Happiness lies in being able to seat your butt on a comfy chair

Ooh, I likes you I do. [Edit: I was referring to Alyasa, not that I don't like any of you other schmucks]

This is pretty much the same question you were asking of spirituality a few posts previous - wherein lies proof? This is one of my favourite bits of theology, where you come across the diverging sense of proof between the 'rational' (using that term loosely) and the spiritual - spirituality & faith both have their proofs, but empirical ration may not admit these proofs to be valid; further, empirical ration is so wrapped up in its 'perfect system' that it will never admit of a proof which is not universally viewable. I like to counter that with "I don't understand microwaves" because I don't, and no amount of 'proof' is going to make them make sense to me. Rational, schmational, I get faith, I don't get microwaves.

Faith is, so far as I can make out, not an irrational response to the world, but a willing acceptance of questions which will never be answered. It would take an absolute masochist to break down all his/her edifices, and they would never succeed (to much not being clever when we're young/ too much being much cleverer when we're young). I summarise thusly: there are always questions to which we don't know the answer, for which we construct, consciously or unconsciously, edifices to protect ourselves. This does not apply merely to the religio-metaphysical questions, this applies to everything which we don't think about every time we encounter it (if you drive, do you think about whether or how the car works, or do you trust that the manufacturers, and all the other intermediaries and suchforth have not contrived to destroy it? Is this not a faith of sorts?)

I choose faith as a deferral of existential questions. Please feel free to do otherwise, should you so chose.

With someone on top of you possibly

Well said.

On a tangent to this -

It's too early to get overly academic about this, but in my humble and uneducated opinion, 'cogito ergo sum' is nothing more than an intellectualization for its own sake.

There is, unarguably, nothing that 'exists' outside human definition. And so, insofar as existence is based on autonomy, there cannot be absolutes. There isn't anything that can be taken outside the context of human experience or imposed definition. (I realize I'm using ambiguous terms like "nothing" and "anything," but for the purposes of argument, they are appropriate.) Without the ability to remove the handicaps of imposed perception, one simply cannot isolate definitives. In short, nothing is "real."

This is why I avoid philosophy, and watch cartoons.

*Edit: And during my typing of this nonsense, you've gone and changed the subject. Assholes.

Capitalization!

With "I think therefor I am" Descartes wasn't saying he was self-conceived, he conjectured only a perfect being could be self-conceived, and that he was fully aware of his imperfections. His thought was merely proof that he existed. "I am therefor I think" is nonsensical. A coma patient exists, a dead body exists, do they think? Existence can't create thought, but thought can prove existence.


By the way, Glice, your last 2 posts were very good and well capitalized. I owe you some rep, but I gotta pass it around first.


Lastly, with the regards to happiness, happiness comes from having some form of control in a world of chaos. So a man with a good job, a beautiful and loving wife, several wonderful children, and a house that is fully paid off would be happy. He feels that he feels he has a life that is under control within his own realms. Take everything away from him, odds are he will be depressed, because he will realize that he never really was in control. To regain his happiness, he must create a new sphere of control. He may turn to artistic output. He regains happiness. Now lets paralyze him and remove his 5 senses as well, but put him on an IV drip. This man will now be incredibly depressed, but perhaps, he can realize that he still has his thought. He can visualize and hear things in his head. Perhaps he can create a world in his head where he is still functioning, where his wife is alive as well as his children, he has his house, and he can even quit his career to become an artist. His mind is his last refuge of control, and he can still be happy with it.

From that, one can say that if hell exists, it is a place where you cannot even control your thoughts.

#Oooh baby I love your ways#

Would that be what generally is known as psychosis, delirium and/or dementia? A state of being mentally incapacitated? Your definition of happiness is enlightening...

at the risk of antagonizing everyone here yet again, wrong. as the most obvious counterexample to your point, consider the following: let us suppose that not only every human, but every sentient being were to suddenly disappear from the universe. now nothing would be left to perceive objective reality any longer, but the ONLY things that would cease to exist would be the sentient beings themselves, and the attendant mental and conscious states they possessed. our PERCEPTION of objects would no longer exist, but the objects themselves, being independent of anyone's perception of them, would persist. to say otherwise is to erroneously conflate epistemology and metaphysics, much as berkeley did when he asserted that there are only ideas and that the existence of x is dependent upon the perception of some consciousness y (with x's persistence through time without human perception attributable only to the constant perception of god).

