From: Jason Joel Thompson (jasonjthompson@home.com)
Date: Mon Sep 04 2000 - 13:47:57 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "J. R. Molloy" <jr@shasta.com>
> Okay.
>
> reality = all that exists
>
> True or false?
Sigh.
This is the false dichotomy I referred to earlier.
For instance, it's easy for me to say 'true' because the statement holds no
meaning. You're just switching titles-- instead of 'reality' you want to
call it 'all that exists.' Fine.
Do I believe that there is only "one" 'all that exists?'
To me the statement is meaningless. How can you apply 'oneness' to such a
concept?
The reason I challenged Elierzer's original statement was not that I was
saying, "No, no, silly, there's actually SEVEN realities..." but rather
that I was questioning the concept of an absolute reality at all.
I don't see reality as a big, ubiquitous, tangible, static, all-encompassing
absolute, but rather as a relative, interpretive, intangible, dynamic
interaction. It finds soldity as a mental contruct in the world of the
mind, but we cannot directly attribute greater 'existence' to it, as yet,
IMHO. Daniel Ust actually touches on this in a way I partially agree with
in one of his responses to us.
J.R., I recognize where you're trying to go with this, and I understand why
you accuse me of obstinancy. You want reality to be the sum of all sets-- I
get the feeling that you just want to shake me and say "Yes, but 'reality'
includes that too!" What you have to understand is that I am approaching
the problem from an entirely different direction.
To me, belief in an external reality is the very human act of saying:
"there -is- something out there real making all of this stuff happen. We
can't directly see it yet, but we know it's there." The belief system has
passing similarities to a religion. And, of course, the adherents say that
they -can- see reality directly.
And, truth be told, I'm not even saying that those people are wrong. There
may very well be an external reality. It certainly seems like there is. I
agree that we should act like there is. So, unlike religious belief, belief
in reality has real, tangible, demonstrable benefits that accrue to all
believers.
Essentially I have complete functional acceptance of the construct of
reality, but maintain mental skeptism. Currently this has no impact on my
life other than to make for interesting discussion. Despite what you were
hinting at earlier, this doesn't result in me swerving out in traffic.
Can we agree to disagree now?
--
::jason.joel.thompson::
::founder::
www.wildghost.com
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