Ed Maartenn100 general theories of physics and philosophy.

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It all depends on what we call 'objectivity'.
Reality is 'intersubjective': it means: more then one person can discover it, independently from the other person. That's a criterium for 'objectivity'.
When you use that criterium, you can state that:

When two or more conscious beings have had exactly the same dreamcontent, the objects in this dreams have a status of 'being real'. The dimensions are different, but the object must be real.
 
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When millions of people 'dream' or 'hallucinate' about the same tunnel and the same light with exacty the same characteristics, independently from each other, then these objects have a status of 'objectivity'.
That's philosophical ontological (about 'to be') and epistemological (what can we know about reality) question.
 
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But they have not discovered the same 'object', they have both seen a representation of the same concept. This means the concept exists, but does not neccessarily mean that the thing the concept refers to exists.
We can both read Alice in Wonderland, but that does not mean talking rabbits exist outside of our imagination.

ETA: Maarten posted while I was typing. It is now obvious that this is yet another attempt to bring up NDE's. You have already started a thread about that, haven't you?
 
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When I dream/hallucinate about complex object x with characteristics y, w, z and someone else had exactly the same dream/hallucination about complex object x with characteristics y, w and z, then we are talking about an observation and not about a dream or hallucination.
 
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It's worse than that: these dreams are only reports of dreams which puts them into soggy mammal memory anecdote territory. Objective like a mirage.
 
Porpoise of Life said:
ETA: Maarten posted while I was typing. It is now obvious that this is yet another attempt to bring up NDE's. You have already started a thread about that, haven't you?
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Of course, it's part of my argumentation for NDE's. That's true. But there is a deeper ontological question to it, wich I want to point out in a philosophical topic.
 
There's no way to know whether your <x> and my <x> in a dream we report after the fact are the same <x> in any useful sense.

Tough.
 
We are not talking about 'is there a way to know wether the objects are the same'. We are assuming that the objects are the same. In that case: it's a discovery and not a dream, in my opinion.
 
A friend and me both dream of a green firebreathing dragon. Dragons, according to you, are now real.
They can't be seen anywhere, they don't eat livestock, don't burn anything, they are never encountered in the real world. But two people dreamed about it, so now it exists.

See that this is poor reasoning?
 
Maartenn100 said:
When I sleep and 'see' in a dream a whole new object with specific features and qualities, wich cannot be found in nature, and 10 other people on the other side of the world have exactly the same dream about exactly this same 'non-existing' object with specific features, is it a dream or is it an observation?
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When did this happen?
 
Maartenn100 said:
When I sleep and 'see' in a dream a whole new object with specific features and qualities, wich cannot be found in nature, and 10 other people on the other side of the world have exactly the same dream about exactly this same 'non-existing' object with specific features, is it a dream or is it an observation?

That's the philosophical question I ask you here. It's an ontological question about the concepts of a 'fantasy or brain construction' versus 'an objective observation'.
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Dream. There are 7 billion people in the world: the likelihood that 10 might dream of similar objects is very high just by chance.

Even more, there are certain cultural memes that are not real, yet help channel a larger-than-chance number of dreamers to see a common object, say a dragon.

I also very much doubt whether any two dreamers have ever seen exactly the same object even with these cultural memes. You and I may each dream about a dragon. You and I may even agree that it has scaly skin and two wings (a third person might say 4 wings). But if we keep independently asking questions of us, you well might say it is black and I might say my dragon is green. Or even if we both agree that it was green, we might well disagree on eye color, or size, or the color of its flaming breath.

The likelihood that we agree on all aspects of a dreamed object when eye-witness accounts of the same physical event often differ, appears to me to be incredibly unlikely. Anyone who says such a thing I immediately disbelieve.
 
Maartenn100 said:
When I sleep and 'see' in a dream a whole new object with specific features and qualities, wich cannot be found in nature, and 10 other people on the other side of the world have exactly the same dream about exactly this same 'non-existing' object with specific features, is it a dream or is it an observation?

That's the philosophical question I ask you here. It's an ontological question about the concepts of a 'fantasy or brain construction' versus 'an objective observation'.
Click to expand...

Woo
 
Maartenn100 said:
When I sleep and 'see' in a dream a whole new object with specific features and qualities, wich cannot be found in nature, and 10 other people on the other side of the world have exactly the same dream about exactly this same 'non-existing' object with specific features, is it a dream or is it an observation?

