Belated reply to Tapio
Unfortunately the world is rapidly closing in and experiences such as that are becoming rarer to find and rarer to experience. I often wonder what we are “losing” by no longer having such practical, pioneering experiences as a direct influence on our culture. My son for instance is growing up in a large city. We go back to the farm for holidays etc…the farm is there, but my son’s experience is nothing LIKE his forebears in having to work hard to simply remain alive! If you stop working hard, you do NOT survive. Simple. Fires, floods, droughts, snow, rain, sunshine, sickness and health, no medical assistance immediately available, break a leg and your simply stuck there, growing your own food of necessity, to merely live. Killing animals to survive, of necessity, to merely live. It grounds you in a reality that no other experience can provide. The loss of cultural information of this kind I keenly feel. Down the generations life is becoming easier. People are becoming less “grounded” in “reality”. That is in our CONNECTION to EVERYTHING. Without that connection, we are nothing! We cannot survive. That is why climate change and subsequent loss of biodiversity is so critical. We lose biodiversity and we lose our existence. It’s that simple.
Anyway…enough of THAT! Back to the topic.
Now of course this cuts both ways. One could argue that there was an objective reality merely waiting for Helen to discover it. Alternatively one may also argue that until Helen DID discover it (ie MAKE it objective), reality was merely subjective, an inseparable whole based entirely on the self.
Which makes your observation…
I feel it moreover it is a little arrogant of some people, who have never had such experiences, to argue that such experiences simply cannot be accepted as objective. Ask anyone who has had a genuinely “startling” experience that DEMONSTRATES that we are missing something about “reality as we know it – that there is something MORE than we currently accept as consensus opinion (for in the end I also contend that reality is “merely” consensus opinion) and they will tell, you that they KNOW this to be true based on the evidence of not only their own perceptions, but on the perceptions of others (plus the odd photo and video, etc). This is entirely different to religion though. There, there ARE no perceptual realities at all. There is just not the same demonstrable “body of evidence” that is consistent over time and apparent in every place as the UFO “experience” is.
(snip related to the topic of qualia – discussion coming soon!)
Ah, but that was the point of concluding ”therefore I am”. He was stating that thinking DOES have ramifications more widespread that “mere” self reference. Helen Keller for example…
Thanks for the link Tapio. It certainly looks like something I would enjoy watching.
Unfortunately the world is rapidly closing in and experiences such as that are becoming rarer to find and rarer to experience. I often wonder what we are “losing” by no longer having such practical, pioneering experiences as a direct influence on our culture. My son for instance is growing up in a large city. We go back to the farm for holidays etc…the farm is there, but my son’s experience is nothing LIKE his forebears in having to work hard to simply remain alive! If you stop working hard, you do NOT survive. Simple. Fires, floods, droughts, snow, rain, sunshine, sickness and health, no medical assistance immediately available, break a leg and your simply stuck there, growing your own food of necessity, to merely live. Killing animals to survive, of necessity, to merely live. It grounds you in a reality that no other experience can provide. The loss of cultural information of this kind I keenly feel. Down the generations life is becoming easier. People are becoming less “grounded” in “reality”. That is in our CONNECTION to EVERYTHING. Without that connection, we are nothing! We cannot survive. That is why climate change and subsequent loss of biodiversity is so critical. We lose biodiversity and we lose our existence. It’s that simple.
Anyway…enough of THAT! Back to the topic.
If a tree falls in a forest and no-one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If we are not there to observe it, is there any such thing as objective reality? You tend to think there is. I, perhaps tend to lean to the other side and think that perhaps there is NOT an objective reality – at least not in the sense we conceptualise it to be. I think we have to remember that we must be taught to perceive the world the way we do. If we are not taught, then reality has no meaning and there is just “I” and everything is “I” There is simply no real distinction between “external” and “internal” reality. This may be shocking for some people but the experiences of Helen Keller point to this as a conclusion. As a deaf, dumb, blind person she experienced the world in a very peculiar manner. For her the world and herself were all “I”. Her “breakthrough” came when she was about 7 years old when she was outside with her nanny and had her hand held under a flowing tap, while her nanny signed the word for “water” into her other hand.
“As a cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed apon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew than that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! … Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On ebtering the door I remembered th doll I had broken. I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realised what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.” (Helen Keller (1923) The Story of My Life. pp.23-24)
Now of course this cuts both ways. One could argue that there was an objective reality merely waiting for Helen to discover it. Alternatively one may also argue that until Helen DID discover it (ie MAKE it objective), reality was merely subjective, an inseparable whole based entirely on the self.
