Realism vs. Idealism

[Aegean]

Yes...they can contradict experienced reality and justify themselves by using the occult or by manufacturing some meaningless prose that seems to be saying something profound but is really meaningless drivel, triggering emotional reactions in others.

[surreptitious75]

A determinist is still a moral agent capable of making decisions where there is a choice of alternatives
The mistake is to treat both determinism and free will as absolutes when they are merely conditional
So there is some determinism and some free will and they exist with each other in total compatibility

[Aegean]

A determinist is still a moral agent capable of making decisions where there is a choice of alternatives
The mistake is to treat both determinism and free will as absolutes when they are merely conditional
So there is some determinism and some free will and they exist with each other in total compatibility

Definitely. I say there are no absolutes. Meaning free-will is not absolute will, to do and be whatever you want.
Free-will is restricted. Minimal. Yet, decisive, over time.

[Prismatic567]

One builds opinions, morals, ideals by exploring and understanding the real; the other begins with the ideal and attempts to incorporate reality into it.

Realism, based on an indifferent, threatening world, seems harsh and brutal to the idealist who has adopted his ideology as a way of coping with threatening indifference of the world.

There are some nuances to the above.

Kant differentiated between Empirical Realism versus Transcendental Realism.

The empirical idealist or transcendental realist assumes there is something "real" out there but he is unable to realize it except for what is perceived by the brain from waves emitted from that "real" thing-in-itself out there.
Why one is an empirical idealist is because one is interacting merely with sense data in one's mind and not the real-empirical-thing.

Meanwhile, the empirical realist engages and interacts with real things within [external and internal] reality objectively.

The empirical idealist is also the Philosophical Realist;

Philosophical realism are attitudes[1] that objectivity exists in reality[2]. In philosophical concepts, objects are ontologically independent of someone's conceptual scheme, perceptions, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc.
..
Realism can also be a view about the nature of reality in general, where it claims that the world exists independent of the mind, as opposed to non-realist views (like some forms of skepticism and solipsism, which question our ability to assert the world is independent of our mind).
Philosophers who profess realism often claim that truth consists in a correspondence between cognitive representations and reality.[3]

Realists tend to believe that whatever we believe now is only an approximation of reality but that the accuracy and fullness of understanding can be improved.[4] In some contexts, realism is contrasted with idealism. Today it is more usually contrasted with anti-realism, for example in the philosophy of science.

Note, the Philosophical anti-Realism comes in many forms.
Kant's view is that of empirical realism which I agree.
Other Philosophical anti-Realism views are the various forms of idealism, e.g. Berkeley's subjective idealism, Platonism, etc. which I do not agree with.

I begin with aesthetics. So, you might say I'm an empirical realist.
The 'object' is an interpretation of fluctuating energies exhibiting a pattern.
There are energies with no pattern which are interpreted as darkness - also complex patterns are interpreted thusly, producing the confusion about what 'chaos' means.
For me chaos means 'randomness', the opposite of order.

The external world is independent from how the mind interprets it, but this makes an accurate interpretation more crucial to survival.

Currently erroneous interpretations are being sheltered from natural culling, for different reasons. Mostly because the promotion of poor judgments, and of superstition, makes a population more malleable to political and marketing manipulation and exploitation.

I'm a philosophical realist.
The mystical I associate with chaos and complexity - not to be confused as being the same.
Reality cannot be entirely known, but only interpreted sufficiently to promote survival and understanding.
Sometimes survival is inhibited by understanding, and promoted by superstition and mysticism. This is why it takes a particular kind of psychology to be a philosopher. A mind that places clarity and understanding above survival.

Nihilism projects mental abstractions into reality - absolutes - so as to 'correct' their absence. If they were to exist, outside their minds, existence would be negated. This is why I say that nihilism, the concept, is part of nihilism, the paradigm.
Nihilism is an expression of itself, and an inversion of reality.
In fact, the absence of absolutes, such as a one-god, universal morality and so on, is a positive because it is existence.
Nihilism is always idealistic, using semiology to 'correct' the real. This kind of idealism begins with the solution and then attempts to justify and validate it over time.
A realist, like myself, begins with the perceived and works towards establishing an ideology based on the experienced and perceived - cross referenced with other minds, and continuously validated against reality.
This establishes a higher probability, not a certainty.

