• SteveMinjares
    89
    We are limited by our five sense, we use our five senses to validate our reality.

    If you loose your sense, never had past experiences of your reality but maintain your own awareness does reality still exist?

    What role would logic, knowledge, faith and wisdom play to bring meaning?
  • Banno
    25k
    We are limited by our five sense,SteveMinjares

    Well, no. I can talk to you, and hence make use of your senses, as well as your sense, common or otherwise.

    ...does reality still exist?SteveMinjares
    Isn't this the same question as, "Does the cup cease to exist when put away in the cupboard?"

    What's your answer to that?
  • DingoJones
    2.8k
    If you loose your sense, never had past experiences of your reality but maintain your own awareness does reality still exist?SteveMinjares

    It may or not still exist, you would have no way of knowing. The reality you could confirm would be your experience of your own mind which requires no experience or senses to detect.

    What role would logic, knowledge, faith and wisdom play to bring meaning?SteveMinjares

    Bring meaning to what?
  • maytham naei
    18
    Can a mind without senses still "i think therefore i am"?
  • Banno
    25k
    How could such a mind have a language? But language is needed in order to propose "I think therefore I am".

    More broadly, that conclusion comes at the end of a process of selectively doubting as much as possible, until Descartes realised that in order to doubt there must be a doubter.

    What could a mind without senses doubt?
  • SteveMinjares
    89
    This thought was inspired to me by The Helen Keller story.

    How the human mind interpret reality, and how does the conscious mind adapt to changes like how a blind man adapts to the world..

    As for Meaning is pretty arbitrary, in a sense on how you navigate your own existence to bring yourself gratification while doing it in a way that is acceptable by society standards. Which contradicts what I said earlier if there is no sensory input to acknowledge another person, who do you get approval from? If there is no one to be accountable too. Does that undermine morality and how the consciousness pursue personal gratification?
  • SteveMinjares
    89
    Isn't this the same question as, "Does the cup cease to exist when put away in the cupboard?"

    What's your answer to that?
    Banno

    From my personal perspective, it’s irrelevant it only becomes relevant to me when it is needed. Knowledge is only relevant if it can be implemented in ones lifetime. To learn and understand something that will never be used is just a waste of time and ones life.

    As for the cup scenario I just have faith it will be there. Faith is not just a spiritual concept is also a practical concept.

    Like starting a business I think it there for it becomes my reality. If not now it will be later in my future. I think it therefore it is.

    Faith is not exclusive to religion. Is a way of thinking and how it explains a trusting relationship with anything in life. From marriage, work, or any kind of relationship in our existence.

    Is a form of confidence knowing the cup will be there. Whether it disappears the moment you close the cupboard door than reappears the moment you open it is irrelevant. As long as it is present when needed, ready to serve its purpose.
  • Banno
    25k
    ...and yet you base your behaviour around the cup still being where you put it...

    If someone asked you were the cup is, would you say "in the cupboard", or would you say "I put it in the cupboard, but can't verify that it is indeed still here"?

    If, on inspection, you found that the cup was not in the cupboard where you had left it, you would be entitled to ask why, to make enquiries. You would seek a cause for the anomaly.

    A seperate point: Faith is different to trust. You might arguably simply trust that the cup is there when it can't be seen. Faith, in contrast, is belief despite, or in the face of, the facts. Faith believes this is the blood of Christ, despite the fact that it is wine. Faith would be insisting the cup was absent when all could see it.
  • SteveMinjares
    89
    If, on inspection, you found that the cup was not in the cupboard where you had left it, you would be entitled to ask why, to make enquiries. You would seek a cause for the anomaly.Banno

    True but I would think the cup is serving a more urgent need greater than my own. And the answer to my question will be answered on its own time. It will come naturally to me and I don’t need to pursue it.

    A seperate point: Faith is different to trust. You might arguably simply trust that the cup is there when it can't be seen. Faith, in contrast, is belief despite, or in the face of, the facts. Faith believes this is the blood of Christ, despite the fact that it is wine. Faith would be insisting the cup was absent when all could see it.Banno

    I think that is the problem with faith is a matter of personal interpretation.

