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Idea or Reality
- Thread starter Fool
- Start date
There is no significant distinction between a thing and the idea of a thing, other than the idea of a distinction.
I strongly disagree. My idea of a chair is quite different than this chair I am sitting on. I cannot sit on the idea of a chair, but I can sit on an actual chair.
If your idea of the chair you are sitting on differs radically from the chair, it is but the idea that the chair differs radically from the idea of the chair.
I never ask the question "does such and such exist." For me the answer is always "yes" and the correct question is "in what way do I experience and know this thing?" And in my experiences, there is a plane of reality that is well-expressed by the map Plato drew about the Forms. His map is still not the territory, as no map is, but for me it resonates.
Just to be clear here, I'm really not interested in debating. I'm just clarifying where I was coming from and why your response to what I said doesn't make sense with how I am approaching things. I'm not asking you to change your map of the territory and I'd appreciate a similar courtesy.
OK. My position is that Platonism was a horrible philosophical mistake that delayed the development of science by centuries. Aristotelianism was a bit better, but nobody really followed up on it so it stagnated.
So, for me, there are a great many things that do not exist. Unicorns, for example. Deities for another. Platonic ideas for a third.
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For me, to hold the idea of the chair as something existentially different from the chair is to support a Platonic idea.
For me, to hold the idea of the chair as something existentially different from the chair is to support a Platonic idea.
And I would disagree. The idea of a chair is a process in my brain. The chair itself is an object outside of me.
That's fair, though I find it strange, particularly with deities. The gods of many traditions undoubtedly exist even by your own standards, though you probably do not call them gods (nor should you IMO, if you do not deify those things). I've yet to encounter someone who denies they exist, at any rate. It would make for an interesting surprise to finally meet one!
There is no "in" in your brain, other than the idea that is a created space, created by the idea of "outside."
That's factually incorrect. Physically, your brain chemicals are located within your brain. You can think yourself to have no activity WITHIN your brain, but i'm quite certain there is activity within mine.
Not to mention there's the word "in" in "brain."
I have no idea why you would think the traditional deities exist by my standards. No I do not believe that Zeus, Athena, Thor, Ahura Mazda, Isis, Horus, or any of the other traditional deities actually exist or existed.
That is not what he was talking about.
That would be news to most neurosurgeons.
Ideas are neural processes in the brain. That is what I am talking about.
I don't care what he was talking about, only what you said. And in no context can your sentence be factually correct. Not even semantically.
May I speak for myself?
But not to psychologists.
Just as you see my viewpoint as strange, I find this one to be *exceedingly* strange. What 'plane of reality' do you speak of? I know of no such thing.
It still makes no sense. "there is no 'in' in 'brain'" just makes no sense logically speaking.
And he wasn't really talking about psychology. So your reply was really out of hand, and missing the point really hard. He was talking about chemical processed within the brain. That doesn't give you the context to talk about psychology.