Philosophy Now Forum

thank you, Johnny, for that kind introduction...

Yes, it is time to play the true or false game....

the way this works is simple, I ask a question
and you tell me if it is true or false....

So, for 20 points, true or false...
Is logic closer to reality than experience?

and the correct answer is.... false.....
but why? logic is a mental construct...
it doesn't actually exist within the world...
you say it does? Ok, where does logic reside?
in the mind... it is a mental construct.. its only place
of residence is within the mind...and how does something
that only exists within the mind, be more real than experience?

ok, next question: experience is a physical action?

and the correct answer is false... experience has a dual nature...
it happens "out there" but it is interpreted within the mind...
by the mental application of rules, thoughts, experiences,
habit.. we come to think of experiences within a certain
framework.... if I were a religious person, I would experience
certain actions and then explain them by a religious context...
the apple fell and I say, god caused that apple to fall....
my mental apparatus... my education, my socio-economic condition,
my childhood experiences, being a conservative or liberal will
all influence how I experience that apple falling..... the apple
falling is explained by my mental apparatus, I can see god, or
I can see gravity or I can see chance, all playing a role in how
I explain that apple falling...depends on my mental framework...
as to why/what caused that apple to fall....

without mind, an apple falls.. and that is the end of the discussion..
even our understanding of the concept of the apple, is set, determined
by our mind.. and even the term ''falls" requires a mind to make
that determination... a apple does something.. and within our minds,
we decide what that action actually is and what it means....
otherwise, an action happens and that is it... nothing else
happens unless it is discovered, determined by our minds....

we make sense of the world, of reality by our mental construct,
our mental apparatus....

we might say, the earth is 93 million miles from the sun....
now what that actually means is the earth, a mental construct,
and the sun, another mental construct and 93 million miles
another mental construct... the entire sentence is not out
there, but found within us...

is there an outside reality, for 100 points?

yes, but it takes our minds to make a picture, as you will,
of what that outside reality actually is....I might see something
happen and I make sense of, understand that action by my
mental understanding of the world.... I reconstruct the world
by my mental understanding of the world...


so, for 1000 points, is reality a mental construct?

yes.... when we say, it is a ''dog eat dog'' world,
do we actually mean, we are seeing dogs eating dogs?
nope, it is a saying that can only be made within our minds...
a dog eat dog world implies certain things, which is created
by our mental understanding of the world.....

we can just as easily say, and be just as correct, that
we are social beings that depend on each other for our
"deliverance" and we would be just as right as we are in
saying its a "dog eat dog world"

our political and social and economic and historic, religious,
and philosophically understanding of the world makes
us see the world in a certain way....

we might see the world historically or within economics,
(as Marx did) or we might see the world politically via our
political understanding of the world, being liberal or being
conservative, impacts how we see and interpret the world...

true or false for one million points...

we see the world through our mental construct
and not based on what actually happens?

true....

we can see the exact same event, 30 people can see the exact
same event and you might get 30 plus, different stories as
to what actually happened....

take JFK assassination....... we have tons of physical evidence,
and video tape and eyewitnesses and yet, do we actually know,
for a fact, what happened? NO, the answer is clearly no..
and that is because our understanding of the event of JFK
assassination is determined by our mental understanding of
that event...which is outside of, separate from the actual
event...I could just as easily say that JFK assassination was
an alien event cause by space aliens trying to achieve a
certain goal... or perhaps I could say, a government conspiracy,
or I could say, a mob conspiracy.... and all of this,
is not about what actually happened, but about what I
think about it based on my own mental apparatus,
my schooling, my political understanding,
my socio-economic place in the world...
my own mental apparatus that is what is deciding
reality, not the actual reality which can only exists
within some mental construct...

thus we don't have reality being an actual event but a mental
reconstruction based on our mental apparatus...
we collectively agree to a reality but that is still
a collective mental understanding.... which could be
very, very wrong.....in other words, the conservative belief
that the BLM movement burned down entire cities, Portland
for example, is mental construct and not, clearly, based on
reality...for Portland didn't burn down, small parts, parts of
a block burned down, but that isn't the city burning down....
and that mental construct, the city burned down,
is a widespread collective mental agreement/construct
by conservatives.... that isn't found in reality...
but that shows us the power and impact that our mental
construct plays in our understanding of the universe.....

people, events, knowledge, actions, are all given some description
based on our mental construct of the world... which has no
basis in the actual reality of the world for the simple reason,
that our understanding of the universe, is a mental construct
and not a physical construct....

reality is found inside of us, not outside of us....
we mentally create or recreate to be exact, the world
around us......and where we stand as human beings, is
nothing more than a mental construct.. given in the mind,
not in the real world...

for to be blunt, the world is as our minds think it is...
nothing more.... and the trees, and dogs and plants
and rivers we see exists, but we give them meaning
and reality by our mental construct of those things...
not by what is there... I see a river and everything
about the river is created mentally by me...
the water, the flow of the river, the temperature of the water,
the uses of that river, the value of that river is created
within my mind, as a mental construct...
the river does exist, but we give meaning and understanding to
that river, mentally...

and what does all this mean for one billion points?
that the universe is not a materialistic universe,
as Marx for example thought it was,
but within our minds, as Kant thought it was...
the universe is an idealistic universe, not
a materialistic universe....
our universe is about idealism, not materialism...
as the structure of the universe is determined
by our mind and is a mental construct...

