rules are made to be broken? and others...

[eydryan]

Two observers can never be in exactly the same place - but this does not affect what is being observed.

then who is to say that they could be...

Philosophy is more to do with exploration. It is a means of defining our uncertainties, not our certainties. If this were not so, philosophers would not be able to question the thinking of their predecessors.
As for the rest, welcome to the Human race. Try reading Kafka.

indeed that is what i think that philosophy is exploration towards your very self and the selves of those around us. and for the rest i can do nothing but agree...

You don't suppose that maybe they just want to sell you your coffee? You're a half-empty guy I take it?

i used to be a half-full guy but then again, i really don't know. now i see either the whole damned cup or none of it. extremes are pushed...

Is philosophy considered a science?? Wow, that makes no sense to me either. It seems like the complete opposite

i can do nothing but agree with you here. and yes, it's a science in which you learn what other people said through time. it bites big time. last year i got a 6 for that and a 10 for an argumentative essay having the text in front (out of 10). so that part sucks.

If you ask me (which you didn't) I'd say you didn't lose touch with your abilities, but that you lost your faith in the system that is supposed to teach you. Like you've come to a point where you realize you can learn more on your own.

here you are absolutely right. i find this way of learning to be deficient and lacking the very thing that gives us superiority: our huge natural processing power. it is in my belief that the brain has the ability to work faster and easier than we conciousely can and also that we are born with knowledge. our brains are not void. our personality is but the necessary knowledge (like speech) is imprionted right therre. it is only the language selection that is concious and taught. i also believe that babies are logical machines given by the fact that they have no remorse and are excellent manipulators. but now i'm going a little overboard.

You are exactly right about money etc. But I wonder why you consider it a "good thing". I agree about life at any size is important. Not because I think they will reincarnate as something else in their next life, but because I believe they have a right to exsist. Ten-fold when you consider the fact that no animal destroys it's environment the way humans do.

oh this is a big one. life in itself fmpov has two aspects: the spiritual and the machine. they are precious first by the already proven thing that they are incredible machines which are mostly capable of doing stuff we cannot. and like you would not like to destroy a fine car or a brilliant supercomputer they should technically be left alone. the spiritual part is not yet proven so it does not yet hold enough weight but it has of course importance exactly because it is the mystical approach. and come to think about it, humans do not destroy their environment, they change it. they destroy ballances in nature but i believe when they will be serious enough humans will replace them with others and the ballance will be lost. many men will die but mankind will never perish...

I'll check it out. I had a bad experience with a zen master once. I hope it's not him!!

well it depends. if the zen master you encountered said he was a zen master and wanted to change you then he was no zen master. for one as wise does not try to change you visibly but work within you and they are usually modest men, saying they are nothing but normal people.

I can't help but think you're seeing what you want to. Not what actually exsists. Your view of friendship is very depressing, and fortunately not true in my opinion. The people you describe are not worthy of being your friends. Find a few true friends whom you can relate to, who care about your well-being, and make you happy! Don't settle for the users and abusers, they are simply not worth your time.

Honestly, I think you need to look at yourself more than your friends. Birds of a feather, flock together. Are you the type of person who uses and abuses people to suit your needs? Are you pretending to be someone you're not to befriend them? If so, you're not helping yourself. Just look at your outlook on life because of it.

Have many aquantances, have few friends. But make the friends you do have count. I've found the opposite to be true. I've found that all humans are in nature 'good at heart'. I believe we are born with a fully functional conscious. (every civilization always comes up with the same basic laws to live by. murder for example.) It takes persistance to become something else. They slowly dull themselves to badness. These people know what's wrong but they do it anyway, even if they never admit it. I imagine a serial killer or something thinking at times, "Wow, I'm f***ing crazy!".

So as far as the world not seeing their corruption and flaws? Doubtful. I guarantee you they see it. They just don't acknowledge it's presence. They have too much to lose if they do.

And for the last statement about our brains, you have no idea how exactly right you are. When you, for example, bounce a ball against a wall and catch it, your brain is doing physics, geometry etc on the fly, fractions of a second. The same calculations on paper would take soooo much longer.

my outlook on life is not that sumbre but i know of it. and all people are that sooner or later. it is blissful to be ignorant to it but i prefer to open my eyes to it. it is not that i am in a bleak condition due to that. it has been in my head for far longer than the time i started to feel bleak. it is quite true but well it's not really important. if you have to live in this world, you have to accept the rules.and about society, some see it, others don't but nothing they could do would change it. and they don't even want to because they are selfish.

As far as schizzos, not a good idea. Their hallucinations can be very dark and dangerous if unchecked. With virtual reality technology they've been able to show what it's like being a schizophrenic. A quick google search found this which gives a good idea of what it's like.

Just plain crazy people on the other hand? Hell yeah, let 'em run loose! Crazy people are so fun to hang around with. I'm totally serious, they are a blast.

schizzos are well maybe some are mainly very wrong but they have in their dreams the ability to do something we cannot: change the way they perceive reality. literally. their brain has so much immagination and is so good at reproducing that that it creates a different world. however, because the sim is not normal the brain tells the user that by adding nightmare scenarios. easy as that. i have seen the presentation. it's just llike hearing you brain think, making up scenarios. it's a monitoring tool of which unfortunatelly tthey have no control over. they have a gift wrapped inside a bomb casing.
crazy people however are the milder version and well i doubt they really have any skills which would make them useful for studying. but indeed they are fun.

