Jason Joel Thompson wrote,
> It's not valid if "unreal" is a null set. It holds no meaning.
But it's not a null set. Unreal means that which is false, untrue, fictional,
having no reality, actual existence, or substance.
> Do you believe that there are unreal things?
Belief has nothing to do with it. I accept that there are bogus inventions of
philosophers.
> Ah... I see the nature of our disagreement. You believe that you are able
> to perceive reality directly?
Anyone can perceive reality directly. Just stop thinking about it.
> So, when you look at a pen, you believe that you are directly seeing the pen
> as opposed to photons that have been reflected from its surface?
No, when I look at a pen I don't "believe" anything. I simply look at the pen.
> I do not place absolute belief in my senses. I am aware of the fact that
> they represent information regarding properties of the object and not the
> object itself.
Hopefully you don't do that while driving. You'd be a menace on the highway.
> Let us suppose that I have a bunch of multi-colored tennis balls, that I am
> bouncing up against some object. And let us further suppose that due to the
> nature of this object, only the orange balls are 'springy' enough to
> ricochet over a wall and land in your lap. Do you think that only receiving
> orange balls from the object is an indication that the object itself is
> orange? Or instead an indication of a particular property of the object?
This reminds me of the story called "The Goose Is Out."
I zenji asked his students to imagine a milk bottle with a goose in it.
Then he asked them how to get the goose out of the bottle without breaking the
bottle or killing the goose.
I bright student answered (correctly), "The goose is out!"
You see, if it's an imaginary bottle and an imaginary goose, than it's easy to
simply imagine that the goose is out.
When you stop imagining things and simply see things as they are, then you have
awakened from your reverie of suppositions and conjecture.
People can conjure all sorts of philosophic nonsense to entertain themselves.
I don't consider it extropic at all to waste time with such silliness.
--J. R.
"Something beckons within the reach of each of us
to save heroic genius. Find it, and do it.
For as goes heroic genius, so goes humankind."
--Alligator Grundy, _Analects of Atman_
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