I'm impressed with Robert Kuhn's ability to always reword the same introduction a hundred times with different people.

One thing I'm sure is real is my struggle to understand where this was going.

What does real mean? Aren’t thought real? Aren’t ideas real? Aren’t feeling real? So please define what do you mean real? Please note that string theory says that matter is also just a vibrating “string”. So reality is all about our senses sensing some thing directly and indirectly.

What l especially appreciate when R.L.K. interviews an Oxford philosopher, is how much the "ordinary language school" still permeates that culture. John Hawthorne's ability to wade us through the morasses of questions concerning metaphysical realism, ontology, modality, mereology, and indexicality, properties,....in an informal way as though he's having a perfectly ordinary conversation about his gardener next door, is refreshing indeed. Though l'm no metaphysician (the gardens l dig in have mostly to with philosophy of physics, and philosophy of science) l'll say from my line of work that these discussions can become quickly muddled. When it comes to general questions about metaphysical, and scientific, realism, one of my 'bibles' is James Ladyman & Don Ross's Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized (OUP, 2007). Lots to say about here (don't get me started!) but L& R advance a kind of moderate realist position, known as OSR, or ontic structural realism. In short, it says we should be realists about structure, and not about entities-full stop. There are several advantages to this view: for starters, we need to distinguish 'ontology' from 'Ontology:' Little o "ontology" is the furniture comprising and constituting the frameworks of our best mathematical theories in our fundamental sciences, like physics. For example, the "ontology" of quantum theory includes particles, fields, potentials (e.g., the Aharonov-Bohm effect). The 'ontology'' of general relativity includes metric curvature tensors, points in Riemannian manifolds, and so on. Certainly, just like in the case of abstract objects like numbers, discussion about little o ontology in the case of fundamental physics, inevitably and irreducibly involves these abstracta and idealizations. So (a' la Carnap) they're within the scientist's "linguistic frame" of the theory/paradigm/research programme they're working in. Okay so far so good. But the stronger metaphysical claims made by OSR is how does "ontology" track "Ontology"? Ontology (big O) are the objective structural properties of the world. It's not an easy question, but in ch. 4 of EMG, they tell a complicated story called ITSR, or information-theoretic structural realism, reeling in Dan Dennett's 'real patterns' ladled with some of the mathematical machinery of information theory (both quantum and classical). It's a deep dive, and critics have accused L&R as relying perhaps too much on the ambiguities (ontological and semantic) of "information" (in all its descriptive and normative senses) but it's certainly a bold attempt to secure questions about what we can genuinely refer to, without either falling prey to an inflationary metaphysics or an agnostic or skeptical empiricism. Last of, when it comes to talk about "what's real," in the case of modality, L& R are modal actualists, championing (hence the term 'naturalized') natural or nomological modality.

This is the closest that Robert seems to have come to nearly getting into a fight. Maybe the idea of this whole series is to eventually demonstrate that he once trained under Bruce Lee and has a black belt in something. Keep at it Robert, don’t let anyone get away with anything that they shouldn’t.

I would say the clay that is now a statue is clay with embedded information due to it's current shape. If we then ask, "Is that information real?" wouldn't we say, "Yes! I see the statue (information) [that the artist encoded into this clay]."

Hard to believe a Professor of Philosophy in Oxford came up with that. Def: Obfuscation is the obscuring of the intended meaning of communication by making the message difficult to understand, usually with confusing and ambiguous language. The obfuscation might be either unintentional or intentional, and is accomplished with circumlocution, the use of jargon, and the use of an argot of limited communicative value to outsiders.Wikipedia

Me thinks that Robert very gracefully & politely held his temper while being subjected to John's brash behavior. John made it clear there was only enough space for his ego and dominance in the room. The stench of narcissism must have been revolting! Well done Robert!! This is the first I've noticed Robert actually being annoyed or perhaps even being outright pissed off at his guest. I'll bet Robert never speaks with John again. Thanks John for waisting everyone's time!

