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andrewss
precariously aggrandized
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Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lately.
#11611429 - 12/08/09 05:52 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Seems like this passage could be a bit relevant given the discussions in the last couple of days on here... give it a read...
To the Realists… You sober people who feel well armed against passion and fantasies and would like to turn your emptiness into a matter of pride and an ornament: you call yourselves realists and hint that the world really is the way it appears to you. As if reality stood unveiled before you only, and you yourselves were perhaps the best part of it – O you beloved images of Sais! But in your unveiled state are not even you still very passionate and dark creatures compared to fish, and still far too similar to an artist in love? And what is “reality” for an artist in love? You are still burdened with those estimates of things that have their origin in the passions and loves of former centuries. Your sobriety still contains a secret and inextinguishable drunkenness. Your love of “reality,” for example – oh, that is a primeval “love.” Every feeling and sensation contains a piece of this old love; and some fantasy, some prejudice, some unreason, some ignorance, some fear, and ever so much else has contributed to it and worked on it. That mountain there! That cloud there! What is “real” in that? Subtract the phantasm and every human contribution from it, my sober friends! If you can! If you can forget your descent, your past, your training – all of your humanity and animality. There is no “reality” for us – not for your either, my sober friends. We are not nearly as different as you think, and perhaps our good will to transcend intoxication is as respectable as your faith that you are altogether incapable of intoxication.
- Nietzsche in The Gay Science
Should we suppose that our experiences of appearances and sensations stem from our human perspective and nothing more? So we access perspectival sensation only. We know nothing of what existence is like with our head cut off. To demand that the world we access via our senses as objective seems odd. So the world we sense is the appearance of the thing-in-itself? What is is what we experience and this is 1 more mode of regarding - even then it seems like solidity is the one that really matters. Our perspective is valid yes but is it just 1 mode? Are there other modes? Will our mode fade out? But yeah, its "objective" enough for us indeed in the flash of human experience there are true consequences for us. I guess I would rather say, the datum that we receive is good enough for our time and place, and surely our perspective has to exert its influence.
Is there an objective world of the thing in itself or just appearances (not just visual) from one or another perspective?
What about change and influx - our temporality might really confuse us when we try to get ultimate.
Not to mention the demand of uniformity. Could we say that becoming and change - in a substance sense - underline the relative temporality of everything? That is to say, everything - even you - are subject to change/influx; you popped into the world and will burst. To demand the thing-in-itself objectivity is to freeze frame the moment vulgarly as the finite being does... almost by necessity. That is to say, as being warps and becomes what we might call objective those things that we can relate to. But is it not evident that the aether - substance - has been something transforming since forever.
Objective? Objective enough....
Quote:
In so far as the word “knowledge” has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings.
I dunno, what say you? I am not sure what to think
-------------------- Jesus loves you.
Edited by andrewss (12/08/09 06:18 PM)
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 95,368
Loc: underbelly
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lately. [Re: andrewss]
#11611816 - 12/08/09 06:42 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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I've been thinking on this lately. Animals, on this earth, with this one exception, seem to deal with everything as if it were objectively real. In this they survive and thrive on this planet. Does it matter if it isn't actually as it appears to them?
Now for us it is a issue of some concern whether we see things as they "actually" are. But let me ask you this. Why this deep concern? What is at the bottom of it?
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Sleepwalker
Overshoes
Registered: 05/07/08
Posts: 5,503
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lately. [Re: Icelander]
#11611842 - 12/08/09 06:45 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
Icelander said: What is at the bottom of it?
Death anxiety? :flirt:
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Kasu
Dialectician
Registered: 11/25/09
Posts: 97
Loc: Detroit, Michigan
Last seen: 10 years, 10 months
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: Sleepwalker]
#11611873 - 12/08/09 06:50 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Nietzsche? Really? The guy who rejected the existence of atoms and said "the biggest fable of all is the fable of knowledge"? These conceptions were formed at a time when science was first coming out of the closet, during the enlightenment, where people were questioning tradition, what they believed, the church, God, mythology, etc. They were for the first time using natural science to obtain truth. As always, there was right-wing and conservative reaction to this scientific progress, doubting the ability of science to obtain truth, defending the Church, condemning intellectuals. Nietzsche was part of this reactionary crowd. There's nothing "psychedelic" about that counterrevolutionary garbage.
Our perceptions are indeed a reflection of the world that exists outside of our own existence. Through properly functioning sense-organs, we can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell the thing-in-itself, which are then reflected in the human mind and translated into human thought, by a very complex process of neural networks..
