Everything is an illusion

[blazeofglory]

Do not confute others. What you perceive to be truth is not truth, but the shadow of it or the façade of it. After a while it no longer becomes existentially visible. What we see is a series of manifestations only.

We are obsessed with things, love, wealth, sex, territory. But see their impermanence, evanescence. All fleet.

I do not mean to dispel all these things. But to be aware of the fact that we must be indifferent to these things. While we are too much with the world, a sense of detachment must embody us.

We know things keep on happening eternally and we simply go adrift with the phenomena and swept by all that take place or happen we must try to understand them.

This is what the Buddha realized and he awakened himself. We are still in deep slumber.

[Mr. Vandemar]

I knew you were a buddhist before I opened the topic. I agree with you. Nothing is permanent, nothing is stationary, and nothing is for certain. How could it be?

[blazeofglory]

I knew you were a buddhist before I opened the topic. I agree with you. Nothing is permanent, nothing is stationary, and nothing is for certain. How could it be?

This idea that all things disappear and vaporize can help overcome a great many maladies we live with in point of fact. We value things beyond a limit. We erect skyscrapers knowing that they cannot endure the ravages of time. The obsession is too strong and we can not think of parting with anything we possess. I do not say we must renounce everything. No. The point is if we do not obsess our minds with anything beyond limits we will lessen our blood pressure levels. When we attach too much importance to things to the extent that we feel we are the things and also thinking that without them life is measurable. Once we forgo such feelings thinking that everything is an illusion we can be happy. The happiness I have in mind is not the one you will get after getting a pay raise or promotion or getting married to a very lovely spouse or after buying your dream home or car. Pure happiness transcends all these things. I do not say I have a leaning towards spirituality to say all this. No. I meditate deeply and feel like that. Ideas coincide or collide.

I do not mean I win over all mundane things. No. I am attached to it yet I have this feeling embedded deep down me. I do not mean you have to agree, yet I feel happy to share the realization I arrived at in life

[Mr. Vandemar]

Once again, I certainly agree with you. I strive my entire life to detach myself from material possessions. These ideas allow me to suffer losses indifferently which I would have previously suffered with a great anger or sadness. The only solution to find enlightenment is a middle way of life, is it not? Take the novel Siddhartha for example, Siddhartha does not become the Buddha (or enlightened) until he has experienced both riches and asceticism and has chosen a path between the two. Material possessions must be the last thing on our mind (they are the first thing on the mind of both the rich man and the ascetic) and we must learn to forget about them. Do you agree?

[Bakiryu]

True, all that we perceive as real is only pure energy. Only our eyes are not sharp enough and see only the matter and not the atoms. All the things that occupy our time are only transient and in the end, there's nothing but molecules and their covalent bindings.

[caddy_caddy]

I agree with u;but I would prefer to say everything is temperory. If we conceive our presence and the presence of everything in life as temperory we would feel much better.
We are obsessed with the idea of eternity in everything!!
I think of life as a cycle in which we have a limited role ( in time and space);it makes me endure loss , pain and be able to have a new beginning, a new cycle.

I strive my entire life to detach myself from material possessions. These ideas allow me to suffer losses indifferently
This is what I call "freedom
I completely agree with u

[Mr. Vandemar]

Why do you prefer temporary to impermanent? Don't they mean the same thing?

[caddy_caddy]

Why do you prefer temporary to impermanent? Don't they mean the same thing?
It is temporary vs. illusion.:yawnb:
I would prefer to say everything is temporary not illusion; I think there is a big difference between them.

[Mr. Vandemar]

Oh, I understand what you mean. Everything but your thought process is an illusion. Nothing can ever be proven to you, absolutely nothing.

Everything, including your thought process, is impermanent. Then again, to you it would be permanent...since when your thoughts end...you end. How do I know the world exists after my demise? How do I know it existed before my birth?

[caddy_caddy]

Our thought process has to do with our consciousness ; how could be an illusion?
I think u are making a correlation between acknowledgment and existence which I don't really make.Human consciousness is related to his experience in time and space ; so it is limited by nature. Our acknowledgment and consciousness is not the centre of existence .If I am not able to proove it it doesn't mean it cannot exist or does not exist.

All the best,

[dramasnot6]

Ah, and who could put it better than the Bard?
"There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so." -Hamlet

Biologically, we do perceive a lot more than what we 'actually' sense. I agree with caddy in that "Our acknowledgment and consciousness is not the centre of existence". What is considered 'real' versus what is considered an 'illusion' is a subjective matter.
For instance, Sigmund Freud considered much to be an illusion and/or a delusion. He considered most of our conscious thought and belief (including religious belief and even our memories) to be of the making of the individual. A great deal of psychological study is dedicated to determining why and how we create illusions. If one was to spend one's life struggling to identify what was false and what was true in the minds of men, one would come out with a very pessimistic impression of mankind :p.
Illusions and perception can cloud our consciousness and even block our reception to new knowledge and understanding. However, there is also a beauty and a uniquely human element to illusion. What is reading fiction literature but imagining and perceiving what is not physically there? What is all art, for that matter?
I like what is said in the OP of this thread. We may dream up most of what is around us, but this does not mean we are useless as a species. Art, love, money, dreams...these have all fuelled and inspired some of the most dangerous and the most wonderful acts of man. To 'make-believe' is fundamentally human, and can be the means of achieving amazing things for 'reality'.

[curlyqlink]

We are obsessed with things, love, wealth, sex, territory. But see their impermanence, evanescence. All fleet.

I do not mean to dispel all these things. But to be aware of the fact that we must be indifferent to these things.

Yes, well...

I've just been reading How To See Yourself As You Really Are by the Dalai Lama. I have read other Buddhist things, and while it is intriguing, I can't help the feeling that it is... plain nonsense. Yes, everything is fleeting. Yes, material things don't necessarily bring happiness. Fact is, though, and as un-spiritual as it may sound, those material things often do bring happiness! And while wealth may not make you happy, poverty sure can be relied upon to make you miserable...

The works of man must all eventually fall to dust. That doesn't mean we can't enjoy them until they do. So why, then, must we be "indifferent to these things"? In the end, it seems to me like a case of cutting of your nose to spite your face.

There's an odd, fatalistic, counterintuitive aspect to Buddhism which is startling and mystical and, well, fun. But in truth it's based on a false promise: achieving an eventual Enlightenment, a golden never-never land that seems no different from the heaven offered by the priests of other religions.

As for rejecting material things and not worrying about trivial things like promotions at work or getting laid off or bringing in the crops, well I always seem to see myself cast in the role of the poor villager living under the shadow of the monastery. It's fine for them up there to reject crass materialism, with nothing to do all day but meditate and eat the rice we grow!

The Dalai Lama's book struck me as offering the same empty promises as any other book in the self-help aisle. Several long winded and rather pompous statements of the obvious, followed by easy platitudes, and a program that if the reader embraces completely and follows faithfully will lead to happiness and success. It struck me as disappointingly shallow. Frankly it also struck me as a rather cynical attempt to exploit a ready market for a kind of instant spiritual gratification, a kind of spirituality lite, the kind of self-centered spirituality that is such a growth industry in the US these days. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is selling easy answers to complex problems.

[Mr. Vandemar]

And while wealth may not make you happy, poverty sure can be relied upon to make you miserable...
The answer to this is the Middle Way, something that Buddhism and the Dalai Lama support. From what I've read, he seems to be a Marxist. The People's Republic of China hate him. Maybe it's because he opposes their authoritarian regime and because they are not real communists.


The works of man must all eventually fall to dust. That doesn't mean we can't enjoy them until they do. So why, then, must we be "indifferent to these things"? In the end, it seems to me like a case of cutting of your nose to spite your face.

That's epicureanism, baby! I'd be epicurean if I hadn't realized that my luxuries resulted in the harm and abuse of others.


There's an odd, fatalistic, counterintuitive aspect to Buddhism which is startling and mystical and, well, fun. But in truth it's based on a false promise: achieving an eventual Enlightenment, a golden never-never land that seems no different from the heaven offered by the priests of other religions.

Hold up. You've missed the point. Enlightenment is not heaven. You don't go anywhere. You stay here. This is not a "golden never-never land". Enlightenment is the detachment from materialistic ideals and want for unnecessary luxuries. You need to read up on Buddhism before you go throwing away comparisons like that.


