Thinking is part of reality

[coberst]

Thinking is part of reality

 

Our educational system and our culture lie to us. We are taught by our educational system and by our culture that there is thinking and there is reality and that thinking’s job is to discover reality; never informing us that reality and thinking go together, one is not separated from the other. Reflexivity is a concept that informs us that thinking is part of reality.

 

In the natural sciences truth is of the utmost importance because knowledge of reality is a precondition for success. In human affairs there are shortcuts to success—one can lie, manipulate, spin, and use force to gain success. Thus in human affairs truth often takes a back seat.

 

In his book “Open Society” George Soros speaks of many things; one important concept is ‘reflexivity’. “I started thinking in terms of reflexivity nearly fifty years ago. It may be interesting to recall how I arrived at the idea. It was through the footnotes of Karl Popper’s “Open Society and its Enemies”…I started to apply the concept of reflexivity to the understanding of social affairs, and particularly of financial markets, in the early 1960s before evolutionary systems theory was born…”

 

The first chapter of this book, wherein he explains this concept, can be found at The Crisis of Global Capitalism.

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

Are you trying to bring up the idea of manifestation? If so, please elaborate what the purpose of this thread is, besides manifesting a conversation about the reflexivity of thought.

[Doctordick]

Thinking is part of reality.

Reality may exist but it is certainly incomprehensible in the absence of thought.

 

Have fun -- Dick

[cslagle]

Thinking is part of our reality. Many people know this, but if one were to apply this concept to their own life they could be much happer. This is not about manipulating or gaining success. It can be about creating an enjoyable life, dispite circumstances. If one believes their reality to be exceptional, it is. Even if they happen to live in a third-world country, in absolute squalor. Those people often turn out to be the most greatful for their lives. It may very well be that "It is what it is", in most cases, but for people who believe in reflexivity, "It is what I think it is."

[coberst]

Are you trying to bring up the idea of manifestation? If so, please elaborate what the purpose of this thread is, besides manifesting a conversation about the reflexivity of thought.

 

We have in our Western philosophy a traditional theory of faculty psychology wherein our reasoning is a faculty completely separate from the body. “Reason is seen as independent of perception and bodily movement.” It is this capacity of autonomous reason that makes us different in kind from all other animals. I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals.

 

This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science. Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason. Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind.

 

The three major findings of cognitive science are:

The mind is inherently embodied.

Thought is mostly unconscious.

Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

 

“These findings of cognitive science are profoundly disquieting [for traditional thinking] in two respects. First, they tell us that human reason is a form of animal reason, a reason inextricably tied to our bodies and the peculiarities of our brains. Second, these results tell us that our bodies, brains, and interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real.”

 

All living creatures categorize. All creatures, as a minimum, separate eat from no eat and friend from foe. As neural creatures tadpole and wo/man categorize. There are trillions of synaptic connections taking place in the least sophisticated of creatures and this multiple synapses must be organized in some way to facilitate passage through a small number of interconnections and thus categorization takes place. Great numbers of different synapses take place in an experience and these are subsumed in some fashion to provide the category eat or foe perhaps.

 

Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories.

 

Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”.

[coberst]

Thinking is part of our reality. Many people know this, but if one were to apply this concept to their own life they could be much happer. This is not about manipulating or gaining success. It can be about creating an enjoyable life, dispite circumstances. If one believes their reality to be exceptional, it is. Even if they happen to live in a third-world country, in absolute squalor. Those people often turn out to be the most greatful for their lives. It may very well be that "It is what it is", in most cases, but for people who believe in reflexivity, "It is what I think it is."

 

 

 

I was educated in engineering but also had some interest in philosophy. My first philosophy course was Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy". I suspect this is an introductory course for most students studying philosophy. Descartes has left Western tradition with a gigantic legacy that only now is this legacy being undermined by cognitive science.

 

Descartes goes through a sequence of analysis in an effort to find an absolute truth upon which to build his philosophy. He settled on "Cogito, ergo sum". "I think therefore I am". The conclusions of this series of analysis by Descartes have set the course, more or less, of Western philosophy. What are the fateful conclusions derived from the work of Descartes?

 

"I am, I exist, that is certain. But how often? Just when I think; for it might possibly be the case if I ceased entirely to think, that I should likewise cease altogether to exist...But what then am I? A thing that thinks."

 

The Folk Theory of Essences

Every kind of thing has an essence that makes it the kind of thing it is.

The way each thing naturally behaves is a consequence of its essence.

 

Descartes knows he exists because he thinks. Because he exists he has an essence. He assumes nothing else causes his thinking but his essence. Conclusion: thinking must be at least a part of the human essence.

 

"Just because I know certainly that I exist, and that meanwhile I do not remark that any other thing necessarily pertains to my nature or essence, excepting that I am a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists solely in the fact that I am a thinking thing."

 

"It is certain that this I [that is to say, my soul by which I am what I am], is entirely, and absolutely distinct from my body and can exist without it."

 

To have reached that last conclusion Descartes must assume an additional:

 

The Folk Theory of Substance and Attributes

A substance is that which exists in itself and does not depend for its existence on any other thing.

Each substance has one and only one primary attribute that defines what its essence is.

 

The following is what his introspection has made him “see”:

 

There are two kinds of substance, one bodily and the other mental.

The attribute of bodily substance is extension in space.

The attribute of mental substance is thought.

[Rade]

IMO, thinking is not reality. Thinking is the process of differentiation and integration (a type of mental calculus of reorganization) of the contents of the mind ultimately derived from perception of reality (often first filtered and modified by the unconscious) which are then projected by the consciousness onto the imagination of the mind. What is projected onto imagination is not itself real until such time that it is transformed into reality of some form or equation or work of art. Suppose you have an original idea first projected via pure thinking onto your imagination but you never share it with others. I think here of Tesla--he claims he invented AC machine first in his mind, working gears and all. Was it real if he never shared the idea with anyone, never built a model, never made a drawing ? I hold it was not real. The man-made thought is never real until it is made available outside the mind that made it. If reality is that which exists, then the only thing that thinking can form as a necessary truth is the reality that some "I" exists, not the internal attributes of the "I" such as the contents of imagination.

 

There is thus a dialectic between reality as the metaphysical given and thinking--they cannot be separated until death they do part.

 

As to Descartes, he never said " I think therefore I am" (Latin: cogito ergo sum; French: je pense, donc je suis)—this is a formulation which is not found in the Meditations.

 

Here is what he wrote:

 

...and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind. (Med. 2, AT 7:25).

 

But, IMO, before Descartes can make his claim of the truth of a specific existent (him), first he must hold a more priori necessary truth, that "existence exist" in the general. This ultimate necessary truth is the basis of not only his Cogito argument, but all philosophy. For if existence did not exist (that is, if there was only nothing) then neither could he claim "I exist" by the act of thinking, since it not possible that a nothing can think.