What am I?

@pagan,

pagan;96932 wrote:

its about what things we think are normal. Just because the logic is simple doesn't mean the consequences are.

Could you give an example please to prove this statement.
Cheers!

@Caroline,

hi caroline

well the case in point re this thread. Two beliefs. We see reality and science is truth.

by science if a is not in the same space time as b, then a is not the same as b. Visual perception of a tree according to science must occur at least in part within the brain. Also there is a delay in time between perception of a thing and the time of the thing perceived because light has finite velocity. Thus according to science perception is not the same as the thing in itself. Thus perception is at least in part a brain construct. Thus the room you are sitting in is not the room in itself, and is at least in part a brain construct, including its three dimensionality.

It follows that the belief that we see reality directly is thus not consistent with the scientific view of perception.

IF and only if this simple logical dilemma is recognised do complex consequences follow. eg science is incomplete, or perception is incomplete and what follows from that ........ eg Science cannot explain the perception of reality/ reality is never perceived as proved by science.... so what of the possible existence of the enchanted? (outside scientific explanation). If none by faith in science, then no direct perception of reality. If however we believe in the direct perception of reality, then perception itself by scientific understanding is enchanted.

and so on .... very complex.

The simple solution of course is to avoid the dilemma. Its not difficult to do because we fudge things all the time. eg we love a friend and find out anectdotally that they have done something really dodgy. Solutions.... its just hearsay! there must have been a reason! its all lies! or just simply ignore and forget it. Don't look.

But fudges have consequences too. When do modern westerners believe that they see reality directly and when do they see it indirectly?

This sounds like a philosophical question that will only effect a minority of people who like to philosophise. But i don't believe that is true and many philosophers like neitzche and sartre pointed out how modern people are feeling alienated. Representationalism is no longer easy to ignore. We can't easily turn it off. Science has given us technology like virtual reality and implants, not to mention media, that is overtly undermining the belief of directly percieving reality.

The saving logic is simple. "Most of the time we perceive reality, except when science tricks us and thats fun!" ...... but sub consciously those tricks with faiths in truth can have far reaching consequences.

@Salbris,

"the task of the philosopher is to wonder at that which men think ordinary" - anon.

@pagan,

pagan;96952 wrote:

hi caroline

well the case in point re this thread. Two beliefs. We see reality and science is truth.

by science if a is not in the same space time as b, then a is not the same as b. Visual perception of a tree according to science must occur at least in part within the brain. Also there is a delay in time between perception of a thing and the time of the thing perceived because light has finite velocity. Thus according to science perception is not the same as the thing in itself. Thus perception is at least in part a brain construct. Thus the room you are sitting in is not the room in itself, and is at least in part a brain construct, including its three dimensionality.

It follows that the belief that we see reality directly is thus not consistent with the scientific view of perception.

IF and only if this simple logical dilemma is recognised do complex consequences follow. eg science is incomplete, or perception is incomplete and what follows from that ........ eg Science cannot explain the perception of reality/ reality is never perceived as proved by science.... so what of the possible existence of the enchanted? (outside scientific explanation). If none by faith in science, then no direct perception of reality. If however we believe in the direct perception of reality, then perception itself by scientific understanding is enchanted.

and so on .... very complex.

The simple solution of course is to avoid the dilemma. Its not difficult to do because we fudge things all the time. eg we love a friend and find out anectdotally that they have done something really dodgy. Solutions.... its just hearsay! there must have been a reason! its all lies! or just simply ignore and forget it. Don't look.

But fudges have consequences too. When do modern westerners believe that they see reality directly and when do they see it indirectly?

This sounds like a philosophical question that will only effect a minority of people who like to philosophise. But i don't believe that is true and many philosophers like neitzche and sartre pointed out how modern people are feeling alienated. Representationalism is no longer easy to ignore. We can't easily turn it off. Science has given us technology like virtual reality and implants, not to mention media, that is overtly undermining the belief of directly percieving reality.

The saving logic is simple. "Most of the time we perceive reality, except when science tricks us and thats fun!" ...... but sub consciously those tricks with faiths in truth can have far reaching consequences.

Ah, I see what you are talking about now. Great post, by the way =)

I have conformed myself with the fact that I dont see reality. It seens easy to grasp that belief then you think that ever day you "leap" eight hours in time in a split second.

@manored,

hi manored

Quote:

I have conformed myself with the fact that I dont see reality. It seens easy to grasp that belief then you think that ever day you "leap" eight hours in time in a split second.

yes i have experienced the boredom of work that can do that Smile

Though of course we usually do believe we see reality by default. Where it becomes stressful at times is during news reports and political broadcasts. (often subconsciously i believe) The reason being that on the one hand we are social animals, and therefore people of authority are really important in our lives. To be judged and related to. When we recognise people of high status and power on the tv then by what means are we doing so? We will never meet most of these people or even 'see' them in our entire lives. Yet we do see them don't we? But then again we don't see them surely? And then again there are the people who put the broadcasts and videos together and they make that reality don't they? Or is it a representation?

