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Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2010 9:08:48 GMT -5
There was a programme on British television about this recently. A staged fight was put on and witnesses gave wildly differing accounts of what they'd seen. It makes you worry how safe many convictions really are! I understand juries are traditionally impressed by eye-witness accounts, but of course they are not necessarily accurate. Many impressions are wildly subjective: the person was handsome or unattractive - subjective the person was tall or short, average or stout - subjective the person acted threatening - subjective the person was angry - subjective and on and on Prosecutors are there to *prosecute successfully* - not to present a fair balance. And it's also well to remember that what is legal is not always the same as what is right or fair. There is also the matter of prejudice. A few years ago a mock mugging was staged in Britain. The actor who was wielding the knife was WHITE but almost ALL the witnesses said that he was BLACK.
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Post by beth on Aug 20, 2010 13:50:44 GMT -5
I understand juries are traditionally impressed by eye-witness accounts, but of course they are not necessarily accurate. Many impressions are wildly subjective: the person was handsome or unattractive - subjective the person was tall or short, average or stout - subjective the person acted threatening - subjective the person was angry - subjective and on and on Prosecutors are there to *prosecute successfully* - not to present a fair balance. And it's also well to remember that what is legal is not always the same as what is right or fair. There is also the matter of prejudice. A few years ago a mock mugging was staged in Britain. The actor who was wielding the knife was WHITE but almost ALL the witnesses said that he was BLACK. I wonder whether he was dark skinned, tanned or fair. IOW, could it have been an honest mistake? If not, they must have been, simply, lying.
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Post by mouse on Aug 21, 2010 11:24:13 GMT -5
if it hurts ya can bet its real
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Post by Deleted on Aug 22, 2010 16:40:22 GMT -5
if it hurts ya can bet its real That's not entirely true, Mouse. Yes, in general touch is by far the most reliable of our senses. On the other hand, the mind is almost infinitely suggestible and malleable and plays strange tricks upon us. For instance, experiments under hypnosis have shown that a hypnotised person can drink a glass of water and become drunk; that they can have their flesh pierced with nails or even burnt and yet NOT react while the touch of a feather can make them scream in agony.
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Post by mouse on Aug 23, 2010 2:21:16 GMT -5
but that is a false scenario..surely i work on the principle that every thing is real that i can touch,,see,,hear..smell....and after that i have to decide what is possible and what is impossible....i touch..see...smell a book..what is writen in that book is a different thing all together
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2010 17:11:02 GMT -5
The trouble is, Mouse, that you are according the name 'reality' to a great many things which in actuality do NOT exist or at least NOT in the form in which you imagine that you perceive them.
Phenomenalism - the notion that all we can be sure of is events - is an honourable position to adopt (Hume is probably its greatest exponent) but it has enormous problems in attempting to explain the problem of error.
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Erasmus
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Post by Erasmus on Aug 29, 2010 21:40:53 GMT -5
The problem is different understandings of real. At one extreme is the materialistic, so that although we know about atoms and energy and all that, 'real' means what we experience through the senses, even though it is not what is scientifically there.
The other view is the one that I hold, that real is exactly those deepest quantum mysteries where everything is Energy or just Potential, or traditional Metaphysics would say a lot more abstract and philosophical than that, and it is the material world of experience that is the unreal deception.
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Post by biglin on Sept 1, 2010 13:02:09 GMT -5
We'll probably never know what is and isn't real because we have such a limited knowledge of (and an even MORE limited understanding of) the world.
Even what we THINK we know is basically made up by our own brains!
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Post by Erasmus on Sept 1, 2010 19:22:13 GMT -5
Turns out that so is what we even see. We knew that about hearing, apart from hearing voices, there's tinnitus and similar problems that a friend suffers from. But obscure conditions show that most of what we see also comes from the brain overlaid with recognizing changes. It's assumed (I don't know how) that frogs among others only see what is moving relative to them. That is similar to some abnormal conditions.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2010 8:39:58 GMT -5
Ultimately I subscribe to the neo-Kantian position that perception is essentially an activity in which the brain evaluates and processes data.
What we imagine that we see, hear, or touch is in reality little more than a construct arrived at through the workings of our brain.
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Post by Erasmus on Sept 3, 2010 20:16:50 GMT -5
I agree and ultimately,so does Science. We can know as much as we know only within the system that contains/constrains us - but our imaginative mind goes beyond that. Animals may use tools but they don't go beyond that responsive practicality to imagine something that has to be created.
Those great Ancient Greek Philosophers we put so much store in, also did not recognise human creative imagination. Plato makes a child's (possible) summation of shapes with only three sides as all triangles 'evidence' for a life before birth where Triangularity was experienced in some pure form without need of examples.
I think that the average 18 year old drunken student could walk around Plato and dance on top of him (and didn't we just!) But it is instructive that there is a culture that assumes ideas learn from outside instead of thinking that a child might derive (and create) the concept of triangle from recognizing similarities between shapes with three sides.
Religious people need to remember that their scriptures were written by men with the same outlook. That is, those who don't believe it was all literal Word of God which it says it is not, and would make 'God' a pathetic case if that were the limit of vine Intelligence!
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Post by das on Sept 8, 2010 17:37:20 GMT -5
Illusion is when you vote for Obama thinking that things are going to change for the better.
Real is what happens when you get laid off from work, your property taxes go up, and you see a news report on Michelle Obama cavorting on vacation in Spain with 50 of her friends at your expense.
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Post by beth on Sept 8, 2010 21:28:28 GMT -5
... and that's politics. I'll let it be this time but we try to stay on topic in a general sort of way ... shouldn't be hard because there's lots more to life than politics. Besides which, there's more than enough room in the stated area. Next time, I'll just set you up a thread in Politics and move the post. No censorship involved ... makes life a lot easier. Thanks
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Post by beth on Sept 8, 2010 21:32:03 GMT -5
but that is a false scenario..surely i work on the principle that every thing is real that i can touch,,see,,hear..smell....and after that i have to decide what is possible and what is impossible....i touch..see...smell a book..what is writen in that book is a different thing all together
and even better evidence is when a great many people see, hear, taste and smell in very similar ways. If I picked up a leaf and my neighbor said, "what are you doing with that fish?", I might wonder, but, in fact, a leaf is a leaf. We can be pretty secure about that.
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Post by Erasmus on Sept 8, 2010 21:53:13 GMT -5
I can't help thinking that last image something straight out of any list of Surreal Classics - and the whole point of Surreal was that it was realer than real. And indeed it is not, it is only a representation of a pipe - which makes all the difference!
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