Is the pencil real?

[John_Lazarus]

Could I say that the situation might be self inflicted? Maybe my mind created you, much like someone who has multiple personalities? It wouldn’t just be you though, it’d be everything.

Well, then you certainly have a lot to answer for…



Actually, I could say the same as you: sometimes I fall into solipsistic thinking. I know I exist, that I am “in here, looking out”. Everything else…not so much.

So I go with the probabilities, that the pencil “exists” (for any accepted definition of “exists”).

Like the comedian said, " I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me."

 

[Peter_Plato]

Am I what creates the significance of the pencil?

Whatever creates and sustains the possibility and existence of the pencil would seem what also creates its significance.

Do you create yourself? It certainly isn’t by an act of your will that you exist, at least it isn’t for me. I don’t wake up in the morning because I will myself into being.

Who or what does bring you into and sustains your being would seem to create your significance, although, it is true that because you exist the pencil has significance for you. But does it also have significance apart from you?

You may have significance for yourself, but that does not preclude you having significance for who or what creates you.

Since you are a “who” and not a what, my money is on a “Who” or some"One" more than a “Who” as your raison d’être.

 

[lemondiesel]

Consider what would happen even if you embraced full-blown solipsism. You’d still enjoy eating food, even though it isn’t real. Paper cuts would still be irritating, even though they aren’t real. Pop bands would still be overrated, even though they aren’t real, and the list goes on. Life would largely continue marching on as normal.

The point is that, so long as the experiences associated with an object are inevitable, it makes no difference whether you wish to deem the object real. You’ll act as if it’s real regardless. So perhaps a decent, preliminary definition of “reality” is “that which the subject could possibly experience”.

You could make this understanding of reality coincide with our usual understanding by factoring in the existence of other subjects and calling “reality” the collection of possible experiences that we have in common (this would eliminate delusions that are unique to an individual).

How would other subjects eliminate delusions? Haven’t you ever wondered what someone else was thinking? It’s inevitable for the mind to create a “world” to experience in. When I eat in a dream and I get full. I interact with other people. Ive been wounded. All of which were created by my mind. It fooled my senses. How can I be certain the same doesn’t apply?

Whatever creates and sustains the possibility and existence of the pencil would seem what also creates its significance.

Do you create yourself? It certainly isn’t by an act of your will that you exist, at least it isn’t for me. I don’t wake up in the morning because I will myself into being.

Who or what does bring you into and sustains your being would seem to create your significance, although, it is true that because you exist the pencil has significance for you. But does it also have significance apart from you?

You may have significance for yourself, but that does not preclude you having significance for who or what creates you.

Since you are a “who” and not a what, my money is on a “Who” or some"One" more than a “Who” as your raison d’être.

For all I know, my sexual drive could be the result of ‘me’ trying to create itself in the next generation. JK

 

[Oreoracle]

How would other subjects eliminate delusions? Haven’t you ever wondered what someone else was thinking? It’s inevitable for the mind to create a “world” to experience in. When I eat in a dream and I get full. I interact with other people. Ive been wounded. All of which were created by my mind. It fooled my senses. How can I be certain the same doesn’t apply?

You can’t be certain, but we DO use the consensus of subjects to increase our confidence regarding what’s real. This fact is reflected in the common expression “Is it just me, or do you guys think that [insert opinion here]”.

The extent to which using a consensus is justified (or whether there even is a consensus) is debatable, I’m simply stating the fact that it is often used and it would be difficult to go without it.

 

[Peter_Plato]

How would other subjects eliminate delusions? Haven’t you ever wondered what someone else was thinking? It’s inevitable for the mind to create a “world” to experience in. When I eat in a dream and I get full. I interact with other people. Ive been wounded. All of which were created by my mind. It fooled my senses. How can I be certain the same doesn’t apply?

You do recognize the difference between your dream and reality, correct?

Also, you are assuming that your “mind” created the dream, yet do you fully know what your “mind” is and that it is fully “yours?”

For all I know, my sexual drive could be the result of ‘me’ trying to create itself in the next generation. JK

It could also be the result of whatever is responsible for you willing that you continue into a next generation.

Just because doubt is possible does not mean different levels of certainty are to be ignored.

Perhaps this is why what we have faith in is a crucial factor to determine what we make of ourselves.

In other words, we have not been created “fully formed” like a rock or chair, but rather have responsibility for what we make of ourselves. So, in the end, it is what we have made of ourselves that will matter, which explains the “nebulousness” of our current state. It isn’t fixed but malleable and we are, in a sense, like putty in our own hands. It is what we create with that putty that will matter, in the end.

