Does Man Exist?

Does Man Exist ?​

~ Regardless, the USA now has a Supreme Court Justice who believes only a Biologist can identify "female". Who is qualified to identify "male " ... ?

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A green chair is green only under particular conditions. "Green" is not a constant.

 

If you are speaking of actual Reality, then I would agree with you [but that's unknowable]. Our perceptual reality is relative to ambient conditions. Here's an example.

On a whim, you decided one day to buy a lottery ticket to the Super Duper Grand Lottery and just found out that you won 1BUSD! You are driving home with an epic natural buzz just thinking about how this is going to make life for your family so very sweet. On arriving home there's a police car in your driveway. The cop comes up to you and says, "I am very sorry to inform you that your wife and three kids have just been killed in a car accident." You go immediately in shock.

Our personal reality is formed a great deal by what happens in our immediate environment.

 

How is what you described any different than actual reality?
I have won a billion USD
My wife and children were killed in a car accident.

That is reality. My personal response to it changes nothing.

 

You are defining green as the color someone sees. That isn't the scientific definition of green. Green is the color of visible light between 495 and 570 nanometers. If a chair reflects light in that range it is said to be green.
You are basically saying that if the only person in the room with the chair is completely blind, then the chair ceases to be green.

 

Again, there are two realities; actual Reality that we cannot access intellectually, and perceptual reality [what most think of as reality.

Sorry, but you cannot speak of actual Reality. To answer your question, a person's perceptual reality is not actual Reality. The closest you can get is by eliminating your personal filter, that way your perceptions will remain relatively unaltered. Once your discrimination kinks in, you get all the bizarre takes on things that characterize human thinking.

Again, are you referring to the relative or the absolute? In the relative, it does but it is easy to find all kinds of things that are screwy about it. In the Absolute, it does not.

We all use time all the time but that doesn't mean it really exists, right? We think a lot of things that have no truth to them at all. There are an infinite number of examples. One of my favorites is the idea that after an election things are going to get better [for the regular guy].

 

Yes, actual Reality is what happened. Your perceptual reality is your response. VERY few people are capable of isolating their response to actual events. This is the purpose of meditation...to be able to see things as closely as you can to what is actually going on so you can respond most appropriately.

 

What if the person in the room is completely blind. What color is the chair for them? Or let's say that all human beings were completely blind. What is the color of the chair?

What I am saying is that Science has given a definition of the color green that holds only when certain conditions are met.

 

I understand that you are saying that our perception of reality is different.

The difference between what you are saying and what everyone else is saying is that other people are pointing out that there is a true reality whose properties and features are exactly the same for all of us. We may not see them the same due to differences in how we perceive them but that doesn’t mean reality itself is different.

If 10 blindfolded people who have never heard of an elephant before are feeling an elephant to figure out what it is, they may all have a different experience. The guy in the back may think the elephant only has two legs, the guy in the front may think the elephant has two legs and a trunk. The gals on the side may not know the elephant has a head. That doesn’t change what the elephant is and if the blindfolded people are diligent enough they could gather enough information to determine the true nature of the elephant.

The same is true of the chair. It may not appear green in the dark but if a body tries hard enough they can soon find out the true nature of the chair through simple observation and testing. They might then say “oh I was mistaken. This is not a chair, it’s a salamander.”

 

I have already accepted your caveat, that we can know nothing, for absolutely certain. But, there is a difference, I also pointed out, in understanding this, from a theoretical standpoint, and employing it, in any attempt to communicate with other people-- who may or may not exist, in "actual Reality"-- in a pragmatic way.

IOW, I am using the word " reality," to refer to those things that could be independently confirmed, by millions of people. At that point, there is generally little reason, to continue to stress our inability to know anything. EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE. Do I need to always call it "relative reality," to prevent your confusion (or your straw man arguments)?

 

@impermanence

Allow me to cover the basic concept, from my previous post, more fully.
I'd said that I use the word " reality," to refer to those things that could be independently confirmed, by millions of people; and that, at that point, there is generally little reason, to continue to stress our inability to know anything at all. Additionally, one's maintaining that something, this uniformly confirmed by others, is the result of some idiosyncrasy of one's perception, at this point, becomes an untenable argument.

There is no reason, for practical purposes, to not accept that we exist, that our planet exists, that our sun exists, and that our planet revolves around it. Likewise, if a person records two statements, in tandem, and anyone else, listening to the recording, is able to differentiate which statement follows which, then for (nearly) all intents & purposes-- including our own, here, unless you can show cause, otherwise-- it is reasonable to accept that the 2 statements did not occur simultaneously, but in a specific order. And that filing of events in a line, between those further in the past, and the more proximate ones, represents the existence of a temporal dimension.

 

Clint Eastwood was once asked in an interview why he never says much. Eastwood said that his estimations change with the changes around him. So he doesn't want to say now what he might think differently later on.

 

It seems there are two realities. There is objective reality and our subjective reality. Our senses may be limited to a narrow bandwidth of wave lengths and decibels but we bring much to our subjective reality to interpret objective reality. Such things as historical context, emotion, spirituality, foresight, biases and more that color our interpretation which, in the best scenarios, enhances our survival and joy of living.

The objective reality is a dead person lying in a coffin, our subjective view of reality, seeing the dead person, would be very different, much fuller and more nuanced….better.

