Does existence exist?

troll alert wrote:

I'm just glad no asshat has come in here yet complaining about how pointless philosophy is and how people who think of this stuff need real jobs.

actually, it's only useless for people like you who do nothing to change the world you lead your little existence in.

secondly, plenty of people who are very interested in this topic are not college profs and hippies.

but enjoy trolling away like the little mindless robot you aspire to be!!!

Diggory Venn wrote:

Are you saying that the laws of physics do not exist independently of the human mind's ability to conceptualize them?

Not really, but I suppose I would say that you have no way of proving that they exist independently of the human mind just as I have no way of proving they don't. If you are a frog, yes, the laws of physics apply in spite of your inability to perceive them obviously, but, again, this is all ultimately within the constructs of the human cranium. Someone like Avogadro's needs to weigh in here. This is not my area of expertise. I enjoyed philosophy and philosophical literature, but not as much as mathematics. Math was easy. Philosophy was not.

edumacator wrote:I'm afraid you just responded to a Family Guy quote. Peter's pretending to be a rich guy and overhears someone saying that, then attempts to describe his food as "shallow and pedantic". Great points though so far, I enjoyed reading that. Much clearer than the usual "I took philosophy classes in college and will now attempt to use my vocabulary to disguise the fact that I have no idea what I'm talking about" response.

Hey thanks for the explanation. I guess I should be watching more Family Guy.

Sagarin wrote:Not really, but I suppose I would say that you have no way of proving that they exist independently of the human mind just as I have no way of proving they don't. If you are a frog, yes, the laws of physics apply in spite of your inability to perceive them obviously, but, again, this is all ultimately within the constructs of the human cranium. Someone like Avogadro's needs to weigh in here. This is not my area of expertise. I enjoyed philosophy and philosophical literature, but not as much as mathematics. Math was easy. Philosophy was not.

I've been emboldened by edumacator. I'll take a shot at this.

I think it's pretty clear to all of us that our perception of reality is organized by the language we have inherited. This language structures and organizes the way we live in the world. One thing that I appreciate about philosophy--which my boy Deleuze defined as "the creation of concepts"--is that it takes as its task the critical reorganization of our habits of perceiving. When done well, this reorganization is in the service of better habits of living.

By this definition a guy like Einstein would be a natural philosopher. By introducing and rigorously describing the concept of relativity, he opened up new orders of perception. We were able to understand the universe in a totally different way, and this reorganization of the universe literally gave us a new universe--new possibilities for technology, new avenues of control, new paths of exploration. It's important to remember, though, that in order for Einstein to make his discoveries, a number of material conditions had to be in place: namely an experimental apparatus delicate enough to find the limits of the Newtonian world view.

Another example would be W.E.B. Dubois. His concept of the double-vision of racial consciousness also opened up new avenues of racial criticism. It described in language that was available to academics and other fairly powerful folks the perspective of living in a racial minority. Dubois was also perfectly positioned in culture to make this point. He had a mainstream education and knew how to express himself in the language of the dominant culture. But he also had access to a different universe, and he worked from within the dominant philosophical position to open angles onto this new universe, just as Einstein also couched his explanation of relativity by reference to foundational Newtonian physics.

These two examples show us that the relevant question with respect to the relationship between human consciousness and the shape of the universe is not whether or not the one is greater than or equal to the other. The more important questions are the smaller ones. How do our current habits of consciousness shape and delimit our perception? What sort of experiences make it possible to reorganize those habits? And how can we develop and maintain the habit of critically reacting to the blindnesses and gaps that are a necessary feature of intelligent categorization of the world in which we live?

Well done. You should develop this into a full essay.