Hi Bryan, my impulse is to pull out for a while. At present I’m feeling we are not getting anywhere. But I don’t want to just destroy the thing. How about I just lie low for a while and give you a chance to develop beyond the preliminary notes and move forward to go where you’re going? Your writing is always interesting and readable and I continue to admire your input but I don’t think our ideas have started to mesh in a fruitful way. This may contradict what I’ve said before, but it’s apparent that you have things to say and so do I but they don’t seem to interact too well.
I thought I better say this after having made a comment on A Wayfarer’s Notes about perhaps not continuing the collaboration. Not that we have any responsibility to report progress to anyone, but it just cropped up, and I don’t like it when expectations are raised which I may not be able to fulfil!
Monday 29 August 2011
B: Another Comment Too Long Too Be a Comment
I'll have to think about these "subjective visions of the world", which I admit exist and which I don't recall ever disparaging, although I'm not entirely sure exactly what you mean by that, and I won't presume to guess either.
You say that I'm disputing objections that you haven't raised. I think perhaps we're both doing a bit of that. For my part, I'm assuming that you dispute objective reality on the basis of statements like, "Reality is contingent on the observer.", which to my mind mind can only mean that the stove isn't real until I walk into the kitchen. To be precise, it would mean that there was no sense of even talking about the kitchen or anything else outside of my being there. Perhaps, the dispute here is a semantic one. You admit that a physical world exists beyond our perceptions, but you use the word "reality" to mean simply the sum of our knowledge and idea of the world. Well, you can call a duck a goose, and a goose a duck, but I'm not sure what's accomplished bickering over idiosyncratic word usages. Either the stove is real when I'm in the room or it isn't. If you want to twist the word "real" to mean strictly my confirmation of the stove, and rob me of any word with which to express it's unobserved existence while simultaneously admitting that it has one...well, I guess you have a reason.
Perhaps it's your objection to the narrowness of the example. Well, what do you want? You didn't like the scientific examples; you don't like the immediate example. I can't establish the objective reality of everything on a case by case basis. You have to build on the principle. If the stove is real, then so are the plasma caves of Alpha Centari or whatever. You keep insisting that you're talking about "something else", something more. You keep saying basically, "Oh yes, that's true, but that's not 'all there is.'" And yet I have no idea what you're talking about, or why you deem anything that I'm saying as a threat to this "something more." After all, I didn't write this note to dispute anything you've said, but rather to clarify my own fundamentals. You keep insisting that these ideas encroach on some ineffable realm that you've yet to define. You keep coming back with "Well, there's more to human reality than that." When did I say there wasn't? Why does it always sound like you consider physical reality a threat to that reality? You say I'm "rejecting the worldviews of millions of people" How? Who? By saying that the world is real? Sorry, it is. If that invalidates someone's "worldview", that's too bad. By saying that God isn't real? But I didn't. I merely proposed a hypothesis.
You ask if I think we create our own reality. I'm not sure what you mean. Do we use our imaginations? Of course we do. I've never been to England, for instance. My idea of it is a composition of things I've heard, what I've seen in movies, extrapolations of my own memories, and things I just flat out made up. But only an extremely small child doesn't know the difference between this and actual reality. I know that the England in my head isn't the real England, and that it would be supplanted by the real thing the minute I set foot in your country and saw it with my own eyes (and yes, there would also be my experience of England, which wouldn't be the sum total of its reality, or would be my experience of part of its reality). Do I discount these "constructs"? Do I devalue the imagination? Of course not. I'm a writer; how could I? I just think it's possible to know the difference between it and reality, and I'm not going to pretend that I don't to coddle to people's "worldviews."
You accuse me of "suggesting things", but it seems to me that you've come here to pick a fight. I was posting my notes. Minding my own business. The comment at the end was meant as a joke, as was the aside in the post. Sorry it bothered you so much.
