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Tony Di Bart
Member
since 2000-01-26
Posts 160
Toronto, Canada

0 posted 2000-01-29 10:37 AM


Hello

My questions is, or my proposal is, is there such a thing as reality?  Does anything really exist? Afterall, according to physics molecules are the probability of being at a particular place in space at any given moment.  Therefore, all matter is a probaility? Everything is one hugh maybe.  

Also, where do emotions fit in the grand scheme of
reality?  Where do thoughts fit in?  If matter is a probability then what are tyhoughts. Are they a probability of probaility.

I do not know.



[This message has been edited by Tony Di Bart (edited 01-30-2000).]

© Copyright 2000 Anthony Di Bartolomeo - All Rights Reserved
jbouder
Member Elite
since 1999-09-18
Posts 2534
Whole Sort Of Genl Mish Mash
1 posted 2000-01-31 05:19 PM


Hey everyone.  Just thought I'd stick my head back in here and see what you all are up to.

I think the question itself is a bit of a philosophical absurdity.  It's been asked of me often enough just to bait me into some frustrating debate.  If the answer to the question posed is "yes" then nothing changes.  If the answer is "no" then nothing changes.  If the answer is "maybe" then nothing changes.  But I'm feeling a little energetic today so I'll give it a go.

It would be foolish and illogical to say the universe does not exist.  Anyone with any training/education in philosophy and logic knows that attempting to prove a negative makes one guilty of committing a logical fallacy.  Assuming those widely accepted logical conventions to be valid, the answer to your question would either have to be "yes" or "maybe".  

Either "yes" (with the normal qualifications of "beyond a reasonable doubt") or "maybe" could be demonstrated easily enough.  I think therefore I am, I feel therefore I am, I see, smell, taste, touch, contract heart disease from the Quarter Pounder with Cheese, therefore it exists, etc., etc., etc.

I think we tend to limit what we consider "real" to be that which can be touched or observed (I think the Scientific Positivists are one of these culprits but it's been a while so I could be wrong).  I wouldn't limit my understanding of "what is real" like this, however.  I would define what is real as "that which either takes up space or causes (or has the potential to cause) an effect."  This is just an off-the-top-of-my-head definition so I expect it to be filled full of holes by someone.

Feelings, therefore, are real because they cause or have the potential to cause an effect.  Thoughts are real for the same reason.  The feelings and thoughts cannot in themselves be observed but their effects certainly can be.  Am I making any sense?

This was fun.  I'll have to come back here again soon.

 Jim

"If I rest, I rust." - Martin Luther


Justin Thyme
Member
since 1999-09-13
Posts 216
Oz
2 posted 2000-02-02 11:39 AM


To answer your question, "Is there such a thing as reality?" I guess I'm Justin Thyme to tell you....

NO!!


hahahahahha.... sorry, but I'm locked in this 'stute and I get bored sometimes. Someone asks a serious question and I answer like that.... how dare I? Carry on with your REAL discussion.... hehe



JT, that's me!

LoveBug
Deputy Moderator 5 Tours
Moderator
Member Elite
since 2000-01-08
Posts 4697

3 posted 2000-02-02 09:00 PM


Well, I just wondered in here from the Teen room, and look what I found!!  

When I read your post, I thought of Poe; "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream". I partally agree with that. Perhaps reality is just a dream... but I'm not really sure what happens when we wake up.

Or, maybe the only reality is who we are inside. That's why we should establish that above everything else... nothing else is real.

Well, that's my try at Philosophy.  

 "To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world"

Brad
Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
4 posted 2000-02-03 03:30 AM


I suppose this is along Jim's point but what is not real?  I wonder if there's a tendency to jump from questions of importance to questions of existence.  Aren't probabilities real?  Aren't thoughts real? Aren't emotions real?  Seems to me all these things are real in a certain way but not in others. If I had feelings for a woman, for example, and then later changed my mind would my feelings be any less real? If, on the other had, I didn't particularly care for a woman (but told her I did so that I could have sex or whatever), the lie would be real, the words would be real, but not my stated feelings (perhaps they would be real at another time). Aren't we, in a certain sense, confusing what's real with change?  If it changes, then it's not real?  Now, where did this permanence issue into this debate, when did it start?

Let's think about the fiction/reality debate for a moment. Often, what is real is considered more important and more emotionally poignant because out priorities tell us that reality is more important than fiction but as long as you think it's real, as long as you believe a story to be real, our priorities remain in place and it is just as poignant as a true life story. No difference.

So, I guess what we decide to be real is ultimately only determined by our priorities and the distinctions we make, both conscious and unconscious, in order to live. Don't confuse what I just said with the idea that as long as we believe in something, or want to believe in something, that that can make it happen. That's an entirely different issue, it seems to me, but the issue or 'real' or 'reality' seems to depend more on the definition of the word than anything else.

Brad

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