    My personal definition of faith is having a loving and trusting relationship.

    That is why many loose faith because they assume faith is following laws and technicality. Than you have atheist doing rituals who go to Church (but that’s a subject for another time)

    Faith to me is described as a type of relationship and I’m not just talking about God. But relationship with people too.

    I understand as a Christian I am supposed to talk about God but belief and faith to me are two separate things. That serves different purposes.

    That’s why I say...

    Faith is having love, trust and confidence in your relationships with...

    Family

    Wife

    Children

    Friends

    Yourself

    God (If you desire to believe)

    Is a life style...

    Purpose to have faith is to Live, Love, be Happy and Heal broken hearts as you live.

    Nothing fancy just keeping it simple.
  • Tom Storm
    9.1k
    My personal definition of faith is having a loving and trusting relationship.

    That is why many loose faith because they assume faith is following laws and technicality. Than you have atheist doing rituals who go to Church (but that’s a subject for another time)
    SteveMinjares

    That's a mighty idiosyncratic definition of faith. If you are a Bible believer then (amongst other definitions) it is:

    "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Hebrews 11:1

    Generally faith is how people explain holding a belief when they don't have good reason for it. In the context of theology it isn't the same thing as love and it needs to be said that you can introduce me to the people you listed above. God, it could be said, remains undetectable, absent - at best the subject of cryptic signs or speculations. Or, in the absence of evidence... faith.
  • SteveMinjares
    89
    Generally faith is how people explain holding a belief when they don't have good reason for it. In the context of theology it isn't the same thing as love and it needs to be said that you can introduce me to the people you listed above. God, it could be said, remains undetectable, absent - at best the subject of cryptic signs or speculations. Or, in the absence of evidence... faithTom Storm

    A married man has a wife, she loves him and She loves her.

    There is no physical proof that she will stay faithful to him. Just her love which is the testimony of her fidelity. Will she every be with another man? The only thing that is certain is that love is sustaining the faith in there marriage. Is the love for one another that cause them to believe in each other without proof.
  • SteveMinjares
    89
    A married man has a wife, she loves him and She loves her.SteveMinjares

    A married man has a wife, she loves him and he loves her**. “Typo correction”
  • Manuel
    4.1k


    It depends on what you mean by "reality". Reality, so broadly construed, is the combination of your senses interacting with consciousness. If we had no senses at all, it's plausible that we'd still have consciousness, only that the "external world" would be significantly or maybe totally impoverished.

    It would be hard to argue one would be able to acquire knowledge, wisdom and the like, though logic and mathematics are different. You said if we "maintain" our awareness. If that presupposes we once had senses, then I believe we'd still have an image of the world in our minds, but that would likely atrophy as more time goes on.

    If we never had any contact with the world through our senses, it's hard to work out what would happen in consciousness. But whatever remains would be "reality". There's nothing more such a word could mean in such conditions.
  • Present awareness
    128
    Although the hard problem of consciousness has not been resolved, I suspect that without our senses, there would be no consciousness. It is through our senses, that gives consciousness, something to be conscious of.
  • SteveMinjares
    89
    All awesome replies thank you everyone.

    The conscious mind without sense is in reference to the fetus, the unborn child. Whether the senses are dormant, non existent or the child simply forgot what he/she experienced while in the womb. This describes how the conscious mind is clean and pure, protected from the external. My perspective is that experience is just a manipulative factor not the cause of awareness.

    The Helen Keller Story is a reference to the struggle on acknowledge reality with limited senses.

    These two examples is an attempt to explain Faith and how it is an intricate part in interpreting reality.

    Faith define as in behavioral (Two definition: Faith of Spirit and Faith of the Mind)

    These example is an attempt to present an idea and how we pursue Truth (Proof). That in our pursuit for Truth, it may or may not be observable due to our own limitations.

