CommieBastard
20th January 2005, 16:48
This is sort of a follow on from the thread 'On Falsity, Conjecture and Truth', which is itself sort of a follow on from the thread 'On Language'.
At the end of the my last thread i asked 'what can we actually say is something which exists?'.
Essentialy, the question is 'What is real?'
The sceptical arguments tell us that we cannot be certain of the reality of anything. For all we know reality as we perceive it could be a computer simulation, or the creations of an allmighty being. These are not things we can discount. We cannot assert that there is a physical universe composed of continuous objects which correlate in some meaningful way to our perceptions and that remain in existence when we are not perceiving them.
So what are we left with?
I assert that what we are left with is essentialy 'One's experiences exist'.
Not too dissimilar to descartes 'I think therefore i am'. But it is a little.
In the sentence 'One's experiences exist' it refers individually to either the writer or whoever is reading the text. When we individually examine the way things are, we can know indubitably that our experiences exist. Regardless of what the source of these experiences is, they exist. So, that is what we are. There is no point saying that we might be a computer program, or a part of God's mind, or a physical being in human shape, because any of these might be true. What we can say is us, is our self, is that bundle of perceptual and conceptual experiences which is churning away.
But is this all we can say? We would not have gotten far if it was.
We can further say that within our experience there is distinctions. There are the higher level distinctions, between visual, auditory, conceptual, emotional experiences. But within these fields there is distinction as well. We divide up what we see into the cup, the label on the cup, the word on the label of the cup, the letter in the word on the label of the cup. We divide sound into notes, and also in other ways.
We can also say that we connect these distinct concepts. We connect them to make 'objects', such that we have a concept of what the cup is which is composed of our experiences of seeing, touching, smelling and tasting the cup, along with also the 'concepts' which relate to these things. By this i mean concepts such as 'redness' which is composed of all of the things we have considered to be red, and allows us to make further distinctions in the future.
So, seemingly what we can truthfully speak about is our experiences, in the terms of themselves, and the nature of themselves as they have been divided and connected.
At the end of the my last thread i asked 'what can we actually say is something which exists?'.
Essentialy, the question is 'What is real?'
The sceptical arguments tell us that we cannot be certain of the reality of anything. For all we know reality as we perceive it could be a computer simulation, or the creations of an allmighty being. These are not things we can discount. We cannot assert that there is a physical universe composed of continuous objects which correlate in some meaningful way to our perceptions and that remain in existence when we are not perceiving them.
So what are we left with?
I assert that what we are left with is essentialy 'One's experiences exist'.
Not too dissimilar to descartes 'I think therefore i am'. But it is a little.
In the sentence 'One's experiences exist' it refers individually to either the writer or whoever is reading the text. When we individually examine the way things are, we can know indubitably that our experiences exist. Regardless of what the source of these experiences is, they exist. So, that is what we are. There is no point saying that we might be a computer program, or a part of God's mind, or a physical being in human shape, because any of these might be true. What we can say is us, is our self, is that bundle of perceptual and conceptual experiences which is churning away.
But is this all we can say? We would not have gotten far if it was.
We can further say that within our experience there is distinctions. There are the higher level distinctions, between visual, auditory, conceptual, emotional experiences. But within these fields there is distinction as well. We divide up what we see into the cup, the label on the cup, the word on the label of the cup, the letter in the word on the label of the cup. We divide sound into notes, and also in other ways.
We can also say that we connect these distinct concepts. We connect them to make 'objects', such that we have a concept of what the cup is which is composed of our experiences of seeing, touching, smelling and tasting the cup, along with also the 'concepts' which relate to these things. By this i mean concepts such as 'redness' which is composed of all of the things we have considered to be red, and allows us to make further distinctions in the future.
So, seemingly what we can truthfully speak about is our experiences, in the terms of themselves, and the nature of themselves as they have been divided and connected.