Sv

Significance

It is certainly the case that each isolated argument made in each small phrase of communication is tainted with an unintentionally hidden agenda. Each detailed argument is only a timber in the framework that makes up our assumptions about life... our world view.

This seems to come to the surface rapidly when talking about concepts such as "reality" and "meaning."

When many "skeptics" talk about reality... they are at the same time revealing their assumptions held in their world view by attaching a significance to what is defined as "real" to them. This makes me skeptical about their skepticism

What is real is certainly all we know... what is real is personal. Inside each of us is a machine that creates for us individually a world more complicated than the universe we know or can anticipate from our sciences. While the scientific universe is big and holds even the complexity of life within it, it is not a related system. It is nothing like our precious reality. In the scientific universe the complexity is formed by so many independent elements acting under so many rules of behavior. Their relationships are only discernable by us - they do not exist in the scientist's world. So funny for the scientist to be surprised when trying to look at the electron! The scientist starts to see that the universe needs us to become the understood universe he seeks!

But our world, the one we live in - where we come from - this is very different. Here is a world defined by relationships and meaning - significance. In fact, it seems like we have nothing in our world that the scientist's world has... so we depend on that world for fuel, this is where the thirst for knowledge comes from. The scientist and the theologian are the same today, in light of the new thinker who has seen enough of science and enough of the natural world - and enough of his fellow man to finally understand who we are.

Who you are (and what reality is) is simply those things that you will feel you will miss when you die. We are all different... we are each a universe, an opus to the natural world where the seed of consciousness fell onto such creatures.

But our brains where not fashioned by nature for this purpose, rather they were weathered from our natural world and focused our eyes to catch the food and walk the land. What funny eyes we see the world in that forms our projected universe! Even our great science is tainted - not at all unlike the religious looking at the stars and casting their opinions thereof. If religious men explain everything with God, then scientists explain it all with measurable relationships... but using the same ruler that sizes up the next meal and the bright eyed lover.

And you can see how our brain acts as a mold stamping out our projected world when you look at people like Einstein, or even better, Tesla! What happens when a brain is broken like that... when the projected universe does not match his fellow man's so well. Suddenly things that were impossible for us to see become clear. Tesla more than anyone shows how powerful the projected universe can be.. and gives hope to anyone who wishes to believe that there is so much more for us to see... that we can never see with our limited mind. Things you may call scientific and real - but when these new things are seen that will redefine the connotation of "reality" completely.

Don't people have a full and complex idea of what the world "reality" means? This is no mere world... it has as its very definition the answers to so many other questions. But for the modern man, the skeptic, the scientist, even the theologian- they all see a starkness to the word. They see man as insignificant - and the laws of matter and forces in the universe as ultimate. More than anything this connotation comes from the same human condition that invented religion and the scientific method. The quest for truth besides man, not the truth of man... we are now looking for answers in the wrong place... the wrong universe!

When I toss a pebble in a mirror glass pond... and the waves radiate outward... are the waves "real?" To the skeptic they are not real... they are an illusion - so many water atoms moving up and down... no water is radiating outward. But he can also claim to accept the rules of the behavior of the waves as an explanation... but he can never really say they are materialistically there... there are no waves you can identify on a trip from the center to the shore.

But in our mind there are waves... because our minds project the universe this way to us... the mind converts relationships and meaning into reality... this is our reality - we all take each moment as our own and it can never be taken away. And like the wave needs a beginning and end for us to signify its existence, so each man needs his time allotment - it defines us. Without birth and death we would not be individuals. Once dead the scientist can feel reassured that we are never coming back... but does it matter? Does it take away form what has happened? There is significance to every moment, and every thought in your mind is a reality. Though the skeptic works to try and prove that there is no meaning in in the mind, we will never succeed.

Artificial intelligence will prove this... when we see the first machines project their own universes for themselves. They no longer will we have to be limited by our brains and their natural and practical agenda. Then we will be able to explore what reality is... because that day we will see that we truly have the power to manufacture reality... this is the key to the meaning of life for us. It will be a happy day

Bill

You say many things. Some I feel are confused thoughts, some I feel are wrongheaded, and some I agree with. Keeping to your declared topic of significance, I give you my favorite quotation from Will and Arial Durant: == Bill

Sv

Thanks for the quote.