As for rejecting material things and not worrying about trivial things like promotions at work or getting laid off or bringing in the crops, well I always seem to see myself cast in the role of the poor villager living under the shadow of the monastery. It's fine for them up there to reject crass materialism, with nothing to do all day but meditate and eat the rice we grow!
Do you know anything about monks? Monks are ascetics. Asceticism is completely the opposite of what you think that the Buddhist monks do. Buddhist monks do not "steal" from the villagers. I hardly think that you live a less materialistic life than the average Buddhist monk does. Do you live on barely enough rice? Do you think rice is some kind of luxury? Ha! If you want to criticize somebody for stealing the rice of the villager, criticize the People's Republic of China!


The Dalai Lama's book struck me as offering the same empty promises as any other book in the self-help aisle. Several long winded and rather pompous statements of the obvious, followed by easy platitudes, and a program that if the reader embraces completely and follows faithfully will lead to happiness and success. It struck me as disappointingly shallow. Frankly it also struck me as a rather cynical attempt to exploit a ready market for a kind of instant spiritual gratification, a kind of spirituality lite, the kind of self-centered spirituality that is such a growth industry in the US these days. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is selling easy answers to complex problems.

I haven't read the book in question so I can only comment on your thoughts on Buddhism. I do, however, think that you have begun to read Buddhist literature without enough knowledge of the subject itself, or adequate knowledge of the terminology. I think you are making too many assumptions about Buddhism and connecting it with "Bible Belt T.V. Special" spirituality without proper reason. I also think that you have found the meaning for certain words, like "enlightenment", through context not definition. You should not go so quickly to associate "enlightenment" with "heaven". They are not one and the same, and the idea you have of "heaven" is certainly not the one I have. Like I said, I think you have been subjected to the horrible TV specials or spiritual "help" aisle too often, and have lost "faith" (not in the traditional sense) in religion in general.

[curlyqlink]

This is not a "golden never-never land". Enlightenment is the detachment from materialistic ideals...

Has any real person ever actually achieved this state of enlightenment? If you asked the Dalai Lama, would he claim to have achieved it? True enlightenment seems to be an ever-elusive goal. Hence, a "golden never-never land."


Do you know anything about monks? Monks are ascetics. Asceticism is completely the opposite of what you think that the Buddhist monks do.
Buddhist monks have monasteries where they live in semi-isolation, remain chaste, and they spend their days in contemplation/meditation in service to the spiritual. Seems pretty similar to what Western monks do.


I hardly think that you live a less materialistic life than the average Buddhist monk does. Do you live on barely enough rice?

I don't follow. You're praising the average Buddhist monk because he lives on barely enough rice. He does without material comforts. Yes, I know. The whole business of rising at dawn, barefoot, with only a thin robe, to meditate for hours in an uncomfortable position. That's asceticism.

I have read a good deal about Buddhism over the years. I even took a course. It's interesting stuff. I just never bought into it. It isn't a case of me not having "adequate knowledge", I'm just not buyin' what they're sellin'.

I understand that Buddhism appeals to many people who are looking for some spiritualism in their lives but who are discontented with "organized" Western religions. But it has more in common with those religions than some might think. This book by the Dalai Lama is an awful lot like something Joel Osteen might have written.

[Mr. Vandemar]

Buddhist monks don't suck the food out of the poor rice farmer like leaches, as you implied. That's all I wanted to make clear.

AND OH GOD NOT JOEL OSTEEN!

[blp]

Yes, well...

I've just been reading How To See Yourself As You Really Are by the Dalai Lama. I have read other Buddhist things, and while it is intriguing, I can't help the feeling that it is... plain nonsense. Yes, everything is fleeting. Yes, material things don't necessarily bring happiness. Fact is, though, and as un-spiritual as it may sound, those material things often do bring happiness! And while wealth may not make you happy, poverty sure can be relied upon to make you miserable...

'I've been poor and I've been rich and rich is better' - common saying

'All I ask for is the chance to discover that money can't buy me happiness.' - Spike Milligan

The common economic wisdom now is that happiness increases with wealth up to a certain point, then the correlation stops. The plateau is not very high - it's just a matter of having enough to get by and something left over for enjoyment. Vast wealth, or even mildly excessive wealth, it seems, do not buy happiness (and may even decrease it).

A guy I met recently had briefly fallen into the world of finance. The (vastly wealthy) people he met there were overworked and unhappy, but unable to imagine even small reductions in their circumstances. One of them was having his pay cut from £250K to £200K a year and was furious about it. Another, who was on similar money, advised my friend not to make a life for himself in the job: 'Don't do what I do.' Why didn't he just stop? I asked. 'It's just not the way they think', said my friend.

[Sweets America]

Just wanted to say I personally agree with Blaze. I really appreciate these kinds of thoughts, they soothe me. I practically know nothing of Buddhism so I cannot reallly talk about it, but what Blaze said reminded of Kerouac's book The Dharma Bums, which I greatly loved, and in this book he explains how everything is an illusion, how human life is so little compared to the universe, how we can be happy and find the nirvana when we realize that we just do not exist because our life is so short that it's as if we were already dead anyway, and I loved these ideas, it really made me feel good.
I loved what he said about meditating on the emptiness of the universe, how the universe is only perceived through our senses, and how we are nothing, and when we realize this, we can relax and feel that we are not only part of the emptiness, but we are indeed this emptiness, and since everything is made of the same emptiness, we can feel compassion for the whole universe.

That also made me think of Borges' essay on Time, how time does not exist, just like space, and how time is not something chronological as we usually perceive it.

[DapperDrake]

everything is an illusion

That I can agree with, but you have to extend it to everything, you can't put human life in a box and say "that is an illusion", that seems pretty absurd to me.

In fact I would say you have it all back-to-front, life is no illusion but everything else is illusion. Descartes famous "I think therefore I am" - we do exist, that is to say I exist, you are just an illusion - an idea in my mind partially conjured by my senses and partially by my imagination, you are not real, you do not exist.
I'm happy to say that is a fact, but I'm also happy to concede that from your perspective the converse is true - to you I am an illusion, I do not exist.

Or at least so I suppose, of course I can't really know anything about you (assuming you are more than just a construct in my mind) because all I have of you is an impression, a few chemicals and electrical impulses in my brain, or so I'm told, of course that's something I'm supposing as well.

In fact of course we can't really know that there is anything outside of ourselves, what's to say that our senses are what we think they are - perhaps the are just a wonderful aspect of our imagination, with no real external stimuli. Perhaps our minds are being fed information that creates the illusion of a tactile spatial reality, with people, animals, wind, compound interest, cup cakes and pain.

but that's not really the point, that point is that the illusion is solid, its our illusion - it matters not one jot whether the world exists outside of me because quite simply it doesn't - everything I perceive exists only in my mind, what's really "out there" if anything, is certainly something quite different to what exists in my mind.

The universe I live in, every single aspect, exists only in my mind. When my mind ceases to exist so does that universe, that reality or world or whatever that I was living in is destroyed completely.

I guess if everything is an illusion then that illusion is our reality.

[NikolaiI]

everything is an illusion

That I can agree with, but you have to extend it to everything, you can't put human life in a box and say "that is an illusion", that seems pretty absurd to me.

In fact I would say you have it all back-to-front, life is no illusion but everything else is illusion. Descartes famous "I think therefore I am" - we do exist, that is to say I exist, you are just an illusion - an idea in my mind partially conjured by my senses and partially by my imagination, you are not real, you do not exist.
I'm happy to say that is a fact, but I'm also happy to concede that from your perspective the converse is true - to you I am an illusion, I do not exist.

Or at least so I suppose, of course I can't really know anything about you (assuming you are more than just a construct in my mind) because all I have of you is an impression, a few chemicals and electrical impulses in my brain, or so I'm told, of course that's something I'm supposing as well.

In fact of course we can't really know that there is anything outside of ourselves, what's to say that our senses are what we think they are - perhaps the are just a wonderful aspect of our imagination, with no real external stimuli. Perhaps our minds are being fed information that creates the illusion of a tactile spatial reality, with people, animals, wind, compound interest, cup cakes and pain.

but that's not really the point, that point is that the illusion is solid, its our illusion - it matters not one jot whether the world exists outside of me because quite simply it doesn't - everything I perceive exists only in my mind, what's really "out there" if anything, is certainly something quite different to what exists in my mind.

The universe I live in, every single aspect, exists only in my mind. When my mind ceases to exist so does that universe, that reality or world or whatever that I was living in is destroyed completely.

I guess if everything is an illusion then that illusion is our reality.

Yes, the life of an animal is just as much an illusion as the life of a human. The question comes from: what is observing? Because the answer is actually: the whole system is observing itself. Individual consciousness means nothing because there isn't anything individual without the whole. In reality, the individual is related to the whole, and neither is greater or lesser. The individual is the same as the whole, in quality, though not quantity. So there is actually no difference between the whole and the individual.