This really can be a subconscious continual stress i believe, where we are constantly being pulled in and pushed back from accepting such things as real on the social level. The social aspect of being human is very important to our well being and mental stability, and it is a strong and compelling sense of our being. What happens when our social urges and needs are constantly being triggered and then dismissed, by the fluctuating presentations of our now socially essential media industry?

On the other hand there is physical reality itself. The TV especially with regard to big news events presents us (represents to us) reality. It is real isn't it? It obviously isn't surely? This i believe creates another level of insecurity of relationship to the world around us. And it can go very deep and connect up with other aspects about conscious life until we can say things like .....

Quote:

I have conformed myself with the fact that I dont see reality. It seens easy to grasp that belief then you think that ever day you "leap" eight hours in time in a split second.

What would our native ancestors have made of such a comment? You sound like a shaman! .......... Are you on drugs? Smile

@pagan,

pagan;97641 wrote:

What would our native ancestors have made of such a comment? You sound like a shaman! .......... Are you on drugs?

With some luck they would workship me as god of sleep =)

@manored,

hi all

here is a link to a new horizon bbc programme called "the secret you" which is an interesting set of new experiments regarding consciousness, brain scans, the sense of self and even free will.

BBC iPlayer - Horizon: 2009-2010: The Secret You

unfortunately it may require some jiggerry pokerry to play outside the uk. Maybe youtube?

or

Ninjavideo.net - BBC: Horizon - The Secret You (Flash)

i found this other link to the horizon programme "the secret you" just broadcast. There are divx versions on this site to. This link is not restricted to the uk like the bbc media player.

very challenging ideas and results here and i have posted the link in another thread........... But i think it is very relevant to this thread, especially one experiment using virtual reality and "where" we are in "the world"!

http://www.philosophyforum.com/images/PHBlue/misc/progress.gif

http://www.philosophyforum.com/images/PHBlue/buttons/edit.gif

@Salbris,

My favorite philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset says in his first book, Meditations on Quixote, written in 1914:

"I am I and my circumstance"

As he later explains, the first "I" refers to "My Life," our life, the individual life of each one of us.

The second "I" refers to "My Self," the perceiving, feeling, thinking, desiring, loving person that each one of us is.

"My Circumstance" refers to all of the phenomena that occur to the second "I," including so-called "physical phenomena," "mental phenomena," and I would add "spiritual phenomena."

Now Ortega later explains that the first "I" or "My Life" consists of the second "I" and "My Circumstance." And, therefore, the second "I" and "My Circumstance" co-exist within what Ortega calls the "Radical Reality" that is "My Life." "My Life" is the "Radical Reality" in the sense that all other realities appear or are "rooted" in it ("radical" comes from the Latin "radix," meaning "root"). At the same time "My Circumstance" ex-ists outside of the second "I" or "Me." This resolves the perennial problem of what is meant by "inside" and "outside" with reference to "My Life."

Thus, the first phrase, "I am I and my circumstance," Ortega later reformulates as "My life consists of I and my circumstance."

For more on these concepts of Ortega see the thread .

@longknowledge,

Quite persuasive, what you paraphrase there, longknowledge.

@Reconstructo,

longknowledge

Quote:

Now Ortega later explains that the first "I" or "My Life" consists of the second "I" and "My Circumstance." And, therefore, the second "I" and "My Circumstance" co-exist within what Ortega calls the "Radical Reality" that is "My Life." "My Life" is the "Radical Reality" in the sense that all other realities appear or are "rooted" in it ("radical" comes from the Latin "radix," meaning "root"). At the same time "My Circumstance" ex-ists outside of the second "I" or "Me." This resolves the perennial problem of what is meant by "inside" and "outside" with reference to "My Life."

well yes i agree if of course the object of logic is outside the thing in itself. Thus the scientific paradox that we cannot percieve directly could be seen to arise out of the 'circumstances' created by acts of rational thought and scientific observation on perception. 'Perception considered' necessarily not being 'perception itself' under Ortega's scheme. A description (knowledge) of primary acts based upon a consistent mode of enquiry might thus be expected to give rise to paradoxes ...... and necessarily incompleteness.

But does Ortega really make a definitive statement about inside and outside with respect to perception? Is not spacetime a circumstance that exists outside of the second "I" or "Me"? Thus outside in a much more 'unknowable' way than spacetime? The language is tricky here. But if we adopt 'outside' as in the spatial sense in interpreting Ortega, then we have a circumstance being used to describe the relationship between 'My Life', I and circumstance. Thats ok, but we are supposed to not rely upon circumstance as complete, so therefore the whole Ortega scheme under that circumstantial interpretation of inside and outside is necessarily incomplete.