If you are a philosophical realist, you cannot be an empirical realist.
A philosophical realist is an empirical idealist.
A philosophical realist do not interacts but distance his aesthetics [confined to his mind] from reality with a reality-Gap.

An empirical realist embraces, entangles, engages and interacts with reality, i.e.
{subject <-> reality}.
In this model, reality is interdependent with the subject.

A philosophical realist aka empirical idealist assumes reality is independent of his mind[subject] thus there is always a reality gap between the philosophical realist and reality, i.e.
{subject ->reality GAP<- reality}

Example,
'Subject' -reality Gap - 'the real table'
In this case the subject do not embraces, entangles, engages and interacts with the supposedly real table.
The subject only perceived what is supposedly the real table via waves and what is real to the subject are merely sense-data, thoughts [concepts and ideas] and brain activities in his brain.
Even if the subject touched the table there is still a 'reality Gap' between the 'real table' and the subject.

The question here is, is there a real table out there that is perceived, seen or touched?

Note Bertrand Russell's dilemma;

Among these surprising possibilities, doubt suggests that perhaps there is no table at all.

Such questions are bewildering, and it is difficult to know that even the strangest hypotheses may not be true. Thus our familiar table, which has roused but the slightest thoughts in us hitherto, has become a problem full of surprising possibilities. The one thing we know about it is that it is not what it seems. Beyond this modest result, so far, we have the most complete liberty of conjecture. Leibniz tells us it is a community of souls: Berkeley tells us it is an idea in the mind of God; sober science, scarcely less wonderful, tells us it is a vast collection of electric charges in violent motion.
-Problem of Philosophy - Appearance versus Reality

That is the dilemma faced by the philosophical-realist's position which culminated to the doubt, perhaps there is no real table out there at all?

[surreptitious75]

The mind cannot be independent from reality because it is a part of reality so the philosophical realist cannot distance himself from it regardless of what he thinks
The only position that is valid is empirical realism as it is mind interacting with reality or more precisely one part of reality interacting with another part of reality
The term reality gap is therefore an oxymoron as the only gaps are ones of knowledge and nothing else

[Prismatic567]

The mind cannot be independent from reality because it is a part of reality so the philosophical realist cannot distance himself from it regardless of what he thinks
The only position that is valid is empirical realism as it is mind interacting with reality or more precisely one part of reality interacting with another part of reality
The term reality gap is therefore an oxymoron as the only gaps are ones of knowledge and nothing else

My point is the philosophy realist's view implied and triggered a "reality Gap" that is not realistic nor true.

[Magnus Anderson]

'intelligence' is not a static feature that can be evaluated according to a finite set of standards. rather generally speaking it is an organism's ability to successfully navigate and use the environment that it's in, which can be quite different than past environments. so you'd not assess the quality of organism x's intelligence (who lives in the year 2386) with organism's y's intelligence (who lived in 1873).

You can successfully navigate and use the environment that you're in solely by luck. That's why I don't think your definition is a good one.

Intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns in data. We use this ability to make accurate predictions, we make accurate predictions so that we can prepare for the future and we prepare for the future so that we can increase the chances of attaining our goals.

With this definition in mind, of which I am a fervent proponent, it is possible to be intelligent without being realistic and without knowing a lot (or anything at all) about the real world.

untab

To be realistic is to have an accurate model of reality. If you're using your intelligence to recognize patterns in imaginary data, while thinking you're dealing with sensory data, you'd be intelligent but not realistic (indeed, you'd be delusional.)

To know a lot is to have an accurate model of a very large portion of reality. If you're not using your intelligence at all or if you're using it to recognize patterns in imaginary data, you'd be intelligent but you won't know anything about the real world.

It is theoretically possible to be realistic (and also knowledgeable) purely by chance, but in the kind of environment we've been living in since the inception of human existence, there's a method of constructing accurate models of reality much powerful than chance. And this method works by recognizing patterns in what was experienced in the past.

But intelligence is not a superpower that can work under any set of circumstances. There is no such thing as free lunch. Intelligence can only work within relatively stable environments (too much complexity requires too much intelligence whereas chaos reduces the advantage of intelligence) and within environments where there is enough time to think (the more complex the environment, the more time required.)

The question then is: could it be possible that modern environments are one of those environments that do not favor intelligence coupled with realism? And what if intelligence+realism is the main advantage of human beings over all other living beings without which living beings are rendered the weakest organisms of all?