If life is illusion, then it just means that we don't know where we are. It doesn't mean that there is one reality, and then another reality, it just means we don't know what reality is-- or what we are, for that matter. What are we? We are souls, and this means our natural state is knowledge, rather than confusion; is peace, rather than anxiety; is eternity, rather than temporary. We are in illusion because we do not realize this. I only say we are in illusion as much as there is suffering.

One part of what would be considered illusion is the idea of separateness. But it is actually more than that.

[blp]

Has anyone mentioned Kant? I'm slowly going through The Critique of Pure Reason at the moment and the first chapter is very much on this time and space theme that Sweets America and others have mentioned.

Kant's idea seems to be not that everything is an illusion, but that we simply have no means available to ourselves of knowing what absolute, transcendental reality is. All we have are our methods of representing reality to ourselves. Time and space are these methods. How do we know that they are methods of representation? Well, we know that we cannot imagine reality without them.

In fact, says Kant, they are what makes it possible for us to perceive objects. This seems self-evidently true. The tricky part, which I'm not sure I quite get, is that he also says that other than acting as subjective ways of representing objects to us, time and space do not exist. I think the point may be that, if they are not objects in themselves, they cannot be said to have any objective reality.

Schopenhauer uses this to argue that there is, effectively, no such thing as death. If, at the point of death, our perceptual faculties disappear, it 'follows' that time and space do too. This renders the (fundamentally temporal) concept of death meaningless. Schopenhauer extrapolates from this to defend the idea of metempsychosis (reincarnation).

[jgweed]

Kant's point is that everything we know must exist in space and time, because the transcendental aesthetic is the condition of our knowing; granted the condition, granted the conditioned.
One might argue, for example, that the similarity of "minds" means that these minds function alike in many cases and different in others. Where there is similarity of function there is similarity of objects of cognition. Thus humans and dogs, insofar as they sense objects in the same way, see the same objects. But dogs hear (at least) sounds we do not, and in that sense, their perceived world differs from ours.
It may also be argued that language, in a way, assures a commonality of perception and thought, since its origins appear to the socially transcendental. If one argues that knowledge is socially constructed, knowledge functions much like Kantian space and time.

To say that everything is "in" the mind, while theoretically possible, seems not to account for many things. For example, there would be no reason or explanation for the time continuum of past/now/future or cause and effect. Events could easily float around willy-nilly or move backwards if they were simply our idea. Again, there would be no reason for the endurance of objects; Fido during the morning walk would not necessarily be Fido sleeping at night. Nor, if everything were "in" the mind, could one explain either world history or indeed our own. The vast multiplicity of the every growing encompassing of facts would be, one would think, beyond the ability of any imagination to construct ex nihilo, as it were.
Then, too, absolute idealism seems to depend on the existence of some-thing called "mind." And by implication, the "mind" would be born full-grown like Athena from the head of Zeus; yet in fact, even our own individual experience seems to show that we "learn" or perhaps better, that our world continues to expand through our lives. If everything were simply and only mental, then one would think that everything would exist "in" the mind from the beginning, and at least in the mind, there would be no passing away or coming to be.

And of course, idealism must be able to point to the existence of at least one "mind." But more and more, don't we understand by mind some extremely complex, dependent on all sorts of circumstances, and not a unitary substance that is easily identifiable?

[mukta581]

GOD is far from every illusion
GOD is heights truth above all illusions
But life is mystery
GOD is mystery too.
Still we are in deep fantasy
We are still in slumber
Life is full of anxious
Some time it seems empty
Some time it seems full of gloom
full of illusion
GOD is far from every illusion
GOD is heights truth above all illusions!!!!!

[blp]

Kant's point is that everything we know must exist in space and time, because the transcendental aesthetic is the condition of our knowing; granted the condition, granted the conditioned.
One might argue, for example, that the similarity of "minds" means that these minds function alike in many cases and different in others. Where there is similarity of function there is similarity of objects of cognition. Thus humans and dogs, insofar as they sense objects in the same way, see the same objects. But dogs hear (at least) sounds we do not, and in that sense, their perceived world differs from ours.
It may also be argued that language, in a way, assures a commonality of perception and thought, since its origins appear to the socially transcendental. If one argues that knowledge is socially constructed, knowledge functions much like Kantian space and time.


I may be wrong, jgweed (I'm still struggling to get to grips with Kant) and I may not even be right about what I think you're saying, but I think you've misunderstood. Kant's point is that everything we know only exists for us in space and time - and outside of our own perceptual framework, space and time cannot be said to have any meaning at all. Space and time are what we bring to the situation in order to know, not just the condition of our knowing. They are our methods of representing objects to ourselves.

This really has nothing to do with the similarity or difference of minds, though I spent quite a while thinking it did. Kant's point is not simply that we have a certain kind of mind (or eye or ear) that perceives in a way different from that of another mind such as a dog's or a bee's or a person's who is colour blind. The difference between perceptual faculties certainly interesting and one can extrapolate from it that there is no absolute reality and, in this sense, everything is illusory. But Kant goes beyond this. He gives the example of a rainbow, saying, yes, we can show how this is illusory within the framework of our perceptual mode, but from the point of view of how we represent objects to ourselves, it doesn't matter, it's simply another object like any other - in that we are only able to perceive it, or anything, thanks to our modes of representation - time and space, which must be common to all minds that perceive, no matter how different they are in their perceptual abilities.

We can represent to ourselves what a different kind of perceiving mind would experience - the 'fractured' vision of the bee or the absence of colour in a dog's vision, or the way sounds it hears that we can't would sound. But we cannot imagine reality without time and space. Yet, absolute, transcendental reality, which we can never perceive or represent to ourselves, is devoid of these things, according to Kant. This is something he proves logically, not scientifically, which is important at a historical point where philosophy and science were coming to be seen as distinct from one another.

[JoanS]

says who? descartes? dont believe to that christian thinker... everyone can say so.. me too... but what he says is truth...

[jgweed]

I think we are saying the same thing, but in different ways, and perhaps I was not careful to distinguish a more contemporary illustration/perspective/example/analogy (drawn from biology and linguistics) involving the transcendental aesthetic, from the Kantian original, which argues that the pure intuition of space and time is prior to all experience, and indeed makes experience possible (e.g., Prolegomena, part one).Given this analysis, the noumena cannot be known, and for that reason discussion of it ends in antimonies.

[blp]

I think we are saying the same thing, but in different ways, and perhaps I was not careful to distinguish a more contemporary illustration/perspective/example/analogy (drawn from biology and linguistics) involving the transcendental aesthetic, from the Kantian original, which argues that the pure intuition of space and time is prior to all experience, and indeed makes experience possible (e.g., Prolegomena, part one).Given this analysis, the noumena cannot be known, and for that reason discussion of it ends in antimonies.

OK, that seems closer to what I understand.

Slavoj Zizek suggests what might be a contemporary, and more scientifically concrete spin on those antinomies. He compares the way, when you zoom in close on an object in a computer game, it breaks down, and the similar breakdown into fuzzy logic that occurs at the quantum level. It's as if, he says, God, the ultimate programmer, just didn't think we'd look that closely at his creation, so didn't properly bother with that bit.

[CognitiveArtist]

Interesting discussion.

I think if everything is an illusion that means there is something really real which we're not grasping, as everything we know is an illusion. This is going off the definition of illusion in my dictionary: "false or unreal perception or belief". I also wonder what's gained by accepting the statement "everything is an illusion". Either "every thing is an illusion" meaning every material thing & item in the world is illusory, or "everything is an illusion" meaning our seemingly non-material thoughts & concepts are illusory, along with all material things in the world. The former I think soon gets contradictory and lapses into Cartesian dualism, whereas the latter is so useless it may as well be rejected. The idea that we are living in the wrong reality (living inside a false & unreal everything) I don't find a very good idea. The idea that there is no such thing as "reality" or things which are really real I am partial towards.


