• Yohan
    679
    Hi.
    It kinda seems to me that there are a few major questions that pervade most or all of the other questions.
    I'm trying to dig below the surface to determine what these are:
    Here is what comes to mind for me at least:
    What is relativity, or how does it work.
    What is non-relativity, or how does it work.
    Assuming both are legitimate, how do they co-exist?

    I think lots of materialists make a mistake of confusing relativity and non-relativity.
    Eg, "I see a rock. If I stop seeing a rock, the rock remains as it is".......This is ok if we don't assume a rock is like it appears relative to the position of our eyes, when we don't see it.
    Consider what a rock looks like a foot away, vs what a rock looks like on the atomic or sub-atomic level.
    On the atomic/subatomic level there doesn't appear to be any individual rock. Nor is there color, shape, texture, etc.
    Some may argue that an object is more accurately known by observing it as close as possible. They may say your vision is blurred the further away you observe the rock from, because you miss the fine details. And so the qualities of the rock from a distance are not really there in the rock.
    If this is true, then what we call a 'rock' is a sort of illusion created by not seeing a rock clearly, from a distance. The atoms created the appearance of a rock, like pixels on a screen collectively appear to form objects. A rock is just a shallow surface appearance, below which is the intrinsic nature of the rock, which is actually the many many atoms.
    But the opposite point of view can also be argued; That the accurate point of view is the bigger point of view. I.E the 'big picture'. "It appears that there is just a bunch of meaningless atoms moving around, but this is a short sited vision, creating an illusion of separation. Step back, and see the bigger picture. There is really a singular entity, a rock, which is more meaningful than mere moving atoms, and step back further, and you will see that this rock is itself like an atom, connecting with other objects forming a singular entity called 'Reality'....step back further and you will see that reality is not just multiple relating meaningless objects, but together forms a meaningful, universal mind"

    An interesting analogy that can correlate with these two views, is considering life to be akin to a book.
    An idealist may say the essential quality of the book is its ideas, and that all the ideas in the book combine to form a over-arching meaning to the book. And that this big meaning is part of a mind, a mind which created the book. Where-as a physicalist reductionist may say... the book can be reduced to chapters, the chapters to paragraphs, the paragraphs to words, the words to letters, the letters to shapes, and the shapes to ink, and ink to atoms, and atoms to sub-atomic particles etc. And that the meaning of the book doesnt' exist, but the illusion of meaning is created as words form more and more complex relationships, forming sentences, paragraphs, and eventually entire narratives of the book, which at its root, does't really exist, but is just infinitely small distinct physical parts.

    What is interesting about both of these points of view, to me, is the question of how far can you reduce things, and how far can you pull back to see a bigger individual that larger and larger parts make up.

    Another way to form this question is, how is Reality both a unity and a multiplicity at the same time.
    Is one of these levels of reality more real than the other. Do not both depend on the point of view?

    Thanks! and happy belated new year.
  • Yohan
    679
    By the way...
    I think the problem of consciousness could relate to the question 'how does a singular entity arise from a multiplicity'
    When a group of people get together, apparently, while we can abstractly talk of a singular entity called a 'group', there doesn't appear to be a singular entity that is greater than the sum of its parts. And the word 'group' doesn't imply a singularity...in that we don't refer to ourselves as groups of cells, but something more than a group, an individual rather than mere separate parts.
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