reality battling it out until only one is left standing. If this were to continue over, over (as it already does, but over a much longer period than it has done), do you think we'd ever reach a point where everyone shared the same 'Global' (or even 'Universal') Reality?

Reacher wrote: How does the idea of an 'essence' or 'ideal' form of something inform religious and cultural belief systems? I bring it up because many faiths have a creation story (reality as we perceive it) as stemming from the ideal of a deity (Heaven, Elysium, etc.)

What are the implications for a culture where an ideal concept informs and in some cases supercedes the reality we see? How can we determine the 'ideal' if it will never enter our sense...and what are some of the dangers of interpretation?

Its been awhile since ive spoken to him and i may not get this perfectly correct, but a professor of religion once told me something along the lines of... a common feature among religions is that they believe that 1: there is an underlying order to the world/reality/existence 2: that human beings can to some degree attune or align themselves with that order and 3: that humans have to make some deliberate efforts for doing this and understanding how to do it.. we have a knack for being "out of sync" with it.

So the answer to the first question above i guess is that its the very thing religious traditions are founded upon. The idea that there is an ideal form or maybe an ideal plane of reality. But I kind of feel like i must be missing something because it seems too obvious? Lol maybe i should consult the i-ching.

The implications and dangers:
Jesus and Christianity come to mind. Christian thought has been a powerful force for civilizing humanity and spreading the belief that individual life is valuable. So simple a thing to say but until the common man was validated by the religious idea that he was important to God his value was literally a matter of his utility to whoever was above him in authority. More useful dead, then dead he ought to be. The Jesus ideal was a transformative force on human culture.

But its also been the source of some very serious devilry lol. Not even getting into the deliberate (and in retrospect, predictable) abuses of power by the religious leaders, Christ as the ideal man (or any other "perfect being" incarnate, there are others less well known) sets a goal post we can never actualy reach (though the striving for it has pushed us towards an incrementally more and more virtuous standard)

That opens us to the darker implications of having such an ideal: the contempt that may arise when the flesh can never live up to it. The cold truth of inadequacy can leave one with a deep resentment towards not only the self, but the whole species. Man, fallen and irredeemable, deserves whatever calamity he receives for the simple fact that he is flawed. I mean the significance of our inherent flaws really is pretty hefty compared to the heights of our virtuous ideals. And if we really measure ourselves against those unreachable standards, its easy to imagine how it might drive some of us into all sorts of madnesses.

What you said about the distinction between the essence and the nature, Adder, perhaps that could be acquainted to the "en soi" and the "pour soi". The "en soi" is ontologic ; it is the numenal 'thing' in-and-of itself (whatever that 'thing' is). Moreover, the more complex the object, the further elusive any objectivity becomes. The "pour soi" is phenomenal ; it is the experience of the 'thing', the 'what it is like' to be that thing, its interaction with the environment -- what you were saying about 'nature'.

As it were, the "en soi" is often (too often) brushed aside in philosophy, since numena is very nearly inaccessible to us experiencing and using beings. It becomes quite a concert for us when we realise that we have to reconcile all of our phenomenal being-nesses to agree some sort of social and ecological arrangement according to a functional order (cosmos). And that is quite a feat even when just deciding what to ask for off of a menu, let alone when needing hundreds of people to calibrate their phenomenal, ipseitic narratives (mythologies, if you prefer) to what is going on. The "creation" happens all the time, since the chaos that we have to reconcile resumes with every encounter.

Reality isn't much other than the sound of the gong that Watts said it was. It doesn't have an intrinsic meaning. We can momentarily make meaning, and we can mean that made, momentary meaning only in the interval it guides us well. We do not have to go about meaningless, but it is good hygiene to change it once in a while (hand wash, cold ... )

The dialectic is not the only approach to encounter available to us -- there is also dialogue (dialogic meeting). That is at the heart of a lesson that Ethan set me when I went banging on about inter-subjectivity and how it was preferable to an attempt at an inaccessible objectivity -- and that, concerning just about any choice we are presented. I'll get that posted soon-ish and link it here.

The hardest part of the lesson is that he told me I have to write in simple terms. How the hell does one talk about existential or transcendental phenomenology in simple terms ??? :S

In response to the idea that reality has no intrinsic meaning:

Kind of long and probably boring ramble about words


It is very probably true that there is no intrinsic meaning to reality, but what is reality? What does it include and what are its limits? Do we know enough about reality to say? Is reality different from the universe? Is the universe as we know it only one (perhaps tiny) part of a greater reality, or is the limit of the universe also the limit of reality? Is there a limit to the universe or is it infinite?

My understanding is that we dont have definite answers to any of these questions. Im also under the impression that, amazing as the brain is (and it is!) the human organism has an ultimately llimited capacity for grasping complexity, and is biologically incapable of perceiving reality directly. Because of this, i wonder if we are capable of making any definitive assertion about what the greater context of reality really is. Maybe we cant identify a grand pattern, and im not arguing that there is one, but neither could a monkey solve a rubix cube or a gorilla identify the pattern of a sudoku.

Alexandre Orion wrote: What you said about the distinction between the essence and the nature, Adder, perhaps that could be acquainted to the "en soi" and the "pour soi". The "en soi" is ontologic ; it is the numenal 'thing' in-and-of itself (whatever that 'thing' is). Moreover, the more complex the object, the further elusive any objectivity becomes. The "pour soi" is phenomenal ; it is the experience of the 'thing', the 'what it is like' to be that thing, its interaction with the environment -- what you were saying about 'nature'.

Yea it could be, depending on the scope of how one might want to define reality. But if reality is defined as that domain of action or observation about physical reality... then for that deeper level of primordial-ness I tend to place within 'darsana', such that the religious 'light' is the Force, and rather leave behavioural and belief constructs as within 'marga' as almost manifestations of language, including things likes ghosts and gods (just to confuse the issue a little bit). Being that the closest we can get to knowing the 'light' besides 'seeing' it, is relational patterns mimicking mathematic ideals.... and why, for efficiency and effectiveness to speed up perception because I tend to have the belief that spirit (to differentiate a more primordial noumena from essence) is less physical and therefore much faster in its form and transformation. So then looking at different cultures we can see them as sets of languages, trying to relate to that inner and out world. Science being a good example of uncovering the essence of things, which had previously considered to be spirit. Lots of people were probably persecuted for witchcraft and the like in the Middle Ages for doing what we'd now call science. But just explaining my definitions. I spend most of my focus on exploring 'darsana', take refuge in refinement of 'marga' but don't (cannot) ignore the importance of 'dharma', as I define them. I think I'm still on topic... which makes me tend to think 'dharma' has a more deontological primacy, marga a more consequentialist, and we end up seeing virtue ethics emerge as predominate approach in darsanic pursuits... though obviously they all exist at all levels (of processing). Such that one often feels more oneself when they are with less burdened with... self, so maybe a three self approach which some Buddhism might define the peak of as the three kayas even haha, or perhaps not.