Wiploc

I'm going to take a guess at your meaning. I'm assuming I've got it wrong, but this will give you something to correct so that maybe I can get it next time:

Your position is that

1. Rocks aren't real because they are simple and don't kick back.

2. Unicorns are real because if they existed they would kick back.

Like I say, I'm assuming I'm wrong, but that's my best guess as to your meaning.
crc

Elf

Thank you wiploc, John Page, & malpensante,
I appreciate your participation in this exercise of consciousness.

wiploc, et al, there are no wrong answers... except possibly silence. What do we possibly have to lose? This is not a set up, I'm not trying to control anybody. I am sincerely trying to form a consensus about the parameters of what we really know about existence~ reality and the subtle qualities of reality such as thought and personal experience.

We really are like a group of people in a dark cave trying to determine what contains us.

wiploc wrote:
Much better! Now we have some idea what you're after. (And now you are getting responses. This lesson can serve you well the rest of your life. You can stop any conversation with an obstructive question, whereas you can facilitate conversation with an answer.)

Elf appeals: I certainly didn't mean for my questions to be obstructive. I wanted them to be instructive, to cause us to consider what we really do not have worked out yet as far as the details I'm sure most of us have vague answers to the questions I posed, but find they conflict somewhat. It is this conflict I believe we can all benefit from, by hashing it out and seeing what we come up with. How many here are familiar with the old Sufi story about the elephant in the dark cave, and the wise men sent into the cave to find out what is in there? Our cave is before us what do we percieve?

Wiploc continues:
My answers (and I'm still guessing what you want, but at least now I have something to base my guess on, and I don't have to write you a treatise):

1. Anything that exists is real.

2. Nothing exists that doesn't exist in a location and time.

3. Unicorns aren't real.

4. Ideas are real.

Does any of that address what you were asking?
crc
Elf replies: All of this is what I am after

John page answers: I agree providing you start with the assumption/definition "Everything is a part of reality". For example, I do not believe that elves and fairies have a physical correlate and remain (real) confabulations.

Cheers, John

Elf asks wiploc: considering Johns statement, can you agree that Unicorns exist as legend or allegorical icons or fantasy figures?

Again, these are not trick questions, but I believe they are important questions to reach agreement on before we look toward the edges of reality. The complexity you percieve is real complexity is it not? I think the questions I posed are valid philosophical questions.

I would also like to add that I have no axe to grind, I'm not trying to save souls, & I do not claim to have all the answers perfectly worked out either. Sincerely, Elf

PS.Please continue to forge a consensus of the parameters of reality.
malpensante, One of the qualities of life is that it has irritability.

John Page

Yes, I believe the dwarves also have axes, so be careful. Here's a diagram of the way i see things Reality .

Cheers, John

Wiploc

Time and effort come to mind. We still don't know what you want, and therefore are not very likely to work hard at achieving it.

You should take a turn before you expect us to go again.




Granted. But you have asked us to write you an encyclopedia without telling us why. You will find that to be inherently unrewarding.





-- "It was six men of Hindustan,"
-- http://members.shaw.ca/athomas125/blindmen.htm

They were blind, not in a cave.
And the poem at the above link includes the censored last verse. In gradeschool (my gradeschool at least) this critical and subversive verse was truncated --- with no indication that the poem had been abridged.




Of course. And now that you have this earthshaking news, will you do something with it so that the rest of us can finally learn what this conversation is about?
crc

Shadowy Man

No pun intended, I hope.

That last verse is very interesting, indeed. Thanks for the link!

Elf

Elf: I will answer with a new story. There was a man who was given a seed of a plant that produced the most incredibly beautiful flowers possible by someone who called himself an elf. the elf told him that if he planted this seed and nurtured it as seeds and plants need, that it would grow and produce an amazing plant, that may well cause trouble in his life and especially how he views the world around him. But if he would raise the plant it would provide healing leaves, more important than willow bark or Foxglove, or that weird mold that could cure infections could ever be. If he were to raise it till it flowered, it would answer most all his questions, bring peace to his heart and mind, and joy beyond what he had ever experienced.

