Levels of reality

So what's really going on?

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Philosophy Explorer
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by Philosophy Explorer »

surreptitious57 wrote:
Philosophy Explorer wrote:
I would request surreptitious57 that you provide a specific example that clearly shows that reality can go altogether out of existence
I never said or implied any such thing and have no idea why you are asking me this. But reality can be defined as all that exists so even
were it possible for it to cease to exist then that state of non existence would be the new reality. And so while the physical state may
change the definition remains the same. Whatever exists is reality even if it is nothing at all and so non existence can also be reality
Although it is not physically possible for it violates the laws of physics so saying so purely for the sake of argument and nothing else
Surreptitious57,

First let me apologize as I thought you were implying just the opposite. Let us move on from there.

So you're in accord with what the scientists have been saying about matter and energy, that they can neither be created nor destroyed, but converted from matter into energy and back into matter again.

From your POV, you're implying that you're not 100% with the Big Bang Theory, that the universe has always been around in some shape or form forever. That's my understanding of your POV.

Now we come to a more interesting discussion, your being. I'm assuming you support the idea of consciousness. If so, then it would be natural to ask what form did your consciousness take before you were born and what form would it have after you die? If you don't have consciousness, then what are you?

PhilX
thedoc
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by thedoc »

Philosophy Explorer wrote:
thedoc wrote:
Philosophy Explorer wrote: I checked my online dictionary on the term "spectrum" which doesn't suggest blending so I don't go along with the term.

If we "blend" yellow with blue, we get green, but the process is reversible and we can get back to yellow and blue so this case suggests the two colors maintain their reality. I would request, Surreptitious57, that you provide a specific example that clearly shows that reality can go altogether out of existence.
PhilX
The spectrum does not mix 2 colors to get a 3rd color as in mixing blue and yellow pigments to get green, the green is a separate frequency of light from blue and yellow. So all colors maintain their reality. At the smallest scales, (atomic scale) colors may come at discrete levels, but at the scale humans see in everyday life, the spectrum is continuous, and each color is a distinct frequency.
To add to this discussion, a "blend" of all the colors would be white. But, technically speaking, white isn't a color even though it may have a distinct frequency. Is green a color?
Normally it is regarded as a color even though it may be produced from two distinct colors. So it's an interesting question, technically speaking, why green is treated as a color while white isn't?

PhilX
I was using the word "spectrum", and I assumed others were as well, in the sense of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is that of light and color, as in the color of the light. There is no distinct frequency for "white" though there is a frequency for green. As has been stated white is the mix of all other colors together, and is an illusion, as there is no frequency for white light.
Philosophy Explorer
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by Philosophy Explorer »

thedoc wrote:
Philosophy Explorer wrote:
thedoc wrote:
The spectrum does not mix 2 colors to get a 3rd color as in mixing blue and yellow pigments to get green, the green is a separate frequency of light from blue and yellow. So all colors maintain their reality. At the smallest scales, (atomic scale) colors may come at discrete levels, but at the scale humans see in everyday life, the spectrum is continuous, and each color is a distinct frequency.
To add to this discussion, a "blend" of all the colors would be white. But, technically speaking, white isn't a color even though it may have a distinct frequency. Is green a color?
Normally it is regarded as a color even though it may be produced from two distinct colors. So it's an interesting question, technically speaking, why green is treated as a color while white isn't?

PhilX
I was using the word "spectrum", and I assumed others were as well, in the sense of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is that of light and color, as in the color of the light. There is no distinct frequency for "white" though there is a frequency for green. As has been stated white is the mix of all other colors together, and is an illusion, as there is no frequency for white light.
Yet doc, green isn't a single color as I indicated before, but it does have a frequency or wavelength. How can that be?

PhilX
thedoc
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by thedoc »

Philosophy Explorer wrote: Yet doc, green isn't a single color as I indicated before, but it does have a frequency or wavelength. How can that be?

PhilX
Green can be mixed from several different pigments, but the green of the spectrum is just one frequency range, each shade of green in the spectrum is a distinct frequency. Green light of one frequency is not the same as mixed pigments to get a particular shade. The 2 are not the same and shouldn't be confused. Pigment operates by deducting certain wavelengths from white light, (if you start with colored light the results might be different), that the eye brain then interprets as a particular color. Light of a frequency might be interpreted as the same color but it does not have the same wavelength. Sometimes the eye/brain will interpret what it expects to see as what is being seen.

