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/lit/ - Literature

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6136103 No.6136103 [Reply] [Original]

A quick survey of my fellow /lit/izens: Would you describe your position, ontologically speaking, of the world as being that of realism, idealism, or something else (eg, anti-realist, skeptic, etc). By what reasoning did you reach your position, and most importantly, how does your position (that is, if you even choose to) avoid the conclusion of solipsism?

Myself, I've come to the conclusion that the world is idealistic in nature, and that it inevitably follows that the position of solipsism (i.e. that nothing transcends my own experience) is unavoidable.

This picture I have chosen shows in my opinion what is at stake. How does the realist explain a physical object (straw), having continuity in the open air, but becoming disjointed when placed into water or behind a translucent object (such as glass). It appears the straw defies it's own supposed physicality. If you respond that some sort of physical light refraction occurs, making the straw *appear* bent, how do you reconcile this with your conclusion of realism? Are there now things 'as-they-are' and also how-they-appear? Is 'how-they-appear' physical, like things 'as-they-are', or are appearances only in the mind, a conclusion the idealist expands upon?

Essentially I'd like you to explain your ontological conclusions about the world, and hopefully foster a lively and intelligent debate. My hopes aren't particularly high, seeing as though we're on /lit/, but feel free to prove me wrong.

>> No.6136175

and the most pretentious post on lit goes to...

>> No.6136185

there is nothing outside of phenomenal experience

>> No.6136188

>>6136103
metamaterialism is very complicated

>> No.6136193

>>6136103

I am a pragmatist first and foremost. I am an empiricist secondly, meaning that I believe in things that can be sensed, and things that are repeatable. Practically this means I believe in things that other people believe in as well, but on a deeper level I believe in objectivity, meaning that I believe that there is existence and truth that exist regardless of whether people sense it or not. Practically this means that I believe a thing is a thing when we can all agree it is a thing and base our agreement on things we can all experience repeatedly. I don't know of any absolute way to refute solipsism but pragmatically it is a dead end.

If you believe in solipsism congratulations, you no longer have a reason to learn anything, ever again, because you are god. Have fun with that ultra fulfilling life, dumb nigger.

>> No.6136201

>>6136103
>It appears the straw defies it's own supposed physicality
no, because what you call the straw is nothing but the straw in the homogenous medium that is the air. And you believe in the dichotomy straw-air. You jump to conclusion. So contextualize your experiences and be careful when you compare two.

I wanted to talk about solipsism as well. What are good arguments for it and counter-arguments ?

>> No.6136211

>>6136193
You're God without the powers we consider Him to possess. Solipsistically speaking.

>> No.6136213

Is solipsism the God's view point ?

>> No.6136236
File: 50 KB, 500x333, profile2247.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6136236

>>6136103
Wow, did you even proofread this shit before you posted it?

>> No.6136241

>>6136211

Nope. You are god. You know how I know? Because I'm really you telling you the truth. Everything is you. You actually do have all the powers of god, but you keep yourself from using them because you don't think you are ready for them yet, but I, who is you, am telling you this because soon, you will be ready.

>this is how silly solipsism is

>> No.6136273

>>6136185
who's phenomenal experience?

>> No.6136276

>>6136193
>If you believe in solipsism congratulations, you no longer have a reason to learn anything, ever again, because you are god.

This doesn't follow at all and hardly even makes sense.

>> No.6136277

>>6136241
You have a child's understanding of solipsism.

>> No.6136279

>>6136201
>And you believe in the dichotomy straw-air
> contextualize your experiences

I have no idea what you're trying to say.

>> No.6136280

>>6136276
Confirmed for both understanding and not understanding solipsism simultaneously.

>>6136277
No, YOU have a child's understanding of Solipsism. The real question is why you keep arguing with yourself.

>> No.6136325

>>6136279
you believe that the strw is not the air

you also forget to see the straw alone does not exist : what you call straw is straw in a medium (here air since I think that you think of 'the straw' as a straw in the air with normal temperature etc. (as opposed to boiling water etc.))

>> No.6136326

>>6136273

the hegemonic subject

>> No.6136861

>>6136280
>No, YOU have a child's understanding of Solipsism. The real question is why you keep arguing with yourself.
What is the solipsism then ?

>> No.6136924

I don't see how your example is evidence against any kind of realism. If you can take a picture with a camera of a phenomenon like refraction and post it on the internet, then this seems like pretty solid evidence that there are really such things as physical objects like light and matter and laws that govern these objects, that exist independently of minds and how we perceive them.

I don't think scientific realism
for instance commits to the notion that what we perceive immediately with our senses represents things as they are.

>> No.6136944
File: 121 KB, 266x318, Epicurus.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6136944

General quietist scepticism combined with an Epicurean lifestyle.

>> No.6136959

I'm too drunk to concentrate on what the fuck OP is trying to say.