I don't think that human beings are a plastic material that can adapt to any kind of environment within any period of time.

[Aegean]

Intelligence = processing speeds + pattern recognition and integration into cohesive mental models.

The rest is how imbeciles try to make their talent for basketball ro hammering into a form of genius.

One has to simply ask?
What separates man - homo sapient - from all other species?
What made this one species dominate them all?
They run faster, are stronger, more durable more flexible, yet dominated by a feeble creature with a large brain to mass ratio.

And yes, like a muscle, intelligence is inherited potential that can remain atrophied, and can regress if the stressors are not forcing ti to remain sharp.

[Meno_]

Surreptitious75 wrote:

"Ego pertains to ones personality and can be completely separate from ones philosophical world view
A determinist is therefore not necessarily more ego driven than a free will advocate [ or vice versa ]

I cannot be certain of my significance on a human scale where no trace exists only on a universal one
But it is academic since all of human existence is merely ephemeral as we are all just passing through"






Maybe a metaphor can be used, as a distinction represented between the ego ideal and the ideal ego within the construction and deconstruction of reality. At the level of the metaphors, identity is represented within the patterns of recognition and creates a double mirror.

[Aegean]

I call my metaphysical views;
Interactions & Interpretations.

An organism engages the real world via a medium - usually light or atmosphere, ro electromagnetism, in the case of touch.
This is when the first interpretation occurs, from stimuli to neural pulse to be transmitted to the brain where it is translated, once more, into feelings sensation, or abstraction, idea.
Much is lost in translation. It is a necessary part of processing data - it simplifie and generalizes.
We can never know reality absolutely, but only what is most probable.
The method has been successful, because our species has survived within the world.

Interactions imply attraction/repulsion, between patterned (ordered) or non-patterned (chaotic) energies.
Chaos is always repulsive, because it can never harmonize, which is a way of saying it can never attract and stabilize into complex forms, like particles.
Harmony indicates ana agreement of patterns - overcoming what repulsion disharmony is present.
Sometimes a third pattern can mitigate to stabilize two patterns in disharmony.

Energies can be conceptualized as vibrations/oscillations - see Superstring Theory.
Order is a repeating, predictable sequence of oscillation.
Here we can borrow from Heidegger's terminology and say that the sequence is of possibility.
Possibility for what?
For interaction.
What is vibrating/oscillating?
Space = possibility. Probability would be matter/energy, order.
Dimensions are part of the sequence.
Light, for example, is a pattern (energy) which can interact it one dimension, diminishing the possibility of its interacting in all other dimensions. This is called movement/momentum, measured relative to other patterns, as speed.
Solidity, mass, like steel, can be understood as a pattern that can interact in multi-dimensional space/time. This sharing of its probable interactivity is perceived as solidity - vibration/oscillation speed slow.

But I digress.
The ideal is of the mind, the real is of the body, physical.
Mind interprets the real, usually using a medium, like light. The accuracy of its interpretation determines the success/failure of its subsequent actions and choices, based on this interpretation.

We can never know reality absolutely, and this is why anyone who claims to have solved the problem of reality is lying, and attempting to manipulate, ro to use the absence of absolutes to exploit need/desire in others.
We can only form the most probable interpretation and the most useful.

[Aegean]

If we use language to reveal and not to conceal, then we may use the Greek term for 'self', ego to refer only to the conscious, lucid, part of self.
This makes Know Thyself a process that can never complete itself.

Self can be sued to refer to the identity starting at birth and ending at death, characterized by experiences - reactions and relating with reality in the fluctuating fluid present.
We may capitalize Self to represent the identity at is inherited from the parents - preceding birth.
we then have a triad:
ego--self--Self - to put it in temporal order: Self---self---ego.
A continuum of memories. Some inherited, genetically, and others adding to the previous via sensual interactivity.
Ego is the awakening to this continuum. Most associate it with the will, because the will is the focusing of the organism's aggregate energies upon an objective.

Data can flow from exoteric and from esoteric sources, into the brain, via the nervous system.
The one-god has been associated with the mind, despite the body, because only the mind is free from natural order, and space/time limitations.
Abrahamism uses the mind to reject the body's limitations.

My emphasis is on physis (nature), empiricism, with metaphysics only acting as a supportive element; a foundation.

[Meno_]

If we use language to reveal and not to conceal, then we may use the Greek term for 'self', ego to refer only to the conscious, lucid, part of self.
This makes Know Thyself a process that can never complete itself.

