BREAKING: MAN CHANGES GLASS OF WATER INTO AN OAK TREE!

[Jasper]

That was a corny joke.

Stop. Now.

Was just two.  I haven't done any for a while either.  I don't know where "out of hand" came from.   

[Phox]

That was a corny joke.

Stop. Now.

Was just two.  I haven't done any for a while either.  I don't know where "out of hand" came from.   

The fact that every interesting thread in recent memory has devolved into a pun war.

[Telarus]

No, they just have the 'accidents' of puns and fluff. In reality a seriously deep conversation about the nature of metaphysics has occurred. Why? Because I changed it into one ex-post-facto! 

[themenniss]

No, they just have the 'accidents' of puns and fluff. In reality a seriously deep conversation about the nature of metaphysics has occurred. Why? Because I changed it into one ex-post-facto! 

[Jasper]

Also, crossposting

Epistemology calls for a certain amount of honesty with oneself, which means accepting a small amount of "fuck it, I don't know" when it comes to the highest and lowest levels of reality, ultimate questions about why anything, et cetera.  Some things can't be known by their very nature.  But the important thing is that some things can be known.  They really can.  The problem I have with oak trees that look like glasses of water is that they turn a small amount of unknowability into a sensational mystery.  The fact is that we can never KNOW that anything exists as we see it, but that hasn't stopped us yet.  Every theory is a map that assumes a corresponding territory exists, but it only assumes that insofar as the map takes you where you think you're going.  The territory need not exist if the map is demonstrably effective.  Take quarks.  We can NEVER, ever observe them directly, but our best theoretical models and observational data are best explained by their existence.  It is possible to make a subatomic particle theory that explains observations without quarks, and if the theory sans quarks worked just as well as ours, it would be EQUALLY TRUE, because a theory is just a model that deals in observations.  The oak tree/water glass theory is "not true" because it is conceptually dishonest, observably meaningless, and oh yeah, Fucking Stupid.  Epistemologically, realism is far superior; the stance that the thing that looks like a glass of water is actually what it seems, and the shit exists in more than just your mind.  "Mind", meaning brain?  Maybe.  But brains would not evolve to see glasses of water in place of oak trees.  There is no evolutionary pressure not to see things as close to what they are as economically possible (the brain makes do with less information than you may think, and it does deceive itself, but mainly for sociocognitive reasons).  But better than realism is model-dependent realism, the stance that since no one model can accurately describe reality at all levels, it is acceptable to use many independent theories to model and predict reality, and where they overlap, they agree.  For instance, there is nothing about atoms that theoretically portend social psychology, yet theories of social psychology can accurately predict human behaviors.  Realism doesn't account for this as well as model dependent realism.  As long as your various theories overlap harmoniously, and are each "good" theories, the things in each theory can be said to "exist", to as much certainty as is afforded to us, lacking our god's eye view of things.

It is not enough to say that a thing only exists in your mind.  It must exist within a model that sufficiently predicts observations.

[hooplala]

Back to the OP...

You know, ten years ago this would have had me foaming at the mouth with rage over the pretentiousness, but now... I don't know, I rather like it.  It sort of encapsulates what "art" is to me at this point in my life.

[Triple Zero]

That. Although, ten years ago, a lot of stuff would have had me foaming at the mouth, but even then I think I'd smirk at it. Now, I laugh at it, and appreciate it, and enjoy a thread on PD about it

[Cramulus]

I am positively tickled by the OP



what I like about it is that it drew my attention to the gears and sprockets in play behind our language

You see this image on the screen above, it looks like a pipe.

But it is not a pipe.

It is an image of a pipe.

And right now your fingertips are resting on something, probably a keyboard.

But that's not a keyboard.

There are electrical impulses that zip from your fingertips to your spinal column to your brain, letting you know that there is something out there with a specific shape and texture

There is a chemical event happening in your eyeball which is the result of protons bouncing off your keyboard and making the unlikely three point shot into your pupil. This creates a shape in your mind, an image you recognize as a keyboard.

It is easy to forget that our point of view is a collage composed of input from a bundle of very specific observational instruments. But we are not seeing reality any more than a weather map actually shows you a storm. Yeah, the weather map can tell you where the clouds are, how much precipitation is falling, the temperature and wind speed. But that's not reality, that's data about reality. The guy reporting from location gives you another peek. The intent of exposing you to all this input is to give you a sense of the storm, to help experience it and make it real. But leci n'est pas une tempête.


I had an experience a few months ago where, for a time, I became acutely aware of my point of view.

Sometimes you have this experience in a movie theater: you're really absorbed in the film. It's occupying all of your attention, you're really in the moment, feeling what the director wants you to feel.

And then somebody coughs. And you are momentarily back in the theater again, suddenly aware of your seat, and your bladder, and the sticky texture of the movie theater floor.


The experience was like noticing that my identity (Some little homonculous, apparently) is sitting in this theater. And he's been absorbed in the experience on the screen, all the lights and sounds getting pumped into the theater. But then he noticed that he was in a theater - was able to be independent of that input. Able to realize that the director isn't able to show the whole event, just this one point of view.



thanks for the link

[Cramulus]

to some extent, I'm talking about "ego death"

[themenniss]

Hooray for René 

I find it absurd how much our brain just filters out as ''unimportant''.
As young infants we never did this. A conversation in this room was just as important as he dishwasher in the next. Sure before around 18-24 months we didn't have a measurable sense of self but our senses requiring outside input were superhuman. Yet if we experienced that sort of unfiltered input in adult life it'd fuck us up. Royally. It's a shame really. I'd love to experience that unfiltered input whist being self aware even if just for a moment. 

Who is by brain to make all these decisions as to what i am aware of at any one time? 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

http://www.mat.upm.es/~jcm/craig-martin--an-oak-tree.html
I'm not sure what to believe anymore...

This is why I hate people.  I fucking hate them.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I am positively tickled by the OP

It's solopsism dressed up as Zen.

It's crap.

[LMNO]

It's a troll.  Pretty effective one, too.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It's a troll.  Pretty effective one, too.

Poe's Law, ITT.

It looks like half the shit written on any given Pagan board.

[Cramulus]

well I had a lot of fun thinking about it, and it drew my attention to the relationship between words and the things they represent. So to me, it wasn't crap or a troll.