@Crythania

I appreciate the interest, feedback, and compliments. You have inspired me to post more. Feel free to skip it if you so desire.

I don’t know about being an “intellectual betterâ€

I'm glad I finally decided to open my mouth and ask about it. Aside from gaining a better understanding of your ideology, inspiring others is one of the reasons why I am here.



I believe that there is something very intellectual going on here. Something that I don't fully comprehend. It frustrates me because I am usually able to grasp esoteric philosophies that elude others. For once, I am the one who is getting lost in the narrative and asking "What the heck is going on here?" As previously noted, it's amusing as well as frustrating. Also humbling. I am often simultaneously impressed by your use of language and perplexed by it.



You've lost me again. "...traditional meaning is extended or deconstructed to its essential core." What does that mean? You have a way of saying things like that, and I believe it means something, but it eludes me. I think I might get it. Maybe. To "extend" the meaning beyond its traditional meaning is to invent a new meaning for it. To "deconstruct" it is to... I have no idea what that means.



"spiritual harmonization with cultural or biological sources." What does that mean?



Now I'm really lost. I have no idea what modal music and modal logic are.



Now this I can follow. It's the one part that I am getting. It fits in with an Agnostic or perhaps Nihilist ideology that any belief system is intrinsically baseless and therefore one can never know for sure if it's true or false. But your ideology goes the other way. Instead of dismissing it all as baseless, you seem to accept everything as true or false depending on how you feel at any given time. As I noted earlier, "wherever the wind takes you."



My definition of Nihilism is "Life is intrinsically pointless. All traditional belief systems are baseless. Therefore, personal satisfaction is the point of living, such as it is. But there is no 'Great Answer' as most religions provide. There's no rhyme or reason to be found." That may be an incorrect definition. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

But you do have a point. "Dancing to music" maintained as "a" point may indeed fly in the face of a Nihilistic belief that there's "no" point. If there is "no point" in the literal sense, then there's no reason to even get out of bed and have breakfast. But there is a reason to do that: because you woke up and your tummy is rumbling. If we focus on a literal interpretation as you've set forth, the Nihilist truly believes that there's no reason to even get out of bed in the morning. I was thinking in terms of "nothing really matters, there's no point, so have as much fun as you can, secure in the knowledge that you're not missing out on any greater meaning in life."

@Crythania
-I’m happy to read that you are here to inspire others.
-You said that you are simultaneously impressed by and perplexed by my use of language. To me that is an instance of a multi-modal perspective. You recognize that you have simultaneous reactions or responses to your input (what you read). Rather than say that one is ‘wrong’ you admit that they both presently EXIST. That is what is important.

Now when I refer to multi-modal it need not necessarily be simultaneous. You could first feel impressed and then stop feeling impressed and start feeling perplexed. So would one of those feelings be ‘wrong’. Well, no not necessarily, but the nature of their existence would be different because one would no longer be actual (i.e. active in reality) while the other is. I have more to say about this but I don’t have the time right now. Sorry.

So if the domain of modal designation (i.e. the context of interest by which we are DECIDEING to be critically referring to) is your entire lifetime (rather than the present moment) it seems fair to designate this sequential perspective (impressed followed by perplexed) also as multi-modal, but if we are simply talking about the present moment and you have only a single feeling (perplexed as impressed is now presently in the past) then it does not seem to be multi-modal.

That having been said, while some do struggle (for some reason) with trying to figure out if they are impressed OR perplexed rather than admit that they are BOTH, many don’t have a problem recognizing and admitting that they are both of something so long as what they are both of is not contrary, contradictory, or mutually exclusive of each other.

For example, someone might say that they feel like they believe there is a god but part of the does not believe in god. This is the type of example where most people say one of those feeling isn’t ‘right’ and they try to resolve which one. I treat it as that both of those feelings (or beliefs, seemings, etc.) actually exist, and while there may be confusion there may also not be confusion but rather the recognition of the maintainence of multiple simultaneous contrary perspectives. If this is perfectly acceptable for two different brains (i.e., one person believes in god and another person does not), I don’t see any reason why this is unacceptable for a single brain (or single mind that functions modally).

-“…traditional meaning is extended or deconstructed to its essential core" is exemplified by the word “musicâ€

Bo,

Wow! There's a lot to digest there! Thanks for taking the time to write all of that.

And I have to say Yay, now we're getting somewhere. The analogy of being simultaneously impressed and perplexed is working for me. I am now "getting it". Indeed, neither is inherently "wrong", which makes it easy to accept both at the same time. As you noted, it's easy to accept two things as being true simultaneously as long as they are not contradictory or mutually exclusive. It's the acceptance of contradictory things that's been tripping me up. Nevertheless, I am now understanding how a multi-modal mind works.

As a Christian and programmer at heart, I am accustomed to dealing in absolutes. "Yes, there is a God, absolutely." "x is true. y is false." It's either one or zero, on or off. "Shared Variable 01 = 5" It doesn't equal anything else. Especially for a Christian, absolutes rule the day. It is not only possibly true, it's necessarily true, and there's no imagination involved. However...

I believe that God is real and that he loves me. I don't have any emperical evidence to support that belief. Only circumstantial evidence. I feel the love of God at work in my life through answered prayers, things that happen in my life, and other circumstantial things. At times I am given to doubt my faith. By defintion, "faith" must be challenged by "doubt". Otherwise, such "faith" would be "known fact". So in a way, it could be said that a Christian operates multi-modally as well, entertaining both faith and doubt at the same time (for one cannot exist without the other).