Slavoj Zizek suggests what might be a contemporary, and more scientifically concrete spin on those antinomies. He compares the way, when you zoom in close on an object in a computer game, it breaks down, and the similar breakdown into fuzzy logic that occurs at the quantum level. It's as if, he says, God, the ultimate programmer, just didn't think we'd look that closely at his creation, so didn't properly bother with that bit.
The Elvis of cultural theory, I agree that Zizek's ideas are very interesting. Although one thing to keep in mind about Zizek is whenever he is talking about something, its as if he is in a dialogue with other thinkers whilst he is talking about a subject. The end result is often very original ideas, but his ideas often have very firm inspirations (not at all to discredit the value or thought of Zizek in anyway, the point being if you want to get Zizek you have to understand others, especially Lacan).
This idea of our zoom breaking down and fuzzy logic resulting I think is exactly Lacan's idea of "the real". The real is that which escapes signification, or that which we lose and cannot conceive of when we gain language. I think Kant's idea of the sublime comes rather close to the Zizek/Lacan idea of the real, both emphasise that some things are experienced as so overwhelming that we are unable to grasp/conceive of them, yet there is some kind of experience of this loss to grasp/conceive of this overwhelming thing.
Another little thing is Lacan's psychoanalysis isn't judgmental that we are distant from the real, and that people primarily live on the symbolic order and imaginary order.

It's all a very interesting way of talking about reality and our experience. Kant also I am really just discovering now, and despite him being an older and always noted philosopher I haven't paid much attention to him (I do also find him very difficult next to many other philosophers, including contemporaries).

[jgweed]

Precisely. If everything is an illusion, it seems that we are owed an explanation about what everything is an illusion (OF), and those who so argue cannot provide this whilst remaining consistent.
It is one thing to say that we can be deceived by appearances, and another entirely to say they are appearances (OF) some other reality that is "really real."

We look at a painting from a distance, and it appears to be a portrait of a late medieval prince; we approach it to get a closer look, and discover that it "actually" is a collection of fruit and vegetables. We move backwards and forwards, our attention drawn to the optical illusion, until we find the more or less precise distance that it occurs. We knew how to resolve (and understand) the illusion by concentrating our attention on it, and following clarifying procedures; in this example, there is no reference to some meta-reality in working through the conundrum.

Cheers,
John

[blp]

This idea of our zoom breaking down and fuzzy logic resulting I think is exactly Lacan's idea of "the real". The real is that which escapes signification, or that which we lose and cannot conceive of when we gain language. I think Kant's idea of the sublime comes rather close to the Zizek/Lacan idea of the real, both emphasise that some things are experienced as so overwhelming that we are unable to grasp/conceive of them, yet there is some kind of experience of this loss to grasp/conceive of this overwhelming thing.
Another little thing is Lacan's psychoanalysis isn't judgmental that we are distant from the real, and that people primarily live on the symbolic order and imaginary order.

Hello CA. Nice to chat to another Zizek reader. Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to this.

I think Zizek's quite explicit about the the Kantian sublime and the Lacanian Real being pretty much the same idea. It's interesting though that if Kant had used a term like 'the Real' he would probably have meant something different - his notion of transcendental reality, which is not just beyond symbolisation, but beyond our capacity to perceive at all. Or

is that really so different after all? I mean, what is really beyond symbolisation other than that which is completely beyond experience? In which case, what does this mean for the definition of the sublime?

I admit this question's a bit beyond me since I haven't even got to the Critique of Judgment, which is where the beautiful, sublime and monstrous are discussed. But it seems to me that people go around happily claiming that the sublime is beyond symbolisation all the time, yet keep managing to convey it through symbols, whether in music, literature or visual art. Not an easy brief, I'll grant, but it does happen.

Two other philosophical ideas seem pertinent, Derrida's 'There is nothing outside the text' and Wittgenstein's 'Whereof we cannot speak, we must be silent.' I would say, the latter could refer to Kant's Transcendental Reality, the former could refer to everything within Kant's Phenomenal (perceivable) Reality and are, thereby, not mutually exclusive. The sublime, then, and perhaps the Lacanian Real too, would be the furthest limit, the point where the ability to symbolise experience threatens to break down.

Or

Lacan's Real actually does introduce a new idea, a second level of remove from 'reality', as follows: first, already, as a condition of experience, we must be separated from Kant's Transcendental Reality, but are able to experience, prior to the acquisition of language, The Real. Second, the acquisition of langauge separates us inexorably from this initial, non-linguistic experience of Phenomenal Reality.

This idea simultaneously has an interesting psychological effect on me, in that talking (writing) about it seems to rather wake me up. At the same time, it seems inadequate. From what I can understand in Zizek, the Real is a lot more than just a baby's eye view of the world.

[blp]

But then again, for all I know, this 'baby's eye view' of the world is something pretty mad and overwhelming and quite adequate to the notion of The Real.

Years ago, I read a book by a young doctor who'd investigated drugs. As part of his researches, he'd tried LSD (though not addictive drugs like heroin or cocaine). He found LSD's mind-altering process wearying. He took it with his wife and describes sitting in bed with her, both desperate for the experience to end and their ability to percieve coherent reality to return. However, he also hypothesised that the experience was analagous to that of a baby's and cited the experience of seeing his own infant son touching himself on the head, then looking up in shock to see what had touched it.

This seems to accord with Lacan's notion that the infant experiences its own being as fragmentary. At the Lacanian 'mirror stage', the child becomes fascinated with its own image precisely because it presents a more coherent bodily image than the child is aware of.

Ah well, who knows? If Kant is a tough nut to crack, Lacan is positively rocklike. The question I have at this point is, what, if any, is the relation between the child's 'loss' of the Real, its greater feeling of physical coherence (which I imagine remains somewhat incomplete in a lot of people anyway) and its acquisition of language? It seems self evident that, ultimately, some greater ability is being acquired, the ability to function and manipulate the world to meet one's needs etc., but it's worth bearing in mind that a loss of some sort occurs too. And perhaps its in our terrifying/wonderful experiences of the sublime that we are able to acknowledge that loss and give it its due (i.e. admit that we've lost is not just terrifying and debilitating, but wonderful too). This would say a lot a lot a lot about the really extreme difficulty of being human.

Oh I don't know.

[NikolaiI]

"Precisely. If everything is an illusion, it seems that we are owed an explanation about what everything is an illusion (OF), and those who so argue cannot provide this whilst remaining consistent."

The everything that is illusion is in relation to the subject. There is infact a truth beyond this, beyond any everything or any subject-- okay, and this is what we measure it all by.

When I consider this, the idea comes to mind that the illusion is the idea of separateness. For instance, that I think I am an "I" separate from my environment. Subject and environment are actually connected, interlinked, one affects the other and so they are part of each other. So in this view, subject actually disappears.

Moksha, or liberation, occurs when we overcome this duality. But it is more than that. It is understood many different ways, in many different analogies. Plato's man of illumination, who has climbed to a level of truth-- the Buddhist, who has realized his Buddha nature; these are but two. It has been said that in truth we are more than we think we are. We are like a sleeping giant. Or you might consider how the ideals of heaven could solve our problems, and then you could set about bringing this light down to earth, so that there is peace, and there is no longer separation between what is low and what is high, what is great and what is small.

You have expressed complete disdain for anything otherworldly. That is fine. I will attempt to explain. The Buddhists have the teaching that reality-- akin to enlightenment-- is not far away. It is immanant. We are searching for enlightenment, but it is like being in the ocean, searching for wetness. This enlightenment, the goal, is described like this in one Upanishad:

"What the sages sought they have found at last.
No more questions have they to ask of life."

And while I have spoke of this as it is a singular goal, enlightenment, in truth, there are many different consciousnesses. In fact, as far as I can tell there are infinite consciousnesses. Anyway, some consciousnesses are closer to enlightenment, some are further away.

So the basic idea I am speaking of is that there are not two worlds, not this one and another. We are not separate from reality, but there is illusion, and that is that we do not know the reality. And the ideas that our conceptions are illusions-- this is based on experience, based on the experience of revelation.

Cheers,
Alex

To sum up, it is not that everything is illusion: of two illusions, the first is "I am everything." The truth is that I am part of the whole, and the second illusion is "I am not part of the whole." The first of these is mainly a moral deficiency, and the second is a question of consciousness-- we have traveled many twists and turns, as Alan Watts puts it, so far that we have completely lost track of where we started-- thus we are in illusion, or ignorance. Hope this helps.

[jgweed]

I am not clear about this argument:"When I consider this, the idea comes to mind that the illusion is the idea of separateness. For instance, that I think I am an "I" separate from my environment. Subject and environment are actually connected, interlinked, one affects the other and so they are part of each other. So in this view, subject actually disappears."

To say that subject and object are connected and interlinked, and that ONE effects the OTHER is one thing. But does this mean that they are the "same"? For if subject and object "disappear" then how do they interact one with another?

Again I am unclear what is meant by "The everything that is illusion is in relation to the subject. There is infact a truth beyond this, beyond any everything or any subject-- okay, and this is what we measure it all by."

