Saint Augustine on Dualism

[zerozero]

I think that's the point of this discussion. The only thing that CAN be real is your knowledge of your own existence/mind. Everything else can NEVER be determined to be real or fake.

And just to add, this is actually one of the original questions in greek philosophy, : "how can I tell that what I sense is what is real?" So it's been a question from the very beginning. That why Augustine and company were talking about it too

Decartes is actually employing it in service of an argument Leyet would actually agree with, which is he's using that to say that the mind and body are separate

Actually Leyet is relatively Cartesian, going by most of his posts here.

yup.

so when you made love to the last woman you made love to, that wasn't real? what about that experience could justify categorizing it as "not real?"

Here's the thing. Did you experience her consciousness and yours at the same time? Nope. Everything you know about her is just what your consciousness knows about her. She might not even exist!

In fact... philosophically speaking.. as far as you're concerned...


I might not actually exist!

 

[OsO]

hardly

dynamic response

It could have been a computer simulation, extended dream (that I am currently still in), hallucination, etc.

It could feel very real to me, but at the end of the day, the only thing I can know for certain is that I am a thinking being who can experience, not if that the experience was actually real.

so with the use of those movie clips are you agreeing with morpheus in saying that "real" is defined by our physical senses and by the electrical signals interpreted by the brain?

or are you saying nothing is real?

what exactly are you saying

for one thing memory is very fallible. but it's been my experience that people here don't like to talk about that (or maybe I'm not remembering correctly ). it's not an easy thing to accept

How Friends Ruin Memory: The Social Conformity Effect | Wired Science | Wired.com

so iyo "real" has to do with our ability to accurately recall something?

Descartes' argument is that your senses have deceived you before, since you can sleep and dream whole scenarios that seem entirely real, complete with sensory experience, without experiencing the outside world, and since there are things like mirages and optical illusions which demonstrate the incoherence of perception even when you are supposedly awake. According to him, "it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once."

He's not stating that your experiences are unreal, only that you can't legitimately establish that they are ever real.

hard to argue with that


so that puts us back in the boat where NOTHING is real? and only our ability to perceive is real?

but let me ask this, if we cant be sure that what we're experiencing is real, and we cant be sure that what we're perceiving is real, then how do we know that ANY of this is real?

how do we know that any single one of our trillions of experiences in our lives were real? cuz if you can question a portion of it then you can question the whole thing.

you see how slippery that slope is?

Here's the thing. Did you experience her consciousness and yours at the same time? Nope. Everything you know about her is just what your consciousness knows about her. She might not even exist!

In fact... philosophically speaking.. as far as you're concerned...


I might not actually exist!

so experiencing the consciousness first hand is the criteria we are using to define "real?"

its not that i disagree necessarily because i know the brain is paying tricks with these atoms out here and that our whole "reality" is a 3-dimensional holographic projection... but to say NOTHING is real kinda shyts on life


but maybe youre right... maybe this brief stint in reality is experienced for a few decades and recorded in this physical brain as memories, and when the brain dies the lights go off, everything ceases to exist, including the experiences themselves

 

[Type Username Here]

so with the use of those movie clips are you agreeing with morpheus in saying that "real" is defined by our physical senses and by the electrical signals interpreted by the brain?

Yes, but not even our physical senses can be reliable. Those can be compromised.

or are you saying nothing is real?

what exactly are you saying

I am just telling you what this philosophical school of thought says.

so iyo "real" has to do with our ability to accurately recall something?
hard to argue with that

Only the fact that you are being capable of recalling is real. Everything else can be deceiving.

so that puts us back in the boat where NOTHING is real? and only our ability to perceive is real?

but let me ask this, if we cant be sure that what we're experiencing is real, and we cant be sure that what we're perceiving is real, then how do we know that ANY of this is real?

how do we know that any single one of our trillions of experiences in our lives were real? cuz if you can question a portion of it then you can question the whole thing.

you see how slippery that slope is?