If there is "no doubt", then we are entering the realm of scientific fact. Gravity, for example, has always worked the way it does, and it will always work that way. In layman's terms, "it pulls things down". I have no reason to believe that it will ever pull things up.

I really think you're on to something here that could be helpful to an individual's understanding of reality. And indeed, things that seem contradictory may not even be contradictory at all, but rather symbiotic in nature, coexisting in harmony with each other. Faith and doubt as an example. This is a breakthrough in metaphysical thought, and it challenges us to reconsider our accepted definitions of concepts we take for granted. I have a feeling that you would challenge the assertion that "doubt" is a "bad thing".

I'm getting the impression that you are very much in touch with the transient nature of the mind. Like everything else in physical reality, it is in constant motion. What was true one moment ago is no longer true, replaced with a new thought.

I am now understanding the extension of traditional meanings. Thanks for clarifying that.

I embrace traditional logic and reason, as well as the existence of absolutes (regardless of whether or not I believe in them or even know that they exist). So, much of this is foreign to me. "Is is true that there is a god?" is the only question. It's either true or it's not.

Much of your musings here seem to deal with imagined reality as opposed to emperical reality. And that fits in seamlessly with the topic of this of thread ("Is life worth living without fiction(al) imagined reality?").

I have more to say about all of this, and I'm still taking it all in, but these are my thoughts for the moment.

@Crythania

I appreciate your response.

I have to say it is one of the best responses that I’ve ever received to one of my philosophical posts either here or at another site that I go to because the way that you were kind of ‘getting it’ out loud was phrased by you in ways that further made me ‘get it’ even more.

Examples are “Christian operates multi-modally as well, entertaing both faith and doubtâ€

It could be worth living...

However, without fiction, I don't believe people could create and add to the world. I believe fiction is what inspires people to create more fiction, especially with media.

I don't think I would want to live in a world without fiction. Without that key component, places like this forum would not exist- as RPG Maker is fiction.

I'd go as far as saying life can't be lived without fiction.

The human brain is so prepared to find answers that, when it doesn't find them, it invents them. Since the only real point of view humans have is the human one, how do we know that the whole human perception of the world isn't, in itself, not real? A fiction? Question addressed in The Matrix: how do you know what you're seeing is 'real'? And what is 'real'?

But that's going too far into the subjective aspects of the answer. My real answer is I don't think it's possible for us to live without fiction, because then, even without realizing, we'd end up inventing fiction again. One way or another.

@The Gnasher

Do you think other animals create fiction by compulsion, or do you think that this necessity to create fiction (this lack of functional choice) is exclusive to Homo Sapiens?

Can't really say, because as I stated in the previous post, the only point of view we can actually consider is the human one.

But if I had to take a guess, I'd say it's exclusive to us.

Bo,

I had a post all typed up in response to your latest response to me, but I wanted to spend some more time digesting all of these new concepts and see if I had anything more to add. My thoughts haven't been all that coherent lately. That's why I didn't reply right away. Then the conversation took off in a new direction. Oh well. For what it's worth, here's what I was gonna say...

~*~*~

Whoa! That was unexpected. Glad I was inspirational.

The real breakthrough I'm seeing here is that faith and doubt are not necessarily contradictory. From where I'm standing, it's looking like they do indeed have a symbiotic relationship. Doubt is not necessarily a "bad thing". It can give rise to renewed faith or strengthened faith. Even if doubt is a bad thing, it can stand as an example of good coming out of a bad thing (strengthened faith arising from doubt). And that's actually an example of how God works. He takes bad things that happen in our lives and turns it around, causing good things to result from it.

The challenge here is to re-examine things that we consider to be contradictory in nature. Maybe they aren't contradictory at all.

I am seeing at least one way that our beliefs stand in opposition to each other. I have "faith" in the presence of absolutes, while you seem to take nothing for granted. I knew you'd challenge the assertion that sceintific fact is "known fact" (just thought I'd give you the opportunity to say it in your own words). You actually stand in fierce opposition to an atheist I used to debate with. He believes in logic and reason and relies on what he can see, hear, touch, etc. He relies solely on emperical observation.

While I have "faith" in scientific absolutes, I also believe that it all works the way it does because God created it. Nevertheless, you are correct. God could change the nature of gravity if he wanted to.

"That's easy. Just change the gravitational constant of the universe." ~ Q, from Star Trek: The Next Generation

@Crythania

I don't think that faith and doubt are necessarily contradictory, but just because they are symbiotic doesn't mean they aren't contradictory. Faith would be one system, doubt another system, and many human minds would function based on either a mode of faith, a mode of doubt, or potentially unlimted modal combinations of both systems depending on their relative presence, intensity, applicability, etc. as a function of time, memory and imagination.

So theoretically faith and doubt may be contradictory but actually they may not function that way because the (religious) theory that is based on faith and doubt is only a mental designation output as a functional behavior regulated by psychological motivations.

Yes I believe your athiest friend relied heavily on faith in logical, rational, and sensory consistencies as well as faith that said consistencies must necessarily be consistent outside of his mind.

The entire content of what I have just posted seems to be a "common sense' rational argument modified with a touch of absurd imagination, which to me need not necessarily be maintained. The question I suggest is on what basis 'should' my comments be evaluated. This is where modality 'seems' to come into play. This analysis of modal applicabilities to me is the essence of fiction.

(insert ritornello)