If everything is an illusion, and utterly dependent on the Self (which disappears into the non-Self) then how can the Self get beyond the illusion to know truths that are not illusory? When the criteria for differing between truth and illusion would be subject to the same illusion, to argue the contrary would be to argue that not everything is illusion.

We seem to agree that there are not two worlds, only the one in which we exist and travail. Where we disagree is about the ability of the self to make sense of it and to understand it; and whether to "know reality" can mean ONLY to know it absolutely and with perfect certainty.
Cheers,
John

[CognitiveArtist]

Hi blp, it is always good to find people who appreciate Zizek and psychoanalysis. It is a fascinating body of thoughts.


I think Zizek's quite explicit about the the Kantian sublime and the Lacanian Real being pretty much the same idea. It's interesting though that if Kant had used a term like 'the Real' he would probably have meant something different - his notion of transcendental reality, which is not just beyond symbolisation, but beyond our capacity to perceive at all. Or

is that really so different after all? I mean, what is really beyond symbolisation other than that which is completely beyond experience? In which case, what does this mean for the definition of the sublime? It is interesting how close Zizek and Kant come. I'm not sure what in Kant is most parallel to the Lacanian real. Those things-in-themselves, noumena or the transcendental reality (I can't really distinguish) seem like Kant's version of the real. As you said, his notion of the real seems to be beyond our capacity or perceive at all. It may be that I don't know enough Kant, but I find it hard to imagine this stuff (whatever it is) which is beyond our experience/perception is philosophically supportable.
I think though a difference between Lacan's the real and Kant's noumena is, I believe, Kant considered the noumena to be really existent which is why Kant is described as having a metaphysics of idealism. Lacan on the other hand, (albeit later unlike earlier in his career, I believe) said the real didn't actually exist objectively, and was only apart of human experience. Yet the real is apart of human experience which is never experienced fully, but is experience of being overshadowed or overwhelmed, as the real is never fully present or fully experienced (like much of Lacan's thought, which stresses the fleeting nature of things in our mind, e.g. the subject being an empty signifier). By the way, I have referred to this useful book Jacques Lacan (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=DXXdFFrKTcYC&pg=PA81&source=gbs_toc_s&cad=1&sig=ACfU3U3NtrGolbjkyRVQhFlQmI3tW15EGg#PPA81,M1) by Sean Homer to clarify my understandings, though I'm not sure I understood it all.


it seems to me that people go around happily claiming that the sublime is beyond symbolisation all the time, yet keep managing to convey it through symbols, whether in music, literature or visual art. Not an easy brief, I'll grant, but it does happen. Art has a strange relationship with philosophical thinkers like Kant, Heidegger and (I think) Lacan. They on one hand seem compatible and support to some degree a hermeneutics which declares that we can only encounter things which we interpret, whilst simultaneously trying to affirm that art is in some way incommensurable or ineffable.
I'm not sure how Kant reconciles the elusive nature of the sublime with the incredible fathoming ablilities Kant bestows upon the subject. Lacan though I can guess. One thing first, I somewhat incorrectly described the Lacanian real when I called it "that which we lose and cannot conceive of when we gain language". That which avoids being made into a sign, or that which cannot be represented in language is better. The idea of the real being before we gain language suggests the real is something primordial, existent in infancy. Lacan though seems to emphasise that the real exists throughout human development. Also that the real is often experienced beyond infancy, and it is the real which we try to communicate (put into language, words) yet we are always unable to. The real, I understand, frames what we talk about, by the real being something which we can never pin down (the real is the thing we desire to say. Yet in Lacanian psychoanalysis a subject never can achieve what is desired, as desire is a surplus, something unattained, as for Lacan you cannot desire what you have).
Lacan's psychoanalysis, I believe, is more able to cater to slippery and sublime qualities then Kant's philosophical project because Lacan is near post-structuralism and thus, through post-structuralist logic, emphasises that the things we experience and think of are decentered and not fixed. I'm not sure about Lacan's ideas on art, but I'm guessing art relays (I'm avoiding using the verb "communicates") to the subject (person) what was lost when they started living as a subject (that is, a language-being, as language creates the subject and bestows upon them their humanity). Perhaps art then is like a master signifier, some vague identity through which people experience and think of the world (for example, other master signifiers are gothic subculture, "Australian-ness" or catholicism. A master signifier is pretty much something that is irreducible to it's parts).


Two other philosophical ideas seem pertinent, Derrida's 'There is nothing outside the text' and Wittgenstein's 'Whereof we cannot speak, we must be silent.' I would say, the latter could refer to Kant's Transcendental Reality, the former could refer to everything within Kant's Phenomenal (perceivable) Reality and are, thereby, not mutually exclusive. The sublime, then, and perhaps the Lacanian Real too, would be the furthest limit, the point where the ability to symbolise experience threatens to break down. I agree that these specific quotes from these two thinkers are relevant, yet I'm not sure I could rewardingly discuss the matter by throwing these two thinkers into the juggle. To try and summarise the discussion though, it seems to be revolving around the idea that what is sublime (for Kant) and what is real (for Lacan) cannot easily, if at all, be pinned down or ensnared in language.



Lacan's Real actually does introduce a new idea, a second level of remove from 'reality', as follows: first, already, as a condition of experience, we must be separated from Kant's Transcendental Reality, but are able to experience, prior to the acquisition of language, The Real. Second, the acquisition of langauge separates us inexorably from this initial, non-linguistic experience of Phenomenal Reality.The first point I completely agree with. Lacan has no actual concern for describing what reality is really like, and what human nature is really like, therefore he avoids things like Kant's transcendental reality. This is done (later in his career) by Lacan's stating that "the real" is just apart of our experience and is not objective, existent matter, the real is just what the experience of "brute matter" is like to us, as human beings. Moreover, Lacan at the end of the day is just concerned with training analysts, and using a provisional language to discuss the human psyche. Lacan is not concerned with actual description; first and foremost Lacan is about psychotherapy.
Your second point is as I was mistakenly talking in my last post, I believe. In Lacanian psychoanalysis the real exists after the acquisition of language. Before the acquisition of language the person is not "human" (that is, not a [human] subject).


This idea simultaneously has an interesting psychological effect on me, in that talking (writing) about it seems to rather wake me up. At the same time, it seems inadequate. From what I can understand in Zizek, the Real is a lot more than just a baby's eye view of the world. I agree. I think the one incongruence in this discussion is a part of my first post. The Lacanian real is an important order or register (one order of three, Lacan's triad, the imaginary, the symbolic and the real) throughout the human life. This importance of the real is seen with art, also the real has a relationship with Lacan's desire (desire is for Lacan really important).


The real is something which occupies a lot of Lacanian scholarship because, amongst other ideas, Lacan's idea of the real was developed late in his career. Lacan's thought changed significantly, he was really a thinker who was willing to revise anything and everything to make his thought more superior. Furthermore, Lacan's psychoanalysis is such a rich system or discourse and there are extensive relationships with every concept. I'm ignorant of how important the real is. After understanding the predicates to one concept it's really a matter of fathoming how that concept connects with other concepts. I'm interested in Lacan and Zizek because their psychoanalysis is such a conceptually unique discourse, also it is the most holistic body of knowledge I know. Learning it is like laying siege to a fortress, yet it's not without enjoyment :)


This seems to accord with Lacan's notion that the infant experiences its own being as fragmentary. At the Lacanian 'mirror stage', the child becomes fascinated with its own image precisely because it presents a more coherent bodily image than the child is aware of.


It seems self evident that, ultimately, some greater ability is being acquired, the ability to function and manipulate the world to meet one's needs etc., but it's worth bearing in mind that a loss of some sort occurs too. And perhaps its in our terrifying/wonderful experiences of the sublime that we are able to acknowledge that loss and give it its due (i.e. admit that we've lost is not just terrifying and debilitating, but wonderful too). This would say a lot a lot a lot about the really extreme difficulty of being human. I don't think the real is lost, as stated above, but this text reminded me of an important loss to a human. If I remember a person becomes separated from the world when it enters the mirror stage and a person becomes alienated (or "barred" or "split" [these terms are synonyms, as I've learned Lacan is word crazy, and his thought developed and change a lot]) when he/she becomes a subject: when the person acquires language.


I have no illusions that all I've managed to do is light a match in the thick darkness of Lacan's psychoanalysis. I'm not sure what art means for Lacan & Zizek, and how art for both of them relates to the real. I don't know how important the real is, and I certainly don't know all of Lacan's concepts which the real relates to. I've just been talking about the relationship between the real and art, and Lacan's real and Kant's sublime.