I come from Computer Science and my observation is that in many of the episodes, but especially this one, object modeling would give you more clarity more quickly than the way this conversation has gone. Object modeling helps me understand a lot of this stuff.

This is all about abstractions. There's an almost infinite amount of abstractions we can make. The thing that seems to be always overlooked is that "atoms" or "fundamental phisics" are as abstract as complex objects, and so I think that this man has a great insight about it.

I do love this Closer to Truth series. However, this particular discussion did not leave me feeling closer to truth.

All things are real, but some are temporary and some are eternal.

It’s not so hard to understand that there are things, and things + organization (arrangements of things). That gets you pretty much everywhere you need to go.

Are not all philosophical issues just language issues? Nothing existential, just “what is the meaning of this word, or this expression” .

i like how this guy slowly realizes that there is just different arrangement of stuff (matter).

If we think of the table being entangled with the room, the room entangled with the building, the building sitting on Earth as a symbiotic reality.

Such an interesting & involved question ... Domari Nolo PA III

8:13 The statue has Low Entropy and the lump of clay has High Entropy.

Clay minerals are composed essentially of silica, alumina or magnesia or both, and water, but iron substitutes for aluminum and magnesium in varying degrees, and appreciable quantities of potassium, sodium, and calcium are frequently present as well. looks like the reality of clay is it's made up of different elements. So it takes different parts to actually make clay and for clay to form.

It seems to me that the question was referring to the nature of reality rather than our human description of it. So philosophy doesn't stretch that far...

A slightly difficult interchange, on an interpersonal level.

You cannot say that something doesn’t exist…you can only say that there is no evidence that something exists, like Mermaids.

How is anything real? In what way are they real? What is reality? Is reality real? It exists. But how does that make it real? And then we end up back at what is real? How is anything real, if it is all relative to perception and also temporary?

How would you define a "table" so that you can use the Transporter to get it from the planet Vulcan to the bridge of the NCC-1701-D?

This makes me think of archimedes ship, which asks if a ship is still the same ship once all of its parts have been replaced. My answer to this would be that the ship never existed in reality to begin with, which is why the question can be reasonably asked in the first place. The ship is a physical representations of an abstract idea used for a function. An idea is an abstraction of physical activity of the brain, so abstractions and ideas are one and the same, physical activity generated by an organism able to generate nonexistent unreal objects. Simply because there is a physical representation of an abstraction does not make the abstraction real. A ship is material shaped in accordance with the knowledge of how the physical operates to perform a subjective function an imagining being pretends must be performed according to an objective they pretend must happen. The materiel and the physical principles which govern the materiel are real but the abstractions applied to them by the physical functions of material beings are not. There is no real need for any objective imagined by material beings to be accomplished in reality. There are only conscious being pretending that there is.

Science tends to promote curiosity and can modify extensive mysticism toward more intelligence reasoning and discussions .

Are there doubts and hunches? Is love or grief real?

All things are real, but not all things align with their original definition we assigned them.

Not only is there legitimate debate over what is "real", I'll take it a step further and claim that there's no such thing as absolute existence. Just like the fact that there's no such thing as absolute motion, there's simply nothing that supports absolute existence...everything is relative.

If an idea of something means that something has reality, then I fail to see why there are poor people.

He’s thinking, “oh no, this guy isn’t playing along”

'I refuse to answer that question on the grounds I don't now the answer"

Is my receding hairline real?

(1:15) *RLK: **_"Constructed (reality) doesn't have the same level of reality as something underneath it would."_* ... "Reality" can be either held within consciousness or actuated in dimensionality. A new invention that is held within the inventor's consciousness is just as "real" as when it's actuated into physical form. The only difference is how this "reality" has been presented. Anything deemed a "construct" (i.e., mathematics, measurement, language, etc.) must have a reliable, repeatable framework, and that framework is just as "real" as the construct it forms.

The table I can take from out of the room and put outside.

A tough little shape is a response to the environment formed by small motion Planck length time segments, and the hexagon or other is extruded forward in, as, or by time, to form a crystal, molecule, protein or honeycomb.