 

[JustStarting]

FWIW:

To me your entire OP looks like you’re searching for what the word “real” means.

So until we can all agree on the definition of that word, a fruitful discussion on
whether a pencil is real or not can’t take place.

 

[lemondiesel]

FWIW:

To me your entire OP looks like you’re searching for what the word “real” means.

So until we can all agree on the definition of that word, a fruitful discussion on
whether a pencil is real or not can’t take place.

I’m fully acknowledging that a pencil exists. Does it exist within a physical reality that everyone takes their own personal part/experience in or is the pencil, along with everything else in entirety, a manifestation by my mind? All other subjective point of views are my part of my own, projected from my subconscious. (Kind of like someone with multiple personalities)

 

[lemondiesel]

You do recognize the difference between your dream and reality, correct?

Also, you are assuming that your “mind” created the dream, yet do you fully know what your “mind” is and that it is fully “yours?” .

What else could have created the dream? It is mine as much as I allow

 

[ynotzap]

does anything exist, can we know anything for sure, can we know reality? These are the positions of skeptics. He tells you that you can’t be sure of anything, and then you ask him,are you sure? He contradicts himself He annihilates his own argument.

 

[Peter_Plato]

What else could have created the dream? It is mine as much as I allow

Your apprehension of what is real is also yours “as much as you allow,” but that doesn’t change that it is real quite independent of what you accept or allow. The important thing is in discerning the difference between what is merely “yours” and what it is of “yours” that corresponds to reality.

Just because it is “yours” does not preclude it from also being real, although not everything that is “yours” necessarily corresponds to what is real.

 

[Darryl_B]

You could give me a long description of the pencil with all the details. You could even take that pencil and throw it at my face. Yet in the end, does the pencil even exist? Or does the person describing the pencil even exist? Am I at fault for not accepting that either exist? Both you and the pencil could be manifestations created by my mind. All of the details explained about the pencil might just be projections of my own thoughts, which are placed into the person my mind as created and then received back.

What if I am just a manifestation of your mind? Does this forum even exist? Or is everyone their own neuron in your head?

At the end of the day, how can you prove to me that the pencil is real? Are all my concepts and beliefs based on assumptions?

I don’t know… Hopefully one person gets it…

No the pencil does not exist you should throw it in the recycling bin. I am still struggling with the possibility of you being real, but the only way I can prove that is if I throw a pencil at you, do you have a pencil I can borrow, or is it already recycled.

 

[ynotzap]

The five senses we have don’t think, they react to things apart from what we think. If we don’t acknowledge that we remain in the dark of our minds which initially record those sense impressions. Contact with the world around us is the beginning of knowledge, something apart from what we think. Thinking and sensing are to different actions of our human nature. If we didn’t have reality, we couldn’t have fiction or imagination

 

[Linusthe2nd]

You could give me a long description of the pencil with all the details. You could even take that pencil and throw it at my face. Yet in the end, does the pencil even exist? Or does the person describing the pencil even exist? Am I at fault for not accepting that either exist? Both you and the pencil could be manifestations created by my mind. All of the details explained about the pencil might just be projections of my own thoughts, which are placed into the person my mind as created and then received back.

What if I am just a manifestation of your mind? Does this forum even exist? Or is everyone their own neuron in your head?

At the end of the day, how can you prove to me that the pencil is real? Are all my concepts and beliefs based on assumptions?

I don’t know… Hopefully one person gets it…

If nothing exists outside yourself ( or your mind ) where did you come from? You surely didn’t create yourself. Therefore there must exist something outside of your mind which created you - whether God or some other reality outside of your mind. In either case there is an objective reality ouside of your mind.

But in answer to the objective reality of the pencil. If you imagined it how do you suppose the concept of a pencil enterd your mind?: Therefore you must have sensed some real object or objects outside your mind which gavve you the concept or idea of a pencil. Now the particular pencil you have in your mind may not exist. But if it arose through your sense of sight then it does exist. There is a difference between daydreaming and reacting to sensible stimulus.

Linus2nd.

 

[lemondiesel]

If nothing exists outside yourself ( or your mind ) where did you come from? You surely didn’t create yourself. Therefore there must exist something outside of your mind which created you - whether God or some other reality outside of your mind. In either case there is an objective reality ouside of your mind.

How can you say, with confidence, that you or I didn’t create “ourselves” in some unknown subconscious way? If I have a predetermined life, then I “existed” as something prior to creation.

But in answer to the objective reality of the pencil. If you imagined it how do you suppose the concept of a pencil enterd your mind?: Therefore you must have sensed some real object or objects outside your mind which gavve you the concept or idea of a pencil. Now the particular pencil you have in your mind may not exist. But if it arose through your sense of sight then it does exist. There is a difference between daydreaming and reacting to sensible stimulus.