[NikolaiI]

deleted

[DapperDrake]

Lots of interesting thoughts! getting too late for me to read it all or reply. I really must get that copy of "critique of pure reason" off the shelf and have a proper go at it, the size and language keep putting me off :blush:

[jgweed]

Comment 1: "Those things-in-themselves, noumena or the transcendental reality (I can't really distinguish) seem like Kant's version of the real. As you said, his notion of the real seems to be beyond our capacity or perceive at all. It may be that I don't know enough Kant, but I find it hard to imagine this stuff (whatever it is) which is beyond our experience/perception is philosophically supportable."

It is, as I understand him, Kant's argument is that noumena are somewhat like figments of the understanding; and his point is that any discussion of them as objects of possible knowledge are illegitimate. Kant would be the last one to say, therefore, that noumena are real.

Comment 2. "...the size and language keep putting me off." To put it mildly Kant is very dry reading; somewhat easier to read, and certainly shorter than the Critique is his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, which covers as a "preliminary exercise" the same material.

Comment 3."Anyway the truth is beyond words, conceptions." This seems then, to make either knowledge about truth, or discussion about it, impossible, especially from a philosophical or rational point of view.

[CognitiveArtist]

Comment 1: "Those things-in-themselves, noumena or the transcendental reality (I can't really distinguish) seem like Kant's version of the real. As you said, his notion of the real seems to be beyond our capacity or perceive at all. It may be that I don't know enough Kant, but I find it hard to imagine this stuff (whatever it is) which is beyond our experience/perception is philosophically supportable."

It is, as I understand him, Kant's argument is that noumena are somewhat like figments of the understanding; and his point is that any discussion of them as objects of possible knowledge are illegitimate. Kant would be the last one to say, therefore, that noumena are real.

Do you know if Kant thinks the noumena are existent? I thought they were in some way the independent, essences of things (therefore the "real" reality), which exist whether people do or do not. Perhaps Kant is just referring to the impossibility of metaphysics when he talks about noumena? My qualm about Kant's noumena is he seemed to suppose they exist, and then that we can't know anything about them. If noumena were hypothetical ("if there were these essences of things [noumena], we could know nothing about them"), then I'd appreciate Kant's point.

[blp]

I'm going to try a longer response to your long post when I have more time, CA.

I thought the noumena were simply things about which our knowledge was so utterly absent that we could not even say whether they existed or not. God, the soul etc. In this sense, they are different from transcendental reality, which, I think, Kant does believe exists, it's just that it's not possible for us to perceive it.

[jgweed]

In the third Chapter of the Critique, Kant writes:
"The understanding...at the same time forms, apart from that relation [object of cognition and cognitor], a representation of an object in itself, and so comes to represent itself as also being as also being able to form concepts of such objects" (B307).
It seems that Kant is indicating in this and what follows that noumena arise from the understanding postulating "some thing," or permanent substance that is the cause of appearances. Obviously for him, this assumption is illicit because independent of experience. Kant would say, under this reading, not that noumena do or do not "exist" but that it makes no sense to talk about them at all.

[blp]

In the third Chapter of the Critique, Kant writes:
"The understanding...at the same time forms, apart from that relation [object of cognition and cognitor], a representation of an object in itself, and so comes to represent itself as also being as also being able to form concepts of such objects" (B307).
It seems that Kant is indicating in this and what follows that noumena arise from the understanding postulating "some thing," or permanent substance that is the cause of appearances. Obviously for him, this assumption is illicit because independent of experience. Kant would say, under this reading, not that noumena do or do not "exist" but that it makes no sense to talk about them at all.

This sounds as if it may be an address to the ontological proof of the existence of God, a version of which had been propounded by Descartes - one cannot have a concept of God without there having been a God to create that concept in one's mind. At a glance, without having read as far as you in the book, it looks as if he's saying, no, we really can't know at all what the 'thing in itself' that is the source of any of our concepts is. Not at all.

[jgweed]

That is my understanding of Kant's position. Further, I doubt that Kant would even go so far as to say that a thing-in-itself (noumena) is the source or cause of appearances. Reason, when it transcends its proper scope (that which gives real knowledge) ends up with what he calls Antimonies, or opposites, each of which conflict with the other, and each of which "can be shown by equally clear, evident, and irresistible proofs." In the Prolegomena, Kant provides examples:
"Thesis: The world has, as to time and space, a beginning (limit).
Antithesis: The world is, as to time and space, infinite."
(Paragraph 51. Beck translation).

If one strictly follows the argumentation of the Critique, it does appear that "God exists" and "God does not exist" is another example.
But we must remember that subsequently, Kant did offer arguments for the existence of God, immortality of the soul, and freedom. Many commentators question the consistency of these proofs with the Critique's conclusions.

[blp]

But we must remember that subsequently, Kant did offer arguments for the existence of God, immortality of the soul, and freedom. Many commentators question the consistency of these proofs with the Critique's conclusions.

That does seem rather disappointing! Oh, except, perhaps, for the 'freedom' part. I think I've read the essay in which he defends this idea. It actually seems all of a piece with his Transcendental Aesthetic. Nothing to do with the object thing in itself creating the concept. What he actually says, I think, is that, because truth is not external to us, but is a product of our perceptual faculties, we don't need any authoritarian figures to tell us what it is. I think that's it. Sorry, I've probably made a complete hash of it. Anyway, it was a good reading experience. I spent most of it feeling irritated and oppressed by his defense of the idea of absolute truth, then, suddenly, as I realised it was a defense of freedom, burst out laughing - with delight, not scorn!

[CognitiveArtist]

I've come across a very helpful source which I will relay, as it explains Kant's noumena and thing in itself as best I can understand it.


1. 1. Kant’s conception of the thing in itself.

Kant begins his chapter on Transcendental Aesthetics with this enigmatic passage:

In whatever way and through whatever means a cognition may relate to objects, that through which it relates immediately to them, and at which all thought as a means is directed as an end, is intuition. This, however, takes place only insofar as the object is given to us; but this in turn, at least for us humans, is possible only if it affects the mind in a certain way. (A19, B33, italics added.)

In this Kant clearly says that objects are given to us through a certain affection they have on the mind. This leads him to making a distinction between things in themselves and thing as they appear to us. The latter are the objects as we experience them, the former are the ground or cause of these appearances. In the preface to the second edition of Critique of Pure Reason, he says the following: “[C]ognition [Erkenntnis] reaches appearances only, leaving the thing in itself as something actual for itself but uncognized by us.” (Bxx.)
Thus the thing in itself is the ground of everything we can cognize, yet it itself is beyond the reach of our cognition. The thing in itself is then basically an object considered as independent of the (human) cognition, whereas the appearances are objects as viewed through the cognition.
The precise nature of this division has been the source of numerous philosophical problems and proposed solutions, because as seen in the quote above, he himself gives only rather vague explanations on how exactly this division should be understood.
(underlines by CognitiveArtist)

Kant's method, transcendental reflection, is a piece of the puzzle which made this all, for me, more understandable


1. 2. Of Kant’s transcendental philosophy.

In his transcendental philosophy Kant examines the necessary conditions of possible human experience, that is, what sort of prerequisites must be set for the things in themselves in order for them to be able to be represented by appearances. This method is called transcendental reflection and it will play an important part in our future considerations.

...

Kant claims that human cognition is always discursive, that is, it represents objects. This discursivity thesis is best understood through its counterpart, intuitive intelligence, which would be able to grasp objects directly as they are without any mediating representation.
The exact philosophy of mind behind Kant’s view is very complex, but I will give a brief and simplified account of it, so that the presentation is easier to follow.
Kant distinguishes two parts of human cognition: sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) and understanding (Verstand). Objects cause (in one way or another, cf. quote in 1. 1. [the Kant quote above]) sensations (Empfindung) in our sensibility, which the sensibility sets into its forms, time and space, producing (empirical) intuitions. Understanding then cognizes common features in the intuitions and puts them together as a mark (Merkmals). These marks are thus derived from experience and correspond to the sensed properties. These marks correspond to the content of the concept and together with the form of understanding produce the whole concept itself.


http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/5260/kantdiagramrt3.png

Therefore Kant’s view is that our experiences are in a sense “filtered” through the forms of understanding and sensibility. The forms of understanding are called the categories. According to Kant there are 12 of them, and they correspond to the Table of Logic, which represents the basic logical operations. (Cf. A70-80, B95-106, Prol, 61.) Even though the experiences are caused by the things in themselves, they do not appear as they are. It is worth nothing that the objects are not merely distorted by our cognition, but their form is completely constructed by it. This means that the things in themselves are not, or so the standard view goes, one or many, nor are they spatiotemporal in any ordinary sense. They are completely alien, and wholly unimaginable to us.