The statue, the lump of clay, the trigger and the table are all objects of *language* . This entire discussion is about how many nouns there are but nouns aren’t real. What is real is the cosmos and that is one unified and undifferentiated existence.

Makes me want to watch your Donald Hoffman video again. Oh yes, a video where your questions get an answer?

seeking the opposite perspective is usually a good idea, but sometimes a waste of time lol

I think John and Robert were having different conversations.

Since "w" is recognized for the word "one", but redundant' for "two" and "k" is silent in "knee", you could inductively conclude that how an English word is spelt is irrelevant to it's sound - a perceived signature vibration, characteristic oscillation, or wave defined either classically by it's length and crest-trough amplitutde, or elementary physical entity ergodic motion quantumly - , but the fact that "zero" is an alphabetic letter sequential canonical sound word, falsifies this, justifying the claim that how a word is spelt is and is not relevant to it's sound, violating the law of non-contradiction * : nothing is concommitantly true and false, however generalizing the proposition 'A is the English alphabet letter A' for a linguistic rule may resolve this, but a new sound would be required for the math symbol 0, given that "ten" for an inverse union of 0 and 1 and "twenty" for 0 and 2, imply a sound for 0 of "TE", even though it is conventionally pronounced "zero". * Without the law of non-contradiction, the opposite to any valid argument, where the conclusion is entailed by the premises, is equally justified, leaving colloquial and formal language categories redundant.

Is perception reality, or is there reality independent of perception?

The fact is they both dont know what we are living in.they experience the human perception but there is a spiritual realm that also exists all around us.so there is more to answer but as of yet most people are not asking the correct questions.human minds are very limited at the moment when it comes to realising what reality is or how much of reality is beyond our grasp.

This guy says a whole lot without actually saying anything at all.

Reality is the information delivered to our brain by our five senses. Based upon this information, we can analyze and develop an understanding of the world in which to experience our individual lives.

Voltmeters do exist as physical objects. Particles only exist as concepts and are mental constructs.

The only Truth is I AM - I Exist. Everything else is a concept.

Stay thirsty. All things are physical in a world of physical objects interacting with other physical objects. Except, of course, that you and I utilize an amazing number if nonphysical tools that we keep readily accessible in a nonphysical space we call our mind. Each is undeniably real. Both exist; a physical world, and a world of the mind that interacts with it. Science is going to have to come to terms with the fact that this immaterial realm must be accounted for in their quest for understanding. Riddle me this... The 4th dimension being time; what is the mind that experiences and comprehends it? Remember kids, be humble, be respectful, and own your dignity like you can afford to share it.

There's only one thing that can be real, and everything must be a consequence of it. That thing is the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which is to say, Reason. Reason is what is real. How does Reason express itself? Via mathematics.

Man I have more meaningful drunken conversations with mates

👍

I don't see how there couldn't be any mermaids. The fact that only about 5% of the ocean has been charted. You have intelligent life that went one direction onto land; and then you have another form of life that stayed in the ocean evolved that way. And there's many more forms of life in the ocean that you haven't seen.

All phenomenas we perceive usually belong to our subjective interpretations until similar experiences are shared among other members of our communities... Allegory of the cave might better illustrate the condition... the problem, here, arises when a unique perspective is considerd as fictious by a majority that might not have the capacity or opportunity to evaluate it... therefore, prior to disregarding "any" particular subject, we must provide proof of both capacity and opportunity and when such scenario is impossible then maybe is better to speak from a personal viewpoint...

👍🎊Happy New Year 🎉👌 ✌🏻👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏✌🏻

Chair is a label for a configuration of stuff that is real. All phenomena, are constructed from this 'real' stuff. But the root of reality by definition, has no explanation, it simply is. Unless you accept infinite regression.

I think everything is real at once, But Idea and category are not . Whereas they can be made to appear real -because they are infused with everything that is really -real

Should have titled the video: ''are mermaids real??'' Would have gotten you more views, Robert Kuhn.