Now if I can only find out what was unclear, what was controversial, and what was popular then I'll be all set

Vorkosigan

But in our mind there are waves... because our minds project the universe this way to us... the mind converts relationships and meaning into reality... this is our reality - we all take each moment as our own and it can never be taken away. And like the wave needs a beginning and end for us to signify its existence, so each man needs his time allotment - it defines us. Without birth and death we would not be individuals. Once dead the scientist can feel reassured that we are never coming back... but does it matter? Does it take away form what has happened? There is significance to every moment, and every thought in your mind is a reality. Though the skeptic works to try and prove that there is no meaning in in the mind, we will never succeed.

Like this paragraph. It's pure gibberish, and where it makes sense, it is wrong. Where did you get the idea that skeptics try to prove there is no meaning in the mind.

Bill

First, as Michael sort-of points out, it is a mistake to assert that "our minds project the universe this way to us... the mind converts relationships and meaning into reality..."

Lets start with that excerpt. Dennet and others have pretty well demolished the idea of the "Cartesian theater" in our minds. Thus there is no "us" that watches some sort of projected reality. Instead, we have various subsystems in our brains each operating somewhat asynchronously to produce their independent outputs, which outputs can be either acted upon immediately, stored for future reference, or sent off for some sort of correlation (or all of these in parallel).

I'm reminded of Philip K. Dick's observation: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." It seems obvious to most rational people that there really is an objective reality that exists outside of any human understanding of what reality actually is. We do misperceive the nature of reality. This is a scientific fact: we do greatly misperceive reality because we know that what we perceive as solid matter is really a conglomeration of atomic and/or subatomic particles and energy fields.

Our understanding of reality does seem to increase over time, but it must be doubted that any human will ever fully understand the complete and true nature of reality.

The bottom line in all of this is that this part of your sentence, quoted above, is exactly backwards: "the mind converts relationships and meaning into reality." In point of fact, our mind converts PERCEPTIONS of reality into realtionships and meaning. Particularly in the case of significance and meaning, those qualities exist entirely as abstract artifacts of human cognition. There is no reason whatsoever for any human to believe that there is any significance or meaning which is not supplied by some human or humans for the benefit of one or more humans (including oneself). This is, frankly, the real point of the Durant quote, above.

== Bill

Sv

You both seem to understand exactly what I am saying... only you think it is invalid. Fair enough... certainly it would take me more than a post to explain my ideas... but your posts make me think very much- which is good since I'm otherwise in quite a vacuum

Dick's observation: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." This is a perfect example of a common (but misguided IMO) connotation of the word "reality." Almost like the word must imply some negative in relation to man... or at least some extra significance. It is this connotation that seems to drive the argument away from the ultimate goal of finding meaning and understanding out of all we see and know. "Reality" can only be an understanding of the world... if you try to make it more than that then you imply that you are smarter than yourself- that you know about something beyond what you can understand. Talking about this "stark" reality (my term for this common connotation of reality) instantly accepts that this real and "unreal" world both exist with the world of stark reality somehow receiving more credibility.

You call my paragraph gibberish, but I think you mean to say that you disagree, right? How is it gibberish? I mean what I say, and it makes sense to me as it is... even if maybe it is not so.

Maybe I don't understand what a "skeptic" is... to me a skeptic is one who trusts only what can be demonstrated... but one step further: a skeptic is most often someone who is skeptical because they believe in a reality outside the mind as being the ultimate reality. For a skeptic, a dream is not real... it is imaginary.

But I am only going on a notion of what a skeptic is to me... I only know the meaning of the word.

Also it is comforting to know that I am able to write "pure" gibberish that makes sense in places - while still being wrong

Vorkosigan

You call my paragraph gibberish, but I think you mean to say that you disagree, right? How is it gibberish? I mean what I say, and it makes sense to me as it is... even if maybe it is not so.

No, I meant that it literally does not make sense, with an orderly presentation of ideas that work together to form an understandable whole.

Skeptics believe in a reality external to their own brains. So do most people.

Perhaps you should take another tack. What is it you want us to understand?

Michael