With psychedelic drugs, these ordinary sensations of the world outside us are scrambled, crisscrossed, inverted, turned inside out and upside down. It replaces normally functioning neuro-transmitters with a structurally similar chemical, which has a profound impact on sensation and perception, mood, cognition, etc. These experiences give you a lot of insight into your past memories and experiences, and let you see the world in a new way, and let you contrast between psychedelic experiences and the real world.
I don't think that just because you can change chemicals in your brain, effectively organizing your brain into a new, more complex way, renders the every day world we perceive as "an illusion". When our perceptions are wrong, then the intended task we seek to do is bound to fail. So we adapt our perceptions to reality, so that we can succeed. With psychedelics, our perceptions are wrong. They induce spiritual experiences, but they don't reflect objective reality. If we were to trust those perceptions, we would run into traffic, fall off balconies, etc. You have to distinguish between every day life and hallucination.
-------------------- wsws.org
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
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Posts: 95,368
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lately. [Re: Sleepwalker]
#11611895 - 12/08/09 06:53 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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This is also one thing that really seems to separate us from the rest. We are able to comprehend that we are not permanent in our animal form and in our personality structure. We die. That is the crux of the dilemma is it not; that leads to a frantic search for meaning. We look for meaning rather then being. Pretty weird shit.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Kasu
Dialectician
Registered: 11/25/09
Posts: 97
Loc: Detroit, Michigan
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: Icelander]
#11611972 - 12/08/09 07:01 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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We realize that individually, we are limited, we only have a short time to experience consciousness. We make up for that limitation through an endless succession of generations.
-------------------- wsws.org
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: Kasu]
#11612397 - 12/08/09 07:53 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Who's we white man? You're not going to tell me you live on through your offspring are you?
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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andrewss
precariously aggrandized
Registered: 08/17/07
Posts: 8,725
Loc: ohio
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: Kasu]
#11612559 - 12/08/09 08:10 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
Kasu said: Nietzsche? Really? The guy who rejected the existence of atoms and said "the biggest fable of all is the fable of knowledge"? These conceptions were formed at a time when science was first coming out of the closet, during the enlightenment, where people were questioning tradition, what they believed, the church, God, mythology, etc. They were for the first time using natural science to obtain truth. As always, there was right-wing and conservative reaction to this scientific progress, doubting the ability of science to obtain truth, defending the Church, condemning intellectuals. Nietzsche was part of this reactionary crowd. There's nothing "psychedelic" about that counterrevolutionary garbage.
Huh? Nietzsche was in favor of science... he just was in favor of always reevaluating and questioning ... I am not so sure it was the ability of science to obtain truths but rather he just wanted to even evaluate truth. But the sum of his works is all over the place and it is hard to nail down exactly where he stood on some things...
I dont think its a question of whether or not our senses are valid, obviously they are, its just a question of there being one proper way to describe reality. Obviously some other animals see and hear the same events that we do, just differently - such as ones with eyes that pick up on different light waves and ears that pick up on different frequencies, etc... How do we rank and such?
-------------------- Jesus loves you.
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andrewss
precariously aggrandized
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Posts: 8,725
Loc: ohio
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: Icelander]
#11612577 - 12/08/09 08:12 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
Icelander said: Who's we white man? You're not going to tell me you live on through your offspring are you?
Well it seems that in a sense that is true, though the identity of the finite mind - your personality - doesnt translate into your offspring but the dna you transfer down through reproduction is a sort of "living on"
-------------------- Jesus loves you.
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: andrewss]
#11612619 - 12/08/09 08:15 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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And when I die my decomposed body lives on in the little daisies.
Don't quite think that's what he meant.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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andrewss
precariously aggrandized
Registered: 08/17/07
Posts: 8,725
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: Icelander]
#11612728 - 12/08/09 08:27 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Indeed, just another change
-------------------- Jesus loves you.
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shivas.wisdom
בּ
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: Icelander]
#11613000 - 12/08/09 09:00 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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I am just atoms, my perception of an intrinsic physical body seperate from the surrounding atoms is illusion.
I was a dinosaur 65million years ago, I was a nebula 9billion years ago, I wonder what I'll be in the next while.
Atoms don't die. I don't die. I just change.
--------------------
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deCypher
Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: shivas.wisdom]
#11613102 - 12/08/09 09:18 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
shivas.wisdom said: I am just atoms
No, you are a particular structure of atoms. This structure is what makes you different from a rock or a dinosaur.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
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Kasu
Dialectician
Registered: 11/25/09
Posts: 97
Loc: Detroit, Michigan
Last seen: 10 years, 10 months
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: deCypher]
#11613668 - 12/08/09 11:11 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
No, you are a particular structure of atoms. This structure is what makes you different from a rock or a dinosaur.