to address spectraljulianisnotdead's point, "sum ergo cogito" in my view should be taken to be prescriptive rather than descriptive: "i am, therefore i'll think." because conceptual thought and rational activity are central to man's survival, his existence necessitates cognitive thought. obviously, some men are incapable of such thought, but that is not the point. and i maintain that descartes was wrong to begin his inquiry by questioning existence: existence is so fundamental a concept as to be axiomatic. also, descartes should not have questioned the evidence of his senses: any attempt to discredit the senses will contain at least one premise derived from the evidence of the senses.

and no, i will not capitalize. i'm too old to change.

Sorry, I'm on Berkeley's side.

Objective reality exists BY human definition. How can one validate the existence of objects/the universe by a means independent of human perception? It is, by nature of our being, the only way in which to process our environment. While I wouldn't be so arrogant as to assert that there is definitively no objective reality, neither would I assert that there is.

Observable patterns of behaviors and occurrences do not by default equate an absolute. The aforementioned are digested and processed by and in terms of human consciousness, so the claim that a reality independent of perception concretely exists is an impossible one to prove.

Whoa, man.

no way. no way. kick the fucking stone with your eyes closed. ha ha. youve been poisoned by too many postmodernists, you english major :p

Alright pedant, you tell me how it's done then. PROVE objective reality to me, and I'll give you a cookie.

No, because even if you are delirious, from what I understand, you still have your own thoughts and reactions to things. It is possible to somehow find an inkling of happiness. Even if with delirium you had absolutely no control over your thoughts, you would then never realize that you couldn't control them.

In my hell, having a tormentor choose all of your thoughts for you.

Here is an example torture session:

The demon begins with the first thought, a seemingly happy one, the memory of his marriage. But the victim would not be allowed to respon with happiness or feelings of love for his wife. Instead, the demon would induce him to feel sorrow and guilt and recall all of his infidelities to his wife and all of his verbal abuse of his wife. Then the demon would place this thought into the man's head "If I were not in hell, I could control my own thoughts, and I could have remembered the good times I had with my wife." The demon would certainly have the man recall that there was happiness, to make it even more painful. Then the demon would follow that with more despair. The demon would never give him one thought to allow him to be happy, and this would continue for eternity.

used the internet recently? science and technology would not work without it. (of course, the very fact of a shitty internet makes me think it's all a fucked dream anyway). :p

I think that from Hegel to Karl Marx a good point for objective reality has been made for quite a long time now

I think there's like a ratio where 94% of all humans are worthless shits. (96% on bad days)

I think you're being a little kind there, Pollyanna.

It's useless and irrelevant to cite various schools of thought on objective reality, because it's common sense and deductive reasoning.

To get a bit abstract, take the concept of time - time in and of itself does not exist, but is an organizational tool imposed by the human mind. It is a construct of the sentient mind that divides up the infinite for purposes of convenience and functionality. Time DOES NOT EXIST outside of the human brain.

I don't think I need to draw the dotted line to make the leap from this concept to the concept of objective reality...

That would imply,though,that you know at least 96% of the human beings on this planet.Am i right?Are your figures accurate or is it just something that you are saying cause it makes you fell like''YOU KNOW'' something,you have learned something from your life etc etc.Keep me posted on that,i'm quite curious

The abstract works rather well with the arts but it just DOES NOT work well when it comes to human beings

Anyone's life experience can form a decent random sample of humanity to extrapolate from.
I would say 96% is a pretty good estimate, being kind.

the concept of time is a human one, but it attempts to fit the changes that we perceive in the world. we have *several* concepts of time in operation, newtonian time being the predominant one. sure the concept only exists in the mind but something else happens "out there" that is pretty consistent, & when the appropriate concept is applied to our relation with "it" it makes engine tune-ups, mars landings & movie times possible.

in any case the mind is also "out there". we are not the ghosts in the machines, we ARE the machines (or to quote devo, "we are the robots". ha.)

Where do these figures come from?Who is estimating them?Have we all got access to them?Explain.......

