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

Maybe it does. Some people would define the objective reality to be what we perceive through the senses, which pretty much relies on having some common ground in what we all can sense.
Of course, you don't have to bother with an objective reality at all.

As for love, love is good.
I would agree there is always some mystery around it, unless you get into one of those moods where everything makes sense, like being in love and completely happy, and having nothing to worry about.

As one rather famous insect said: 'love is all you need'.

A little aside: I tend to agree, though I dunno about all this subjective antireality stuff. People seem to assume that the pluralism of our postmodern society brings us to a new level of freedom and purpose within our own worlds, but I believe the opposite is true. When you reject objective reality you do not release the inner self that was bursting to get free, rather you destroy the ultimate purpose of human interaction that has blossomed over the past two and a half thousand years. I think it most unwise to reject most of the thought in history in favour of some idea that has been around in the popular sphere, at best, for the past fourty years or so. Here are a couple of problems with subjectivism:

1. Saying 'everything is justified' merely waters down the concept of justification, thus leading to the belief that no more justification is needed, thus becoming 'justification is nothing', which inexorably leads to 'everything is nothing'.

2. I touched on this above, but if everyone does their own thing then what does that mean for society? I don't personally believe in democracy, but for those who do, answer me this: if all reality is subjective then how can one person say they can represent another?

3. My final point touches on morality. If all morals are subjective, then why are there some things which most people consider wrong in all circumstances? Burning children alive for example. If I thought that was right, and you wrong, what justification would you have to prevent me from doing it. You may argue that if most people think it is wrong then it is. But what if you found a tribal society which pracised this act? If they all thought it was right and you wrong, then why should it be stopped?

Just a few thoughts for you. It distresses me to see many people going down the utilitarian/relativeist/subjectivist routes without properly thinking through the consequences.

Andúril

Meh, reality is an illusion to me, I don't take it seriously. In fact, I think we all take ourselves a little too seriously.

Hmm...

But if reality is an illusion then what is real? Most people would define illusion as 'that which is not real', so to say reality isnt real implies you believe there is something more real than the everyday world in which we live.

Are you pointing to some greater reality, such as love, or God or something to justify your attack on the everyday conception of reality, because if you arn't, then it seems to me that to say 'reality is an illusion' is nonsense.

Whether you take this sort of thing seriously or not is your perogative. I for one value the concept of truth, which I guess is why I care about this sort of thing. But you may consider such a valuation to be without use.

Andúril

I don't think we'll ever be able to truly figure out what's real and what isn't. What I'm saying is that it really doesn't matter what's real and what isn't. In a way, they may be one in the same.

the concept of dualistic reality implies the reality is twofold; mind and matter. There is no way of knowing wether matter is actually a product of our minds or not.

Indeed... I guess I believe that whats important is the spiritual reality of God. Everything else derives its existence from said being and thus is less real, though things such as love are more real than material objects because they are inherant characteristics of the highest form of reality.

Thus it is more justifiable to live for something which is more real... for example, love over money, justice over human status etc.

Andúril

*cheers*

yeah

a lot of catching up after a long off of univrs.
Nunarssuaq's very piercing remarks and anduril's relativly traditionals
4got where i post : our senses are just a tiny strip in each of their spectrum
+ theory of uncertainty

cynic is so rite.



in a buk i was told 2 read, all our species are the left-over after a selction(natural or not is 2 b defined anew!_) result from ancient ones with myriads inter-species erased! even chemicals well fall into this theoty.

If u care bout truth so much

Hi,

I'm not sure I totally understood what you were saying. Spelling has its uses. However, I might add that though the theory of natural selection is relatively accepted nowadays, there are grave doubts as to whether such ideas lead to the theory of evolution or not. Indeed, just because Darwin (and others) made some observations, why should unobserverd observations be anything like them? Could natural selection simply be something that works with what we have observed, and not with what we have not: ie. the evolution of the human race.

Just a thought.

