Becoming aware of thoughts

Once you dig into thoughts , they well up like ground water , which means you have to do the digging thing.

We are not very sure if thoughts are already there ,or they appear when we start the process of becoming aware of them. For example, these thoughts about thoughts being already there or appearing when we think of them -were these already there in a latent form ?

If thoughts are mere electrical impulses happening at the time they are happening, then there is a pattern to it or there is supposed to be a pattern .Does that mean there is something predictable about what thoughts follow the current thought .Which means whatever thought is currently in the mind , will necessarily have to lead to the same succession of thoughts all the time.

But this does not seem to be happening because when I look back I find the thoughts were different the last time around. It follows that the train of thoughts is different each time I start the thinking process.Which means there is no particular pattern to the way a thought leads to the next thought.

Again the word “lead ” presupposes that there is something in the current thought which predisposes what follows it. For example , in this train it is words which seem to carry forward thought.The word “lead” -started the process of thinking how one thought is followed by another ,flowing out of the first thought. Some times it is a word or combination of words which takes the sequence of thoughts in a different direction .Does that mean the word drops from the blue / or that the word happens as part of the natural thought formation?

There seems to be something called a natural word formation : much like water welling up in a dug well.One never is sure if the word “lead” in the earlier thought came to me because the underlying thought about one thought naturally brings forth another in an unfailing manner and that is exactly the way it will work out when this thought occurs anytime.

Skepticism: This has happened just now to me .I suddenly started to think I had come to too many and too much unwarranted conclusions and too quickly.

Poetry and photography

Poetry is not about fantasy all the time .It is sometimes about unreal situations,the unreality arising out of the fantastic combination of things and events which do not exist in real life.This does not mean that it is entirely unreal and is not reflective of life . What happens is the strange set-up of things and events which do not occur in the same combination in real life but happen nevertheless as a possibility which is captured by a change of perspective. The change of perspective adds to the beauty of the situation which is unreal but nevertheless exists in visual perception. Photography is so much like poetry in this regard.

The strange mixture of things  makes for a new reality.The wind rustles in the leaves and the leaves fall to the ground .The fantastic reality of the tree and the falling leaves mixes with the blue sky and whiteness of cloud and as I stare through the sky-spaces another world is born,another sky comes into existence. I travel to the office in the white heat of April Summer alongside bright-red bougainvillea my world is not the same world as it has been all the time.The white-and -red bougainvillea are entirely different as the April sun falls on them , their luminescence strangely different from what they were this very morning.This is the new reality which a photograph captures and if you look backwards you can recognize the wistfulness present in the unique spatial situation captured by the photo by recollecting all the elements of the picture as an ensemble or at least the motif of the picture if it had one at the time it captured the situation

What is truth?

If we have to arrive at some definition of truth we may look at it as a commonly agreed perception of reality. The definition has its own weaknesses :firstly ,common agreement could be in limited space, limited time and could turn into disagreement in another space,another time. Secondly we are talking about perception which even if common could be misleading and for arriving at correct perception individual and group biases will need to be recognized and eliminated .Thirdly even if we are agreed on the perception of the reality both in our time and in the past (i.e. we and our ancestors have looked at the reality as the same) we do not know what the perception will be like in future and will tally with perceptions of the present time and the past .

I wonder whether we should pursue this inquiry any further .Isn’t it fruitless? The truth keeps changing now and then and our definition will depend upon the changing context and the changing values.

Time is a mere successon of one’s ideas

The philosopher Berkeley views time as a mere succession of ideas-a puzzling thought.

It may be this way :When we view Time we are not thinking about how individually we perceive the way Time is measured by the movement of the clock but about the passage of Time which is independent of the physical ticking of the clock which only measures the passage of time but is not the passage of time itself.

On the other hand it is ideas that flit through one’s mind which make for the passage of time for you and me .This is because it is succession of ideas that governs our perception of the world irrespective of the “objective reality” and it is the perception which marks our time ,not the clock.

Questions about the length of the rulers and their possible answers

If there is a 10 CM ruler and someone ask you how long is that. The answer should be 10CM. If there is a 5 CM ruler and someone ask you how long is that. The answer should be 5CM. Now, If there isn’t any ruler and someone ask you how long is that. I should answer 0 or “N/A”? In this case, does 0 and “N/A” have the same meaning?

http://www.askphilosophers.org

The question asked about what the length of the ruler is when there is no ruler cannot be answered . Only when there is ruler and that is the one being referred to can the answer be made to this question. There is an assumption behind the question that we are specific about the ruler and it is not any ruler but the ruler and since there is no ruler it is safe to assume that the question has no answer.

More accurately we can say that the question does not arise. It is assumed that the questioner is clear about what ruler he is referring to and the answerer with a reasonable application of mind can decipher what ruler the questioner is referring to .The question will then arise and the answer can be expected.

One ambiguity can arise in answering the question. The questioner can say the ruler can exist with a “zero” length and if the question is about the length of the ruler it is correct to answer “zero”. N/A can also be used if instead of answering the question we say that the question does not beg an answer. Both of course are not the same as N/A would imply the answerer is challenging the correctness of the question itself while in the case of “zero” reply a technically correct answer is being given.

The storyline of my life

Suppose, someone has made a personal statement in his university admission application to the effect that if he were determined ,by the future,to join the university ,he would not be required to write the statement .If on the other hand the future is already determined that he will not join the university ,he need not bother to write the statement. Is he right in his action?