Yeesh, I was just kidding around.
I don't have much faith in people in general, that's all.
In most of my personal experience, most people are a waste of time, that's all.
And yeah, living in a society, we all definitely have access to a random sampling of humanity.
Grocery stores and automobile license bureaus are a good place for a good sample of random irritating humanity.

I generally do so my estimate of the amount of arseholism that lays in the human race might be slightly different from yours but it doesn't mean it does not exist at all.I would be a complete fool to believe that!

You're ignoring the simple logic of the argument.

The ONLY understanding we have of any concept in the universe is through human perception and digestion. While one might maintain that gravity, planetary rotation, evolution, whatever the fuck you want to throw in the pot, occurs independent of human behavior or participation, they are as events only understood by the human definitions used to communicate their existence. Without human perception, our means of observing these phenomena, we would have NO WAY of knowing they exist. While you can reasonably infer that a light you've turned on stays lit when you leave the room, there is no way to be entirely certain of this.

I'm dumbing this down because, really, it seems like a relatively simple concept to me. Humans are arrogant fuckwads who assume that the rules of rationality they put in place govern all and create absolutes. These rules and concepts are infallible insofar as we wish them to be. They are, at best, a desperate attempt to maintain a tenuous hold on stability and logic that enables them to function as sentient beings.

The concept of reality is, in essence, mankind's secular faith in the unseen, a religion of logic. It can be just as easily deconstructed as any god, and is by far more dangerous.

Oh yeah. It's all about the Frame Of Reference.
And Kraftwerk were the robots.

yes but youre confusing the concepts with the reality they attempt to refer to. i would not be as foolish to claim reality exists as described by language/concepts/whatever. we only know minimal parts. but don't mix reality with communication.

A lot of good books have been written about Historical Materialism.They are easily available in your local Waterstones

Wise man. I second this heartily.

Different points of view i suppose.Anyone's life experience is quite a generic way to put it methinks......

That was good.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to truncated again.

You know truncated, at first, I didn't like you, but I'm starting to think that you are one of the most awesome people on the board.

you might be kinda slow :p

Only at cumming, but I'm pretty sure girls like a guy that can go for awhile. Well, to go with the whole Descartes thing, I think girls like it, so I will accept that they do, otherwise, I would be never sure what they liked and I could never find happiness.

^^ ha ha, good answer, and you're getting repped for it, but no ball cupping, unless you're the one willing to do that part :D

(cumming claims aside, wasn't truncated obviously a star from the get go?)

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ps--

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to SpectralJulianIsNotDead again.
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sorry man, i guess i did that before, but here goes your butt slap

ok, put down the kant and think about it. time is a measurement of change, right? and the ability to change is a property of things as they are in the world independent of our perception, right? (this premise it seems you would deny, but i shall argue for it later.) thus time is merely a measurement of certain capacities of elements of objective reality. now the measurements THEMSELVES (e.g., seconds, hours, millennia) may be products of our own imagination, but that does not negate the objective existence of time. think about this: you (hopefully, if you have any sense at all) would not say that because it is a matter of convenience that we divide up extended objects into inches, miles, and light-years, that nothing is extended and that space does not exist outside the human brain. (of course, if you're an idealist or kantian you would say just that.) let's go to further extremes: if i threw you naked into the chicago river at midnight on new year's day, would you deny the objective existence of temperature even though it was causing you excruciatingly real physiological detriment?

as for the idea that things exist independent of our perception, i shall use an adductive argument so as to best persuade you, but in actuality the idea REQUIRES no justification, as it is the foundation upon which all our knowledge, indeed much of our very existence, rests. hopefully you accept the validity of the senses (as above, any attempt to argue against the senses' validity shall employ the senses); all our (valid) sensory-perceptual evidence points to the existence of an objective reality. furthermore, the best explanation for this sensory-perceptual data is that what we perceive actually exists -- our minds simply are not intricate enough to create entire realities of their own. also, the idealist cannot account for similarities in the perceptual experiences of myriad people (berkeley tried to by asserting that this is possible because god perceives everything, but this is patently absurd). finally, the idealist may well be caught in a paradox: is the mind a product of the mind as well? how can the mind create itself?