§tephanos

Did you mean the evolution of the human race was observed or unobserved?

unobserved. Sorry. My point is that we have records of something which looks like natural selection because we made some observations. However, we did not observe the evolution of human kind, so just because some animals showed signs of evolution, does not lead logically to us evolving at all. If you think that that is good evidence then you are merely subscribing to naturalistic philosophy (which states that the world can be understood wholly in terms of nature), and not to what science so laughably calls "fact".

Andúril

Well, I would agree then. But confining yourself to deduction greatly limits what you can know though. Observing that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west a million times doesn't logically prevent the sun from rising in the west the next day.

It's true. When we drop a stone, there's really no telling for sure wether it'll fall down or float up into the sky. We only predict that it will fall because of past observations we've made.

WOW, how did the conversation get from Love to this? Pretty cool how some things turn out... Maybe I just proved that evolution is true by observing how this conversation has evolved... or maybe not, hehe.

Nunarssuaq

Oh love! That's what we were talking about!
Love, oh love! How did we get so far away from that?
*sighs*

That's the human race in a nutshell...how DID we get so far from it?

"Perhaps I'm old and tired," he continued, "but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway."

Its been said many times that the more you learn the more you realise the less you know. It's funny. I'm doing a philosophy degree at the moment and the more I study the more I realise that the less I care about lots of things. Not to say its not all very interesting and all that, but ultimately, I don't think much of it matters to my life in any way. Indeed, at the moment my main task is attempting to discover who I am and what love is. There is so much in the world which I do not understand, but thats okay. I don't need to know everything anymore. I guess what I'm really talking about it priorities. What is important is you find out what your priorities are and follow them. There is far too much to learn to learn everything. A wonderful illustration of this was presented by Jean Paul Sartre in Nausea, in the character of the Autodidact.

He whished to write some idea of his own, but before he could do that he wished to 'complete his education'. This consisted of him reading every book in the library of his small town in alphabetical order, moving from one subject to the next. Its endearing, but also sad as it paints a picture of academia that is not too far from the truth. Thus, I no longer long to learn everything. I merely wish to learn that which is important, which, I believe is to answer the following questions:

Who is God?
Who am I?
What is love?

If I come to the end of my life and come anywhere near to finding the answer to these questions, which are irrevocably intertwined, then it would not be a wasted life.

Andúril

love is what gives meaning to life, as life holds no meaning on its own. life is only meaningful in its interactions with other things, as nothing has meaning in and of itself, not even the universe (as a side note the universe has no meaning), and thus without love we have nothing. i choose love here with a slightly different meaning, but i feel it is appropriate considering the fact that no other bond creates such a full list of emotions, pretty much everything from intense rage to joy is covered.

ps, love itself has no meaning because it is merely a bond and to give it a meaning would create a circular definition for life.

Francis Bacon (the 20th century artist) said that love was the closest two people can come to being nice to each other "because god knows thats hard enough".

Love has nothing to do with being honourable, nothing to do with being intelligent, in fact if youre falling in love, or have your eye on someone, you can pretty much lock your mind up now, it'll only get in the way.

The problem i find is, yes, its ok to be cynical, tell me that love is the worlds biggest lie, tell me that its silly and pretentious and for sissies, i'd love to believe you. But its not true. For want of love i've done some of my favourite things, gained my best memories and learnt what a twisted b****** i really can be. Without love i feel frail, lonely, hopeless, everything comes in fits and starts, its a struggle, maybe that doesnt go for everyone, but the only time i get any peace is in distracting myself. With love i feel jealous, destructive, trapped even (maybe it wasnt love), but i never wanted it to end. The problem was it became so easy to take it for granted.

i've never seen my failings so clearly until i was in love. My sense of self (which will only get washed away in death) has become more defined. And as with all true things, the sadness, the awareness of mortality and loss, is always right behind you, tapping away on your shoulder.

it's just such a magical time

I'm amazed this thread is still going but, what with the subject matter, no suprise. I want to say thanks for not overloading it with contributions, and I am touched by what has been said, some of it sounds as if I might have written it.