Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

akeefe's picture

"It's on the Internet, It must be Real."

Now, for a summary of Thursday's verbal conversation. I was again struck by out need to categorize. As we have already discussed, categorization is something that we cannot avoid, but must accept as part of our mental process. We broke things down into safe versus dangerous, mine versus yours, the individual unconscious versus the collective unconscious, but what we were really debating was reality versus fabrication. It was quickly realized that these words had taken one a new life and new definitions. Though it was never explicitly stated, our language did seem to lean towards an abstract definition of reality. We wanted it to be some omniscient understanding of the universe apart from the stories we create. We might even say that to a religious person, “reality” is what God sees. Dennet would say that such a definition cannot stand up to current scientific knowledge. I wonder how he would alter the definition, and what purposes these definitions we have created might serve?

Reply

To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
5 + 6 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.