h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sneaky. I would say that 'to perceive' is a success verb. That is why there is a presumption that perceptions are veridical.

There was an old man who said: "Hush!
I perceive a young bird in this bush!"
When they said: "Is it small?"
He replied: "Not at all;
It is three times as big as the bush!"

There is a natural presumption that whatever is perceived can be described etc, making it a success verb. Contrast 'to suspect' where one may well be wrong.

toxx

What about dreams? I can describe my dreams rather well, this includes waking dreams, or hallucinations. That is why I say that dreams of all varieties are percieved.

So, how can perception be veridical, when experience tells us otherwise? Dreams, mirages, hallucinations, none of these are considered veridical, yet they are percieved by millions, and in some cases, billions. Again, my definition of perceive is input from the five senses, and I won't split hairs as to whether one electrical impulse is different from another. If, in my mind, I see something, then I see it, and it doesn't really matter if my eyes are open or not.

I think we're might just be getting somewhere. Quite possibly a starting point.

Collins English dictionary:

reality: n
1. the state of things as they are or appear to be, rather than as one might wish them to be.
2. something that is real ( )
3. the state of being real ( again)
4. philosophy - a. that which exists, independent of human awareness; b. the totality of facts as they are independent of human awareness of them.

perception: n
1. the act or the effect of perceiving ( )
2. insight or intuition gained by perceiving.
3. the ability or capacity to perceive.
4. way of perceiving; awareness or consciousness; view
5. the process by which an organism detects and interprets information from the external world by means of the sensory receptors.

Well, guess that clears that up!

az

Smartass. Although I'm glad to see that the Collins English Dictionary agrees with me on the def. of perception (#5). So I guess my definition of it wasn't so unusually broad after all.

Not too fond of the definition of reality, though. I'm not so sure that reality is real without awareness of it being so, but I might be alone there. How do we know what is real before it's ever percieved? How do we know that the perception of it being real causes it to be so?

hi Sneaky,

Well, I think only a total solipsist would deny the reality of a table existing in a room they are not in.

<>

How do you even know for sure that *you* are real? eh? eh?

az

What about a table existing in a room nobody has been in? I didn't mean to infer that for something to be real it has to be percieved at all times. What I meant was that the initial perception could very well have formed the reality of the something. Ideas controling reality. It's a concept explored in the fiction novel 'Blood Work', I forget the author.



I am that I am. Whether I'm real or not is pretty irrelavent, although I'm beginning to suspect that the solipsist I met the other day was right.

<>

Irrelevant? To whom? Anyhoodle, since you are not in the presense of your solipsist friend now then you probably don't exist.

az

Sneaky. I suspect you are confusing peceiving with what I would much prefer to describe as 'experiencing'! One experiences a dream and, usually, an illusion of perception within it. As Descartes said, we might well be mistaken. However, I would insist there remains a radical difference. If there were not, then we couldn't be mistaken! "Last night when I was asleep, I perceived that the Atlantic has all dried up. Let us warn the shipping companies"! I don't think so.

toxx

az. More than a little tongue-in-cheek, I'd say that your dictionary might clear these matters up for a linguist! However, use of the verb 'to be' doesn't help us much, since it is virtually synonymous with 'to have reality'. Synonyms are fine for language, but don't help the philosopher one little bit unless they have an explanatory, or at least an explicatory element.

toxx

toxx,

Well, as Sneaky pointed out, I was just being a smartass. Just adding a bit of jocularity to the discussion.

Which isn't to say that I don't think the discussion is valid, only that I have little to add except some light-hearted bits of whatever.

Just to make you all smile!

Do carry on as you were!



az

az. One of my rare cut 'n' pastes:

God in the Quad
by Ronald Knox

There was a young man who said, "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."

REPLY
Dear Sir:
Your astonishment's odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
GOD.

Hi chaps and chapesses,

Sadly, Recumbentman is out at the moment, or he would certainly be able to put us right on the Berkeleian views voiced above., i.e. ( I think this is Berkeley ) that God is the ultimate permanent perceiver of everything, including the tables in the rooms no-one has been into.

My stance, as ever, is Advaitin, with a dash of Mahayana Buddhism. So, statements to do with the reality of the personal self are irresistible bait.

So....there is no "real" personal self. There is no concrete entity to which one can point and say this is really an "I". "I" is a process, subject to constant change, and therefore, according to Veda and Mahayana, unreal.

Isn't it interesting that the statement "I am that I am," first recorded as uttered by God in Genesis to Moses from the burning bush, is so close to the Vedic "I am That." In fact, the whole formula for practical investigation of the "I" and its relationship to any putative divinity is given right there at the burning bush....
"Be still
and know
That
I am
God."

That which "is" is the unboundedness of the divine beingness which is what "I" is, and this can be "known" in the stillness when perception is aware only of aware-ness. And it is at this point that any sense of a personal "I" ceases to exist. The unboundedness can only be described as "That," according to Vedanta, because it transcends the boundaries of manifest, dualistic "reality."

The paradoxical nature of this realisation is that the physical organism, complete with all its faculties, intuitions, thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations etc., continues as per usual, but without an "I" doing any of it.

So here "I" am, sorry folks, dragging deity back onto the philosophy thread ( which I criticized Toxx for doing a while back..) But blame Berkeley.

On the broader issue of perception, does not the sense of identity arise from the joining of two perceptions: the perception of an external environment, including the physical body with all its sensations, and the perception of an internal environment, including thought, dreams, and, crucially memory? Feelings and emotions seem to be largely physical, with intuition at the subtlest end of the sensory scale.

Ho hum, as usual we are doing exactly what Wittgenstein warned philosophers, at least the logical type, against doing, speaking of that wherof we may not speak, and not passing it over in silence. But then, this is where it gets interesting, and the rest, as LW also said, is nonsense.

whoops, simulpost - the was for toxx's limericks.

shall go back and read what you have to say, Chai darling.

az

Chai,

Oh okay, I think I get it. We are all Fred!

az

Dear Az,

Precisely. How succinctly stated. I fancy a T-shirt with the logo

"We Are All Fred,"


only being philosophers, it should read

"We Are All Phred."

Chai

Chai,



Phred, eh? I like it!

az

"Yes, we are, all completely Phred"

I'm not.

Ohhhhhhhhhh yessssssss youuuuuuuu aaaaaaaaaaaaaare.

Recumbantman,

<<"Yes, we are, all completely Phred">>

You stuck in the word 'completely' there in your quote, which was not previously said. Anyhow, you don't have to be Phred if you don't want to - nobody does. But I never said I was *completely* Phred.

az