What's the weather like where you are now? How would you check it - glance out the window, open it to get a feel, step outside, consult your preferred weather app? From this follows a more intriguing question - which would you trust more, your lived experience or a measurement? I'm from a generation that …
Tag: reality
What is More Real – Experience or Measurement?
What's the temperature outside right now? How would you check it - look out the window, perhaps open it to get a feel, or look into your prefered weather app? I'm from a generation that still remembers life without mobile phones and the internet, but that got quickly used to all the comforts these technologies …
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Spreading the Word: Our Access To Reality
One of the oldest debates in the history of human quest for knowledge is whether we can access the objective reality at all. Some think there is no objective reality at all and that "it's all in our minds", others think there is nothing else besides it and that our knowledge directly represents that reality. …
Reality as Being and Becoming
What do ancient Greek philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides, the early 20th-century main protagonist of the novel Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, and Latvian writer and poet of the turn of the 20th century known by his pseudonym Rainis have in common? Across centuries and geographies, they all share an idea: a belief that being and becoming are …
Anaxagoras on Change: Everything Contains Everything
One of the last pre-Socratic philosophers of Ancient Greece, Anaxagoras hailed from the Ionian city of Clazomenae but is notable for being the first one to bring philosophy to Athens. There he taught and flourished for about 30 years until the mid-5th century BCE when he went back to Ionia due to charges brought against …
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Heraclitus on Wisdom
Heraclitus is a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher still known more than 2,500 years after his days for such utterances as "All things change" and "You cannot step in the same river twice" (the latter is the most famous translation but perhaps not the most precise one). He held the view that reality is One, all is …
Spreading the Word: Reality Needs Fiction
Today, I share with you a very interesting article. It tells about maintaining one's humanity in extreme circumstances. Perhaps surprisingly, fiction helps us deal with reality. Imagination. Hope. The 'as-if' philosophy. Enjoy the read! Link to the article: https://psyche.co/ideas/how-emil-utitz-salvaged-his-humanity-in-a-non-human-world Keeping up the "Spreading the Word" tradition, every Thursday I hope to share with you an …
The Meaning of Objectivity, Reality, Truth – Part II (Final)
In the first part of this article (published last week), I stopped at the appearance on the stage of Plato and his ideas of what is real, as expressed in his famous cave allegory. Now, I jump right in and pick up from exploring Plato`s thoughts on the topic of reality. Afterwards, I offer some …
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The Meaning of Objectivity, Reality, Truth – Part I
Real life. Objective reality. True fact. We all confront these and similar short phrases in our daily lives. They are powerful because they are meaningful to us. Yet, do we really, objectively, truly know the meaning of these words? Do we understand that it is us who endow them with meaning? If we are ready to contemplate …
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Spreading the Word: Objectivity and Reality
In this week's "Spreading the Word", I share with you a video where two philosophers - Daniel Kaufman and Massimo Pigliucci - discuss the topics of what is real and what is objective, what are our intuitions about these concepts, and what might the implications be. I found this talk immensely interesting and also easy …
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