What is reality?

[The Inglorious One]

I'm claiming an unbounded reality that includes the bounded (but non-distinct), which is non-dualism, not dualism or monism.

You better explain what you mean by this because I have no idea.

Things and beings are localized regions of dominant characteristics rather than distinct entities: "Not one, not two."

Which eastern philosophy do you claim is predicated on transcendent cause? The major ones which I've studied all assume Immanent cause.

I never mentioned anything at all about a "transcendent cause." You merely assumed that it was implied when I said philosophy presupposes and implies a unifying principle that transcends yet includes the subject-object dichotomy. "Principle" and "cause" are not synonymous.

The observer cannot be the thing observed;

This statement is simply false and I have no idea where you might have dug it up. However it would be difficult to conceive of a more blatantly dualist position. Perhaps a crash course in cognitive neuroscience might disabuse you of your Cartesian fantasies because modern science tells us that Descartes got his pithy aphorism arse-about. I am therefore I think makes a hell of a lot more sense than it does the other way around, as Kant pointed out. It is not our objects which specify our cognition but our cognition which specifies our objects.

Who or what is postulating that the statement is false? (I wonder what the world would be like id Descartes said, "I experience, therefore I am.") What I said is indeed dualistic if the observer is thought to be "separate from" that which is evaluated. However, that is not the position I'm taking. My position is that the evaluator in some degree or in some sense transcends the evaluated but is not separate from it. The life of a flower transcends the minerals that comprise its body, but it is not separate from it.

Aldous Huxley wrote a very famous book on this subject entitled The Perennial Philosophy.

Mine is not a solipsist position. I accept the existence of an objectively real world but merely claim that how we choose to model it is entirely subjective.

It's solipsism, but other than that I agree with your evaluation.

Inductive conclusions drawn from observation can make no truth statements about their own ontological validity because this process is entirely tautologous.

True, inductive conclusions cannot make truth statements, but it can make value statements drawn from observation. Otherwise, logic would dictate that Pol Pot and Mother Teresa are morally equivalent.

"Don't you understand that the one who made the inside is also the one who made the outside?" Inside and outside coexist in a feedback loop, as it were.

I'm not sure that I understand what you're saying here but I suspect that I agree with you because this a very Kantian view. We can confirm the objects of our cognition only by cognising them, which means that even in principle our cognition can only ever confirm or deny itself. There simply is no "outside" referential frame from which we can observe the world, even in principle. We are merely the emergent consequence of a dynamic process involving the behaviour of matter and energy. We are made up of the very stuff of the universe itself and thus have no choice but to observe it from the inside out. This has important metaphysical consequences because what we really mean when we say that we observe our world from inside out is that we observe our world by looking BACKWARDS down the arrow of time. The observer observes a universe which no longer exists.

Most neuroscientists believe that consciousness is an emergent property of a feedback loop. I agree, but expand the idea to include the whole of reality rather than confining it to the brain. The crux of our disagreement, I think, lies where you said, "There simply is no "outside" referential frame from which we can observe the world, even in principle." That's the very definition of solipsism (the philosophical theory that the self is all that you know to exist). It may be true in the absolute sense, but it is mere sophistry nonetheless.

Inside and outside are a continuum, but we live in a relativistic world in which values and material objects cannot be dismissed. Even a Hindu who believes it's all Maya won't step in front of a moving bus. And, I would suggest, for good reason. ("Don't you understand that the one who made the inside is also the one who made the outside?" is from the Gospel of Thomas. I inserted it only to show that I'm not saying anything new.)

A logical and consistent concept of the universe cannot be built up on the postulations of either materialism or subjectivism, for both of these systems of thinking, when universally applied, are compelled to view the cosmos in distortion. Never, then, can either science or subjectivism, in and of themselves, standing alone, hope to gain an adequate understanding of universal truths and relationships. That's why we need philosophy.

[The Inglorious One]

A Course in Consciousness is written by a physicist. It, too, is interesting in spite of its problems.

I think I'll pass. Physics has a very poor track record in understanding the role that human consciousness plays in our understanding of the physical universe so I fear that reading a physicist on the subject of consciousness would be about as illuminating as reading a prostitute on the subject of chastity.

LOL! I can't fault you there, but it does get you thinking.

[Obvious Leo]

I said philosophy presupposes and implies a unifying principle that transcends yet includes the subject-object dichotomy.