Self can be sued to refer to the identity starting at birth and ending at death, characterized by experiences - reactions and relating with reality in the fluctuating fluid present.
We may capitalize Self to represent the identity at is inherited from the parents - preceding birth.
we then have a triad:
ego--self--Self - to put it in temporal order: Self---self---ego.
A continuum of memories. Some inherited, genetically, and others adding to the previous via sensual interactivity.
Ego is the awakening to this continuum. Most associate it with the will, because the will is the focusing of the organism's aggregate energies upon an objective.

Data can flow from exoteric and from esoteric sources, into the brain, via the nervous system.
The one-god has been associated with the mind, despite the body, because only the mind is free from natural order, and space/time limitations.
Abrahamism uses the mind to reject the body's limitations.

My emphasis is on physis (nature), empiricism, with metaphysics only acting as a supportive element; a foundation.

However, that can't be held unto the final set of self containing irreducibile elements for functional reasons, neceasarily, only contingently.


But why return to such uncertainty , where the objective aesthetic did not arise spontaneously .

[promethean75]

You can successfully navigate and use the environment that you're in solely by luck. That's why I don't think your definition is a good one.

Intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns in data. We use this ability to make accurate predictions, we make accurate predictions so that we can prepare for the future and we prepare for the future so that we can increase the chances of attaining our goals.

sure, but what i did say about intelligence was sufficient to prove the point i was trying to make at that moment. anybody who likes to cite drops in intelligence in sample groups as some kind of evidence for a general decline in something like civilization, is blowing smoke. what usually follows is some statement like 'but those stupid people are sheltered by an artificial environment... a once natural environment that would not tolerate them, one which man has interfered with to make accommodating to them.' this line of nonsense is even more ambiguous. where does one draw the line between acceptable interference - when man's control of the environment is good - and unacceptable interference - when man's control of the environment is bad? in fact, you might find the same people pushing this idiotic argument at the front of the line to get a heart transplant, or not hesitating to accept a sizable loan from a bank to buy a house. shirley these things aren't 'natural', are they? these are things man has designed... much like the things that make stupid people's lives more easy, no? they must be artificial then. ah but these are 'good' instances of 'artificial', of man's interference with what would otherwise be natural; a homeless man who dies because he can't get a heart transplant. you see what i mean. trying to draw a 'line' here is almost as stupid as the argument itself, so you don't bother mincing such nonsense.

but yes, had i gone on further to expand the definition of 'intelligence', i would have included the pattern recognition that you mention. that's obvious enough. still though, that's not all that it is, so i'd say your definition was rather incomplete as well. where is the pattern recognition in the foresight that you ought to park on the street instead of the sloped driveway the night before they call for snow? where is the pattern recognition in drawing the inference that groups that acquire a surplus of material goods tend to stay in one place rather than remain hunter-gatherers? where is the pattern recognition in the intuition that your spouse might be moody because their favorite team lost the superbowl? there re all kinds of intelligence that have next to nothing to do with recognizing spacial or causal patterns.

all this aside, the major premise is simple, and simply overlooked; there is no 'ideal' intelligence status, because environments change, thereby changing the demands made on the organism to survive. there may arise an environment in which some stroke of genius is perfectly useless (a philosophy classroom comes to mind)... and another in which some sonofabitch dumb as a styrofoam hammer can get along just fine.

[Aegean]

Mamery is what pattern recognition relies upon.
Sense of self.
inheritance.

A pool of memories the individual can use to perceive pattern in its own and others experiences.

Trial and error is natural selection at tis basest most primal form.
Memory and the understanding ti may produce, adds a multiplying sophistication to probabilities.

[Aegean]

Normally the idea/ideal proceeds from the real.
In Nihilism, all is inverted abstractly, linguistically, because is cannot be practically, physically.
Nihilism begins with the idea/ideal and then selectively attempts to incorporate reality into its contexts - into its ideology. If and when it cannot - which depends on the degree of its attempt to annihilate the real and replace it with tis ideal - it either rejects it as illusory or insignificant, or with a word redefinition defines it out of existence, or mystifies it and conceals it in mystifying prose and nonsensical met poetics - metaphors, allegories, insinuations, full of triggering symbols/words.