Which makes your observation…
…also valid.
Yes, there is a semantic distinction to be made here. I KNOW in the sense that it IS an objective reality to me. Just as Bishop Berkeley’s stone was an objective reality to him. I am sure that if others “stubbed” their toe on the same stone as I have, they would make of it exactly as I have done – an objective reality. Now others may argue that my reality is actually subjective, but if they do, then they are NOT “realists” as they lay claim to be in proposing their OWN alternative “realities” to my “objective” reality. They become relativists with all the accompanying baggage that brings. They simply CANNOT have it BOTH ways. Drawing the conversation back to UFOs then, the debunkers claim my reality is subjective at the same time as claiming their own reality is objective. That’s just nonsense. MY reality is as objectively real to me as theirs is to them. Now we have dispensed with semantics…
But by the same token the “skeptics” (and I have yet to see proof that many of them exist in this forum) claim to KNOW something that applies to us all, and clearly my experience shows that their “reality” does NOT apply to a whole cross-section of people in society.
You explain your point well. I contend however that my reality is based on MUCH more than a subjective “feeling” - as you term it. I have the experience of a lifetime to back my perceptions. I also have the advantage of a higher level education than the vast bulk of humanity – including most I suspect in this forum. And this education has directly involved the investigation of human perceptual fallibility, including memory. I also have the experiences of many other people who claim to have witnessed things very similar to my own observations and, critically, to have had the SAME reaction to them as me. There is even more… photographs for instance.
I feel it moreover it is a little arrogant of some people, who have never had such experiences, to argue that such experiences simply cannot be accepted as objective. Ask anyone who has had a genuinely “startling” experience that DEMONSTRATES that we are missing something about “reality as we know it – that there is something MORE than we currently accept as consensus opinion (for in the end I also contend that reality is “merely” consensus opinion) and they will tell, you that they KNOW this to be true based on the evidence of not only their own perceptions, but on the perceptions of others (plus the odd photo and video, etc). This is entirely different to religion though. There, there ARE no perceptual realities at all. There is just not the same demonstrable “body of evidence” that is consistent over time and apparent in every place as the UFO “experience” is.
Well, interesting you should say that. Remember the “Canals” on Mars. For quite some years, all sorts of eminently qualified astronomers “observed”, through their telescopes, canals on Mars! They even drew maps and had created theories as the how and why of them. It was only through experience that they realised that they were perceiving things in the wrong way. So even ostensibly objective “experiences” such as an observation through a microscope must still be “interpreted” in the context of a greater body of learning. Unfortunately for the experience of UFOs, the “greater” body of learning simply does not exist. We have no clear way of “interpreting” the experience. We have speculation about misperceptions etc, but THAT is theoretical - post hoc rationalisations if you like. The very fact that human perception IS fallible confound UFO “evidence” with “false positives” that later turn out to be negative. We simply have no current rational schema, theory, hypothesis, that enables us to sort the “signal from the noise”. THAT is why research is essential. We MUST develop those schema, just as in every other science we do. Just WHY the debunkers seem to want to DENY even an attempt to develop such a schema – to give the UFO proponents their “day in court” if you will, somewhat escapes me…but as a psychologist I can speculate that FEAR is a big driving force – as it is in many, if not most human activities.
I actually don’t think I do understand what you are driving at here – well I DO but I think you are confusing a couple of concepts. Ever heard of Qualia? I have not time to explain here but I think it would benefit you to “Google” the term before expounding further on this issue.
Yes, I agree. To conclude ET IS irrational.
Again, you need to get on top of “Qualia” before I can continue. Let me know if you wish to pursue the line of inquiry. You may know about qualia already (let me know if you do). To debate someone that does not understand where you are coming from is pretty frustrating because they tend to repeat their original assertion in rebuttal rather than discussing intelligently the points you raise. I hope also Tapio, that you are indeed willing to learn, because there are some very important concepts you are discussing that need more than just a cursory argument to understand fully.
(snip related to the topic of qualia – discussion coming soon!)
Ah, but that was the point of concluding ”therefore I am”. He was stating that thinking DOES have ramifications more widespread that “mere” self reference. Helen Keller for example…
). Then, a bit over three years ago, BAM! Three kids in a bit over a year, wife, home and I also found the internet and...well, here I am. On my way to new kinds of discoveries daily!