 

Technically, nothing could ever be confirmed by two people yet millions. What lots of people can agree on is generalities, e.g., the chair is green. If you got down to the specifics, everybody would be perceiving something different. That's inconvenient, I know.

Not everything is relative. What is not relative are things that are codified such as moral conduct and law. Having said that, it is very important to know which reality it is that people refer to. Most people do not understand the concept of Absolute Reality even after you explain it to them 100 times. But it's not really the sort of thing that can be understood, only realized.

 

In day to day life that may be true.
In science, however, it is the exact opposite. The scientific method, the process by which scientific discoveries are made, was established for that reason exactly, to take out personal bias.

 

My point, has to do with pragmatism. It seems, the concept of "Absolute Reality," is not very helpful, in most cases, towards two or more people understanding one another. IOW, it seems like a case-specific concept. Otherwise, it will just devolve, in a profitless debate over semantics.

For example, you here contradict my statement about multiple people "confirming," a "fact." The thing is, I had given EXAMPLES-- which you failed to include, in your quote-- of the virtually unanimous agreement on such ideas as that we exist, and live on the planet Earth, which orbits our sun. It seems pointless, at least in a general conversation, to not accept this mutual understanding, this point of widespread agreement, as being true: that relates to my point about everything being relative.

The "inconvenience," of trying to verbally do the impossible, by representing miniscule and, for most intents and purposes, meaningless differences, as in the exact shade of blue that different individuals see, looking at the sky, I am pointing out, is not worth the effort, unless it is being used for a more specific reason, than just to acknowledge a fact, that should be understood. I have already acceded to your point, that everyone is unique, and therefore all of our perceptions are, strictly speaking, personalized. Yet, the fact that my fingerprints do not exactly match yours, does not interfere with both of us understanding, with a reasonable degree of conformity, what each of us means, by that term.

IOW, how does our individuality, prove any of your posits: about God's existence, or our own less likelihood, of existing, or about Time not existing, and so forth? Or was stating this known truth, the whole point of your thread?

 

The scientific method is attempting to answer a question by controlling variables. Meditation is attempting to quiet the discriminating mind so as to allow the truth [or as close as you can get] to present itself. By seeing the truth of the matter [wisdom], you can then respond with the greatest skill.

Although the scientific method is fraught with issues, it's about the best method the human mind has come up with...and works pretty darn well in a fairly pure form.

 

You are clearly missing that science is designed in part to remove the differences of perception of individuals.

So, science talks about measured wavelengths, not perceptions. (Unless what is being examined is biological perception - for example, in flora and fauna.)

Again, dubbing your personal ideas of the supernatural as "reality" doesn't make it reality. And, so far all you've described is what it isn't.

 

I enjoyed Impermanence's op case for the likelihood of an eternal Gods existence being greater than mans by virtue of eternity. Another thing to consider is that life is a place rather than a string of fruitless points in time or eternity. For instance, those who have died in the past aren't behind us, but are ahead of us because when we die, they will already have gone thru that door.

 

It all hinges on the idea that there is an eternal god.

 

I'm fine with that part. I'm an atheist. But, I could be wrong!

I'm not so fine with his declarations that what we detect, what evidence we gather, the grounds for making decisions, is just crap.

 

In general, I agree with you, but we are talking about reality, so it matters.

Right.

The only way to explain this was to delve into the Absolute which didn't really resonate with you. What I was getting at was that our relative reality is whatever you wish to make it. It's why people have such incredible limitations in communicating [everything changing all the time].

The question of existence of ourselves or God was just an exercise. In Absolute terms, we do not exist nor do we not exist. We just are [outside of existence].

 

I understand science. I use it all the time. You do not understand not-science...and that's ok.

 

That's a great example of why time is such a slippery slope.

People need to understand the limitations of the human intellect [which will at the same time will avail them of other possibilities]. I am not saying that science or anything else does not exist, only that all things knowable exist conditionally. That which is beyond knowing is where the true "answers" lie but we cannot access them. It is this unknowing that gives people the peace they seek, i.e., removing the burden of having to "understand" all the time. Intuitively, we all know that we cannot know. If you stand in front of the mirror and confront yourself about what you actually know to be the Truth, I believe you will find it hard to open your mouth.

The bottom-line is that there are methods for transcending the paradoxes of the human intellect, and this has been known for thousands of years. It doesn't mean that you cannot participate in normal human social life [after all, I have performed a couple of hundred thousand patient visits], it just means that you approach "knowledge" differently. You see it as something that is constantly changing. Again, what does not change [or changes more slowly] is agreed on morality and law [until something new is agreed on]. If you are able to "go with the flow" in your life, you can more accurately see the truth of what is happening and respond with more care [compassion]. This is what wisdom is...simply seeing the truth [as close as you can].

 

More than eternal...unknowable. God "is" [intellectually] because it's the only thing that makes any sense...but this "making sense" is something that does not come from thinking, it comes from not-thinking [realizing].

It's that same thing that allows you to go down the interstate at 80mph [with hundreds of other cars] constantly making micro-adjustments from information coming into your visual system MUCH faster that you can think about it. You are literally "in the flow." Your non-thinking abilities are of a MUCH higher order than your thinking ones.