(Askphilosophers.org)

Difficult to say .We are coming back to the same old theory of determinism or a universal causation which says that whatever be the proximate cause there is a universal cause which will lead to an effect which will ultimately determine the future. For example ,I am working in my office today at this point of time and I have a tiff with my boss. There is a strike in public transport which has led to my arriving late in office ,thereby causing a tiff with my boss and in a heated exchange of words I lose my job. Can I say that my losing the job is on account of my coming late and a consequent tiff with the boss ? My losing the job is an effect which can be traced to a proximate cause-the transport strike but if the circumstances had not already developed leading to a situation of the above type,my losing the job would not have happened. It only means that there is something in the total situation which contains the genesis for the present developments or something within my boss’s situation or within my own situation which eventually developed into my losing the job.

Sometime I feel that there is what I call a “storyline” in my life. If I read patterns in the events unfolding I get an uncanny feeling that I am slowly but inexorably being led towards the happening of some major events every now and then ,major movements in terms of their impact on my life . These movements happen all the time although everything that happens does not lead up to the next major event in my life. All my routine activities I perform are merely proximate causes but behind them there is a storyline , a movement which will lead to a denouement and a fall ,followed by another similar movement beginning to develop towards another major event. Thus my life is filled with wave after wave of movements towards some major events all of which could not have happened due to one or two proximate causes.

Is photography an art?

Q: What about photography, isn’t that art?

No. My position is that photography, which can indeed be a wonderful and excellent thing, is not actually an art form per se. A photographer can be more accurately said to “document” something by showing the audience exactly what was there (when well done, he does this using some of the same techniques that an artist might such as composition, selecting contrast levels, etc.) rather than recreating what was there in light of an expressive goal which allows a great deal of freedom to adjust what is there and how it looks which is unavailable to the photographer

Brian K.Yoder
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2003/Best_of_ARC/best1.asp?msg=108&forumID=18

We cannot agree with the view here. The assumptions here about what photography is themselves need to be validated.For example ,the photographer does not merely document what is already there.He searches out for that which furthers his vision and arriving there he expounds his vision which is uniquely artistic. Composition in photography is not a mere beautification device but arises out of the photographer’s unique vision.The photographer recreates ,just like an artist,”what was there in light of an expressive goal which allows a great deal of freedom to adjust what is there and how it looks.It is not correct to say that such a freedom is not available to a photographer. We are not talking about photo-journalism which perhaps merely documents what is .We are talking about the great photography artists like Cartier-Bresson whose photographs are as much an expression of a unique artistic vision as any painter or a music composer.

Irony of "double-think”

 The interesting question put here is why does one ask questions to which one already knows the answers ? It looks like we actually do not know the answers but only think we know them because in most of the cases what we have thought the final position has never remained the last word on the subject. Obviously in the world of constant flux there can be no final answers. That of course is a pretty obvious thing. But the bigger truth is not that the reality underneath changes but merely that is seen differently. Our eyes evolve over time and so does our perceptual thinking.

But what is most intriguing is the irony in our way of thinking. There is a constant “double-think” as we go along perceiving things and commenting on them. Right from our childhood we keep taking mental positions in reference to our fixed value systems derived from our family and culture but there is a subterranean dialogue which is going on within us which contradicts the surface .  There is nothing final about anything and as soon as we hear anybody saying the final thing there is a sardonic laughter within us born out the  silent hollowness experienced by the “within”- a kind of dramatic irony which dogs every step .This is what robs us of our sleep,the delicious inertia of  being able to accept any position as the final thing.

Is God all-knowing?

An interesting question raised here is if God is all-knowing He must be surely knowing that I am going to sneeze in the next five seconds and if I control my sneeze ,I have just changed the future.It means that He is not all-knowing.(Askphilosophers.org)
The funny thing is that this argument does not jell. Even within the limitations of the human logic we can easily demolish this argument because when we say God is all-knowing we mean He is really all-knowing.That is , He not only knows you are going to sneeze but also that you are going to control the sneeze and change the original course of events that would have happened if you had not controlled the sneeze.

Ask Philosophers.org

Is time stationary ?

Is time stationary, and we move along it? Or are we stationary, and time moves past us?(Askphilosophers.org)

Response from Peter Lipton

“On one view, time is a lot like another dimension lying alonside the three dimensions of space. On this view time doesn’t move: all times are equally real at all times, just as all parts of space are equally real from all places. But do we move along time? Well, we are in different places at different times, and of course we are at different times at different times.

According to another view of time, the present is privileged. As George Santayana once said, ‘the present is like the fire running along the fuse of time’. On this view, it looks like we are moving along time, and so is the present.”

If time is the fourth dimension, time does not move just like the other three dimensions. Do we move along time ? Just as we move in space in all the three dimensions (i.e.moving horizontally in space), we also move in the space-time situations (my room,where I am present, encapsulated in the time of now) .I move sitting in the same room into a different space-time situation in the next second. I may also be moving into a different space-time situation by changing into a different space .

The other view where our present moves in time like a spark running along the fuse of time as George Santayana said ,is a graphic description of how the present burns itself in a quick running movement towards the future. There we are moving inexorably through a series of time-space situations to a future which is end of all space-time situations as far as the experiencer himself is concerned.