My final snippet is of the beginning of an argument which claims by the nature and/or qualities (of the lack of qualities) of the thing in itself (I paused here for a moment on whether or not to include the last 2 paragraphs. I ended up including them as they helpfully explain Kant's argument for the existence of the thing in itself)


2. 1. The unintelligibility argument.

Kant’s claims that we cannot know the thing in itself calls for the question: how can Kant then claim that they exist? It surely seems at first blush that this is an absurd stance, but as we will see, the whole argument is based on a misunderstanding of Kant’s transcendental method of reflection.
Kant’s account of transcendental reflection is given in the following passages:


Reflection […] is the consciousness of the relation of given representations to our various sources of cognition. […] The first question prior to all further treatment of our representation is this: In which cognitive faculty do they belong together? […] [A]ll judgments, indeed all comparisons, require a reflection, i.e., a distinction of the cognitive power to which the given concepts belong. The action through which I make the comparison of representations in general with the cognitive power in which they are situated, and through which I distinguish whether they are to be compared to one another as belonging to the pure understanding or to pure intuition, I call transcendental reflection. (A260-1; B316-7.)


[T]ranscendental reflection is a duty from which no one can escape if he would judge anything about things a priori. (A263, B319.)

Transcendental reflection is thus the action through which the conditions of experience are exposed. As Westphal aptly puts it: “Kant uses transcendental reflection to identify several of our key cognitive capacities by identifying several of our key cognitive incapacities.” (KTPR, 2.) The basic idea is, then, that Kant is simply charting the borders of what can and what cannot be cognized by finding out the necessary conditions for our cognition, i.e. the conditions without which no cognition in general would be possible.
From this it is relatively easy to see that Kant is merely maintaining that we could not possibly know anything about any objects that did not fulfil these necessary conditions – a claim that is true on the basis of the definition of ‘necessary condition of cognition’. Thus Kant is not, as such, making a claim about the thing in itself, but about the capabilities of our cognition.
Now there are, however, other problems involved with this part of Kant’s view. One could ask, and indeed many have, about the grounds of Kant’s claim of the existence of such objects. It is one thing to accept that we cannot know anything about such objects that do not exhaust the requirements set for possible knowledge, but quite another thing to claim that these hypothetical objects actually exist.
This is where the transcendental reflection again steps in. Let us follow Kannisto’s footsteps here. Surely enough, we experience. Now this is only possible if there is something to experience. If what we experience, on the other hand, were fully the production of our cognition, then we could not err – and the possibility of error is a necessary condition of knowledge (or, it could be asked, what would knowledge mean without the possibility of error?). (Kannisto, 321-2.) Such a view would also fail to account for why things (seem to) persist even when we do not perceive them, or why we seem to share our world.
This leads Kant to the claim that something external to us causes these experiences – hence the thing in itself. (Ibid, 322.) In short: Kant is not making claims about the noumenal realm, but of the borders of the phenomenal realm. He is, so to speak, arguing from a box that because something comes into the box, something must be outside the box. Therefore, his claims here are not inconsistent at all, and arguments stating otherwise arise from the failure to understand Kant’s transcendental method.

I get the method Kant uses to philosophise about experience and what must exist to cause the experience. I still am at odds with the existence of thing in itself/noumena, and also Kant's project, yet there is nothing I can really think of which is faulty. To put the cherry on the cake with this precise summation
the thrust of Kant’s argument is that we cannot know anything about the thing in itself (apart from its transcendentally deduced existence), and therefore cannot in particular know them to be for example spatiotemporal.

I did aim for trophy quotes, so I hope my lengthy post isn't too cumbersome. I did cut the above passages out of an all around useful 18 page document on Kant's Nomena and thing in itself.

The helpful website (http://www.beyondappearances.com/index.php) with a lot on Kant, and the specific document.

And the specific document (http://www.beyondappearances.com/essays.php?action=NoumenalCausation).

[jgweed]

Continuing the discussion, Kant distinguishes between a positive and a negative definition of noumena (B307):
“If by 'noumenon' we mean a thing so far as it is not an object of our senseible intuition, and so abstract from our mode of intuiting it, this is a noumenon in the negarive sense of the term. But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensible intuition, we thereby presuppose a special mode of intuition, namely the intellectual, which is not that which we posses, and of which we cannot comprehend even the possibility. This would be “noumenon' in the positive sense of the term.”

Now obviously, Kant rejects the positive sense, since the noumenon would be an object of an intellectual intuition which we do not enjoy. The negative sense then requires some explanation, since Kant writes that “The doctrine of sensibility is also the doctrine on noumena in the negative sense.”
If I may summarise Copleston's discussion of this duality of noumena in his History of Philosophy (Vol.6, Part II,Chapter 12) this may be because the negative concept is necessary as a limiting concept---things considered INSOFAR as they do NOT appear to us; for we cannot say with certainty that appearances exhaust all that can be called real, nor can we say that reality is TOTALLY created by the Self (traditional idealism, for example).
Since the Kantian Self contributes only the formal, formative parts of experience, we must, it seems, keep the distinction between these formed phenomena and something-else-in-addition-but-not-phenomena which we call noumena, or things-in-themselves, even if we cannot know their characteristics or even if they actually exist.

Bibliographic note: for those interested, the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Meiklejohn, is available on-line at Project Gutenburg. This lacks, though, cross-references to the Prussian edition making citations difficult.
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=5144&pageno=8

[white camellia]

What interesting discussions! Thank you all who have given time to it and those who will.

[sherwulff]

I've been told that Coleridge drew heavily (I think my professor put it this way: "We know he got it right because he stole it") from Kant in what I assume to be his "imagination versus fancy" categorization. Can anyone shed light on this topic?

[DooRag]

Blaze, what are you talking about?

Are you ok?

[byquist]

Politely disagree with that word "illusion" when associated with life, existence, individuality, being, identity, substance, essence, etc., although detaching from certain things, behavior patterns, and objects may, indeed, be all for the best or forced upon us against our wishes.

The little baby mouse (even got a name, Wall-E) that I saved this summer for even a week of life was not an illusion. My dog is not an illusion. My kids and the students I teach are not illusion(s). Affirming reality instead of illusion is an active means of solving problems, and most folks seek solutions. A participant in the Olympics is not going to get much help from holding to the idea that doing the 400 meter butterfly is an illusion.

You obviously do not like hearing this, probably find such a demand for practical results to be inconsequential; however, when significant results appear then you are dealing with real power and not abstraction. Some, maybe all, aspects of "illusion thinking" are abstractions, mind-games, and by entertaining its modus the divine never touches the human needs that people have. Something cures; nothingness or emptiness provides no cure to anything, however tantalizing such thinking may be.

[blazeofglory]

Blaze, what are you talking about?

Are you ok?

Dear DooRag, Of course what I talked about is likely to confuse and confound anybody. I out of humbleness would like to scribble a few more words on it. In fact what I say is a product of what I read, or pondered or came to know at some moments in life or maybe out of the software installed into my minds by society-framers. I cannot get over these conditionings in life no matter what I do, indeed in the snare of ideas. I am afraid I am tangling you with too much of what I believe in.
Friend, discard my thoughts, do not accept it to internalize. Just take it as a part of the communications I tend to have across a thousand and one people in every walk of life. Ideas as crop up and a few leave marks and the rest vaporize into this vast abyss, called the universe.

I apologize to you if I am mystifying you with more and more such words. I appeal to you if you do not find it palatable, discard it, for what I talked about have more of illusions, for everything is an illusion.

[jgweed]

It is one thing to chant "all is illusion" and another to present reasoned arguments and explanations for its truth. For example, even if our mind's hard drive is conditioned and guided by society's software, there is no reason to think that therefore the software does not provide a functioning programme. Could one not say say, in fact, that the "snare of ideas" could be considered a guarantee of their truth?

[NikolaiI]

It is one thing to chant "all is illusion" and another to present reasoned arguments and explanations for its truth. For example, even if our mind's hard drive is conditioned and guided by society's software, there is no reason to think that therefore the software does not provide a functioning programme. Could one not say say, in fact, that the "snare of ideas" could be considered a guarantee of their truth?