Bro, this is one form of dualism between the argument of dualism vs materialism. In Cartesian dualism, nothing can be proven to be real except that you are a thinking being.

so experiencing the consciousness first hand is the criteria we are using to define "real?"

its not that i disagree necessarily because i know the brain is paying tricks with these atoms out here and that our whole "reality" is a 3-dimensional holographic projection... but to say NOTHING is real kinda shyts on life

I know you are open headed dude. That's the best and worst thing about philosophy: you put on these philosophy hats that describes existence and you live in that description for a few hours, days or weeks. It can be great and it can be downright scary. Nihilism for one is scary as fukk. Took me a while to shake out of it.

but maybe youre right... maybe this brief stint in reality is experienced for a few decades and recorded in this physical brain as memories, and when the brain dies the lights go off, everything ceases to exist, including the experiences themselves

This entire life you think you are experiencing could just be your memory of it all.

Waking Life has a great scene about this:

[ame=http://vimeo.com/16121539]Jesse & Celine in Waking Life on Vimeo[/ame]

 

[zerozero]

but maybe youre right... maybe this brief stint in reality is experienced for a few decades and recorded in this physical brain as memories, and when the brain dies the lights go off, everything ceases to exist, including the experiences themselves

you're kinda misunderstanding what they're doing here breh. Obviously they don't go "nothing is real" and get lost in a drugged haze, they wrote books and taught people and had their ideas survive forever for a reason. The question they're asking is what can you be entirely sure about?

take a look at this:

Zeno's paradoxes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.

He's saying, you can never get from place A to place B, because to get there you have to get halfway to B, then close halfway between your remaining and B, and then halfway between your remaining position and B...

That doesn't mean he lies in bed all day cause he's convinced he can't get anywhere. It's a thought experiment that tries to hack away the unexamined life to ask what's really going on.

 

[Type Username Here]

you're kinda misunderstanding what they're doing here breh. Obviously they don't go "nothing is real" and get lost in a drugged haze, they wrote books and taught people and had their ideas survive forever for a reason. The question they're asking is what can you be entirely sure about?

take a look at this:

Zeno's paradoxes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.

He's saying, you can never get from place A to place B, because to get there you have to get halfway to B, then close halfway between your remaining and B, and then halfway between your remaining position and B...

That doesn't mean he lies in bed all day cause he's convinced he can't get anywhere. It's a thought experiment that tries to hack away the unexamined life to ask what's really going on.

Several of these paradoxes were "solved" using limits based calculus. Just throwing that in there.

 

[The Real]

you're kinda misunderstanding what they're doing here breh. Obviously they don't go "nothing is real" and get lost in a drugged haze, they wrote books and taught people and had their ideas survive forever for a reason. The question they're asking is what can you be entirely sure about?

take a look at this:

Zeno's paradoxes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.

He's saying, you can never get from place A to place B, because to get there you have to get halfway to B, then close halfway between your remaining and B, and then halfway between your remaining position and B...

That doesn't mean he lies in bed all day cause he's convinced he can't get anywhere. It's a thought experiment that tries to hack away the unexamined life to ask what's really going on.

Zeno's paradoxes were in service of Parmenidean thinking, which posits that all Being is one and unchanging, and that diversity and change are false. It's hard for us to imagine now, but with the paradox above, he was actually trying to prove that movement is impossible, because there is an infinity of divisible distance between any one object and any other. The great thing about the paradoxes is that they are open-ended enough to be used for a wide variety of philosophical purposes aside from their original context.

 

[DANKTHRONE]

If you can doubt that x equals y then you must say that x equals y is false at that time, under those definitions, until those definitions are changed.

To lois lane clark kent equals something that is not superman, with both definitions not contingent on the hypothetical. X doesnt equal y to lois lane. Therefore the statement that x equals y is false to lois lane is true even though x equals y to you. Because you cannot be lois lane.

None of that matters. The only thing that matters is that there is an interpretation where Descartes argument is not logically valid. Just because you are able to DOUBT x (that there is a body) but not doubt y (there is a thought) doesn't mean you can make the inference that x is not y. The key point to stress is there is nothing about the DOUBTING that allows you to say that they are not identical. Lois Lane cannot doubt that x (Superman is Superman) but she can doubt that y (Clark Kent is Superman) but clearly she isn't entitled to say that Clark Kent isn't superman.