    Maybe when humanity evolves and acquire new senses it will become observable. Or the Truth may manifest itself in another form to where it can be recognized.

    Faith is vital due to the existence of witnesses and testimonies. For example, a blind person asking another person to describe color to him. How do you describe “Red”, “Blue” and “Green” to someone who never experienced sight?

    The blind person has a choice to trust in the testimony or not. Whatever he decides will become his reality.

    Color being the proof you are seeking

    Witness is your fellow peer

    Blind person is the person who didn’t witness the proof.

    Faith is the choice to “Trust”. Do you trust the Witness testimony or not. Whatever you decide, to believe or not, faith is a constant. Without proof to support your convictions then there is just Faith.
  • Banno
    25k
    True but I would think the cup is serving a more urgent need greater than my own. And the answer to my question will be answered on its own time. It will come naturally to me and I don’t need to pursue it.SteveMinjares

    What?

    My personal definition of faith is having a loving and trusting relationship.SteveMinjares

    That't be having a loving and trusting relationship, not faith. Faith is a form of believe, but as I said, it;s not just unjustified belief, it's belief that defies justification.

    As such it is an evil.
    ...when they don't have good reason for it.Tom Storm

    It's holding a belief despite there being evidence to the contrary.

    You're equivocating between faith and commitment. Related, but not the same.
  • Banno
    25k
    The blind person has a choice to trust in the testimony or not. Whatever he decides will become his reality.SteveMinjares

    There's much care to be taken in doing philosophy. There's a difference between reality and belief. Belief is what you take to be true. Reality is what is indeed true, despite what you believe.

    Reality is the same for everyone. That's rather the point of distinguishing it from belief and from our reactions, emotional or intellectual.

    Hence there is no "his reality".

    There's an intellectual trap, in which one supposes that the world is different for each person. If you think on that for a bit, you may see that it cannot be so. Those around you experience the very same world you do, but they may react to it differently. The difference is not in the world, but in the reaction each person has.

    You might also note that we have already gone beyond out five senses. Not just with microscopes and telescopes, the trite examples; consider that with push of a few buttons on your phone you can have your position on the Earth to within a few metres; or with an fMRI you can watch your own brain functioning.

    Trust and faith are distinct. Trust is earned and warranted. Faith is demanded and conscripted.
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    It would be memories of reality, not reality itself.
  • Banno
    25k
    What would be?
  • Tom Storm
    9.1k
    There is no physical proof that she will stay faithful to him. Just her love which is the testimony of her fidelity. Will she every be with another man? The only thing that is certain is that love is sustaining the faith in there marriage. Is the love for one another that cause them to believe in each other without proof.SteveMinjares

    Again that's not faith as the term is applied to God. Again you are talking about a reasonable expectation based on evidence - you can identify a marriage and a couple and see them together. We even have ways to measure the strength of a marriage. We don't have any evidence like this for God.
  • Banno
    25k
    It's odd, that fidelity - as in monogamy - features so prominently in @SteveMinjares's musings.

    Commitment and trust would feature more prominently in an open marriage than a closed one. So if love is commitment and trust, it would be greater without fidelity.
  • Tom Storm
    9.1k
    Yes. I guess this probably comes with the cultural turf if he is a Bible believing Christian.
  • Banno
    25k


    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10481/define-morality/p1

    Christians fail to see the immorality of their creed and acts. They presume they have the moral high ground, not noticing the inadequacy of what is in essence an appeal to authority.
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    If you loose your sense, never had past experiences of your reality but maintain your own awareness does reality still exist?SteveMinjares

    From the OP
  • Tom Storm
    9.1k
    The God of the Bible is a Mafia thug.
  • SteveMinjares
    89
    Trust and faith are distinct. Trust is earned and warranted. Faith is demanded and conscripted.Banno

    That is not my Faith. My faith is different, is trusting in what you believe. You test your belief through trust. And by this behavior of trust I confirmed the spirit is real.