I'm not convinced that you understand what transcends means but I certainly don't agree with this statement. Philosophy makes no transcendent assumptions whatsoever because such notions lie beyond philosophical enquiry by definition. Any unifying principle for reality must be an immanent property of its own mechanism but that will never help the observer. He still has to define and describe whatever patterns of self-organisation he observes according to whatever unifying principles he has the imagination to invent. Naturally this is an existential claim which cannot possibly make sense to anybody who regards physical reality as the construct of a creator. This was actually Newton's a priori assumption and he specifically defined physics as an attempt to model the mind of such a creator. Sadly after 400 years physics still hasn't wavered from this objective.

My position is that the evaluator in some degree or in some sense transcends the evaluated but is not separate from it. The life of a flower transcends the minerals that comprise its body, but it is not separate from it.

This is a non-standard usage of the word transcends and I'd advise you not to use it in this way, even though I'm pretty I understand what you mean. It has the sour taste of dualist mysticism about it which is inappropriate in philosophy. The "livingness" of a flower is an emergent property of the behaviour of the matter and energy which constitute it and that's all it is. There is no external agency which gives the flower the property of "Life", although I'm not accusing you of suggesting this. The "livingness" of life is no more remarkable than the wetness of water because we simply accept that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and thus has more complex properties.

Most neuroscientists believe that consciousness is an emergent property of a feedback loop. I agree, but expand the idea to include the whole of reality rather than confining it to the brain.

Absolutely agreed. That cognition is an embodied PROCESS is nowadays mainstream neuroscience. Our consciousness is merely a complex sequence of electro-chemical events which act as a staggeringly complex non-linear information processor. The simplest vertebrate mind makes the most sophisticated linear computer on the planet look like an abacus. Most philosophers of information and computation share the view that to create an artificial mind of any meaningful complexity is now and will always remain utterly impossible. (Setting aside the inconvenient fact that only a madman would even dare contemplate building such a thing. Minds are notoriously unpredictable.)

That's the very definition of solipsism (the philosophical theory that the self is all that you know to exist).

I accept this definition and therefore can't understand why you see my position as being solipsistic. At no stage have I claimed that the self is all that exists. All I'm saying is that the self is the only thing we've got to construct our models of reality with.

Never, then, can either science or subjectivism, in and of themselves, standing alone, hope to gain an adequate understanding of universal truths and relationships. That's why we need philosophy.

I agree with the principle but not with the underlying assumption. What are your grounds for supposing that there's any such thing as a universal truth?

[Scott Mayers]

I understood "transcendence" to imply act of going beyond a given dimension without specifying its existence or non-existence. To "transcend" the place or 'dimension' of nothingness defines a line; to "transcend" a line's dimension is the place or dimension of a plane; to "transcend" a plane is to space; to "transcend" a space is to find time; etc... .

As to any underlying unique unique truth:

Assume that "No unique truth exists". Therefore multiple such truths exist necessarily. Let 'X' stand for "the set of all multiple truths". Then one unique truth, namely, 'X', as defined exists. If 'X' is not allowed because one such multiple truth can include 'X' as one of the truths within it, then the 'process' of infinite regress can be defined as 'Y'. It breaks no rule to even be contradictory as this too is a truth within 'X'. Thus, "No unique truths exists" is proven simultaneously true OR(logically inclusive) false. Let this last statement/sentence represent a unique truth. Then "No unique truth exists" is not so unique after all.

Therefore, at least one unique truth MUST exist.

[henry quirk]

What is Reality?

The sum total of what exists.

What exists?

Every- and any-thing that persists after you stop paying attention to (stop believing in) it.

[The Inglorious One]

I said philosophy presupposes and implies a unifying principle that transcends yet includes the subject-object dichotomy.

I'm not convinced that you understand what transcends means but I certainly don't agree with this statement. Philosophy makes no transcendent assumptions whatsoever because such notions lie beyond philosophical enquiry by definition. Any unifying principle for reality must be an immanent property of its own mechanism but that will never help the observer. He still has to define and describe whatever patterns of self-organisation he observes according to whatever unifying principles he has the imagination to invent. Naturally this is an existential claim which cannot possibly make sense to anybody who regards physical reality as the construct of a creator. This was actually Newton's a priori assumption and he specifically defined physics as an attempt to model the mind of such a creator. Sadly after 400 years physics still hasn't wavered from this objective.