FYI I have mixed green from yellow and black pigment, so it doesn't have to be yellow and blue. I'm sure there are other combinations that will give green paint. The other colors of pigment are the same way. There are at least 2 different pigments of white artist oil paints (titanium white,and zinc oxide) and they will have different effects on the finished color mix, one gives a "warmer' color and the other is "cooler". There is no frequency for "white" light and the different mixes of colored light result in different "white" light, even though it all looks white.

I just talked to the operator of a paint store, who was mixing paint as we spoke, and the most often used pigments were a yellow, black, and maroon (red). In color printing the older method was the 4 color process, which is still used in color printers, and there it used cyan (blue) magenta (red), yellow and black to make all the colors that the eye sees. If you look at a 4 color print with a magnifying glass you can see the 4 colored dots of colored ink that the eye/brain then mixes to interpret the colors. Color printers also use dots of colored ink to get the wide variety of color in the finished image but the dots are much closer together and sometimes overlap.
commonsense
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by commonsense »

Philosophy Explorer wrote:The problem is whether the dreamt up people are real or unreal? From my perspective,
they're unreal. From Big Dreamer's perspective, they may be real or unreal depending on the story. Let's alter the scenario to add Nicki Minaj to the scene (live). Now from my perspective, Nicki Minaj is real, but for Big Dreamer, may be real or unreal depending on the story and these are levels of reality because this is all part of my TV screen.

PhilX
Everything got mucked up for me when PhilX injected Nicki into the scenario. By giving us POVs and perspectives as a part of reality, the implication is that reality is relative. This troubled me at first, however it makes sense that what I see on my TV screen could be different than what PhilX's screen displays--say, for example, if my screen is zoomed and Phil's is not.

Does that mean that from my perspective I will only see the reality that exists in my world, making reality an absolute for me in my world? If so, do I have it right that in all possible worlds reality would vary just as each world would vary?
commonsense
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by commonsense »

thedoc wrote:
Philosophy Explorer wrote:
thedoc wrote:...there is a frequency for [the color] green.
Wrong! The frequency that you claim is for green is actually the frequency for red. How could you possibly have gotten that wrong? And as you may have guessed, blue is going to be replaced by chartreuse. Besides, green is not a color, it's a vegetable.
surreptitious57
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by surreptitious57 »

Philosophy Explorer wrote:
what form did your consciousness take before you were born and what form would it have after you die
My consciousness had no form before I was conceived [ rather than born ] and will have none after I die
It is a function of the brain and exclusively so too and so cannot exist outside of it as a separate entity
thedoc
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by thedoc »

commonsense wrote:
thedoc wrote:
Philosophy Explorer wrote:
Wrong! The frequency that you claim is for green is actually the frequency for red. How could you possibly have gotten that wrong? And as you may have guessed, blue is going to be replaced by chartreuse. Besides, green is not a color, it's a vegetable.
Let me know how your colorblindness works out assuming you survive learning how to drive a car.

BTW, green chlorophyll absorbs red light and reflects green light, that's why it looks green to us. Perhaps that is the source of your confusion?
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

commonsense wrote:
Hobbes' Choice wrote: It is perfectly common and reasonable to talk about levels of realism. A documentary about WW2 could be accurate or less so, spin issues that are more or less relevant to the narrative. You cannot include everything, and some accounts will more closely match a person's experience of WW2, whereas others (that might attempt more objectivity) might see to be far off the mark. We are talking about representations, and ultimately your own sense experience is a partial representation, however real it might seem.
Good one. This post made me think about a few more questions for further examination. Are you saying that realism is a portrayal of reality? Is it the case that realism and reality are two different names for the same thing? Does that mean that reality has levels because portrayals of reality can have levels? Please expand or defend your position. What if I choose to separate representations (internal experiences derived from external occurrences) from actual external occurrences--where would I be then? Would the same arguments apply if we were to change the topic to levels of truth? Are truth and accuracy the same thing? And what about experience, in all this?
Objectively there is only one reality. But such is the truth about how humans understand the world, we are doomed to only be able to represent that reality through sense perception.
We commonly accept that seeing is believing, but in honesty, sight, might not be the best, and certainly not a complete way of viewing reality. We know well enough that there are many other things on the periphery and outside our direct perception, and may well be many more aspects of reality we might never know about. We may never know about them in the same way that humans 200 years ago knew nothing about X-rays, microwaves, ultraviolet, infrared, radio waves ad infinitem.
In short our perception is always partial, and thus we can never know reality, but only our proximate version of it.
I suggest that even we we to have more senses we could only perceive our immediate environs.
We are forced to conclude that even truth is partial, and accuracy within certain parameters in range and scope.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

