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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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yes werner, yes... be at peace with your truth...
from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/
"Moore and Russell found two main arguments for idealism to be fallacious. The first concerns Berkeley’s idealistic principle that being consists in being perceived, the second the converse claim, attributed to Bradley, that thought entails being. Their criticism of the first as well as their rebuttal of the second argument stems from certain convictions they share as to the nature of knowledge, and is meant to discredit both epistemological and ontological idealism. The assault on Berkeley is staged by Moore most extensively in “The Refutation of Idealism” and picked up in an abbreviated form by Russell ten years later in the chapter on idealism in his The Problems of Philosophy, while the attack on Bradley, although foreshadowed in Russell’s Problems, is spelled out rather lengthily (and a bit nastily) by Moore in “The Conception of Reality” from 1917–18. Their main objection against the two idealistic arguments seems to be that they rely on unjustly presupposing that the mental act of relating to an object (perceiving, thinking, knowing, experiencing) is a necessary condition for the existence of this object. The fallacy involved here consists in failing to make “the distinction between act and object in our apprehending of things”, as Russell (ibid. 42) puts it, or, in Moore’s terminology of The Refutation, in wrongfully identifying the content of “consciousness” with its object (loc. cit., 19 ff.). As soon as this identification is given up and that distinction is made it is at least an open question whether things exist independently of the mind, and idealism insofar it neglects this distinction and holds fast to that identification is refuted because based on an invalid argument.'
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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You’re obtuse (and I think you know it). That little “->” performs a great many functions and creates a wealth of definitions. (Is this how you do math?) “. . . and here, a miracle occurs!” Terrific.
Yes, I acknowledge I'm a bit slow these days and unable to match your singular brilliance. My time has passed and I must hand the baton to energetic and intellectual souls like you and the Wizard. Or maybe I never had a time and have been delusional all those years thinking I could do math. My students over the years have been tragically denied your incredible insights into the emptiness and profound inexplicability of reality, instead being acquainted with such trivia as residue theory and infinite functional expansions. How could I have been so neglectful? Oh yes, I remember, I am hopelessly obtuse.
Pray for me.
;>(
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Oh, I get it now. (I'm so dense.) You're angry.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I refute it thus!
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cintune
climber
Ollin Arageed Space
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I guess it's just too simple to be cool.
Things out there exist first. We perceive them second. We may process and interpret our perceptions differently, but that's irrelevant to the existence of the things we are perceiving.
Not an approach that'll buy you any bragging rights on the morning commute or the bamboo mat, though.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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PSP said, LMAO ! are you channeling blue ring? Zen has no issue at all with science.
Well, tell Largo that.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Things out there exist first. We perceive them second. We may process and interpret our perceptions differently, but that's irrelevant to the existence of the things we are perceiving
That's it. No more need be said.
Now back to Islam and hijabs.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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That's it. No more need be said.
i couldn't agree more. i never understood the, "objects NEEDING a human mind" thing(-less), from the get go. Also, to the avoidance of suffering, and the other "unwanted" emotions, i ask; why the avoidance?? Cannot suffering equate to a positive summation? Why, i might say the crown on the human head is his ability to process the rainbow of emotion he does!
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Mar 10, 2016 - 07:31am PT
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Things out there exist first. We perceive them second. We may process and interpret our perceptions differently, but that's irrelevant to the existence of the things we are perceiving.
cintune wins this thread's "post essence of clarity award."
IMHO ;-)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 10, 2016 - 09:02am PT
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No more need be said.
A scary thought, yet I comfort myself in the expectation that Largo will be back to tell us that no matter how finely you examine a proton you will not find the ability to write King Lear, and MikeL will tell us that King Lear is an hypothesis, an interpretation, and there is no proof it was written.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Mar 10, 2016 - 10:07am PT
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The crowning achievement of human evolution, replacing itself with a synthetic version, a warrior bent on destruction in the name of survival of the fittest. Sounds fitting.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 10, 2016 - 01:43pm PT
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I chose well.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Mar 10, 2016 - 03:06pm PT
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The crowning achievement of human evolution, replacing itself with a synthetic version, a warrior bent on destruction in the name of survival of the fittest. Sounds fitting.
We can genetically engineer many organisms. They already do it with mice, so the leap to humans is not a leap anymore. It is being done all of the time right now. Human subjects will inevitably occur.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering
That link will blow your mind.