On the other hand if "My Circumstance" ex-ists outside of the second "I" or "Me." is interpreted in a much more abstract way more akin to say not coincident, then scientific spacetime becomes a piece of 'circumstantial scientific knowledge' and common space and time become 'circumstantial 'direct' perceptual knowledge'. What is inside and what is outside then take on a plethora of different interpretations, including Ortega's scheme where it seems to me that those terms are kind of necessarily unknowable ..... lest they become circumstantial.

@pagan,

yeh even though i have suspended my comments temporarily upon Ortega, because its a head twister for me Smile

, nevertheless as far as i can tell thinking and seeing are both primary acts of being in his scheme. Thus the way the world appears according to simply looking (its on the outside) and the way it appears according to scientific thinking using the nature of light and neurons (its on the inside) still remains. Which one is correct?

@Salbris,

pagan;110123 wrote:

yeh even though i have suspended my comments temporarily upon Ortega, because its a head twister for me , nevertheless as far as i can tell thinking and seeing are both primary acts of being in his scheme.

Yes, but Ortega prefers to call it acts of "living," since the start of his metaphysics is the idea that "My Life" or "Living" is the "Radical Reality."

Quote:

Thus the way the world appears according to simply looking (its on the outside) and the way it appears according to scientific thinking using the nature of light and neurons (its on the inside) still remains.

The way the physical phenomena appear when we look at them is dependent on the surfaces or "outside" of the things we are looking at. This is true of the other physical phenomena as well, i.e., touch, taste, smell and sound too, if you think about it.

In order to study the inside or what Ortega calls the "profundity" of things, we must use our thought or imagination to construct "models" of what we think the "inside" are like that we think explain the physical phenomena that we sense. Then we perform experiments to test the models against the phenomena we sense. This is what physical science is all about.

Over the years these models have become more and more sophisticated and refined down to the subatomic level, where we have to use special "sensors" to detect the results of the experiments, because our "senses" are not "sensitive" enough to "sense" them.

Does that make "sense"?

Quote:

Which one is correct?

In a "sense", they both can be. Sometimes our senses can "deceive" us.
The familiar phenomenon of a strait stick that has one end submerged in water appears "bent". It took the theory of light and of its refraction at the boundary surface between different media to explain it. According to this theory, the light that is reflected off of the surface of the stick is "refracted" or "bent" by the boundary between the water and the air through which it passes. But this also requires an explanation of why the light is reflected off of the stick in the first place, and this requires not only the theory of light but also a theory about the properties of the surface of the stick, which are in turn dependent on the properties of its interior.

So in this case science has to explain not only the composition or "inside" of the stick and of its surface, but also the composition of its "outside" or what we might call in Orteguian terms its "circumstance," i.e., the media through which the light passes as it travels from the surface of the stick to your eye.

Now your sense of sight is "correct" in that the "appearance" of the stick is different because the media through which the light has to travel is different depending upon whether or not its coming from the surface of the portion of the stick that's underwater.

But the scientific theory about the phenomenon can also be "correct," if it can provide an explanation of the phenomenon which is not incompatible with the explanation of other phenomena that we can observe with regard to the stick, the water, the air, and even the optical system of our body, which I haven't even gone into.

One interesting fact that I learned when I Googled the "bent-stick illusion" or "stick-in-the-water illusion," as it is known, is that the degree of the apparent "bending" of the stick depends on the angle of vision of the person with respect to the surface of the water. Thus, the closer you are to the stick, the lesser the degree of refraction and the less 'bent" the stick "looks."

This leads us to a discussion of "point of view, " which just happens to be the topic of my next thread in the Jose Ortega y Gasset Forum. As a lead in to it I would like refer you to my latest post in that Forum: My "Point of View" - An Anecdote

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@longknowledge,

hi longknowledge

Quote:

The way the physical phenomena appear when we look at them is dependent on the surfaces or "outside" of the things we are looking at. This is true of the other physical phenomena as well, i.e., touch, taste, smell and sound too, if you think about it.

well yeh thats my point if you think about it!

in ortega's scheme the objectivation is not the thing in itself. So why would one set of thoughts be correct over any other? there is very good rationale for perception of space and time being internal to the brain (not the thing in itself) and also for believing that it is external (and thus usually considered as the thing in itself). I would have thought that ortega would always recognise that thought models were circumstantial and not the things in themselves. Therefore 'inside and outside' may be suspect as accurate descriptions (objectifications) of things.... particularily if different schemes contradict each other. But even more surprising to me is that ortega would use the terms internal and external to I exuctant and circumstance, since there is something necessarily unknowable (objectifiable) about the i executant. Moreover I executant is fundamental in its relationship to perception (acting) and thinking too.

I would have thought a better way to describe the relationship between the I exuctant and its circumstance was as unknowable ..... seperate but connected, behind and with, outside and with, and so on. ie paradoxical to thought and senses because they are circumstantial and cannot objectify the I executant.

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