thedoc wrote:
commonsense wrote:
thedoc wrote:
Wrong! The frequency that you claim is for green is actually the frequency for red. How could you possibly have gotten that wrong? And as you may have guessed, blue is going to be replaced by chartreuse. Besides, green is not a color, it's a vegetable.
Let me know how your colorblindness works out assuming you survive learning how to drive a car.

BTW, green chlorophyll absorbs red light and reflects green light, that's why it looks green to us. Perhaps that is the source of your confusion?
But green and red are qualia, of no importance to plants. Cholrophyll absorbs a range of wavelength of light and reflects within a narrow band which humans call green.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

thedoc wrote:
Philosophy Explorer wrote: Yet doc, green isn't a single color as I indicated before, but it does have a frequency or wavelength. How can that be?

PhilX
Green can be mixed from several different pigments,.
"PIgments", obey a completely different set of rules to mixing light.
Light is additive whilst pigments are subtractive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGB_color_model

In the image when red and green are mixed you get yellow. Do that with pigments and you get muddy brown.
Between blue and green you get a bright cyan. With pigment you can very dark green
and so on.
commonsense
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by commonsense »

surreptitious57 wrote:
Philosophy Explorer wrote:
what form did your consciousness take before you were born and what form would it have after you die
My consciousness had no form before I was conceived [ rather than born ] and will have none after I die
It is a function of the brain and exclusively so too and so cannot exist outside of it as a separate entity
I agree with surreptitious up to a point.

Like consciousness, language is a function of the brain. Both are functions of the brain, and yet both exist outside the lifespan of a brain.

Functions yes, but also independent forms of some sort.
thedoc
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by thedoc »

commonsense wrote:
surreptitious57 wrote:
Philosophy Explorer wrote:
what form did your consciousness take before you were born and what form would it have after you die
My consciousness had no form before I was conceived [ rather than born ] and will have none after I die
It is a function of the brain and exclusively so too and so cannot exist outside of it as a separate entity
I agree with surreptitious up to a point.

Like consciousness, language is a function of the brain. Both are functions of the brain, and yet both exist outside the lifespan of a brain.

Functions yes, but also independent forms of some sort.
each Language is common to many in a particular group and language in general is common to almost everyone. Consciousness is specific to each individual, even though it is common to all, but not the same consciousness. Each individual has a consciousness that is unique to that individual even though consciousness is common to all human individuals.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

commonsense wrote:
surreptitious57 wrote:
Philosophy Explorer wrote:
what form did your consciousness take before you were born and what form would it have after you die
My consciousness had no form before I was conceived [ rather than born ] and will have none after I die
It is a function of the brain and exclusively so too and so cannot exist outside of it as a separate entity
I agree with surreptitious up to a point.

Like consciousness, language is a function of the brain. Both are functions of the brain, and yet both exist outside the lifespan of a brain.

Functions yes, but also independent forms of some sort.
Language might exist outside YOUR brain; it exists in the brains of others. Consciousness might exist outside YOUR brain; it might exist in the brains of others.
But when your brain returns to mush when you die there is nothing to generate either language or consciousness.
And since we is not ONE SCRAP of evidence for any language or evidence of consciousness outside of working brains, it is an empty claim to say, "yet both exist outside the lifespan of a brain."
It is not only empty, but empty headed if you will pardon the pun.
commonsense
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Re: Levels of reality

Post by commonsense »

It should be obvious that thedoc & Hobbes tore my argument to shreds. And rightly so. It was short-sighted of me to claim that language could exist without consciousness. Equally off the mark was my taking consciousness out of the individual. There's a circular piece of logic in my statements that anyone (except me, apparently) could see. Thanks for setting things straight.
Last edited by commonsense on Tue Apr 04, 2017 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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