So often, if any scientific discovery has military applications, then the military will own the research and classify it. I can be pretty sure that somebody in the military or who is funded by them, is looking at this very thing. At the least, they are following the technology. I would bet that a lot of Ed's work has been classified, preventing him from publishing that topic. Livermore is responsible for our nuclear weapons, after all, and I believe most of them were designed there.
I said this on the other thread, too, but genetically engineered humans will become common sooner than you might think. Scientists are already screening embryos for known heritable diseases. All you need is one cell out of a 32 cell embryo, extract the chromosomes and then the DNA, sequence it, and say, if breast cancer runs in the family, you can choose an embryo that doesn't have that trait. Expensive, yes, but you can be comfortable that if you have a daughter, her chances of getting breast cancer are much, much, lower.
That is simple stuff. We are already splicing genes into mice. Genes that came from a totally different organism. You can take a bacteria gene and put it into corn or mice. If they can do it with animals, well, the only thing keeping us from doing it with humans is ethics. Ethics fade rapidly when big dollars enter the picture.
A brave new world awaits us. The rich countries will be genetically superior, and the poor countries will not. It will also tend to happen along lines of wealth, because this is expensive. There will inevitably be a genetic upper class. Stronger, smarter, better looking, you name it.
I don't know if I will live to see this, but there will come a day when genetically engineered, superior humans will exist. Even if it gets banned in the US, the rest of the world will march on with the technology, and it has obvious military value.
I hate the military. Every cent spent on bullets is embezzled from us.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Mar 10, 2016 - 03:32pm PT
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BASE, where did you ever get the idea that I was "against science?" Not so.
Some might find this interesting. It's from a Cosmologist friend who was talking to non-cosmologists at a recent conference. Pardon me inserting a few bloopers for the fun of it.
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Let’s say that, as perception tells us, any object – an e-cigarette, a ring, and Ed's left wing tip – are all comprised of energy/ particles which take up space, or at any rate, are measured within this, and not that “place.” The Washington Monument is NOT in Delaware, for example. And the tie on Ed's neck is not on BASE's neck. And the quark at CERN is not in Las Vegas, so far as we know.
An interesting question is: Does the assumed object – the monument, the necktie, and the quark - occupy the exact same space as the particles which make it up? What does this actually mean, if it means anything?
Perhaps we say, no, the object does NOT take up the same space as the particles in its makeup, since the constituents of any object are always in flux, so in strict geometric terms, objects do not occupy the exact same space as the particles from which they are composed, though our minds and physical bodies tell us they do. After all, what would a chair occupy space with, if not particles? Pure chair-ness? Concrete space, not filled by particles, but with some kind of non-particle-spatial-stuff. What the Ed would that stuff would be?
This would also imply that the particles are unnecessary, and we could remove them without changing the chair at all. Take a chair, remove the physical particles, and we’re still left with a chair. Of course this is preposterous. There are no ghost-chairs. If we throw the chair into a fire and let it burn to ashes, it doesn’t remain a chair any longer, and it doesn’t take up space (never mind the ashes).
If you pursue this thought far enough, you come to understand that fixed objects “out there” are the stuff of perception, and are observer-created. Quarks, some might say, take up space, but they are not fixed.
There’s many examples of “objects” which have fuzzy boundaries when we start examining their constituent parts – a bed of nails (one nail isn’t a bed), a digital picture (one pixel isn’t a picture), a work of art (one drop of paint is not a Vermeer), etc. But this final example highlights the problem with assigning independent existence to our concepts, and to what our perceptual functions wrangle into “objects.”
Consider the Big Dipper. When we look up at the sky, everybody knows exactly what we’re talking about when referencing the Big Dipper. But what exactly is it? Is the Big Dipper actually a concrete object “out there?” In fact it’s seven stars millions of miles away from each other. It’s a pattern that human observers create and recognize, not some external “object.”
Chairs, houses, baseballs, Ed's checkers collection – all of these things are constellations, meta-perceptual creations and no “thing” more. They are patterns provided by perception, and we give those patterns a name for practical reference. Our words and numbers do not reference actual unified “things,” any more that the Big Dipper is some independent “object” floating around in space. Again, the only object is observer-created and exists as an object, not “out there,” rather as a mental construct.
But - just because objects are conceptual doesn’t mean that “physical” reality disappears without the mind. Particles exist in a manner whether we’re aware of them or not. As Einstein famously said, “I’d like to think the moon is still there when I’m not looking.”
