Can we propose a definition of thought without linking it to reality? Or, must thought be whatever reality be? In other words, is the mysterious make-up of thought truly inseparable from reality?
I guess it depends on the definition of reality. Why do those interested in philosophy get so focused on definitions? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! You can argue definitions all day long but it won't change the underlying principles of consciousness. For what it's worth, my thoughts are my realities.
Sure. I am thinking that you make sense. See the thought has no connection to reality at all.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Edit to add: Hey, I thought friction was reality. Or was it the hypotenuse of a triangle is reality...Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The thought is reality, but the subject matter need not be. Yes. Reality can be any number of things.
Gee it is almost like you are not describing reality but simply describing things that are real. Or do you mean that since friction is reality and thoughts are reality then thoughts are friction. Do you realize that reality check made more sense than you? Can you even imagine reality?
Objective reality can be defined as reality in its ultimate or unchanging form. This is more like the future or ideal image, instead of what we now know. Humans, at each stage of history do their best to describe how they perceive the reality they can see. This approximation becomes the basis for personal and collective temporal reality. It is not eternal but temporal. For example, at one time the earth was understood to be flat. This POV did not equal ultimate or unchanging reality. Rather it was connected to the temporal reality of humans at that time in history. The ultimate reality does not change, while temporal reality is in constant flux, with these fuzzy temporal images slowing coming into focus. Clarity will be achieved way in the future. Beside objective reality, there is also subjective reality. Subjective is not about the scientific method, but more about opinions and choices. For example, fashions change each season and also have characteristics for each generation. There is no ultimate eternal fashion, that slowly comes into focus, like an ultimate explanation of the universe. Because fashion and style is subjective, it can be the subjective ultimate at each point in temporal reality. The old timers may listen to oldies music because to them that was the ultimate music within their subjective reality. This defines an unchanging aspect of their reality. Sometimes people mistake subjective reality for objective reality. Dogmatic appeal makes many people believe even a fuzzy objective picture has the clarity of ultimate reality. Each generation treats their dogma like their favorite songs, thereby blocking the march of the youthful toward objective reality. This does help create a capacitance so change is marginal. Inside the box is based on this hybrid reality, with outside the box subjectively, taboo, but necessary for higher temporal clarity in objective reality.
I don't see how that would be possible. If you are suggesting that thoughts must be substantial, in other words that thoughts are composed of some kind of thought-stuff, and that this must be the same stuff that makes up the rest of reality, I'm going to disagree. Probably. The fact that the town I live in has a particular population is certainly linked to reality. But that needn't imply not only that some kind of mysterious 'my town's population' substance exists, but that the rest of the universe is composed of the same stuff. I'm inclined to think that it's possible to exist and be real without being substantial. There are relations between substances for example, or magnitudes. There's the fascinating reality of holes. And there's a huge literature, dating back to the ancient Greeks concerning substances and properties. I don't think that I want to imagine thought as mysterious psychic properties possessed by substances though. That line of thinking leads towards pan-experientialism. I'm more inclined to think of thought as information encoded in the physical properties of the substances comprising cognitive systems. An analogy might be the information recorded on a computer's memory drive.
Immediate reality is provided by sensations (visual, aural, tactile, etc) and would seem a constantly "new" and unconditioned world without the acquired habits of memory and the extended processes of reflective thought (reasoning, inference, etc). The latter in turn provide a world that is "understood / conditioned" or the reality of theory (rendered more permanent / predictable via generalizations and global regulation). Since the ancient Greek era such intellectual activity or critical thinking has been taken to be the "hotline" to either an existence which is mind-independent or an objective reality free of subjective beliefs. But OTOH, something like Zen Buddhism might flip that Western tradition around to where, again, it is the immediate realm of extrospective manifestations (prior to thought and language being applied to them) that should accordingly be considered liberated from our cognitive biases and conceptions / scheme-formulations (i.e., the latter consisting of a delayed "encountered later" view of reality). "Reality" itself is a concept, but it's too challenging to avoid the word. One still needs a symbol for referencing the target of discussion. David Darling: There is a saying in Zen: “The instant you speak about a thing you miss the mark.” So, presumably, this saying has also missed the mark — and this one, too. Our endless analysis can lead us into all sorts of difficulties. But how can we break free of it? Living in a world of words and concepts and inherited beliefs, says Zen, we have lost the power to grasp reality directly. Our minds are permeated with notions of cause and effect, subject and object, being and nonbeing, life and death. Inevitably this leads to conflict and a feeling of personal detachment and alienation from the world. Zen’s whole emphasis is on the experience of reality as it is, rather than the solution of problems that, in the end, arise merely from our mistaken beliefs. Because it eschews the use of the intellect, Zen can appear nihilistic (which it is not) and elusive (which it is). Certainly, it would be hard to conceive of a system that stood in greater contrast with the logical, symbol-based formulations of contemporary science. More than any other product of the Oriental mind, Zen is convinced that no language or symbolic mapping of the world can come close to expressing the ultimate truth. As one of its famous exponents, Master Tokusan said: “All our understanding of the abstractions of philosophy is like a single hair in the vastness of space.” Zen claims no thought system of its own. Yet it is undeniably Buddhist in origin and essence. And so before trying to appreciate its final flowering, it is worthwhile digging down to examine Zen’s roots — roots which are set firmly in Indian soil, in the fertile ground of Mahayana Buddhism. [...] Zen is . . . difficult to talk about. So alien, indeed, is Zen to the analytical Western mind that it is perhaps easier to say what it is not. Zen is not a faith because it doesn’t urge the acceptance of any form of dogma, creed, or object of worship. Nor is it antireligious or atheistic; it simply makes no comment on the matter. Zen is not a philosophy or even, to the Western mind, a form of mysticism. As we normally understand it, mysticism starts with a separation of subject and object and has as its goal the unification or reconciliation of this antithesis. But Zen does not teach absorption, identification, or union of any kind because all of these labels are derived ultimately from a dualistic conception of life. If a label is needed that best approximates to the spirit of Zen then “dynamic intuition” is perhaps as close as we can come. --Zen Physics - - - - - - - Immanual Kant: The dictum of all genuine idealists from the Eleatic school to Bishop Berkeley, is contained in this formula: "All cognition through the senses and experience is nothing but sheer illusion, and only, in the ideas of the pure understanding and reason there is truth [ultimate reality]." The principle that throughout dominates and determines my Idealism, is on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth [real things exhibited in space / time rather than intellectual / immaterial / language products outputted by reflective thought (ideas as such that tend to be timeless, aspatial)]." --Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics
I think thought and reality are separate. You can think a nonsense word without meaning and therefore has no connection to reality. You could use invented letters instead of the written alphabet to be certain. You could also imagine something impossible. Ive seen impossible drawings (stairs etc.)