That's the philosophical question I ask you here. It's an ontological question about the concepts of a 'fantasy or brain construction' versus 'an objective observation'.
Click to expand...

It is a dream.

It is quite impossible that eleven different people scattered about the world will have exactly the same dream.
 
Maartenn100 said:
We are not talking about 'is there a way to know wether the objects are the same'. We are assuming that the objects are the same. In that case: it's a discovery and not a dream, in my opinion.
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This assumes the answer to your question. Why not ask "if an object exists, then does it exist?"
 
Maartenn100 said:
When I sleep and 'see' in a dream a whole new object with specific features and qualities, wich cannot be found in nature, and 10 other people on the other side of the world have exactly the same dream about exactly this same 'non-existing' object with specific features, is it a dream or is it an observation?
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When you dream you also just happen to experience a number of things related to your recent experiences. Your brain is in a non-lucid state, and you can imagine stuff. Seriously, what do you think is going on?

Stop trying to look for things to believe in.
 
We are talking about an object (radiant light) with characteristics wich are not been found in popular culture or elsewhere. Give me evidence of a film or some music about this kind of light.
 
It is NECESSARY that multiple independent observers be able to identify the same thing for it to be objective.

That is not, however, sufficient. Multiple people can be crazy, for example. Or (and this is a non-trivial issue) the observers may not be as independent as you think.

As for dreams, why assume they have anything useful to say at all? If we can't assume that, we can't assume that multiple people dreaming about one thing has any meaning.
 
Maartenn100 said:
We are talking about an object (radiant light) with characteristics wich are not been found in popular culture or elsewhere. Give me evidence of a film or some music about this kind of light.
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It's not up to us to prove your observers are independent. It's up to YOU to prove they ARE. A perfectly viable counter-argument is "You have not provided sufficient evidence to support such a conclusion." As you have provided NO evidence, that statement can be left as-is, though more typically an explanation of what evidence we should expect to see is required.
 
We are talking about a non-existing object in Nature nor in popular culture, films or whatever.

We are talking about a hallucination of a new very complex object with exactly the same holon of characteristics.
The chances are 1/10000000000000000 that two people can have the same dream about exactly this complex new object with certain systemc or organic characteristics.
 
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Maartenn100 said:
We are talking about a non-existing object in Nature nor in popular culture, films or whatever.
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Is that an exhaustive list of potential ways to communicate this concept?

No.

My point, therefore, still stands. You need to PROVE this, not assert it. And even if you could, it really wouldn't support your conclusion as dreams don't inform us about reality.

By the way, that's taking you at your word. In reality, I seriously doubt anyone had a dream that is completely absent from such media. As has already been pointed out, it's trivial to find parallels in media. Your number is meaningless, as you just made it up out of nothing.
 
Maartenn100 said:
When I sleep and 'see' in a dream a whole new object with specific features and qualities, wich cannot be found in nature, and 10 other people on the other side of the world have exactly the same dream about exactly this same 'non-existing' object with specific features, is it a dream or is it an observation?

That's the philosophical question I ask you here. It's an ontological question about the concepts of a 'fantasy or brain construction' versus 'an objective observation'.
Click to expand...


If you do a Google search for "father ted dreams reality" you'll find a handy diagram.
 
It's true by logical thinking and by definition, not by some evidence.

We are talking here about a new holon of objects who are organised in specific ways with specific characteristics wich are unique. What are the chances that millions of people hallucinate this same specificly organised holon of objects?

By pure logic thinking (deduction) we can conclude that this must be an observation and not a hallucination. A testimony of something existing (ontology) in a certain dimension. Not something constructed by a brain nor a fantasy.
 
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Maartenn100 said:
We are talking about a non-existing object in Nature nor in popular culture, films or whatever.

We are talking about a hallucination of a new very complex object with exactly the same holon of characteristics.
The chances are 1/10000000000000000 that two people can have the same dream about exactly this complex new object with certain systemc or organic characteristics.
Click to expand...

Is this another one of those cases where you know that you are posting stupid crap and yet you go on to post stupid crap?
 
Crossbow, why do you think that thinking philosopically about the ontological status of a complex new object is 'full of crap'.
 
Maartenn100 said:
It all depends on what we call 'objectivity'.
Reality is 'intersubjective': it means: more then one person can discover it, independently from the other person. That's a criterium for 'objectivity'.
When you use that criterium, you can state that:

When two or more conscious beings have had exactly the same dreamcontent, the objects in this dreams have a status of 'being real'. The dimensions are different, but the object must be real.
Click to expand...