Fucking hell

>> No.6136977

>>6136103
>It appears the straw defies it's own supposed physicality.
Its just bloody fucking light refraction. They teach physical optics in like 9th grade in my country. Are you American?
>If you respond that some sort of physical light refraction occurs, making the straw *appear* bent, how do you reconcile this with your conclusion of realism?
Study physics you twat. The physical elements here that you seem wholly ignorant of is light waves. I'm too tired to respond properly but go study physics or even just read some basic introduction to logico-anlaytical philosophy.

>> No.6137818

>>6136977
there's always this one guy, who becomes extremely enraged, and screams some stupid shit like "REFRACTION REFRACTION!"

Do you also think atoms are like miniature solar systems? billiard balls orbiting a core?

>> No.6137826

>>6136326
what does that mean?

>> No.6137840

>>6136325
What are you even trying to communicate?

>> No.6137848

>>6136236
Yes. What's the problem?

>> No.6137852

>>6136188
>metamaterialism

I googled that word and it appears to have no relation to the OP.

>> No.6137856

>>6136193
>meaning that I believe in things that can be sensed
>I believe that there is existence and truth that exist regardless of whether people sense it or not

This appears to be a contradiction.

>> No.6137949

>>6136103
>Would you describe your position, ontologically speaking, of the world as being that of realism, idealism
Idealism and realism don't exclude each other.
Didn't bother reading further, sorry, I'm too lazy. It's probably shit anyway. You can't categorize the whole history of philosophy into few categories.

>> No.6138036

>>6136193
You believe there is truth but you stated that you only believe what can be objectively observed and reciprocated, repeated.
How can the both be truth without you presuming you've seen the truth and have repeated experiment concluding truth.
Never mind, i just answered my won question.
>Practically this means that I believe a thing is a thing when we can all agree it is a thing and base our agreement on things we can all experience repeatedly.
This is your definition of truth.

>> No.6138099

>>6137949
wow

>> No.6138171

>2015
>not choosing trancendental idealism

>> No.6138221

>>6138171
You mean 1781?

>> No.6138260

>>6138221
Bitch, time is just a figment of my sensual intuituion and doesn't exist in objects themselves

>> No.6138288

>>6136103

>realism

Did you mean materialism?

>> No.6138303

>>6138260
From Kant's perspective time is not "a figment of your sensual intuition", it is the condition of your sensual intuition, which reverses the relation.
Furthermore, this is irrelevant since you have no access to the things in themselves. To speak that this makes chronology somehow "false" is to deny the noumena/phenomena distinction. It is not only reasonable but necessary to speak of different years because the form of time itself is necessary.

>> No.6138341

>>6138303
Lmao #REKT

>> No.6138701

>>6138288
No I meant realism. I also added a "something else" option afterwards, which could include materialism.

>> No.6138711

>>6136103
1. Read Bergson, you dullard.
2. Learn to write.
3. Stop being retarded.
4. Stop being pretentious.

>> No.6138724

>>6137818
>stupid shit like "REFRACTION REFRACTION!"
Optical physics is pretty elementary. Sensual data isn't axiomatic, but you can't deny physics.

>> No.6138970

>>6138711
It's a survey, I was asking for your thoughts and opinions.

>> No.6138997

>>6138724
I didn't "deny physics". What I should of said is that physical theories of how light waves interact with glass/optics etc is completely tangent to what you think the nature of the world you experience around you, and that glass within it, is. Is it material? is it phenomenal? Is it something in-between, eg, indirect realism? is it something altogether different?

It's just stupid to respond to these fundamental questions with something as lame as banal as "refraction and uhh optics and ur dumb hurr grade school lol".

Really goes to show the caliber of thought on this forum, wherein people can't even give halfway decent or relevant responses to a simple series of questions.

>> No.6139074

>>6138997
>should of
>of
Proofread your shit before you post on /lit/.

>> No.6139438

>>6139074
lest I taint you're bored with bad grammer

>> No.6139461

43 posts in and only around 2 people have actually tried to give an answer to a pretty simple question. Are you having difficulty understanding what's being asked? I mean, are the questions just on a higher level than your ability to comprehend? I really expected at least a little better from you /lit/. Maybe even an intelligent debate. Obviously I was mistaken, oh well, back to my academic philosophy forums. Hell even r/philosophy shows more insight than this shit being displayed.

>> No.6139494

i find the Buddhist notion of dependent arising to be useful, perhaps not in the sense of ultimately being true, but of recognizing that our ability to determine the causality between events (or the contents of events/objects) in absolute terms is extremely weak.

I think that our have zero confidence in our ability to define events/deduce causality in such a way as to define a specific metaphysical theory which explains the creation of "the universe" or "the absolute" or "reality" in any meaningful way.

At least two things will always puzzle the human mind:

1. why do things exist rather than there being nothingness

2. what is the meaning of self, self-ness, consciousness as a subjective self.

These are basically the extremes of the object-subject partition. The riddles emerge out of an inherently false but unavoidable (or at least very difficult to avoid) conviction which serves as the utmost foundation for the human's system of organizing observation.