More precisely, in light of our modern understanding, Lil' Al might have more accurately said: The particles at the location which we reference as “the moon” remain, regardless of our mental contributions. But moon, as an a stand-alone object “out there” exists only in our minds. It is “observer created.”
While the above is indisputable per inanimate and observer-created “objects,” it loses traction when applied to the subjective realm. For example, if you believe as many do that consciousness is no more than the emergent output of mechanical, physical parts (brain), when we start removing particles from Ed's brain, for example, we might actually end up taking something additional out of existence – namely, Ed's “self.”
When we reference beings (Edward) and/or consciousness, the boundaries are tricky to establish. Is “Ed” his brain? Is Ed fully explained by his seemingly physical constituent parts? Something to ponder for those interested in the nature of what they are measuring, beyond the numbers.
Bottom line: Perception is extremely effective at carving up so-called physical reality into bite-size pieces. It names “stuff” and distinguishes “this” from “that.” Good thing, too, because we’d have a difficult time navigating the world without boundaries, even if they are observer-created.
But the phenomenon of objects “out there” is entirely in our heads. When we experience interacting with “objects,” we're in fact interacting with concepts, constellations of discrete particles (which are themselves not objects in any meaningful way) which we, the observer, perceptually fashion into “things” separate from ourselves.
This does not imply some hot-tub monism. Physical reality – as it toggles between energy and “matter,” is momentarily divisible, though younger, more progressive scientists would likely hold this is so only between fundamental units of measured phenomenon – for the lack of better generic terms - that the energetic signature of quarks, leptons and bosons, for example, are not selfsame. Even here, it is highly problematic to say that we are measuring an object called a boson that is physically comprised of a discrete energetic and/or material “stuff” existing separate from our measurements, and which physically exists “out there.” We certainly derive measurements, but it is our perception, not so-called physical reality, that tells us the measurement belongs to a thing or an object.
This last point, which calls into question the meaning of “things,” presents a conundrum better imagined than described, but which all of us bump up against the moment we ask, “What is it I am measuring?”
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Mar 10, 2016 - 03:44pm PT
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So while Mike goes on about nobody being able to nail down "what' is is that we are always talking about, his idea is worthy of closer scrutiny for those who are not bored and have the discipline to stop measuring (for just a few minutes a day) and probe the question of what the hell is "out there."
JL
So. I imagine that my son, John Long, has a fever. I go to the medicine cabinet and get the thermometer. I put it beneath his tongue for 3 minutes. When it was removed, it said, 104.5 degrees. So I should get Johnny to the doctor as soon as possible.
We all use measuring tools. I would bet that Largo watches his speedometer when going through a school zone or passing a cop on the highway. He talks a big talk, but he uses "yardsticks" as we all do. The computers or smartphones with which we post were entirely designed with theory and measuring devices. The notion that we rid ourselves of them is impossible most of the time.
I get it that Largo spends part of his time meditating about no-thing. I got that after a few hundred of his posts.
In reality, he uses measuring devices all of the time, down to measuring his feet for his first pair of EB's.
I'm sorry. I don't get it. What value is to be gained by ignoring the tools with which we measure our physical surroundings? Should we blast all of our weather satellites? I'm sure that when he broke his leg that they showed X-rays. Did he save any?
We are a species of tool makers. From our frail little bodies, we can dig enourmous mines using mechanized equipment. We went to the moon using measuring devices to get us there and land.
I'm unaware of any significant human achievement of the practice of no-mind. Not a damn thing. It doesn't mean that none exist, it just means that I haven't heard of it, two different things. I try not to step on the toes of our Zen brethren.
I have read Herman Hesse's book, Siddhartha. I found it amazing. Perhaps if we meditated a couple of hours each day, we would be happier, and better at our jobs. I don't know. That is PSP's domain, not mine, which is totally physical. I know some Buddhists, and none of them have attained enlightenment. Is enlightenment possible, in the sense that Hesse described?
That is not my area. To the zen contingent: How many people have achieved enlightenment?
The next question is, what would you do if you achieved it? A total understanding of everything. Does that include a cure for AIDS?
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Mar 10, 2016 - 03:56pm PT
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^^^^Thanks for a straight up post. We could evade a lot of back and forth if the tenets of Zen were plainly explained, but they never are.
You said this at the end:
The third is epistemic nondualism, i.e., being, non-being and so on cannot be found on analysis and therefore do not ultimately exist....
