"False evidence appearing real"!

I LOVE THIS EXPRESSION! Why? Because with the right mind set and interpretation one can move mountains! The possibilities are endless with this phrase! "O.K. scarboroughfair, get to the point" I bet you're saying! lol

Problems and situations in life go beyond fear, it goes much deeper than that! With the right set of eyes one can decipher life in such a way that is unbelievably efficient! You see, we truly create our own reality! When I first heard that we create our own reality my first reaction was " F@ck you, it's other people that make me the way I am"! But after a lot of self honesty I embrace this philosophy! The fact is, more time than not we wire our minds for destiny. What you believe in your heart will manifest itself in a lot of personal issues. Most things in our mind is a phantom! It's a fantasy! It's not real! The things in our minds that we perceive to be real can and most times will become one's reality.

A lot of what I right about is cutting edge to me, but there are those that already know these concepts and know far more than I can comprehend at this moment in time! I embrace an open mind policy in that there's always room to learn and grow!

Yes, people in our lives have an influence to a varying degree in how our life turns out, but in the end it's our decision. We truly create our own reality and destiny! The funny thing, I'm just scratching the surface on this. I can't wait to see what's ahead!

Ok I'll pick up that ball and run with it. Someone once said "perception is reality"

Sure there are limits to that, but my point is that if you lived inside a virtual reality tank which was completely convincing to the point where you couldn't see the "joins" you would in effect experience that artificial and individual state as real and from your point of view there would be no difference from what I might, for want of a better description, describe as consensual shared reality.

We all live inside our own heads to an extent. I percieve and understand you, I interact with you through the organ which is my brain. The physical part of me you see... but if you have ever seen a corpse you will know that while physical attributes on their own may make an anatomically accurate effigy they do not constitute a person. That ineffable thing which is personality and spirit makes all the difference, and that is something which we make for ourselves. Sure other people help us to fashion our persona, but fundamentally it is something which springs spontaneously from within us.

False evidence... the trouble is if you read the likes of Godel, and his theorem of incompleteness, which states that to be provable a theorem must, of necessity always be incomplete, you might conclude that whether a thing is true or false is in iteself often highly subjective. It's a kind of philosphical equivalent of the Hiesenberg uncertainty principle leading to the conclusion falsehood is pretty much a given in this world. Nothing is ever entirely true or false because if it was it would not be provable.

So ultimately I think the difference between falsehood and reality is often merely one of perception, and as for fear that too can often be an illusion conjured from within us by our unhealthy beliefs. Such monsters from the ID can indeed be conquered if you are prepared to stand up to them.

Someone else, also very wise, once said "Then you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free"

Down the years, and to my immense irritation, that wonderful saying has been misappropriated by those who wish to use it not to set people free but instead to bind them into a sort of numb conformity in which, just because something works and is true for them, they expect everyone else to do and be exactly the same thing.

But applied in Godel's reality the saying goes much deeper than that. If truth and falsehood are in part generated from within us the saying is really urging us to reach within to uncover our truest and noblest selves and thus be free to be whoever we really decide that we are.

QuoteSomeone once said "perception is reality"

There would not be perception without something out there. We do not just live in our minds like the matrix. We live in a 4 dimensional world that may have more. It is true that our senses and memory have defects and that we can imagine. But that does not remove the fact that their is a physical reality beyond us that our mind operates in, also. We can through measurement and repeated experience and also verified by others come up with a probability of a physical reality and how it works. It seems we are far from perfect but we are also not just our minds.

Again I beg to differ.

Perception and delusion are both mediated by the same neural circuits. That's why for someone who is delusional it can become so difficult to distinguish between reality and their fictional delusions.

In any case I never said that we were just our minds. Only that everything we say do and experience is preceived by the internal person through the mechanism of the mind. Thus philosophically it is diificult to prove with any certainty that anyone exists outside of ourselves.

I agree that in practice most of us choose to believe in existential reality, but probably largely because the alternative is a rather unattractive and lonely concept, namely that I am the only real person and the rest of the world is merely an elaborate delusion conjured up by my mind.

I do not believe that for one minute, but there have been a number of eminent philosophers who did! or at least argued from that theoretical position.

As a physicist and hyeprspacialist I personally believe in the version of superstring theory which has 26 dimensions not just 4! But that of course, leaves plenty of room for their to be more things in heaven and on earth than are currently dreamt of in our rather limited philosophy.

QuoteI am the only real person and the rest of the world is merely an elaborate delusion conjured up by my mind.

The concept of person comes from the physical reality. You would not have that concept without it. You can not know anything without a reality to perceive. Now you can have problems with what you experience through your senses and misinterpret physical reality over time. Babies that are deprived of sensation die. Physical reality is not a matter of beliefs but a matter of how you interpret it. All concepts have some input to your senses to become concepts. Physical reality might not be the same as your personal reality but you would not have a personal reality without it.

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Post Merge: March 20, 2010, 12:01:07 PM

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QuoteThus philosophically it is difficult to prove with any certainty that anyone exists outside of ourselves.

But you can prove it scientifically with a high probability. Philosophy is not concerned with truth.

Quote from: lisagurl on March 20, 2010, 11:58:47 AM
But you can prove it scientifically with a high probability. Philosophy is not concerned with truth.

Agreed - as a scientist I agree that is indeed true, but this conversation is taking place in a section of the website labelled philosophy... and hence my argument is rather more conceptual and abstract and not necessarily confined to literal an absolute truth. I am merely trying to put forward some alternative concepts which I have come across in my various studies.

Possibly I am not doing a very good job because I am, if you like, adopting a debating position, originally with Scarborough-fair. Admittedly it is a philosphical position which, if I am to be entirely honest, is not one that I actually believe, but which I think contains some interesting alternative ways of looking at things... alternative, that is, to the approach that he was taking in his original post. That's all.

I say this in case perhaps you may have mistaken my rather philosophical debating stance for something which I actually literally believe.

Edit - Besides scientific materialistic and provable ideas are all very well but they can produce a rather souless and boring set of beliefs. The imaginative writer part of me would prefer a degree of quite possibly not literally true but never the less interesting ideas any day.

John Austin said that any philosophical claim consists of the bit where you say it and the bit where you take it back.

Still philosophy should not understate the importance of truthfulness, epistemic conscientiousness, or assessments of knowledge. Plato said poets did not tell the truth.

Quote from: lisagurl on March 20, 2010, 03:23:15 PM
John Austin said that any philosophical claim consists of the bit where you say it and the bit where you take it back.

Still philosophy should not understate the importance of truthfulness, epistemic conscientiousness, or assessments of knowledge. Plato said poets did not tell the truth.

Touché - for I am of course both a writer and poet!   (although possibly not a terribly good one) I have an MA in creative writing for which I had to produce a portfolio of poetry. So I place my hand up to own that sin of which Plato accuses me.

QuoteI created my own reality

If you know that you created your own reality you know that it is not the physical reality we all live in. So you also know that you are self justifying and in-turn feel guilt and fear.

QuoteThe less ego one has, the more one can learn at a deeper level. 

Transcendence from sentience to sapience requires control of desires and emotions.