These internet comments that assume "brains build pictures of reality" are teaching me that Kant, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein don't get nearly enough attention in nerd culture.
You got my attention. I think I’m one of the lightly outraged, “Ahkshually…” folks, but I’d prefer to have a discussion than an internet argument.
Here’s where I would start:
with these words. We’re trying to pin down reality with the shared conceptual tools of words. The very fact that we’re somehow having some meaningful exchange here indicates a massive shared repository of concept(s) - shared but not identical. Overlapping enough, though, for us to somehow engage in what feels like meaningful dialogue about “world,” “mind,” and “reality.”
Attempts to know and describe world and our experiences of it using word and concept seems to me (and some buddhists) to infinitely regress into that nothingness or emptiness which you refer to with, “there is no world to know.” Religions and traditions of the mind ironically have a word for this emptiness beyond all word and concept: *sunyata.*
And if this all seems quite useless and pointless, you would be right.
To have a brain is to feel and act and move and build and hurt and care and try - with each other, for each other - cooperating according to shared concept, agreement, and meaning - in relationship and community across generations. And indeed, where did it start? Which came first? and why do we want to know?
I am reminded of Karl Friston's 'Free Energy Principle,' which actually aligns with Kant's ideas by and large. The FEP echo's Kant's thoughts that the mind contains innate conceptual frameworks and the mind actively synthesizes these concepts through its senses to better integrate into the world.
We are not passive observers of reality, but already are part and parcel with reality.
You got my attention. I think I’m one of the lightly outraged, “Ahkshually…” folks, but I’d prefer to have a discussion than an internet argument.
Here’s where I would start:
with these words. We’re trying to pin down reality with the shared conceptual tools of words. The very fact that we’re somehow having some meaningful exchange here indicates a massive shared repository of concept(s) - shared but not identical. Overlapping enough, though, for us to somehow engage in what feels like meaningful dialogue about “world,” “mind,” and “reality.”
Attempts to know and describe world and our experiences of it using word and concept seems to me (and some buddhists) to infinitely regress into that nothingness or emptiness which you refer to with, “there is no world to know.” Religions and traditions of the mind ironically have a word for this emptiness beyond all word and concept: *sunyata.*
And if this all seems quite useless and pointless, you would be right.
To have a brain is to feel and act and move and build and hurt and care and try - with each other, for each other - cooperating according to shared concept, agreement, and meaning - in relationship and community across generations. And indeed, where did it start? Which came first? and why do we want to know?
follow the thread of Wittgenstein to cybernetics and the role of the observer can be formalized (check out heinz con foerster )
I am reminded of Karl Friston's 'Free Energy Principle,' which actually aligns with Kant's ideas by and large. The FEP echo's Kant's thoughts that the mind contains innate conceptual frameworks and the mind actively synthesizes these concepts through its senses to better integrate into the world.
We are not passive observers of reality, but already are part and parcel with reality.
Great read!