Kropotkin

and what does this mean to us?

that the universe is not a set, fixed place..
that the conservatives think it is....that a person
born evil, will live evil and then die evil...
but that entire sentence, a person, evil, die,
born, are all mental constructs... a person is born
and then we mentally determine if that person born
is evil or good.... the entire idea of good and evil is
a mental construct.... there is no outside, objective
concept that corresponds to good and evil...
that good and evil are mental constructs..
and could be changed and even reversed...
that we can call good, evil and evil as good.....
that is easily done... for words are a mental construct...
and we hold onto this idea of good and evil as a convenient
mental construct.. we can just say, that person is evil...
and we can hold to that thought.. and it is actually
easier to think that way then to explore what good
and evil actually is....

Let us take the Holocaust... an event universally held to be
evil and yet, and yet, there are many people who claim
that the Holocaust was not only good, but necessary....
and how do we go about attacking this claim of the goodness
of the Holocaust? by another mental construct...that people
have meaning and value by just existing... we, by being born,
have automatic value and worth... another mental construct....

that our values, of good and evil and hope and love and justice,
are all mental constructs, should be understood...
I can't point out justice in the world out there..
it doesn't exist like a tree or a dog exist's...
it is a mental construct and as such, exists only in
our minds...as does good and evil....
I see a person murder another.. is that good or evil?
I can't actually say for sure, because the act of murder
physically exists, what it means is a mental construct...

so we have a two-tiered system, one is reality..
physical event, places, things, people..
and the second tier is the mental understanding of
the first tier... we have a physical action
and then we have a mental reaction to that action....
and we bounce off of the mental reaction, we make
sense of the physical event by our mental construct of
the world....

this understanding basically denies phenomenology....
which is the bracketing of events... which is the
philosophical study of the structures of experience
and consciousness......it tries to have an "objective"
study of certain topics... but there is no such thing
as "objective".... everything is a mental construct
and as such, there is no such thing as objective...
all we have is a mental construct of reality...
and nothing else....

Kropotkin

and again, what does this mean?

that the universe is not a set, determined place, time,
event... we can change the nature of what it means to
be human, we can change the very idea of institutions,
events, government, economics, political, social
and philosophical existence.. because each of them
is a mental construct.. not a physical reality...

our minds, by how the mind constructs the universe,
creates the reality of the universe... the universe
isn't a physical place, but a mental place... created
by our thinking about how the universe is constructed...

if we believe, have a mental vision of the universe
being built by god and determined by god, that
is the reality of the universe... if our mental construct
is that the same universe is scientific idea, that becomes
the reality of existence.... we see life through science,
not through religion or god....

the universe through our mental construction becomes far
more malleable.. far more flexible...don't like the government
we live under, it isn't really that hard to change it... the
real question becomes, what government should we live under?
What government we have becomes a question of what it means
to be human.... is our worth as human beings, really one
of the creation of a GDP or do we still have value even if
we don't contribute the 'Gross domestic product"

according to capitalists, we only have value as human beings,
when we make a economic contribution, thus our
value is being a worker, a producer or a consumer...
and we have no other value outside of that
contribution to the GDP....but that is as much a mental construct
as the mental construct that human beings are a product of a
all powerful god and our only value is to worship said god.....
both ideas, of capitalism and religions, deny, devalue
the worth of the human being... making our value dependent
on our working for the other, be it the capitalist or god....
we have no independent value outside of serving god
or money.... but as mental constructs, we can change
that to be something that allows human beings to have
as much value as money/capitalists/god....

all it takes is a mental reevaluation....
a reevaluation of values, as Nietzsche called it....
which is just another way of saying, we reevaluate
our current mental construct... and hopefully change it..
for the goal of existence isn't about permanence... but
about transformation...

and how does that work Kropotkin?
indeed, how does that work?