Just wanted to add I'm really enjoying this thread...

yeah, it's very interesting, we should ask the admins if they let us make a pdf of this thread if it ever finishes, it would be quite interesting to give it to others to read..

 

[Hertz van Rental]

then who is to say that they could be...

By the same token, who is to say that they can't be?

 

[eydryan]

well the law of logics. so see, mine is backed up

 

[Hertz van Rental]

well the law of logics. so see, mine is backed up

Not at all. You have in no way proven that two people could not be in exactly the same place at the same time. Just to give you a hint as to what you need to do - it took Bertrand Russel four pages of calculations in his Principia Mathematica just to prove by logic that 2+2 = 4!
Most people have been taught that all triangles have three included angles, the sum of which is 180. But they are rarely taught that it is, in fact, possible to construct a triangle containing three 90 degree angles. It just depends upon the rules of the space you inhabit. Check out non-Euclidian geometry.
In a multi-dimensional universe (which most scientists now accept we inhabit) it is entirely possible to have two (or more) observers occupying exactly the same space at the same time - they would just be in different dimensions (at 90 degrees to each other).
All this is mere hair-splitting. What is in question is what is being observed, to get back to your original point.
We all see pretty much the same thing and in the same way, or at least close enough for us to agree, when we are in proximity. If that were not the case then Science - and indeed the rest of life - would be impossible.

 

[Marctwo]

We all see pretty much the same thing and in the same way, or at least close enough for us to agree, when we are in proximity. If that were not the case then Science - and indeed the rest of life - would be impossible.

I often think we don't - maybe we just calibrate our view to given standards. So if a group are looking at something blue, they may well get different impressions of it; But as long as they agree to call it blue then they can communicate about it.

 

[Hertz van Rental]

Exactly so. If a group are all looking at something blue and one of them sees a pink monkey peeling a banana, what would be the reaction of the rest of the group?
And he would be well advised to see a shrink and an optician before insisting that the others had got it wrong.

(With colour it is actualy possible to do a spectral analysis and then measure precisely the colour vision of the observers to find out by how much each one deviates)

 

[Marctwo]

It doesn't matter... as long as he agrees to call it blue. :lmao:

 

[Hertz van Rental]

Would make the decor in his house rather interesting. But surely the monkey should be called Cheetah? You don't get Australian monkeys.

 

[Marctwo]

lol! Very good.

Just noticed the edit:

(With colour it is actualy possible to do a spectral analysis and then measure precisely the colour vision of the observers to find out by how much each one deviates)

That's fine for telling you what someone sees but it doesn't tell you much about what they perceive.

 

[Hertz van Rental]

Well that takes us neatly back to Descartes.

It is actually possible to check perception by a variety of cognitive and perceptual tests. Lots of work has been done on this because of it's importance to the military. You don't want some GI Joe with his finger on the button seeing a pink monkey peeling a banana but perceiving it as a Russian ICBM heading for NY.

What you can't measure or check is how someone interprets their perceptions.

 

[Marctwo]

You don't want some GI Joe with his finger on the button seeing a pink monkey peeling a banana but perceiving it as a Russian ICBM heading for NY.

He may see what you would call a pink monkey peeling a banana but to him it's just blue.

I'd say you can quite easily find someones interpretation of their perceptions or even relate to someones perceptions but to know how they actually perceive things you'd need to be them.

 

['Daniel']

Yes. Really it doesn't matter what someone percieves something as, it's arbritary. If someone sees a monkey on a screen wheres someone else sees a blip on a screen it doesn't matter because to that person a monkey is the equivalent of a blip. We can't prove what someone sees just what that thing means to them. I could see red as green and green as red but to me red has always actually been green and green has always been red so If I was asked to choose the 'red' wire I would choose in relation to everyone else the green wire but to me its red. Seeing as these are just words that don't have any real meaning to the sense.

But then you could mention people who are colour blind. But say percieve green as red and red as green or maybe thats what they should percieve what they actually see is brown a red and blue as green. So theire interpretaion is wrong not their perception because perception is arbritary.


Waffle^ read if you want.

 

[Hertz van Rental]

I'd say you can quite easily find someones interpretation of their perceptions or even relate to someones perceptions but to know how they actually perceive things you'd need to be them.

As I have said, perception can be tested.
Perception is awareness through sensory stimulation. We have the same physiology with the same sensory aparatus and it works in the same way.
Children in Schools are usually subjected to sensory tests throughout their Educational life in order to pick up perceptual problems. Dyslexia is one such. Glue ear is another.
The 'average' or the 'norm' is quite easy to work out and then it is a simple matter to work out if an individual deviates from this and by how much.
Try reading up on perceptual psychology.
It is the interpretation of perception where the problem lies as interpretation is informed by experience and memory. A lot of our interpretation is coloured by associations. As we have all had a slightly different experience of life our associations will be different.

 

[Marctwo]

You can test for perceptual compatibility within a given norm but that's not the same as knowing how someone perceives something. Perception is knowledge and understanding gained through the senses. Although we may come to the same conclusions, our understanding can be very different.

Our eyes may be physically similar but our brains will often work in different ways and to varying degrees will not be too dissimilar. However, our minds/souls are unique and this is where perception is born.

 

[Hertz van Rental]

You are confusing the technical terms here.
Perception is the process of receiving sensory stimulation. That is a physical process that can be examined and measured.
You are talking about ascribing meaning to this sensory information - interpretation (or aprehension) that is, how we understand the world.