Reality conscious experience of information given meaning by existence?

Didn't understand the point of his rambling

There are no tables, there are no chairs, there are no statues. There are only processes (and ultimately only one larger process). "Tables," "chairs," "statues" are just conventional ways of describing a temporary arrangement of energy. If you took away all the constituent parts of a "table" (or whatever) -,took away all the particles temporarily appearing to form the "table" - there would be no essence of "tableness" remaining. We don't want to admit that because it would necessarily also apply to ourselves, so that's why we invented religion and "souls."

some confusing remarks here between things, descriptions, uses, and representations? What is a "thing" in the first place? We get back to god old ontology vs phenomenology and this discussion seems quite naive in that context, no ?

Are triangles real?

My humble opinion is that electrons ARE real, and become measurable AS particles when their local fields interact with another localized field or particle.. The Copenhagen interpretation of QM suggests this is the case.. We can observationally measure the track of such collapsed particles through a cloud chamber or their individual impact events on a phosphorus screen.. Additional support comes in the form of the two slit experiments.. Interactions cause particles to collapse from their wave function, but that doesn't mean they are not real.. A humble opinion only..

There no reality just our perception of reality.🙂

The space between two things is a third thing

Play at 50% speed !😄 hilarious

Is this a real question?

"..not only is everything energy, it responds to consciousness itself." The Illusion of Reality: The Scientific Proof That Everything is Energy and Reality Isn’t Real "When astral matter is exposed to thought, focused by the lens of the mind, a perfect image of reality is instantly formed out of astral mind stuff by the reaction of astral matter to thought." Treatise on Astral Projection "In quantum physics, perception and observation play a central role." From Information and Quantum Physics to Consciousness and Reality

If you are talking about what you can see, touch, hear, smell real is just electrical signals interpreted by your brain

Ideas about mermaids just shows the fact that imagination is a real thing you can imagine. Not that our imaginations are real but we can really imagine.

Everything is real. Fictional characters are real .fictional characters. If they didn’t exist how could I even refer to them? If you perceive something, even if what you experienced is different and even contrary to everyone elses experience and perception that was your true and real perception and experience. Correlation of experience makes it a shared or common perception but a solitary experience or perception is no less real, simply not shared or correlated with others. The only thing which doesn’t exist is nothing. The word nothing exists. An idea of an empty region of space can exist but it is a region and thus has qualities like volume or even being empty is a quality which that space possesses

What is real? Look at all the things we created..all of civilisation. All that started in peoples head.. All our human world stuff comes out of the head. It is all design of some sort may it be a building may it be a law. So looking at nature it must be something comparable to that..The main question is how does such thing work in nature..what is the (super)naturals version of our head.

Reality has existence and information?

The whole purpose and meaning of morning Star is morning is the beginning of a day star gives light so the beginning light is what morning Star means. God said let there be light.

This was more like a Monty Pyton comedy sketch ....

I absolutely love this show and many of the subject topic issues are most truly fascinating, but in this particular case, or in this particular episode here, i can’t seem to get a full grasp, or get a hold of this so called simplistic conversation, about sea mermaids, or even about statues made out of clay. To me, all of this seems to be kind of irrelevant, in terms of existential issues, as to what is real and what is not. For instance, if you want to know my opinion, i think that sea mermaids simply originated from the great legendary tales of the Greek Mythology, where Poseidon was the ancient greek God of the seas and that’s all there is to it. Period...! Correct me if i’m wrong, but unless, i missed the point, or if i missed out on something here, this conversation doesn’t seem to fit right, or it’s not getting anywhere at all, philosophically speaking, that is. However, may i simply suggest you to choose another appropriate topic, that is much more closer to truth and perhaps start questioning the presence of viral diseases in today’s modern world, such as the COVID-19, for instance, rather then talking about sea mermaids. Given the circumstances, i think that this would be much more realistic, if you may allow me to say so, with all due respect. Thank you! so much for bringing us all of these marvelous presentations and Happy! New Year to all of you, on the KZfaq channel. Stay safe! Johnny, Montréal, Canada 🇨🇦

Old Robert seems behind the 8 ball pretty often, despite all his interviews.