Don't get hung up on the reason that the two propositions cannot be doubted. Descartes cannot doubt that there is a thought because it isn't psychologically possible, while Lois cannot doubt that Superman is Superman because it is a trivial truth.

Just because Descartes can't doubt that there is a thought but he can doubt that there is a body, it doesn't allow him to say that body MUST be different than mind. He thinks he can because of Leibniz's identity of indiscernables, but this is because he treats existence as a predicate. He says it isn't possible to doubt that there is an x (a thought) that the property y (existence). This is a major no no, since existence is formulated not as a predicate but as the existential quantifier. This is why you are arguing that the Descartes and Lois Lane propositions are different. This is true, because Descartes proposition isn't even formulated coherently. Even if it was, however, it still wouldn't matter because the argument still isn't functionally true.

Descartes is entitled to say that something exists. He isn't entitled to say that it must be a thought and that thought and matter are necessarily different.

 

[daze23]

so iyo "real" has to do with our ability to accurately recall something?

it's part of it. how can you say something is "real" when your memory of it could be false?

 

[zerozero]

does the fact that your thinking changes if you get brain damage ether Descartes' conception of the mind in his divisibility argument?

http://bethelphilosophyblog.blogspot.in/2008/06/descartes-on-indivisibility.html

The argument is one from divisibility.

(1) All extended things are divisible.
(2) No minds are divisible.
(3) No minds are extended things.

 

[OsO]

i see what folks are saying, but i dont necessarily agree 100%.

if our experiences are not real, then nothing is real. because thats all a "life" is, a continuous series of experiences.

but again, we would need a common definition of "real" to even begin this discussion. because for something to even be considered a "deception" that means that something that is NOT a deception MUST also exist. because if everything were a deception then those deceptions would become the reality, and hence, "real."

i also understand the perspective that the only thing we can 100% confirm is that we are thinking "beings." and its hard to argue with that.

but i think at the end of the day your thoughts are real and your emotions are real, real to you anyway... and a lot of one's thoughts and emotions are dictated through experiences. so even if these waking experiences are not "real" they are creating real effects.

i dont know man.... deep subject

 

[CHL]

I had to bump this thread, very interesting, yet

 

[CHL]

And just to add, this is actually one of the original questions in greek philosophy, : "how can I tell that what I sense is what is real?" So it's been a question from the very beginning. That why Augustine and company were talking about it too

Decartes is actually employing it in service of an argument Leyet would actually agree with, which is he's using that to say that the mind and body are separate



yup.




Here's the thing. Did you experience her consciousness and yours at the same time? Nope. Everything you know about her is just what your consciousness knows about her. She might not even exist!

In fact... philosophically speaking.. as far as you're concerned...


I might not actually exist!

Off topic but do you think that at some point in the future (whether that be decades, centuries, millennia from now) could two consciousnesses concievably "combine"? Or could a being experieince another's consciousness?

At the very least a mini, limited version of this that will be possible this century is thought transfer, right (the concept is already in it's very early stages now)?
(http://www.newscientist.com/article...ding-implant-gives-rats-telepathic-power.html)
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/06/brain-to-brain-communication-internet_n_5772700.html)

 

[zerozero]

Off topic but do you think that at some point in the future (whether that be decades, centuries, millennia from now) could two consciousnesses concievably "combine"? Or could a being experieince another's consciousness?

At the very least a mini, limited version of this that will be possible this century is thought transfer, right (the concept is already in it's very early stages now)?
(http://www.newscientist.com/article...ding-implant-gives-rats-telepathic-power.html)
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/06/brain-to-brain-communication-internet_n_5772700.html)

Good question. I was going to be like "probably not" but then I thought of it another way: can you "store" consciousness and revive it? I think that may be possible in some fantasy sci-fi future. So if you can store it you can probably transfer it..

 

[Type Username Here]

Good question. I was going to be like "probably not" but then I thought of it another way: can you "store" consciousness and revive it? I think that may be possible in some fantasy sci-fi future. So if you can store it you can probably transfer it..

You can essentially do that now: writing and reading. This thread is proof of that in some ways, as we have downloaded a piece of St. Augustines consciousness and thoughts by reading his writing in a book (or in this case a system of linked machines and circuitry) . It's still very primitive in reference to what you're alluding to but it's a step there.