Been wanting to get back to you about this one. Yes, I agree that there is no lack of possibility of certainty, of discovering truth, etc. There's much, much work on all this as I'm sure you're aware. I've only read a very small amount, time does not allow a thorough study; I've read different philosophers, and my sources are scattered, etc...there are many theories, and the starting point it seems is ontology -- Who are we? What are we? Questions like this. Buddhism analyzed these questions and said that in the analysis, you can point to different attributes and so on, but other than that ego is false.

The different aggregates that go into illusion are something like sense perception, feeling, emotions, concepts, and consciousness-- I could have it slightly off. Some people consider that we are consciousness. There's a great Hindu poem that says that all is cut out of consciousness, like figures are cut out of a rock. There are different forms but they are forms of consciousness.

"All is illusion" can be explained in the way that all we know is from our sense-perception, and we can only confirm anything experienced thus, with other sense-perception. The question is what is beyond it? And it is answered in a surprising way, with parallels that point to an interesting phenomenon.

All our concepts are dependent upon many factors. Every concept we have is dependent on us, as well as factors around us. The reason is that concepts are related to values, which has no meaning except in relation to an individual. But what is valuable to one individual has no value for another; and so what has meaning for one has no meaning for another. Further, what has meaning for the individual is in constant change, so he does not value what he did previous, and his future tastes are subject to change as well. So we say it is illusion, only because it exists subjectively; one world exists for one person, which beyond them, does not exist at all.

So to go back a little, we still have the question begging, what is not illusion? The answer is what is pure reality. In my understanding there is no platform or paradigm which cannot be gone beyond. In any paradigm we can analyze it and find a higher truth. We can always reach a higher peace, or reality. What I mean is, there is always possible a revelatory paradigm shift. Our consciousness is always changing; who can know exactly consciousness they were in their entire life? There is physical and mental, and psychologically we are probably influenced by our philosophical system as well as all the other factors. We are on but on level of infinite levels, and we can never get at the absolute truth or on the other side of the scale, nothingness, and we are always between the two.

[DapperDrake]

Politely disagree with that word "illusion" when associated with life, existence, individuality, being, identity, substance, essence, etc., although detaching from certain things, behavior patterns, and objects may, indeed, be all for the best or forced upon us against our wishes.

The little baby mouse (even got a name, Wall-E) that I saved this summer for even a week of life was not an illusion. My dog is not an illusion. My kids and the students I teach are not illusion(s). Affirming reality instead of illusion is an active means of solving problems, and most folks seek solutions. A participant in the Olympics is not going to get much help from holding to the idea that doing the 400 meter butterfly is an illusion.

You obviously do not like hearing this, probably find such a demand for practical results to be inconsequential; however, when significant results appear then you are dealing with real power and not abstraction. Some, maybe all, aspects of "illusion thinking" are abstractions, mind-games, and by entertaining its modus the divine never touches the human needs that people have. Something cures; nothingness or emptiness provides no cure to anything, however tantalizing such thinking may be.

What is truth, what is practical reality, what is conciousness?

These things are exactly what they appear... at the mundane level. However when you look at them closely enough you find that they are just nothing. How can individual conciousness exist when we are divisible? truth is what's important but how can anything be important when we are mortal? Practical reality, your Olympic swimmer, is absurd, and its absurd that anyone takes it seriously, myself included.

Does anyone ever really come to terms with their mortality? or do we just sweep it under the psychological carpet, and tack the carpet down with distractions like "practical reality", blindfolds like "truth", and comfortable lies like "self" and "conciousness" and "individual" and "society" and "Love" etc..

Its really quite amusing, why do we bother? we spend our whole lives tacking down that carpet and then we just expire like the meat bags we are anyway.

I have little patience for people who won't at least peek under the carpet a little ;)

"It is one thing to chant "all is illusion" and another to present reasoned arguments and explanations for its truth. For example, even if our mind's hard drive is conditioned and guided by society's software, there is no reason to think that therefore the software does not provide a functioning programme. Could one not say say, in fact, that the "snare of ideas" could be considered a guarantee of their truth?"

You could, if you wanted to, of course you don't have to because its not truth, its optional truth - you can choose to believe it. What's the point of that? I suppose its comfortable, seems like a bit of a cop out to me though.

[NikolaiI]

The main meaning of "Everything is illusion" is that everything is known by sense-perception, everything we know is in relation to sense-perception.

The first breaking out of this illusion is both what Plato describes as climbing out of cave of ignorance, and what the Buddhists descibe as realizing one's Buddha nature.

The statement and idea have to do with revelation, and since we are accusing each other of not liking our ideas, I will say that you might not like the idea of revelation.

It is like an "aha!" moment.
What falls away are our misconceptions, which prevent us from being peaceful and blissful and from knowing. Normal, conditioned, sense-perception consciousness does not go this deep. It is after deep meditation and searching, so much spiritual practice (which yes includes laughing, etc.) that one can start to see these things.

There is a part of us that is higher than the rest of all this.
Call it the stoic nature inside us
Call it the Buddha nature
Call it the Christ nature,
or call it the soul,
it is the part of us which does not die, which is not affected by the elements.

The eternal part of us does exist.

So-- everything is illusion means that everything exists materially, only it is immaterial in relation to what actually exists. What actually exists? well nothing is different, only it actually is a world completely beyond our imagination. It is blissful and full of knowledge, as opposed to being in the darkness of ignorance. The nature of reality is the reason that anyone would say the rest is illusion. It is the "aha" the "eureka" when we say, "this and the other were actually problems? I can't believe I cared about them!"

Because we realize that we are the authors of our lives.
We realize that we are in control of ourselves, and we can write our life like a story,
and since we are the authors, therefore we can raise ourselves above it somewhat, and see it based from what is actually real-- that is, we, writing the rest of our lives out; from where?

I hope I haven't been more confusing than not.

[jgweed]

"The main meaning of "Everything is illusion" is that everything is known by sense-perception, everything we know is in relation to sense-perception."

Let us suppose this statement to be true, although I think there are many things not known, but triggered by, sense perception. We reformulate this into something like an argument: everything is known by sense perception; therefore everything is illusion.

Logical argument:
How can this "therefore" be proved? For then it must be demonstrated that each and every sense perception is false; not just that we may be in error from time to time, but always. And it must be shown that there is some standard against which we can make a decision about each and every perception that it is false. But this can only be done, if it is to be done, by comparing sense impressions to something ELSE that is not dependent on sense impressions, which by definition is not possible.

Practical argument:
That everything we know through sense impressions is false is refuted countless times each day by countless people. Our world and our activities are predicated on the truth of, and reliance upon, the veracity of our experience. And if we err, we understand the procedures for clarifying our misconceptions, and these procedures always refer to the world of experience (we "take a closer look" for example).

Psychological argument:
To say that "everything is illusion" is based on a prior existential decision that either one is powerless to move about in the world of experience, or to make a moral decision that appearance is inferior to some imagined---and of course, unknowable, world of "perfection." Since there is no way to determine whether the world is illusion, it seems that it must be a matter of belief, or faith, or aesthetics.

[DapperDrake]

Logical argument:
How can this "therefore" be proved? For then it must be demonstrated that each and every sense perception is false; not just that we may be in error from time to time, but always. And it must be shown that there is some standard against which we can make a decision about each and every perception that it is false. But this can only be done, if it is to be done, by comparing sense impressions to something ELSE that is not dependent on sense impressions, which by definition is not possible.

No, you do not need to demonstrate that each and every sense perception is false. Its not a question of false or true but rather a question on the nature of our truth.
Just because something is illusionary does not mean that it is false, it just means that you have an extrapolated/interpolated picture. it is the case however that what you perceive is not what is real, for arguments sake, a colour blind person may not see the number in the dots and a person with normal vision might see the number - who is seeing reality and who is seeing illusion? the answer is both are seeing illusion but both are seeing a different illusion because their sense apparatus is different. i.e. neither of them are in fact perceiving reality but rather just the illusion created for them by their senses.
In short there is the problem of appearance and reality as described in the first chapter of Bertrand Russell's Problems of Philosophy
and in fact chapters 1 through 4.


Practical argument:
That everything we know through sense impressions is false is refuted countless times each day by countless people. Our world and our activities are predicated on the truth of, and reliance upon, the veracity of our experience. And if we err, we understand the procedures for clarifying our misconceptions, and these procedures always refer to the world of experience (we "take a closer look" for example).

So the illusion is self consistent... does not prove that it isn't illusion. In fact its an almost irrelevant point so far as I can make out. To take a trivial example, The Matrix movie demonstrates just one sense in which our would could be an illusion and yet still meet the criteria you mention.