So, you are saying that if we cannot perceive it or understand it, then it does not exist? In principle? It doesn't "be" or exist?
This all sounds a lot like, "Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if nobody is around to hear it?"
To that, I say, of course. The felling of trees is a well known human activity. Chances are, you live in a home built at least in part using the corpses of dead trees.
So we have an endless number of examples of trees falling, and they all make a crashing sound. So, if you remove the observer, something else is actually happening? Why should it depend on the observer? This is an important question. The only comparable scientific area that I know of is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which falls more along Ed's side of things.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Mar 10, 2016 - 04:01pm PT
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Their main objection against the two idealistic arguments seems to be that they rely on unjustly presupposing that the mental act of relating to an object (perceiving, thinking, knowing, experiencing) is a necessary condition for the existence of this object.
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These arguments were put forth nearly 100 years ago, and came out of the largely British Camp who founded the analytic tradition in philosophy. And if you've ever studied logic, you'd know all about it. The rub against these folks is that, as Tillich said, "They sharpen the knife but don't cut the loaf."
But the important thing is that in the meantime, the arguments have been widely revised once phenomenology entered the picture and perception was better understood. But the biggest step was in no longer conflating the indefinite stuff/non-stuff with meta-level objects "out there." From what my friends tell me in the science camp, while there are no definitive definitions of matter and energy that all agree upon (above and beyond measurements of same), few progressive (under 50 is their cut-off point) scientists would now say that "mind" creates said "stuff/non-stuff." Rather "mind" is an object builder on the meta level. That was the point of the thought experiment - it showed how all descriptions of objects were tied to perception and the symbols we use to frame what we perceive.
The far trickier waters, from what I hear, concerns the slippery issue of the stuff/non-stuff also NOT being objects, case being (among others I hear about endlessly) that a photon is not some "thing" out there that has radiation, rather the only "thing" to "photon" is the word, which describes not a photon/thing existing separate from perception, it describes radiation.
And BASE, you are still not getting the gist of the "Falling tree" thought experiment. "Sound" is a perceptual phenomenon. The falling tree, if no one was there to hear, still produces vibration at a certain frequency, but a snake, for example, even if it was IN the falling tree, would not "hear" the vibrations because snakes have no tempanic membrane, ergo no "sound."
Hope that clears it up for you, that "sound' and vibrations are not selfsame.
JL
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cintune
climber
Ollin Arageed Space
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Mar 10, 2016 - 04:16pm PT
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That seems to be the gist of the whole paradigm: sounds don't exist, but vibrations do; colors don't exist but electromagnetic frequencies do, etc.
So how is it all not just a clever word game, splitting experience and existence into neat little interdependent worlds of their own?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Mar 10, 2016 - 04:34pm PT
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That was the point of the thought experiment - it showed how all descriptions of objects were tied to perception and the symbols we use to frame what we perceive
This seems perfectly obvious if one includes the intermediate devices with which we measure reality. Why the big deal?
The far trickier waters, from what I hear, concerns the slippery issue . . . rather the only "thing" to "photon" is the word, which describes not a photon or thing existing separate from perception, it describes radiation
Perhaps radiation is a thing. And all of this reflects the current thinking in physics . . . which may well change over time.
All that is in our lives are approximations.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Mar 10, 2016 - 05:17pm PT
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That seems to be the gist of the whole paradigm: sounds don't exist, but vibrations do; colors don't exist but electromagnetic frequencies do, etc.
We need to first deconstruct what you just said. First, the normal usage of "paradigm" refers to a model. There is no model being employed in this discussion. This is a matter of taking what is, or what seems to be, and dealing with it straight up.
Next, colors DO exist, but not as physical objects "out there," independent of mind. When you say, "but electromagnetic frequencies do" exist, you have tossed your hat into the physicalists camp, whereby "real" and "physical" are the same, all else is simply imagined. But try telling a back person that colors are not real, or ignoring what color car you want to buy because colors are observer-created. This starts to chip away at the discursive trance insisting that real and physical are selfsame.
What's more, the idea that all of this is simply a matter of words, and not a look at reality, is also mistaken. The "big deal" is only realized once the brute fact of all this goes from being an idea to something that is existentially understood at depth, that we are actively creating.
And John, I would be interested in hearing your take on how radiation is a thing. A thing is always an object:
Full Definition of object
1
a : something material that may be perceived by the senses <I see an object in the distance>
That would mean that radiation, itself, is material (not merely related to or conjoined with material). How so?
JL
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