I don't think you'll find many philosophers arguing that Plotinus was not a philosopher. Moreover, "Philosophy makes no transcendent assumptions whatsoever because such notions lie beyond philosophical enquiry by definition" is itself a transcendent statement. It presumes to put boundaries around the unbounded and claims it to be meaningful statement only because it presupposes a unifying principle.

My position is that the evaluator in some degree or in some sense transcends the evaluated but is not separate from it. The life of a flower transcends the minerals that comprise its body, but it is not separate from it.

This is a non-standard usage of the word transcends and I'd advise you not to use it in this way, even though I'm pretty I understand what you mean. It has the sour taste of dualist mysticism about it which is inappropriate in philosophy. The "livingness" of a flower is an emergent property of the behaviour of the matter and energy which constitute it and that's all it is. There is no external agency which gives the flower the property of "Life", although I'm not accusing you of suggesting this. The "livingness" of life is no more remarkable than the wetness of water because we simply accept that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and thus has more complex properties.

Then I suggest you read Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy. You can download it free on the internet.

One of the reasons I like Holophany is that it embraces paradox instead of regarding it as something to avoid at all cost. For example, you probably think it is impossible to make sense of the statements "monism that reject dualism is dualism" or "the sound of one hand clapping is the sound of one hand clapping." Yet, it makes perfect sense from a non-rational (not irrational) point of view. Some theists argue that Creatorship is the aggregate of God's acting nature. That being said, is the universe the effect of an external agent? Is God immanent or transcendent or both? Does it even make sense to say God's transcendence makes God an external causative agent? To say "The "livingness" of life is no more remarkable than the wetness of water" is meaningless tautology. Is the experience of "livingness" the same as the experience of "wetness"?

That's the very definition of solipsism (the philosophical theory that the self is all that you know to exist).

I accept this definition and therefore can't understand why you see my position as being solipsistic. At no stage have I claimed that the self is all that exists. All I'm saying is that the self is the only thing we've got to construct our models of reality with.

You have, however, made the claim (or at least strongly implied) that the subjective is all that really matters.

Never, then, can either science or subjectivism, in and of themselves, standing alone, hope to gain an adequate understanding of universal truths and relationships. That's why we need philosophy.

I agree with the principle but not with the underlying assumption. What are your grounds for supposing that there's any such thing as a universal truth?

I never said, nor did I imply, there is a "universal truth."

[Obvious Leo]

It presumes to put boundaries around the unbounded

To assume that reality is unbounded is a conceptual leap which takes one beyond the domain of philosophy into the realm of the unknowable. I don't deny that there are some thinkers who have done this over the years but I regard the unknowable as not being a legitimate subject of philosophical enquiry. You may see this as a matter of personal taste but I regard it as a necessary ontological commitment if our universe is to be comprehensible. Surely we can agree that the goal of both philosophy and science is comprehension.

Then I suggest you read Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy. You can download it free on the internet.

I've had a copy of this book for over thirty years although I'll admit that it might be almost that many years since I last read it. I have a substantial library which includes all of Huxley's work, although I've always regarded his grandfather Thomas as a far more significant figure in philosophy. Thomas Huxley was the bloke who did all of Charles Darwin's heavy intellectual lifting.

That being said, is the universe the effect of an external agent?

This is not a trivial question for the reasons which I've outlined. If the universe is the effect of an external agent it is immediately defined as unknowable.

Is God immanent or transcendent or both?

Take your pick pal because sitting on the fence is not an option. The universe is either sufficient to its own existence or it isn't. You can have the trinity of Aquinas, Newton and Descartes or you can have Leibniz, Spinoza and Buddha. These are mutually exclusive philosophies.

Does it even make sense to say God's transcendence makes God an external causative agent?

Any philosophical discussion defaults to the absurd once god is brought into it. Either the universe is everything that exists or it isn't but both philosophy and science are only meaningful if we assume that it is.

Is the experience of "livingness" the same as the experience of "wetness"?

Yes. It is a description of a state of being.

You have, however, made the claim (or at least strongly implied) that the subjective is all that really matters.

I'm saying that the subjective is all we've got and is therefore the only reality we can make meaningful statements about. I think we've managed to agree that such statements can have no inherent truth value.