Real things have a physical presence. They can be experienced by one or more of our five senses.

Whats going on.. ? No idea what the point was here.

I really appreciate John Hawthorne's attitude here. His deliberately naive attitude towards these questions really push the viewer to consider whether or not these questions make any sense in the first place. I personally decided that "What Things Are Real" is in fact a bogus question on the outset.

Every subject is his life long obsession, isn't it

One simple remark: Can we say for sure the idea of a mermaid is impossible to realize forever? I am not so sure about that as one could think about messing with DNA more deeply then we do now we just aren't very good at it yet... If the answer is to top it up with something more bizarre like a smiling Conscious Star my answer would be it depends on the level of a Civilization and its cosmic process antiquity! So no, I am not sure upping up the stakes sorts that one either... On the question "What is Real" most of us are asking what is real "now"...now doesn't make much sense as it is a phenomenal construct to. I rather go with what is real in what domain of operations...superman is real in comic book stories and in movies...I think no one would question that either, and while I am at it I am also certain caveman would consider modern man superman...so the tricky bit here is tacking the topic into domains rather then absence! In fact the whole topic is very tribalistic at its heart as when we ask what is real we normally also mean to say what is "more real" and if the "more real" is on my tribe rather then yours...

This was going....nowhere, sadly.

They look a bit alike.

We think there are no 'real' mermaids but we don't know there are no 'real' mermaids, I feel that technicality needs pointing out. Joking aside, there are also different overlapping realities- blue does not exist as it's only how we interpret that which we see as blue, yet because we can do that it also does exist- we can appreciate blue in a sky or painting, there also has to be that which we see as blue in the first place. Back to the mermaids (I was partly joking but to make this point), if a child watches a drama about mermaids they have a sort of existence in that child's imagination, so in some ways perhaps they both exist and do not, are real and are not, the same as the blue. Also in the same way the blue exists even if only as that which we have interpreted as blue, likewise the story mermaid- it exists in the text or speech or film telling that story. (Un) reality is a strange entity. Edit: I was ahead of the video at that point they did cover this re the merfolk. Where reality gets tricky is in what is just our perception and what is the reality behind it, them talking about tables might seem silly but there could be overlapping 'realities' in which they are not real in the sense we experience them as, just lines of universal code of some sort, real to us like the blues but in that other reality just like the words of the mermaid story or the thing we interpret as blue or the thing we interpret as a table because that's how we put it together like the story or the brain interpreting blue. This thinking is tied into thinking that at their smallest levels the story, blue and table- and the brain that perceives them, could all be the same thing(s), just written or assembled in different combinations, the crux is not knowing what that ultimate 'core reality of everything' is. Which they'll probably talk about now I've typed that! I'm sort of arriving at is reality linked to perception- if a random shape is a sculpture to the community that made and own it (like the statue) it might just seem like a lump of material to someone outside that community who has no understanding of their references of interpretation. If a wood boring creature lives in the table then it is part of that creature's environment and different to them than to us, so in some of these cases the 'things' would seem unreal from different viewpoints in the contexts of the other viewpoints (for example how do we know we're not living in a table- not literally but our universe or the multiverse or whatever it is in could be the inside of something else far outside our comprehension- the reality could be anything- does the bug in the table know it's a table in a human world in a universe?...., likewise the virus or bacteria living inside us- do they know they live inside another living thing? Hence what they think is 'real' may be very different. Of course they may literally know nothing in that regard and just function on autopilot as they may not even have the brain or in the absence of a brain the equivalent to think about reality) Hence reality must surely have a lot to do with perception and what is/isn't accurately known. Living things are perhaps limited to educated guesses which they can only go so far in investigating (which explains a lot about the phenomenon of humanity's questioning curiosity), so perhaps we partly make and mold our reality by the direction of our learning, we discovered wood could be made into things and the ability to make tools thus thinking it would be useful to have a surface at hand height to put things on so invented tables so then we had a word for tables and a perception of tables and so on. Throw the statue at someone and it becomes a projectile and maybe you don't care that it's a lump of clay or a statue- you've also changed it's reality in another way- it has become something potentially linked to cruelty or survival or something else depending on the circumstances- and perhaps the perspective- this could be both evil and not, maybe even kind from different perspectives in very different circumstances, but importantly potentially in the same event. If we have free will then that's a reality we could create through an action with consequences. I typed that before he mentioned the gun handle idea, which in a post about reality is quite a fun coincidence. Which makes you wonder as perhaps not every living thing can think about reality (and as far as we know the table cannot) how much do we make our reality- is it perhaps surprisingly close to the mermaids some of the time? The table is home to the bug because they made it home, from choice or not, which gets you to a desk drawer full of other questions, so we add drawers and cabinets to the table to store these other realities and it becomes a desk, sci fi becomes ideas that become inventions, and so on, many years from now we've got a total grip on biology and genetics and somebody creates a merperson for whatever unfathomable reason....