I'm not a phil student. How am I doing over here?

>> No.6139872

>>6139494

I typed this shit up, somebody please read it so I'm not the only one who wasted time.

>> No.6140014

>>6137826

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_(philosophy)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony

>> No.6140748

>>6139872
I don't really understand the point you're trying to make. For example, what does:
>The riddles emerge out of an inherently false but unavoidable (or at least very difficult to avoid) conviction which serves as the utmost foundation for the human's system of organizing observation
mean? What is the 'inherently false but unavoidable' conviction? Please explain what conviction you are referring to.

Are you saying that because we cannot recognize the causality between, or the contents of events), we therefore cannot form coherent theories about the nature of reality? But isn't that itself a coherent theory about the nature of reality? And why can't we determine the content of events or objects? I kick a rock and see it move, am I wrong? Is it not possible for me to determine that a rock was kicked and moved? Or that my kicking caused the rock to move? What is stopping me from determining this?

Am I way off track here, because I feel as if I am. It is still totally unclear what it is that you're communicating, or the point you're making. I ask if you think the nature of the world is some sort of realist, idealistic, or other type of nature, and you seem to be implying that it's impossible to determine, because we can't even determine the contents of events in the world? But why not? I really don't see how when I kick a rock, I can't determine that I kicked a rock. And it seems a contradiction to say events cannot be determined, because you're making a claim about the determinism of events (that they cannot be done).

Again, I have no clue what you're trying to say.

>> No.6140758

>>6140014
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony

"Hegemony is the political, economic, or military predominance or control of one state over others."

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_(philosophy)

A subject is a being who has a unique consciousness and/or unique, personal experiences, or an entity that has a relationship with another entity that exists outside of itself (called an "object").

I cannot see a way in which these two words can be coherently combined into a "hegemonic subject". What does that even mean? A subject that is somehow a state, with military dominance over another state-subject?

This is just nonsense, and it's laziness on your part to just link wikipedia articles. A google search of "hegemonic subject" finds nothing of any relevance

>> No.6140780

Realism irrevocably polluted by anthropocentric observation

>> No.6140815

I don't see much difference between the outside world and the inside world, there is no particular line to be drawn there. That doesn't imply any form of solipsism, because, in this notion, others are included as well in this non-limiting field of experience.

Because of that, your take on it doesn't make much sense to me, because you seem to think it is either something outside that is distorted by your perception or something of your perception that disregards the outside world. You are only seeing it from your own perspective. I liked that you used an ordinary object to try to make your point though.

Realism is a shit term. Everyone will call themselves realistic. People call drawings that represent visual depth of field to be realistic. I really try to avoid this term at all costs and I think you should too.

>>6139494
The notion of dependent origination is not just a matter of not being able to pinpoint a cause, but that the whole is a cause of each particular thing. If a flower appears on a tree on a mountain, I can ask you what caused it. You may say it is because of the water, or the air, this or that chemical reaction in the tree and etc. But that particular flower could only exist in that particular way because of the whole mountain. It is not the branch that is blooming, but the mountain that is blooming. The whole universe, really. And if you reduce it to this or that cause, say, the flower is yellow because of the species of tree. You may reproduce the tree and also get yellow flowers. But that one particular flower on the tree on the mountain (which is real and not an ideal of an average flower) could only exist at that place and that time, because all else was in the way that it was at that moment.

To find the cause of a thing is not a problem there. What matters is that a flower appeared. In the same way, buddhism is not interested in stating if the straw is like that because of its qualities as an object, or characteristics of light or if it is a matter of your perception, because there is no such distinction. When buddhism states that this world is an illusion, it is not proposing that this world is fake and there is something real some place else (like a solipsism claim that the objective world is fake, but one's perception is real). But that all of those worlds and realms and states of consciousness are equal illusions and that one must not attach to them as if they were the one real thing. Nevertheless, the following step is to take responsibility for the things you face and learn to act properly at that point.

>> No.6140827

THAT'S NOT A STRAW

>> No.6140916
File: 56 KB, 328x429, Nagarjuna[1].jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6140916

>>6139494
Madhyamaka 4 life

>> No.6140926

>>6140758

read the rest of the article on hegemony, dipshit

don't just quote the first line to give a knee-jerk reaction

>> No.6141621

>>6140748

The inherently false but unavoidable conviction is the belief in a self, or in selfless as a thing apart from the rest of reality.

>> No.6141672

>>6139074
There once was a man posting shit
And hadn't bothered to proofread it.
They replied in a rage
Screamed, "Not this page!"
And the man found he'd posted on /lit/.

>> No.6141700

>>6136103
The straw has no effect on how her image is delivered to the outside world. It does not defy its own physicality, its physicality gets distorted by its surroundings.

>> No.6141734

The way all this illegal technology use is so powerful is the forced reality upholding the worse possible laws of classical physics and the allowance of quantum physics to be used malevolently while being treated as unreal!