I never said, nor did I imply, there is a "universal truth."

I'm pleased to hear it. It's a filthy habit.

[The Inglorious One]

I understood "transcendence" to imply act of going beyond a given dimension without specifying its existence or non-existence. To "transcend" the place or 'dimension' of nothingness defines a line; to "transcend" a line's dimension is the place or dimension of a plane; to "transcend" a plane is to space; to "transcend" a space is to find time; etc... .

As to any underlying unique unique truth:

Assume that "No unique truth exists". Therefore multiple such truths exist necessarily. Let 'X' stand for "the set of all multiple truths". Then one unique truth, namely, 'X', as defined exists. If 'X' is not allowed because one such multiple truth can include 'X' as one of the truths within it, then the 'process' of infinite regress can be defined as 'Y'. It breaks no rule to even be contradictory as this too is a truth within 'X'. Thus, "No unique truths exists" is proven simultaneously true OR(logically inclusive) false. Let this last statement/sentence represent a unique truth. Then "No unique truth exists" is not so unique after all.

Therefore, at least one unique truth MUST exist.

Really, you should read Holophany. The author uses different words to essentially say the same thing.

[The Inglorious One]

What is Reality?

The sum total of what exists.

What exists?

Every- and any-thing that persists after you stop paying attention to (stop believing in) it.

I like that. It brings to mind another book....

[The Inglorious One]

To assume that reality is unbounded is a conceptual leap which takes one beyond the domain of philosophy into the realm of the unknowable. I don't deny that there are some thinkers who have done this over the years but I regard the unknowable as not being a legitimate subject of philosophical enquiry. You may see this as a matter of personal taste but I regard it as a necessary ontological commitment if our universe is to be comprehensible. Surely we can agree that the goal of both philosophy and science is comprehension.

You sound like a physicist bound to the doctrine of "shut-up and calculate." It may be a useful and practical methodology, but hardly encompasses the sum of human experience (and falls short of reality).

That being said, is the universe the effect of an external agent?

This is not a trivial question for the reasons which I've outlined. If the universe is the effect of an external agent it is immediately defined as unknowable.

I asked a simple question: Can the God I described be said to be an "external agent"?

Take your pick pal because sitting on the fence is not an option. The universe is either sufficient to its own existence or it isn't. You can have the trinity of Aquinas, Newton and Descartes or you can have Leibniz, Spinoza and Buddha. These are mutually exclusive philosophies.

So it's an either/or proposition? Why should reality be so limited?

Does it even make sense to say God's transcendence makes God an external causative agent?

Any philosophical discussion defaults to the absurd once god is brought into it. Either the universe is everything that exists or it isn't but both philosophy and science are only meaningful if we assume that it is.

So, most philosophical discussions over the past few thousand years are absurd?

Is the experience of "livingness" the same as the experience of "wetness"?

Yes. It is a description of a state of being.

So quantity of experience = quality of experience?

You have, however, made the claim (or at least strongly implied) that the subjective is all that really matters.

I'm saying that the subjective is all we've got and is therefore the only reality we can make meaningful statements about. I think we've managed to agree that such statements can have no inherent truth value.

Sure, but is the subjective all that really matters?

[Obvious Leo]

You sound like a physicist bound to the doctrine of "shut-up and calculate."

I'm not a physicist although I've studied the subject extensively for decades. I'm a philosopher of physics and it has always been my fervent wish that the physicists would stay in their own playpen and play with their own toys. One of my greatest heroes in 20th century physics was Niels Bohr and the doctrine of "shut up and calculate" originated with him. He knew perfectly well that the tools of physics were not the right tools to use to explain physical reality and he was dead bloody RIGHT. Unfortunately the generations of physicists who followed in his footsteps didn't know their epistemological arses from their ontological elbows so his cautionary warning went unheeded. I still stand shoulder to shoulder with Bohr on this. The physicists should just shut up and calculate and leave the metaphysics to those who are schooled in such matters.

Unfortunately the philosophy of physics is an unattractive field of study for most philosophers because the mathematical extravaganza one needs to wade through in order to understand its logical inconsistencies is intimidating for most scholars. It's very intimidating for me as well but I'm a pig-headed sort of a bloke who reckons that if it sounds like bullshit it probably is.

I asked a simple question: Can the God I described be said to be an "external agent"?