Kropotkin

so what is the point of existence?
if the universe is a bendable place, where
values and experiences are just a mental construct....
what is the point of existence?

if the universe is about its plasticity,

Plasticity: the quality of being easily shaped or molded....

then we should think about bending the universe to
something that is more human friendly.....

we have the possibility to shape, to form, to create
the universe that we want, need and desire....

the name of the game for human beings is really
just one word.. transformation....to transform
us, mentally, socially, politically, philosophically,
economically... in all ways possible, we can transform
ourselves, our lives, our families, our society and our
state... into something that works for us, not
like the society and state that today actively works
against us, but something that makes us better human beings....
today and tomorrow...

so the word for the day is this: transformation....

In what ways are we going to transform ourselves?
from what to what? what reality do we want, not
what reality we are forced into because we don't
understand that we have the ability to change and become
something else.. right now...all we have to do is do it....
but that requires us to actually have some sense of where
we are and where we want to be.... so, Socrates was right,
the name of the game is to "know thyself" and then know
what we want to be, to become and then work to make
that happen... to transform ourselves into what we are...
human beings.... not animal and not animal/human, but
truly a human being....
and that is possible if, if we hold that the universe is
a mental construct, not an actual physical presence....

to become human requires us to think about what it means
to be human...if we have a mental construct of what it means
to be human, we can then begin the process of becoming
human.... of transformation... and that idea, transformation is
what being human is all about.....

Kropotkin

In a very real sense, we already live in a
transformational universe.... we change at each stage of
human existence... we go from infants, to toddlers,
that is just one transformation,
and we go from toddlers to a child, another transformation,
and we go from a child to a pre-teen and then onto
being a teenager.. then onto being a young adult, to being
a full adult... we transform, change our nature quite
a bit in existence... I am not the same as I was when I
was 23 or 33 or 43 or 53 or even at 63... the very act
of getting older changes us, transform us... and we must
be able to understand that transformation...
it happens all the time, and within every single human being...
transformations are in fact, the very essence of being human...

so instead of our transformations being accidental...
we engage in our transformations as part of an
intentional act... we decide, we are here
and we want to be there.. that movement is
an intentional act and part of a transformation....
of going from here to there....to becoming
animal to animal/human to becoming fully human...
that is the road map of human beings....

can you point out on the road map of being human,
where you are? are you still animal, or are you
(with most people) animal/human or do you want
to transform into becoming human, fully human like
the great human beings before us, Goethe, Gandhi,
Shakespear, Lincoln, Da Vinci, MLK... people who engaged
in becoming human...and then reached the next stage/level
of being human.. self actualization.... to become something
new... and gift that back to the rest of us...
who are you? and what will you become?
that is the only question we need to engage with
as human beings...

how to transform and what to transform into?

Kropotkin

in my "philosophy is half truths" thread,
I point out that what we ''know'' or ''understand"
as human beings is really nothing more than
half truths... for we cannot know the entire truth
about anything...it is not possible....I might say,
I know chess.. and that might be slightly true,
but I ''know" so little about chess that any low ranking
grandmaster can wipe the floor with me.. and I cannot
as he/she cannot know everything there is to know about
chess.. It is simple impossible to know everything about chess...
just as we can't know "everything'' about anything...
take a subject and we simply cannot know everything
about it... the laws of knowledge, of knowing everything
prevent me from knowing everything... at most, all I
can know about anything is half truths, certainly not
the entire truth...

and this limitation defines us and forces us into
making choices without all the information...
for usually... our ignorance about something is greater
than our knowledge about something.. we are more ignorant
then knowledgeable about things like chess.....

this uncertainty is what creates dogmatism... we don't know
things and so in compensation, we overdramatize things
like the certainty in religions, religions like conservativism,
Catholicism, Hinduism and Buddhism to name a few religions
that have taken a dogmatic approach to existence....
the more uncertain they are about things, the tighter
they hold onto their faith in a religion....the religious
beliefs are a reaction to an uncertain world...
people turn to religions because they are so uncertain
about the world/universe... not because they actually
hold faith in that religion, but it calms their uncertainty
about the world....

true or false, if people were more certain about the world,
the modern religious beliefs will lessen... true...
the modern religious faith comes from the uncertainty
that fills the world today... uncertainty that arises from
science, biology, physics, evolution, technology, political,
economics and philosophical beliefs...

the relativity of the world's concepts have forced people
to hold onto their beliefs with stronger and stronger
determination.... whither or not those beliefs are justified...
is irrelevant.... the point is the faith in those beliefs,
not if they are true or not.... that is where we get
our certainty from... our faith in those beliefs,
not if they are true or not....the stronger the faith,
the more certain we are... and that is the point...
to create certainty in our lives through faith in something...
to have faith is to be certain.... and to be skeptical is
to have little or no faith in something....

and we certainly are skeptical about, well everything...
we are skeptical about science, politics, religions,
society, law, the masses, philosophical skepticism has been
all the rage since Descartes ...

in what can we be certain about? that has been the philosophical
question for 500 years... and no answers yet.....
plenty of questions, but no answers...

Kropotkin