Linus2nd.

Are you implying all creative intuition must have a prior basis in reality?

 

[lemondiesel]

Your apprehension of what is real is also yours “as much as you allow,” but that doesn’t change that it is real quite independent of what you accept or allow. The important thing is in discerning the difference between what is merely “yours” and what it is of “yours” that corresponds to reality.

Just because it is “yours” does not preclude it from also being real, although not everything that is “yours” necessarily corresponds to what is real.

100% on the same page. I’m just trying to comprehend this way of thinking. For instance, if I am questioning what is real in the present, what does that make the past? How can I be certain that the past doesn’t correspond to neurons in my brain which ends up just being a computer simulation?

Random, but what is the pencil? I’m interacting with it as it is a solid object, but it’s an infinite regression beyond the atoms it is made of.

 

[Peter_Plato]

100% on the same page. I’m just trying to comprehend this way of thinking. For instance, if I am questioning what is real in the present, what does that make the past? How can I be certain that the past doesn’t correspond to neurons in my brain which ends up just being a computer simulation?

Random, but what is the pencil? I’m interacting with it as it is a solid object, but it’s an infinite regression beyond the atoms it is made of.

Have you read Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition or any Thomistic arguments (Aquinas, Gilson and Maritain, I think, all have some version) that it is conceptually impossible for universals (or transendentals?) to be reduced to a materialistic explanation.

Materialists, to be consistent, must subscribe to some form of nominalism to retain logical coherence. In other words, they must deny that concepts and experiences have any reality at all in order to logically defend a full blown materialism. Feser, for one, argues that eliminative materialism is the only logically coherent form of materialism that is possible, though ultimately untenable if any real meaning is to be made of the universe.

You might be interested in Feser’s treatment of Descarte’s “Preservation Argument” for the existence of God, which Feser lays out in extended form here:

edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2014/02/descartes-preservation-argument.html#more

Given your distinctively Cartesian “cogito” inspired OP, you might find the argument interesting. Ultimately, Feser dismisses it as a “mess” but it does have some charm to it. Certainly more charm than eliminative materialism.

1. I am preserved in existence or continuously created out of nothing at every instant.

1. Causing the sheer existence of a thing out of nothing requires greater power than causing any other perfection does.

1. So if I were preserving or creating myself out of nothing, I could also cause myself to have any perfection, including the perfections characteristic of the divine nature.

1. But if I could give myself the divine perfections, I would have done so, and yet I have not.

1. And since I am a thinking thing, I would be aware of creating myself out of nothing if I were doing so, and I am not aware of doing so.

1. So I am not preserving or continuously creating myself out of nothing.

1. Anything that is preserving or continuously creating me must, like me, be a thinking thing, since there cannot be less reality in the cause than in the effect.

1. Since any possible non-divine preserving cause of my continued existence also lacks the divine perfections, it could not be the preserving cause of its own existence either.

1. The only thing that could terminate this regress of preserving causes is something which does have all the divine perfections, which would be God himself.

1. So God exists.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

How can you say, with confidence, that you or I didn’t create “ourselves” in some unknown subconscious way? If I have a predetermined life, then I “existed” as something prior to creation.

Are you implying all creative intuition must have a prior basis in reality?

Actually, I think you are wasting everyone’s time. If you are really interested you can read Edward Fesers works and his blog. He also has a new book coming out in May.

Gook luck to you and Descartes.

Linus2nd

 

[Blue_Horizon]

You could give me a long description of the pencil with all the details. You could even take that pencil and throw it at my face. Yet in the end, does the pencil even exist? Or does the person describing the pencil even exist? Am I at fault for not accepting that either exist? Both you and the pencil could be manifestations created by my mind. All of the details explained about the pencil might just be projections of my own thoughts, which are placed into the person my mind as created and then received back.

What if I am just a manifestation of your mind? Does this forum even exist? Or is everyone their own neuron in your head?

At the end of the day, how can you prove to me that the pencil is real? Are all my concepts and beliefs based on assumptions?

I don’t know… Hopefully one person gets it…

The problem is you have no consistant definition of “real” so nnobody can help you.

For myself, if something suddenly hurt my face, and I saw a broken pencil on the floor I would say the pencil is real.

You might say it was all your imagination.

Thats fine. We have different understandings/definitions of “what is out there” so communication is no doubt impossible between us.

 

[JamesCaruso]

… and his name was Rene.

I stink, therefore, I know I exist, and so does everyone else.