You say that I'm misconstruing your position...maybe, but you are miscontruing mine. When did I say that the "air" metaphor above meant "reality"? If you would read this post in the same open spirit that you've supposedly been trying to read my other posts, you'd see that the "air" is clearly the passions, the possibilities, the vitality of life, our love for it. It has nothing to do with anyone's concept of reality. I wonder how much you know about this "something else", if you don't see what I'm talking about here.
Besides, you're passing judgement on idea that I'm presenting as something I've already decided isn't going to work. I don't see the need to be so critical of it. This is, after all, just a note.
You say that I'm disputing objections that you haven't raised. I think perhaps we're both doing a bit of that. For my part, I'm assuming that you dispute objective reality on the basis of statements like, "Reality is contingent on the observer.", which to my mind mind can only mean that the stove isn't real until I walk into the kitchen. To be precise, it would mean that there was no sense of even talking about the kitchen or anything else outside of my being there. Perhaps, the dispute here is a semantic one. You admit that a physical world exists beyond our perceptions, but you use the word "reality" to mean simply the sum of our knowledge and idea of the world. Well, you can call a duck a goose, and a goose a duck, but I'm not sure what's accomplished bickering over idiosyncratic word usages. Either the stove is real when I'm in the room or it isn't. If you want to twist the word "real" to mean strictly my confirmation of the stove, and rob me of any word with which to express it's unobserved existence while simultaneously admitting that it has one...well, I guess you have a reason.
Perhaps it's your objection to the narrowness of the example. Well, what do you want? You didn't like the scientific examples; you don't like the immediate example. I can't establish the objective reality of everything on a case by case basis. You have to build on the principle. If the stove is real, then so are the plasma caves of Alpha Centari or whatever. You keep insisting that you're talking about "something else", something more. You keep saying basically, "Oh yes, that's true, but that's not 'all there is.'" And yet I have no idea what you're talking about, or why you deem anything that I'm saying as a threat to this "something more." After all, I didn't write this note to dispute anything you've said, but rather to clarify my own fundamentals. You keep insisting that these ideas encroach on some ineffable realm that you've yet to define. You keep coming back with "Well, there's more to human reality than that." When did I say there wasn't? Why does it always sound like you consider physical reality a threat to that reality? You say I'm "rejecting the worldviews of millions of people" How? Who? By saying that the world is real? Sorry, it is. If that invalidates someone's "worldview", that's too bad. By saying that God isn't real? But I didn't. I merely proposed a hypothesis.
You ask if I think we create our own reality. I'm not sure what you mean. Do we use our imaginations? Of course we do. I've never been to England, for instance. My idea of it is a composition of things I've heard, what I've seen in movies, extrapolations of my own memories, and things I just flat out made up. But only an extremely small child doesn't know the difference between this and actual reality. I know that the England in my head isn't the real England, and that it would be supplanted by the real thing the minute I set foot in your country and saw it with my own eyes (and yes, there would also be my experience of England, which wouldn't be the sum total of its reality, or would be my experience of part of its reality). Do I discount these "constructs"? Do I devalue the imagination? Of course not. I'm a writer; how could I? I just think it's possible to know the difference between it and reality, and I'm not going to pretend that I don't to coddle to people's "worldviews."
You accuse me of "suggesting things", but it seems to me that you've come here to pick a fight. I was posting my notes. Minding my own business. The comment at the end was meant as a joke, as was the aside in the post. Sorry it bothered you so much.
You say that I'm misconstruing your position...maybe, but you are miscontruing mine. When did I say that the "air" metaphor above meant "reality"? If you would read this post in the same open spirit that you've supposedly been trying to read my other posts, you'd see that the "air" is clearly the passions, the possibilities, the vitality of life, our love for it. It has nothing to do with anyone's concept of reality. I wonder how much you know about this "something else", if you don't see what I'm talking about here.
Besides, you're passing judgement on idea that I'm presenting as something I've already decided isn't going to work. I don't see the need to be so critical of it. This is, after all, just a note.
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