Me missing a piece is still me. It's just not necessarily the whole me. Cuz there's a piece of me missing. We can try to help those people find the missing pieces and put them together or we can just let them go keep on being a partial being and let them be broken and have missing pieces. Really we should let those broken pieces go and be made new. Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. Jeremiah 18:3‭-‬4 KJV As you can see Jesus Christ is the only one who can fix the vessels and make them new. Rev 21:5.

So I’ve learnt that Mermaids aren’t real but tables are. Great.

The clever coyote (greed) is always trying to catch the roadrunner (love). But never does. Because something that is not real (absence of love) can never catch that which is real (love). That coyote (greed) is a crazy clown... The roadrunner is the state bird of the Land of Enchantment. The land of magic (love).

A voltmeter tells you how much power that you're dealing with and what kind of power. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians 6:12 KJV

This KZfaq Channel is real

Zoolander: Mer-Man 😂

John... please... let the man speak...!!!

so mermaids do exist, but mermaids are not real this feels like the other half of the battle G.I. Joe warned us about when we were kids

God is real. We are real. We are a real reflection.

Our Awareness, or Consciousness, is the SOLE OBSERVER of REALITY without which NOTHING can be observed as real. This is the truth. ...but if your standard tests of reality rely on whatever any of your physical senses can detect, including the use of tools of detection, then your Awareness/Consciousness can never be real to you because you can not see, hear, smell, touch, or taste it. ..and because Awareness/Consciousness can not be proven as real by your standard tests of reality, then it is just an illusion. Therefore, everything that your Awareness/Consciousness observes is also just an illusion. ..and because Robert Kuhn requires material proof before he considers an existence as real, he will always be in eternal limbo, always wondering what is real, because he can not even prove his Consciousness (which is the sole observer of reality) as real existence....

Ask him if language is real :)

Materialists and their word salad

The science method uses the real physical world when determining experiments and definitions of the natural universe. The view of Causality as an unknown natural event has led to the evidence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit effects Christian life by dwelling within believers, guiding them into a righteous and faithful life. Any definition that describes the Holy Spirit as a feeling; a presences, an influence or guiding companion, has a natural event for Causality associated with this effect. Science has confirmed the benefits of being spiritual as seen in the studies by Harold G. Konenig; 'Religion, Spirituality, and Health'. Spirituality of religious people has proven health benefits over the non-spiritual. Spirituality's association with diminished egocentrism is responsible for the successful communications found in every culture and society. Emotional Intelligence includes; self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. All of these traits arise naturally from successful Religious Systems in the form of individuals developing into Spiritual persons. Science studies prove the existents of the 'Holy Spirit' by means of the benefits associated with the Holy Spirit. Scientific evidence for the existence of the Christian God has been found.

Well, that was a complete waste of 15 minutes.

Zoolander: MerMan