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I love Kant, the later Wittgenstein, Derrida, post structualism, postmodernism and the philosophy of language.
I don’t like the to in to be or to with any other infinitive for that matter. It entails movement when the infinitive indicates anything but movement or change. I am or it is are to indicate a state that in reality does not exist.
Being is to indicate a state over time. So this is closer to what is true of the reality.
Becoming is what is what we always do. But that too is an illusion. Becoming is what we perceive when the reality “sees” none. Becoming is therefore a value.
1.
When we play tennis not only we are interacting with the reality, we are assuming that the reality will behave in a certain way. I doubt I will get very far by just contemplating the nature of the ball, the court surface, or the springiness of the string gut. But rather by interacting with the reality, I prove my understanding of it.
Knowing the limitation of my movement, my opponent’s, the way the ball behaves against the racket strings and court surface, the way the ball travels through the air with spin, I try to defeat my opponent. My performance is proof of this understanding.
2.
In some ways Donald Trump’s actions are also proof of his understanding of the world. He uses it to “deceive” not only others but himself as well. I do not mean he is a bad person, but that is doing what we as humans do best – to achieve the most with what we have. So know ing what to do as a human, a cat, a religion is really proof. To me, this is a kind of (my kind of) objectivity.
In OOO all object are said to be on equal footing. The question though is whether it is equally 0 or equally 1.
I tend to think it is without value whatsoever except for a value produced by systematic difference between them. This difference, and therefore value, exists only when observations are made.
It therefore means if there is no observer there is no value in the situation.
So, what exactly is an observer is now the question.
I rather like Schopenhauer for the one thing he said about will and representation. Will being our volitions and being an object that we can know. Schopenhauer believed Kant missed the point when he said that we can never know the things-in-themselves. Schopenhauer believed so because what Kant had seemed to forget is that we are also objects within the reality. Thus we can know us as the thing-in-itself.
I kind of agree with Schopenhauer but also feel we cannot truly know ourselves. The example I can give is when we fall ill. If we are fully aware of the health of our body this would not have happened. In other words, we are not fully aware of the condition of this body-will. It is as unknown as the object-representations. The body-will is in reality just another representation in the Kantian sense.
At every turn, then, we have only representations. But also, we have will in the form of the nature of our being, to believe that will is possible. Our characteristic is to believe we can reach will or perfection. That is what we should embrace, not lofty unreachable ideals as though they are separate and not part of, or else greater than us, worthy to be aimed at.
1.
Our being has the characteristic of data creation with-in and with-out the mind. We create concepts at every turn. We replace the real things with its concepts. We also mistake concepts for the real things.
Plato was one of the first to create the idea of ideal forms that all else is based upon. Real cats are but shadows of the ideal cat, where the ideal cat is the model for the cats of the world. But Plato did not have the benefit of current understanding. Cats did not always exist. It would be safe to say cats did not exist two billion years ago. Did the ideal form already exist then without a single cat to be in existence? What is the point of having the ideal form of cats if there were none to be?
The more likely answer would be that our ideal form of cats comes from our experience and observation of cats by way of blending all that is considered ideal of a cat, rather than something like an ideal form existing before we start.
2.
This is like the present state of Apple’s App Store. It is far from ideal but we keep bits we like here and there and remove other bits that don’t seem to work. Call it “tweaking”, “evolution” or some other term you like. Ideal forms are not there. Only the concept of ideal forms exist. We must not mistake the concept for the real thing or for the verbal form of it.
What are the limits of my knowledge of the world?
For the last ten years I have “existed” in Japan. Within this time the nature of reality has not changed. This is as expected and is not surprising. I had lived in the three countries previously, and also extensively spent time in another country intermittently most of my life. The nature of reality holds true for all these places. I have also looked through the telescope at the International Space Station, the surface of the moon, Jupiter and Saturn its moons, Mars, and the light from distant stars and galaxies. As far as I can tell the nature of the reality is no different than to the one here on Earth. But that does not mean the nature of reality cannot be different elsewhere in the parts of the universe I have yet to observe.
What I can say is this: the nature of my immediate physical reality is thus, and that is all that matters.
Why should I need to worry about there being a different reality? For me, to function and operate in this world, this is all that I need to know – that within my world, reality is uniformed.
