Nothing Is Real

their I hope this answers all the questions anybody ever had about philosophy.

ever been in a philosophy class? Well I hope you haven't, because its a load of shit. Philosophy is something learned from observing and simplifying our world by using relativity until you fucking realize.

I've been in a philosophy class, and you know what I realized? The only people who need it are too caught up in their petty lives as slaves, and don't have the time to open their mind, or fucked up when they had the chance. Ancient philosophy even skips the motion of science, and is just a rule book with out proof.

If nothing is real, and nothing is right or wrong, than you have understood philosophy.

Well, yes, I have been in a few Philosophy classes in my time - I'm in the last year of completing my English/philosophy major at uni. And a lot of the time philosophy can seem pointless, especially analytic philosophy which constantly picks apart arguments and invents new positions and new distinctions until you wonder what the original point was.

But to say that philosophy simply holds that 'nothing is real' or is based upon mere statements without attempting to find any proof is to miss the whole point of philosophy in the first place.

What philosophy does is act as a science of ideas. Philosophy takes our everyday notions of certain concepts and then analyses them to find out what we mean when we use these concepts. For example, what do we really mean when we use the concept of freedom? Is it simply that we 'could have done otherwise' or is it that we can 'do whatever we want.' Philosophy then seeks to determine what the implications of our concepts are - if we think that freedom is that we 'could have done otherwise,' how does this fit in with a deterministic universe?

I guess the most frustrating part of philosophy is the fact that definite answers are never found - the very job of philosophers is to take concepts and ideas that we think are solid, and find paradoxes, inconsistencies and problematic implications inherent in them. In this way, it seeks to provide us with a systematic view of the world, whereby our total knowledge contains no logical inconsistencies. Inconsistencies are undesirable - obviously if I thought that all mammals are warm blooded, yet I thought that humans were cold-blooded, there would be a pretty big inconsistency that I would need to deal with.

The hardest part of philosophy is that, to understand many of these arguments you have to study a LOT of philosophy. Because philosophers have been working pretty hard for a long time, there are hundreds of different positions on arguments, each with implications on other positions. For example, if I am a reductive physicalist, then it is hard to see how I can be a dualist. If I am a reductive physicalist, my position on topics such as conscious experience are going to take a certain form. The aim, when doing philosophy, is to work out which positions you agree with, and try to fit them in with the rest of your beliefs. The best philosophy is done by challenging seemingly solid concepts, and forcing a new position to be taken; The Gettier Problem, for example, was a three page article - very short by philosophical standards - that completely blew apart the idea that all knowledge has to be is a justified, true belief.

In short, philosophy is done by offering answers to the problems with our ideas of the world. It then takes those answers and makes them problematic.

It may seem pointless, but in the end it enriches our understanding of who we are and our role in the world around us.

no, listen here, you understand something, but you are sort of contradicting your self. I do take things apart, but when you do the answer is always karma. Nothing is broken, everything is broken? You think that is a contradiction maybe, and it is, but its something both sides are tugging at endlessly, and there is never a winner or a loser. thats what karma means. To fully understand anyone's ideas ideas about life, etc, you have to live it, believe it, see it.

Philosophy class can't teach you that part, and if you don't understand that part then you don't belong in philosophy, and if you understand that part, you don't need philosophy class. Everything is as complex as it is simple. Atoms electrons, thats all everything is. So what if person A has taken chemistry, they don't teach you the destroying beauty of the abstractness that you find in these areas.

if you agree with one philosophy and not the other, then the comprehension is limited, anything is possible, ask the guy in the mental hospital. opening your eyes is what is important, and philosophy cannot teach you that.

It helps teach you the basic skills by giving you a structured environment for learning and discussion, and you are introduced to new ideas and ways of thinking during the course. True, it doesn't teach you the difficult part of philosophy, the opening of your mind and the ability to see the limits of your own reality and the subsequent expansion of your perception, among other things. It doesn't teach you how to really see an argument or position, to see truth and the beauty of logic and understanding. It simply teaches the words and formulas and ideas, but those are important in themselves, even if they will still need to be "filled in" by personal understanding. Perhaps one is better off forcing himself to learn them through focused meditation, but not everyone has the interest to do that.

So, I think it serves as a good introduction for those that have never really given much thought to reflection and logic. And if part of the course is to force the students to truly start to think and reason beyond dry calculation of concepts, then all the much better. Everyone can swim, but most don't learn on their own. Showing how enjoyable and enriching the process of philosophy can be creates the impetus for further self development, and explaining and focusing on the basics of logic and thought gives the student the honed tools they will need for proper progression. And, again, simply having that forum and that structure can be a lot in itself.



