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I am the first person to visit a distant and unseen planet called X.
Question: does the planet come into existence the very moment I visit it?
I leave this planet called X.
Question: does it cease to exist the moment I leave it because no remains to see it?
Warning: this video contains visually disturbing scenes.
Szczurolap (The Rat Catcher) is a 1986 documentary about the one of the few remaining rat exterminators in Poland.
The film begins with a scientist describing an experiment where a rat is shown to drown in a matter of 15 minutes when left alone. Another rat which was rescued by way of a plank but later returned to the water survives for 15 hours. The point is that a rat given hope will have the will to live.
In the rest of the film we follow the exterminator in his task at exterminating the entire population on a rat-infested farm. He describes how he needs to be patient. By using poison he could kill off perhaps only three-quarters of the population, leaving the stronger and smarter rats to survive and passing on their genes (and knowledge) to the next generation . But by waiting and gaining their trust he can exterminate a far higher percentage from the beginning. So much so that he will feed the rats, other rats will continue to eat his poison ladened or by hardening their stomaches with plaster, even when rats are dying around in front them all the while he stands there watching. The remaining rats are shot with an air rifle. The last surviving rat – the boss – is then literally lured out with bait on fishing hook then killed by smashing it against the wall.
The film ends with the exterminator revealing to his listeners that his real job is that of watchmaking.
The narration, while about rat extermination, is really a philosophical meditation of sorts. Very little information about this film exists in English. I highly recommend it. But it is definitely not for the faint-hearted.
“There is a book on the table. The book is brown. I will accept the book exists. But does the colour brown exist?”
Brown is a wavelength. White light bounces off the book. The characteristics of the book absorb certain wavelengths. What is not absorbed is reflected. Let us call this isolated, reflected wavelength (low-intensity light at 600 nanometres) which reaches our eyes “brown”. The eyes, which are receptive to wavelengths, transmits that information from the retina down the nerves to the brain where it is equated to “brown”.
You see the book. I see the same book. The colour which is reflected corresponds to “brown” in your vocabulary and my vocabulary. But whether we see the same colour in the same manner does not matter. As long as we are talking about the same “thing” is all that is important.
In this sense, we have isolated the property “brown” to be the wavelength and given it this agreed-upon name. The wavelength exists as light, as energy. I would say “yes”, it physically exists.
Chomsky believed there were innate ideas when it came to language. But cannot the patterns (deep structures) of language explained by the limitations of probable choice and the tendency towards linguistic efficiency, rather than some kind of pre-determined given?
In some ways this is what Chomsky is saying. But somehow there is a gap between his understanding of the physical reality and the reality of his language.
Language is a physical property and should be treated as such, not as some mystery akin to religions and gods.
By simply saying, “God” does not bring God into existence anymore than saying “Harry Potter” will bring this fictional character into existence.
Human beings are very good at creating abstract objects. And indeed we treat ideas and thoughts as objects, often mixing them up with the real objects of the world.
Do absolutes exist? Or do they only in relation to relative things … thus making it relative. Furthermore, since absolutes are not affected by the relative things it is a constant. It also works in the opposite direction where it does not affect the relative. This suggests absolutes can be safely ignored.
Central to the teaching of Buddhism are the three marks of existence (trilaksana).
The three marks of existence are:
Conditioned things (sankhara), according to Buddhism, do not make up the entirety of things. There are also unconditioned things. Together conditioned and unconditioned things are called the dharma – the entirety of the world.
Nirvana (the realization of the non-self or emptiness of everything, conditioned and unconditioned) is neither impermanent nor permanent, and neither unsatisfactory nor unsatisfactory. To say it is permanent would be to not understand its characteristics. To say it is satisfactory would be to not see the inconsistency of duality. The neutral, zero position of Buddhism is something rather hard to grasp. And by being unenlightened is to be not fully understanding the zero position, but be like somewhere between -1 and +1, other than 0. By having a value – positive or negative – we are not understanding the meaning of 0. The irony is, we cannot know zero without recourse to every other number, that is, zero means nothing without something.
The problem is not that God will not die, but that man will not let Him die.
The natural state of the world is flux. No matter what we do time marches on. It is one directional. Time’s arrow.
While it is nice to call time (Mr Parmenides) an illusion the static state of ideas is not that same as reality.
Or that things must come from the perfect ideas like “forms” is nice too (Mr Plato) but perfection and is something of seemingly of the mind, and not to be found anywhere in the world except for in the mind, or brain as it were.
No, universals were the creation of the mind, not the other way around.
Everything is in flux. And everything makes sense (has meaning) only as relative to all else. This includes God of which Man needs to define himself*.
*no apology here to Man since pretty much he is to blame.
What is so special about human beings? Are the only beings that think we are special ourselves?
For 13 billion years the universe has done just fine without us. The universe does fine with us now. And the universe will do just fine without us again after our extinction.
Our knowledge and existence is simply insignificant within the larger picture of the reality. It is only with humility that we can truly live a full life. We must make significance and relevance for ourselves and others around us now, not elsewhere and not in the past or future.
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