In the Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta, The Buddha said this when asked about the “deeper questions” of the nature of the world:
“[Your questions are] just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a brahman, a merchant, or a worker.’ He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me… until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short… until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored… until I know his home village, town, or city… until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow… until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated… until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.’ He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.’ The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.
The story tells us The Buddha’s attitude toward questions of irrelevance. What we need to know is immediately available to you through your senses and perception. This should be your starting point on the investigation into reality, whether you are Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, atheist, a philosopher or scientist or any other category of being I have not mentioned. For this is truly what is common among us, our senses and perception. Everything else is supplemental and, in my opinion, like noise in the data.
1.
This morning I took the garbage out, as I do every Saturday morning. There was the sky. There were clouds, mountains, trees, rocks, roads, my car. birds singing, the rice fields, our vegetable garden, my neighbour bringing home a dead wild boar. This is physical reality. The world I see and all its objects, space and time exists. I verify it independently. And you can come verify it as well. The world where you are now reading this is the same but different part of the physical world. I can, if I want to, come to you and verify it independently as well. Few would argue that this is not the world, not real.
Outside my house, as I said, are rocks. The one particular rock that I picked up this morning is real. It existed with the ground, vegetable garden, mountain, clouds, sky. But does the rock “know” of its existence and the physical reality it belongs to? Let me put it down – both physically and metaphorically – for the moment and come back to it later in this post.
2.
There is a physical reality. But how do I know it? I know the reality through my senses and perception of it. There is no other way for me to have knowledge of it. The senses, my, eyes, ears, nose, skin and tongue give me the sensory data, and my brain saves and processes this sensory data to let me know of its existence.
Suppose there was a person who was born without any senses (no eyes, ears, nose, skin or tongue) but with a brain. Would this person know anything of the reality? Now let us suppose there was another person who was born with all the senses but without a brain. Would this second person know anything of the reality as well?
3.
Yes, there is a physical reality. And in the reality there are objects which can know the world and objects which cannot know it. These objects have been called variously throughout history as animate/inanimate, sentient/non-sentient, etc. I prefer either observing/unobserving or perceptient/non-percpetient objects. I am perceptient. The rock outside my house is non-perceptient. There are a multitude of objects out there. They are either perceptient or non-perceptient. I can perceive the existence of perceptient and non-perceptient objects. Others can perceive them (and me as a perceptient object) as well. The rock has no such understanding of the reality. Note, this does not make me “better than” or “superior to” the rock, only that I am different from it, as far as objects are concerned. The non-perceptibility of the reality is the rock’s characteristic. The perceptibility of the reality is a characteristic of my being.
4.
Senses precede sensation, and sensation must precede perception. And perception limits and informs my understanding of the reality. I act and make decisions (inferences) in accordance to my understanding of the reality. Knowledge is the sum of perceptions, inferences and actions of a perceptient object. The rock outside my house cannot know the reality. It perceives nothing, makes no inferences and does not act volitionally.
5.
The physical reality is made up of objects, perceptient and non-perceptient. It includes space which separates the objects, and time in which objects interact within the space. The interaction is complex. To not look at this complexity is to ignore the reality, to ignore space, objects and time.
Generally, I do not like to make analogies but I will make one here because analogies make concepts easier to understand. Furthermore, the ability to make analogies is a characteristic particular to the perceptient object that I am – a human being.
Chess is a game with a physical reality and rules. In the physical space of eight-squares by eight-squares and thirty-two pieces (sixteen to each side) is the game played. There are five different pieces (king, queen, bishop, knight and rook) and the pawn (the pawn is not called a “piece” for some reason). each piece and pawn has its own particular characteristic. The objective of chess is to win the game by checkmating the opposition king. The minimum needed to play chess are 1) to have a chess set, 2) to have a playing partner, and 3) to know its rules. Yet, having these conditions do not make for an interesting and entertaining game. Knowing how to win – the strategies and tactics of the game – knowing how to interact meaningfully in the reality is what is needed.
I am an observing object. I observe the objective reality. I observe that I observe, and I observe that I am observed.
There are numerous objects in the world. They are of two general types – observing and unobserving objects. I am an observing object. I interact with the space and objects as an object. I therefore mark time by interaction and by observing this time.
The world is the objective reality, the collection of independently existing things – space, objects and time. Space is a special kind of object. Time is the interaction of space and objects.
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