I'll add a bit: I've found my life to be a sort of reverse-engineering of my schooling: taking the concepts that have been given to me and then working back from that to find the full implications and the realization of their truths. I don't think that makes my schooling worthless, as I do have those concepts and ideas to work with. I would wish they would teach us the importance and beauty of knowledge for its own sake, and the joy of perception and understanding, but that's something that by its nature can't be easily taught with words, and there are few that experience it fully themselves to the extent that they could properly instill the spirit of learning in others.

I think philosophy has some use. In my case it helped me to question things about life that led to me having more awareness of myself and the world around me. For that purpose i think philosophy can be a potent and useful source of learning. However, i would contribute that more to the process of philosophising, rather than using philosophy as an academic pursuit.

And everybody philosophises, you were philosophising by creating this thread, dylanshmai. At the end of the day it doesn't really help in gaining certainties about life, but it does help people explore possibilities of life and as a result change their lives. Philosophy is a tool, not a religion or a science. It's not a way of life, it's a way through life.


I know i'm a much better place in life for having familiarised myself with this idea of mental exploration. I do agree that life is about experiencing and living and not sitting around intellectualising on subjects for the sake of it, or wading through books to try and figure your life out, that's a waste of time. I just think philosophy naturally goes hand in hand with real experience.

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Originally Posted by Ardent Lost

I think philosophy has some use. In my case it helped me to question things about life that led to me having more awareness of myself and the world around me. For that purpose i think philosophy can be a potent and useful source of learning. However, i would contribute that more to the process of philosophising, rather than using philosophy as an academic pursuit.

And everybody philosophises, you were philosophising by creating this thread, dylanshmai. At the end of the day it doesn't really help in gaining certainties about life, but it does help people explore possibilities of life and as a result change their lives. Philosophy is a tool, not a religion or a science. It's not a way of life, it's a way through life.


I know i'm a much better place in life for having familiarised myself with this idea of mental exploration. I do agree that life is about experiencing and living and not sitting around intellectualising on subjects for the sake of it, or wading through books to try and figure your life out, that's a waste of time. I just think philosophy naturally goes hand in hand with real experience.

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yeah. that's what I was trying to express.

Yet, here you feel the need to state it. Perhaps some form of expression driven by false meaning, and contradictory half-hearted belief.

Quite like this.

You're also overlooking that one doesn't go into engineering from the desire to own a bridge. While you may enter an intro philosophy class with the goal of finding a default position like "nothing is real," those who undertake the discipline do so not only to better understand knowledge for themselves, but also to contribute to human understanding in ways that then influence fields like government, business and education. Philosophy as an occupation is not self indulgent navel gazing; it's part of the work of civilization.

There is reality... I am most certainly real, the most absolutely objectively real thing there is, in fact. I don't see how I could exist if there is no reality. There are delusions perhaps but there is still a reality behind the delusions which causes them. Maybe I'm just missing the point.

okay, well then you haven't had a lucid dream yet.

how is my belief system any less than anyone elses? you only have assumptions about me, and its based around my opinion of academics in our world today, which I think is shit. I am only telling you guys where I come from: a self propelled scientist, philosopher, mathematician, etc, and we all are, even if its in school that you find it. But I am doing it in conditions that apply to life and things that are relative, while people in school are doing math with chemistry, when humans only need to know that chemistry is numbers, its that simple, unless your curing cancer. Who is to say you are any smarter than a homeless man, and who's to say someone with a masters in bull shit is any smarter than you? no one.

you speak of civilization, and doing your part in it. Your part should be to starve the economy as much as possible and to take orders only from yourself and maybe help yourself and other if you are satisfied with yourself. Kids are being taught to live for money, not for love or any other reason which is usually banned in a school, and yet their is so much corruption, injustice, and kids with brain that only hold pop-culture info, and scars from their parents and teachers, but only scars, because when they figure out the direction was forced and not chosen, they will ask themselves: what else is there to live for? and they will either be to tired from "civilization" to bother following that road, and who knows, maybe commit suicide (its always the right season for that in the US of fucking A) or they will go down that road and risk being punished by our society, by being pushed into the sewers and streets.

Homeless people are more human than most of the people I see walking around talking on cell-phones, laughing about shit TV shows.

I mean, even society itself does not accept homeless people, because they don't have a job??!! that pays shit and they don't want to be slaves like the rest of us! haha, here is what I think of our civilization and our cultural impact (the brainwashed culture): FUCK IT, FUCK IT TO HELL.

If nothing is real, whats the point of the word "real"? You just changed the definition of the word "real" in your head, and thats why you think nothing is real. In the end we both agree, we just have different definitions of "real". I call all hallucinations real. There isn't a single hallucination or delusion that is not based on reality. Therefore, everything is real.