    Example:
    If someone claims this medication will heal my illness. You either decide to trust it and take the medication. Note the effects, if the effects observed proves to be positive it is true, if the effects observed proved to be negative or none existent than it is false. If you decide not to trust then you are just left with wonder.

    Through my trust in God I confirmed my belief to be true because I observed the effects to be positive. Is up to the audience to believe in the Witness testimony or not. If you don’t believe in the Witness, then believe in the result through the behavior of Trust. Is by this behavior Truth reveals itself or what you call proof.
  • Banno
    25k
    Again, all you are doing is prevaricating between trust and faith. It's a common rhetorical ploy, using faith to mean trust, then sliding into belief despite the facts. So a creationist will argue that scientist have faith in their theories, as if this were on a par with faith that a Jewish dude rose from the dead.

    Good reasons not to accept your definition.
  • Banno
    25k
    SteveMinjares, here, a blatant appeal to authority for you: Kenny and Aquinas...

    Faith, as I understand it, is the acceptance of the testimony of a sacred text or of a religious community. The two, in fact, go together, because if the sacred texts are taken as guides to practical life, their authority is inseparable from the authority of the religious officials whose role is to interpret them. In the Judeo-Christian tradition for instance the very notion of “the Bible” as a single entity depends on the various authorities throughout our history who have established the canon. However impressive individual books may be, to see them as elements of a single revelation containing some or all of the other books is already tacitly to accept a religious authority that defines the canon. One might gather together the works of Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus and Thucydides into an epitome of Greek thought. The anthology would share a common cultural tradition and cohere as well or ill as the bible does. But we would not treat it as a single book, to be treated differently from all other books, because there has never been a Hellenic rabbinate or episcopate to canonize such a collection.
    The common characteristic of faith in almost all religious traditions is its irrevocability. A faith which is held tentatively is no true faith. It must be held with the same degree of certainty as knowledge. In some traditions the irrevocability of faith is reinforced by the imposition of the death penalty for apostasy, which is the abandonment of faith.
    Aquinas, from whom I have drawn my account of religious faith, notes that it does not fit into the categorization of mental states which he, anticipating Dawkins, set out. “The state which is belief involves a firm adhesion to one side of the question. In this a believer is in the same position as someone who has knowledge or understanding; and yet his assent is not warranted by any clear vision, so that in that respect he resembles someone who doubts, guesses, or is convinced.”2
    Faith, then, resembles knowledge in being irrevocable, but differs from it in being a commitment in the absence of adequate evidence.

    http://www.lib.csu.ru/ER/ER_Philosophy/новое_разбросать/Шрейбер/CUP/Knowledge,%20Belief,%20and%20Faith.pdf
  • SteveMinjares
    89
    Faith, as I understand it, is the acceptance of the testimony of a sacred text or of a religious community.

    That is one problem there “as I understand it” meaning is a perspective I cannot validated and you are telling me to trust his testimony of thought which in turn require me to have faith in him and his thought process.

    The common characteristic of faith in almost all religious traditions is its irrevocability. A faith which is held tentatively is no true faith.

    I disagree, faith can be as basic as just believing that God exist.

    In some traditions the irrevocability of faith is reinforced by the imposition of the death penalty for apostasy, which is the abandonment of faith.

    That is a paradox since no human has the authority to judge what is the right way or wrong way to practice faith. And by this you break your own laws because by passing judgment on how to practice faith you are claiming you are God. Only the Spirit has authority not man.
  • Cobra
    160


    Interesting question. I'm curious what roles other parts of the brain plays into this, such as the cerebellum and spatial awareness. The cerebellum and the brain would still be active; in spite of no senses. The loss of all senses may force the brain to compensate and re-route, new sensations outside of the 5 senses may arise. What about dreams? Hallucinations? Etc..

    Being born this way from birth may also cause severely stunted development; they'd definitely probably have to be tube fed forever.

    Some blind people can still see light. The totally blind can still have hallucinations (this may be the brain compensating).

    Reality is not mind-dependent; it persists whether or not it is perceived, no? Do "minds" generate the world around it?
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