Exactly. The human mind is a product of matter organized in a definite way. With the help of the brain, 5 or 6 sense organs, a nervous system, circulation system, metabolism etc, you are able to reflect the world around you, obtain energy, in a struggle against nature to secure your own existence.
Indeed, you are given the external world through sensation. Sensation is indeed the direct connection between consciousness, and matter.
Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them. Therefore, to say such a concept can become "antiqued" is childish talk, a senseless repetition of the arguments of fashionable reactionary philosophy.
Yesterday we did not know that coal tar contained alizarin. Today we learned that it does. The question is, did coal tar contain alizarin yesterday?
Of course it did. To doubt it would be to make a mockery of modern science. And if that is so, three important epistemological conclusions follow:
1) Things exist independently of our consciousness, independently of our perceptions, outside of us, for it is beyond doubt that alizarin existed in coal tar yesterday and it is equally beyond doubt that yesterday we knew nothing of the existence of this alizarin and received no sensations from it.
2) There is definitely no difference in principle between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and there can be no such difference. The only difference is between what is known and what is not yet known. And philosophical inventions of specific boundaries between the one and the other, inventions to the effect that the thing-in-itself is "beyond" phenomena (Kant), or that we can and must fence ourselves off by some philosophical partition from the problem of a world which in one part or another is still unknown but which exists outside us (Hume) — all this is the sheerest nonsense, Schrulle,99 crotchet, invention.
3) In the theory of knowledge, as in every other branch of science, we must think dialectically, that is, we must not regard our knowledge as ready-made and unalterable, but must determine how knowledge emerges from ignorance, how incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact.
Once we accept the point of view that human knowledge develops from ignorance, we shall find millions of examples of it just as simple as the discovery of alizarin in coal tar, millions of observations not only in the history of science and technology but in the everyday life of each and every one of us that illustrate the transformation of "things-in-themselves" into "things-for-us," the appearance of "phenomena" when our sense-organs experience an impact from external objects, the disappearance of "phenomena" when some obstacle prevents the action upon our sense-organs of an object which we know to exist. The sole and unavoidable deduction to be made from this — a deduction which all of us make in everyday practice and which materialism deliberately places at the foundation of its epistemology — is that outside us, and independently of us, there exist objects, things, bodies and that our perceptions are images of the external world.
-------------------- wsws.org
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: shivas.wisdom]
#11615606 - 12/09/09 09:25 AM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
shivas.wisdom said: I am just atoms, my perception of an intrinsic physical body seperate from the surrounding atoms is illusion.
I was a dinosaur 65million years ago, I was a nebula 9billion years ago, I wonder what I'll be in the next while.
Atoms don't die. I don't die. I just change.
Actually I think it's energy that doesn't die.
The energy in a closed system is continually recycled. OK now lets get on with being the illusion cause IMO it's all we really got in this impermanent form.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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shivas.wisdom
בּ
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: Icelander]
#11615615 - 12/09/09 09:27 AM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Walla!
--------------------
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Kasu
Dialectician
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Posts: 97
Loc: Detroit, Michigan
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: shivas.wisdom]
#11618285 - 12/09/09 04:32 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
Atoms don't die. I don't die. I just change.
If atoms could see, think, hear, and sense the world around them, they would have no reason to evolve and develop over millions of years to produce organisms that have the ability to do just that. Consciousness is a product of matter organized in a particular way, it isn't a general property of all matter. Sensation is only associated with the higher forms of matter, i.e. organic matter.
When you die, your body breaks down, it de-organizes, it withers away. Like all things in this universe, nothing is permanent. Everything has a life cycle. The only consistent law in the universe is that for eternity things will come into existence and then wither way. Consciousness is also one of those things, it's only temporary, giving you a glimpse of the world around you before you turn back into lifeless, thoughtless matter, to be used for energy by other organisms.
-------------------- wsws.org
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lat [Re: Kasu]
#11618317 - 12/09/09 04:36 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Consciousness is also one of those things, it's only temporary, giving you a glimpse of the world around you before you turn back into lifeless, thoughtless matter, to be used for energy by other organisms.
Appears so.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Lakefingers
Registered: 08/26/05
Posts: 6,440
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lately. *DELETED* [Re: Icelander]
#11622549 - 12/10/09 10:40 AM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Post deleted by Lakefingers
Reason for deletion: No reason.
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Icelander
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Registered: 03/15/05
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Re: Realism, objectivity, perspective, deception..... This seems relevant considering this place lately. [Re: Lakefingers]
#11622579 - 12/10/09 10:48 AM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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He had is perceptive moments for sure.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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