[Aegean]

Moving from subjectivity towards objectivity is a movement from practical pragmatism towards impractical pragmatism; a movement towards the indifference of reality, necessitating a similar gradual indifference.
An unsustainable state, for humans, who, as organisms, must care and experience world as need/suffering.
A movement similar to that of light - increasing possibility of interactivity in one spatial-dimension, producing a decline of possibility in all other dimensions - speed.

[Aegean]

There's a difference between bringing language 'down to earth' and pulling it into the earth to bury it.
Nihilists want to bury it in allegory and romanticism, and idealism, (positive nihilists) or they want to convert it to meaninglessness and declare philosophy dead (pure nihilists).
If the world lacks absolute, create them with semiotics; if these fail to convince or to produce the desirable outcome, then settle for absolute negation as the one and only certainty.

[Meno_]

Of course, with a middle of the road signification transvaluing both, with constructed objectives vested in probable outcomes. All ideals are realized to connect with all possible designs of possible modeling
are vested as usual in an anthropomorphiic medium

The eternal return to higher conscious manifestations of the ego

are signified as problems consisting of the signification of the particular that has to be overcome primarily, at least within the elementary participation mystique of two elements, creating sense of the binary signifier.

In the most reductive sense the idealization of a ideal manifestations of transcendental reality require a set of antithesis. Primal pre reflective visualization results in an apeothetic reduction toward nil , an absolute nihilization toward absurdity.

[Aegean]

Not the eyes, language is a mirror into the soul, if by soul we mean the mind/body synthesis.
In times of decline, as the American Empire has now entered, the majority will be taken over by superstition, confusion, and desperation, reflected through their use and understanding of language.

We live, now, in a state of increasing desperation and degeneracy.
If words like male/female can lose their empirical meaning, and become terms of ideological contention, then how much easier it is to do so with more synthetic words, referring to more complex concepts?

The modern American infected mind lives in a state of linguistic confusion.
Words do not refer to biological real phenomena, but have become ideological - abstractions that replace empiricism with emotionalism.

[Aegean]

Words have now been detached from empiricism and attached to abstractions, found in books, or in other minds - in subjective collectives.
Each adopting a specific jargon, reflecting their method of coping with reality - their nihilistic style.
They gather in 'safe' areas, i.e., areas free from predation, to casually regurgitate and share their shared method of self-medication - their shared coping jargon.

Although many of these misused and abused words have conventional meaning they are not grounded in empiricism, but intentionally maintained as ideologies, to be bought and sold on the market of ideas/ideals, where trends emerge and then gradually disappear and replaced by new fashion trends with their own lingo and their own style.

[Aegean]

If not absolute power - omnipotence - then all will find parity ni shared powerlessness.
If omniscience is impossible, then we can find parity in uniform ignorance.

If not absolute oneness, then absolute void.
The either/or of Nihilistic binary dualisms.

[Aegean]

Nihilism must reduce language to an ideology, referring to abstractions with minimal or no reference to an shared experienced world.
It must do so to sell its own ideological coping mechanism to those who share the same existential anxieties and genetic weaknesses, gathering them into cult-like groups, sharing the same jargon and the same obscurantism.

Some would rather render language empirically meaningless to reject a world that confronts and challenges their idealistic conception of themselves.

Male, female, race, love, morality, value, god etc.
All mystical words referring to occult realms, where the like-minded - those sharing the same psychology - can escape into.

Empirically grounding these terms will disarm them. This is why they fight, tooth and nail, those that try to return language to tis original utility, calling them names, like nazi, fascist, objectivist, or accusing them of an ulterior motive, of an emotional motive...fearing that their own may be exposed through their choice of words and how they chose to define them.
With no objective foundation, words become reflections of an esoteric foundation - where emotion replaces evidence and reason, and ego validates.
Quantities replace qualities, and 'truth' is measured by how many feeble minds an ideology can seduce and integrate into its obscurantism.

Vagueness maintaining an aura of all-inclusivity. None will be insulted or threatened; nobody will be turned away, if they show the willingness to submit to their common coping ideology.

[Magnus Anderson]

If words like male/female can lose their empirical meaning, and become terms of ideological contention, then how much easier it is to do so with more synthetic words, referring to more complex concepts?

Given any word, what does it mean to speak of its "empirical meaning"?

[Aegean]

Example:
Male = biology, reproduction...appearance, behaviour...

[Aegean]

First came the action, then the word.
Interactivity - how the specific phenomenon relates and interacts with other phenomena.