First of all - prove this has happened and second total nonsense, two people may dream of fairies - doesn't make fairies real beyond being a fiction created by humans.
 
Maartenn100 said:
Crossbow, why do you think that thinking philosopically about the ontological status of a complex new object is 'full of crap'.
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Because quite recently you wrote the quite insightful post (see below) where you admitted that you know that your ideas are wrong:

Maartenn100 said:
Giordano, I'm not specifically talking about my ideas here. I know they are wrong. I was talking about a general attitude on this forum towards new ideas.

I agree with most things been said here.
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Therefore, when you talk about eleven people all over the world having exactly the same dream, then it sounds like more stupid crap.
 
Maartenn100 said:
When millions of people 'dream' or 'hallucinate' about the same tunnel and the same light with exacty the same characteristics, independently from each other, then these objects have a status of 'objectivity'.
That's philosophical ontological (about 'to be') and epistemological (what can we know about reality) question.
Click to expand...

When millions of people 'dream' or 'hallucinate' about the same tunnel and the same light with exacty the same characteristics, independently from each other, one should look at what other common factors and circumstances these 'millions' of people share.

And in the case of NDE's the commonality is a brain starved of oxygen.
 
Crossbow said:
Because quite recently you wrote the quite insightful post (see below) where you admitted that you know that your ideas are wrong:



Therefore, when you talk about eleven people all over the world having exactly the same dream, then it sounds like more stupid crap.
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I was thinking that Maartenn's admission of error was both brave and insightful. But now I wonder if it was just a political means of deterring criticism. Honestly I am surprised to see the same old arguments trotted out by him here.
 
Crossbow said:
Is this another one of those cases where you know that you are posting stupid crap and yet you go on to post stupid crap?
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At minimum a case of making up a number completely out of whole cloth. And exaggerating a phenomenon enormously to make it sound much more significant than it really is.

When I was growing up I enjoyed the book titles such as "Stranger than Fiction." Then I realized that these books typically began with a small nugget of a real story to which they proceeded to add amazing (but made up) features and removed all the facts that would have provided an obvious explanation. Story as written: "Mysterious footprints found on roof after snow- had cloven hoof devil shape and there was no evidence in snow of how they could get there!" Real story: "Footprints found on roof- almost all of which look like owner's bootprints although some had begun to melt. Ladder found along side of house."
 
Dinwar said:
Is that an exhaustive list of potential ways to communicate this concept?

No.

My point, therefore, still stands. You need to PROVE this, not assert it. And even if you could, it really wouldn't support your conclusion as dreams don't inform us about reality.

By the way, that's taking you at your word. In reality, I seriously doubt anyone had a dream that is completely absent from such media. As has already been pointed out, it's trivial to find parallels in media. Your number is meaningless, as you just made it up out of nothing.
Click to expand...

And let's not forget (or let Maartenn forget) that his "complex new object with certain systemc or organic characteristics" is fancy word salad for...a tunnel with light. As fagin says, what's complex about that?
 
Giordano said:
I was thinking that Maartenn's admission of error was both brave and insightful. But now I wonder if it was just a political means of deterring criticism. Honestly I am surprised to see the same old arguments trotted out by him here.
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They are the same old arguments; but I'm inclined to give him at least a sliver of credit for trying them as an approach to a slightly different idea. IIRC, in the NDE thread(s), he fought tooth and nail against the idea that NDEs were dreams or hallucinations at all; he appears now to have at least accepted the idea that that's all they are. But...he's still, as you say, trotting out the same old argument that commonality proves reality. The goal post has moved, and the result is that he's trying to kick a field goal from 90 yards away instead of just 80. (Sorry, I'm watching NFL Network right now)
 
Maartenn100 said:
We are talking about a non-existing object in Nature nor in popular culture, films or whatever.

We are talking about a hallucination of a new very complex object with exactly the same holon of characteristics.
The chances are 1/10000000000000000 that two people can have the same dream about exactly this complex new object with certain systemc or organic characteristics.
Click to expand...

I'd like to see your math on this.
 
turingtest said:
And let's not forget (or let Maartenn forget) that his "complex new object with certain systemc or organic characteristics" is fancy word salad for...a tunnel with light. As fagin says, what's complex about that?
Click to expand...

The 'tunnel' aspect could also be simply tunnel vision which is a symptom of oxygen starvation.
 
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