Being of a sceptical nature, he kept the seed in a drawer for a day or two unconvinced that there was anything to the elf's story. But being a curious person he put the seed in an old pot with some soil already in it and watered it. The next day he watered it again and didn't see anything growing yet. He became impatient and began to doubt the elf's story even more, feeling a little foolish for accepting the seed and planting it, as if he had invested more of his prescious time and consideration than he should have. On the third day he watered it a little and observed only a slight bulge in the soil where the seed was. He then dug up the seed that had begun to sprout and stated that, "There is no value in this seed worth having, no wonderful flower!" He threw the sprouted seed away and considered himself wiser for it.

Is this man justified in his opinion? Is he the wiser for having gotten rid of the sprouting seed early? Sincerely, ~Elf~

PS How many participating here have read John Page's chart and/or the poems he provided on that page? I did and found them very valuable. E

malpensante

wiploc:
actually, deutsch labels the criterion "dr johnson's criterion", and is inspired on a play by boswell in which the characters are dr johnson and another guy. the guy says "i think that rock doesn't exist", and dr johnson, after kicking it, says "i refute it thus". the rock's kicking back is a metaphore for an uncontroversial property of the rock, which is that it responds in a complex and autonomous manner when interacted with. in fact, deutsch gave an analogous definition of the criterion, in terms of hypothetical computations:

if a substantial amount of computation would be required to give us the illusion that a certain entity is real, then that entity is real.

so, if you can give a unicorn some logically consistent properties which need some big amount of computation to be simulated as real, then it, even though abstract, is real.

elf and all:
daniel dennett, in his article "real patterns", argues for what he calls "semi-realism". to explain it very briefly in my own terms:

if two theories attempting to explain an experienced pattern are ontologically different but predictively equivalent, there is no way of establishing which one is the real one. but if their explanatory or predictive or ontological economy, that is, if their overall functional economy can be measured, maybe this measure might account for different levels of "semirealism" for both theories.

Elf

Wiploc, I appreciated your contribution, and have been reading Dennet's papers. I especially liked and agreed with Dennet's "Darwins dangerous Idea".

http://www.arn.org/docs/johnson/dennett.htm

I believe he is accurate with his evaluation of the effects of Darwinism effecting science and the intellectual community in a negative way. Along the lines put forward by Brian Josephson in the BBC program Heretic.

I'm still working to understand the concept of "explanatory or predictive or ontological economy" or "overall functional economy".

This process of refining epistemological ontology is what I'm after, the process itself and a functional description of the qualities of existence. What is it that defines existence.

What is more probable "Big Bang" or "Steady state"? I promise to add more when rested and time allows. I must tend to my son's needs till Sun. Cheers, ~Elf~

malpensante

elf: i was talking in loose terms: explanatory economy may mean that the theory which is more awe inspiring, or maybe connects in more profound and insightful ways with explanations of other patterns, is the more explanatorily economical. predictive economy may mean that the theory that requires less calculation, or less pondering, or less time to become a prediction, is more predictively economical. ontological economy may mean that the theory which complies best with ockham's razor is more ontologically economical. very probably i'm omitting other kinds of economy. one of the theories might be more economical in one respect and less in another, than the other theory. but the overall sum of this comparation would be the functional economy. so, the more functionally economical would be the highest in semi-realism ranking (say, in a ranking between 0 for completely non-real, to 100 for uncontestably real, at least until someone comes up with a new theory).

i read "darwin's dangerous idea" and, no kidding, i consider it the best book i have read. i don't know about big bang and steady state, but what do you think is more probable, one single universe, or a multiverse full of infinite parallel universes?

John Page

Our minds. If we know something either real or imaginary, it exists.

Cheers, John