I must have missed the bit where you described your god. Newton's god is an external causal agent and Spinoza's is not. I'll withhold comment on your god until you offer me a definition of such a being. You know how it is with gods, they seem to mean all things to all men.

Take your pick pal because sitting on the fence is not an option. The universe is either sufficient to its own existence or it isn't. You can have the trinity of Aquinas, Newton and Descartes or you can have Leibniz, Spinoza and Buddha. These are mutually exclusive philosophies.

So it's an either/or proposition? Why should reality be so limited?

If you understood these philosophies you wouldn't be asking this question. They offer diametrically opposed views on the nature of determinism and therefore they simply can't both be right.

So, most philosophical discussions over the past few thousand years are absurd?

Any philosophical discussion is absurd if it involves speculation about entities whose existence cannot be established. The same goes for science so the geeks can shove their multiple universes and hidden spatial dimensions up their arses as well. An explanation which explains everything is an explanation which explains nothing.

Sure, but is the subjective all that really matters?

It is to me.

[A_Seagull]

[quote="Obvious Leo"][Any philosophical discussion is absurd if it involves speculation about entities whose existence cannot be established.
[quote]

Then perhaps all philosophical discussion is absurd? For the existence of any entity cannot be established except as a speculation. The confidence one might have in the existence of a tree or an atom is just one of degree.

As to the question of "What is reality?" : "Reality" is a word that is used as a label for a concept that pertains to what might actually exist beyond our senses. In other words, it refers to what might exist as the source of the data that we detect through our senses.

[Obvious Leo]

[Any philosophical discussion is absurd if it involves speculation about entities whose existence cannot be established.

Then perhaps all philosophical discussion is absurd? For the existence of any entity cannot be established except as a speculation. The confidence one might have in the existence of a tree or an atom is just one of degree.

As to the question of "What is reality?" : "Reality" is a word that is used as a label for a concept that pertains to what might actually exist beyond our senses. In other words, it refers to what might exist as the source of the data that we detect through our senses.

You are late to the conversation, Seagull, but essentially you're saying what I've been saying. Reality in physics is nothing more than the construct of the observer, thus both tree and atom are only such because that's the way we've inter-subjectively agreed to codify a set of observational data. How we do this is entirely arbitrary and can make no statement about the underlying processes which actually generate the data. This is the point which Bohr took pains to stress and which most of the pioneers of early 20th century physics clearly understood. In fact Schrodinger's story of the simultaneously dead and alive cat was always intended as a piss-take at his own expense and a reminder to his colleagues not to take themselves too literally. If QM is taken literally then a cat can quite literally be dead and alive at the same time and no object in the universe can exist unless a conscious observer is observing it.

The cat story is obviously bollocks but that no object can exist in the absence of an observer SHOULD have given them the clue as to what the problem was. In the absence of an observer an object will still exist but it can have no spatial extension because the Cartesian space is a mathematical object and not a physical one, which makes the space the property of the observer and not the property of the object. Einstein himself was acutely aware of the problem of the observer throughout his life and openly said so.

"We must never forget that spacetime is not physically real"....Albert Einstein.

Einstein was almost immediately dismissed as an obsolete has-been after the publication of GR because he knew bloody well that there was something seriously wrong with it. It inescapably required spooky action at a distance which could not be accounted for within the paradigm, a problem which still obtains a century later. Unfortunately the lunatics took over the asylum in physics and logical positivism became the prevailing ideology of the day. This chilling doctrine denies the role of human reason in the conduct of human affairs and consequently physics has never since made sense. Even to this day many physicists continue to maintain that our universe can only be understood in the language of mathematics, a claim which conflates the map with the territory and one which any scholar of philosophy should dismiss out of hand.

[The Inglorious One]

Sure, but is the subjective all that really matters?

It is to me.

That's the problem with solipsism: to you, all philosophical discussion is absurd.

Sorry, but I'm gonna cut you off because you have no business being in philosophy forum.

[A_Seagull]

Sure, but is the subjective all that really matters?

It is to me.

That's the problem with solipsism: to you, all philosophical discussion is absurd.

Sorry, but I'm gonna cut you off because you have no business being in philosophy forum.

The real problem with philosophical discussions is that most 'philosophers' have very little idea what philosophy is all about; they do not understand its processes nor limitations.