If hallucinations weren't completely based on reality, what would they be based on? Other hallucinations? And what are those other hallucinations based on? Reality. And if they are not, they will be based on other hallucinations which in their turn, will be based on reality.. etc.. you will always end up at the root, reality. Everything is based on reality. Everything is real. All experiences are reality.

Well Dylanshmai, I don't really know how to respond to that because i don't think it's likely that anything I say will change your mind.

You talk as if all academics are organised into one big group that controls society and education, when in actual fact I think you'll be hard-pressed to find a group of people who disagree with each other more. The whole job of academia is to argue - to further knowledge by challenging ideas to see which ones work and which don't.

I think you're confusing your own dislike of capitalism with a dislike for society in general. That in itself isn't a bad thing - most people go through that stage I guess. If you have a dislike of materialism, then perhaps you should be supporting the quest for knowledge and education, because it is the furthest thing from materialism that I know of.

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Originally Posted by dylanshmai

But I am doing it in conditions that apply to life and things that are relative, while people in school are doing math with chemistry, when humans only need to know that chemistry is numbers, its that simple, unless your curing cancer.

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Okay, so I'll assume you're talking about non-chemists taking chemistry, let me know if I'm wrong. The numbers are everything, though, because they represent the logical order of things. Perhaps chemistry is an abstract sort of thing at our level of perception, since we don't really ever see actual chemical reactions, just the aggregate result, but still knowing the why of chemical reactions requires knowing the properties of the chemicals involved. It's not "necessary" information, but yet it's important and for many interesting information that expands their understanding of the natural world.

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Who is to say you are any smarter than a homeless man, and who's to say someone with a masters in bull shit is any smarter than you? no one.

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Surely not every masters degree is an MBS.

Who says that having a masters makes you smarter? Most of the people I've met with masters degrees don't think they're smarter than everyone for it. I suppose if some do, then that's not a very defensible position. No, the paper alone doesn't confer intelligence, although it does represent specialized knowledge and skills of a certain degree in most cases.

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you speak of civilization, and doing your part in it. Your part should be to starve the economy as much as possible and to take orders only from yourself and maybe help yourself and other if you are satisfied with yourself.

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I can appreciate reacting against the current commercial and materialistic society, but starving the economy helps no one. I suppose taking orders from yourself alone isn't a bad thing. I don't get how that fits in exactly.

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Kids are being taught to live for money, not for love or any other reason which is usually banned in a school, and yet their is so much corruption, injustice, and kids with brain that only hold pop-culture info, and scars from their parents and teachers, but only scars, because when they figure out the direction was forced and not chosen, they will ask themselves: what else is there to live for? and they will either be to tired from "civilization" to bother following that road, and who knows, maybe commit suicide (its always the right season for that in the US of fucking A) or they will go down that road and risk being punished by our society, by being pushed into the sewers and streets.

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But some money is necessary to subsist. I agree that there's too much importance on money today, but it's not money that's the problem in my eyes. It simply represents material wealth, and as material beings in the one sense we do need some material wealth to survive. I don't romanticize the homeless and think they're superior for not living for money. I think it's an interesting life, and not necessarily worth scorn of whatever sort, but when people decide to stop paying their own way in life, I don't think that's acceptable, because they're then shifting the burden onto others. If they're capable of providing for themselves, they should at least feel the need to do so, even if their ability to do so is limited.

I don't think therefore that questioning the importance of money should necessarily lead to being homeless and financially unproductive. One can hold money and wealth as less than sacred, but still appreciate its fundamental importance as a part of the same system of limited resources and necessity as one's own body.

Back to the homeless issue, I don't think it's a matter of intelligence, and I'm not sure where this position came from, but I guess you've had a run in with some sort of intellectual elitism. On that tangent, I'd say not everyone feels that way, and sometimes you just have to accept some people hold some rather repulsive views. But on the homeless, many are that way not necessarily because they're enlightened people who have tossed aside money, but because they've fallen to addictions or mental disorders. Again, I don't want to romanticize them. Their status is still very unfortunate and a black mark on our society, but at the same time many are homeless for reasons other than not being materialists.

Well if you ask the common physicists of today they will say they don’t really have an absolute picture of the way the world really is. Instead there are ideas of what is called quantum reality. Which consists of the following.

• There is no deep reality.
• Reality is created by observation.
• Reality is an undivided wholeness.
• The world obeys a non-human kind of reasoning.
• The world is two-fold consisting of potentials and actualities.

Quantum theory is real to me but it doesn’t correspond to “common sense” the principle features of quantum theory contradict “cause and effect” Cause and effect events are definitely real because they produce ‘real’ actions. I guess in short, I know that I am real but I think we are a ‘lower-resolution’ per-se’ of real.

yeah