More real reality?
Has anyone here ever wondered if there is anything more real than this life? Maybe even thought that there had to be something more real? As even a kid I think I imagined there had to be more, but I didn't know where to look. And for whatever it maybe worth people who had NDEs often report a more real reality. Any psychologically people here? Is there a reason why the mind would create such a thing, and how exactly could it?
Comments (55)
Quoting TiredThinker
Reality isn’t a product you’ll find in a drugstore, a neuropsychology lab, or on netflix. From a psychological point of view , the feeling of reality is a function of meaningfulness , which is connected with significance and relevance. The more interconnected we make the elements of our experience the more real they will seem, which means ‘ultimate realty’ is as much about active invention as passive observation.
Philosophically, I believe that the West has lost something crucial in abandoning the sense of there being ‘degrees of reality’. It is something that was conveyed by the ancient idea of the ‘great chain of being’, but it one of the beliefs that has fallen by the wayside in modern thought, in my opinion. Without it, there’s can’t be any sense of there being a vertical dimension which provides the scale along that which is better and best is conceived. That’s why modern society, again, tends to dwell in a valueless flatland.
Ditto for the explanation.
Quoting Wayfarer
I recommend climbing in this regard.
Read Art of Dreaming for a practical technique.
One would need to analyze what it is that makes something real. Does it come on some kind of a scale with a dial which we can twist & turn, consciously or not, and experience "more real reality". I think the correct term here is hyperreal.
It seems there are two criterion for real (being real). One is the run-of-the-mill one; whatever it is, it's fixed. The other is somewhat subjective, malleable, flexible, and thus can be increased/decreased, the net effect being, inter alia hyperreal experiences.
Intriguingly, most thinkers have been reporting the opposite experience, the world as unreal (vide Buddhist Maya, Plato's allegory of the cave, to name two). Perhaps what we're looking at here are mirror images.
Describe what you mean by "more" – "more real (than) reality".
Quoting Wayfarer
Please elaborate in your own words (i.e. translate in sum from your sources into ordinary language, no links). Thanks.
Transcendent values (e.g. "the good" "the true" & "the beautiful")?
Like Deleuze's (Spinozist) plane of immanence?
NB: Spinoza titled his 'transcendence-free metaphysics' the Ethics, which is anything but "valueless".
More real than reality translates to more real than what there is. What's more real than what there is? You'd need a new approach to make this question intelligible.
You can say that there are different ways of experiencing the world, it is not inconceivable that an alien species could see aspects of the world we cannot experience.
Or you can ask what is it that grounds reality.
NDE's don't mean much if there's still activity in the brain, no different than a dream. What would be surprising is experiences once there is absolutely no brain activity left. But nobody's come back to say anything, so, don't hold your breathe.
:100:
Maybe I don't mean more real so much as that the current apparent reality is more of a temporary simulation and not the main show. Hopefully.
Some people that study NDE claim brain activity has ceased. It really depends on what they say. They can create stuff from imagination shortly before fully waking up too. If they report information that even those in the room can't readily know that can be interesting.
Very briefly, in various cultures, the 'great chain of being' was the assumed hierarchy of kinds of being(s). At the bottom level is minerals and what we would now call inorganic nature. Then it ascends through vegetative, animal, and rational - that's us. Above us are the angelic intelligences (I suppose in archaic cultures also the various demigods) and then above that is the Divine Intellect from which it cascades down through the different levels.
You do find remnants of the idea in 17th century philosophers Spinoza, Descartes and Liebniz. Most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the greater degree of reality it has. Given that there are only substances and modes, and that modes depend on substances for their existence, it follows that substances (ousia) are the real constituents of reality. It might also be added that at this time, it was still widely assumed by Christians and Jews alike that the soul insofar as it is a substance is created directly by God, and therefore is of a higher order than physical entities.
That does provide a response to the OP, insofar as it posits the idea of 'degrees of reality', which I think is generally extinct in the modern culture, which tends to see existence as univocal, i.e. it has only one meaning, and that things either exist or they don't.
Quoting 180 Proof
Would you agree with this description?
which seems rather mystical to me.
A brain is necessary for experience, if you remove the brain, you can't have experience. People may claim that brain activity has ceased, but if people are reporting NDE, then clearly brain activity is still going on.
Unless they would be willing to say that experience does not depend on brain, but on something else, like blood circulation, or something like the soul of times gone by. But these ideas of soul don't hold up anymore, it was vitally united with the issue of God and all that context.
If they can report things other people in the room are doing, then a serious, medical/profesional account must be given, otherwise, to quote Hume:
"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish."
What about this "vertical dimension" in contrast to "a valueless flatland"? Tell me what you mean by these phrases.
You've had multiple NDEs? Can you prove that?
A brain is needed for an experience, and an experience requires the brain. Full circle huh? How do we know the brain isn't the puppet that just keeps the body going? Suspend belief a little? I'm trying to not be depressed by chronic pain and disorientation all the time since my injury.
Well, it's kind of like saying eyes are required for vision, and vision requires eyes. How do we know that the eye isn't the puppet that keeps our sight going?
It's the simple observation, observed throughout all history, that a person whose brain is sliced in half, or pierced through with a bullet or arrow, or a head rolling from a guillotine, results in a bit of loss of awareness, and reports of experience cease coming from those (dead) persons.
There are many things we do not know about mind and how it relates to brain and the relationship between the world and the mind/brain, which is crucial, and is not well understood. And we can attempt to frame questions in terms of what types of experiences we can and cannot have, given that we are human beings, not gods.
We can also speak about "things in themselves" - negative noumena - which is as far deep as I think reason can go in terms of foundations for experience.
If you want "something more", then you can perfectly well adopt substance dualism and admit of the existence of the soul, in addition to body, adapted for modern times.
I think we have plenty to consider with what we have.
I'm sorry about your chronic pain, I hope it gets better.
How did you achieve your experiences?
I suppose you could find, in Spinoza, recommendations for the way in which the 'amor dei intellectualis' could be sought or cultivated, and alternatively the kinds of things which would thwart its relisation. So there's an ethical dimension implicit in that, isn't there? It's not that dissimilar to Vedanta, as I believe some have said - swap out God or Nature for the Self of All, and there are many convergences. It's a spiritual discipline culminating in a form of union (albeit expressed in a manner which was obviously very threatening to the proximate religious authorities of his day.) I think I remarked before, this would explain why he was abhorred by the Rabbis, in that he threatened (as many mystics do) the need for priestly intermediaries.
I recall you recommending Iris Murdoch's 'Sovereignity of the Good', which I believe recapitulates Platonist principles, inspired by Simone Weil, to argue that there is, as the title implies, a 'sovereign good'. Generally speaking the analytic philosophy of her day rejected any such principle on the basis of any such proposed good not being publically verifiable. (Somewhere in the last few weeks i read an article about Murdoch, Mary Midgley and one other -forgotten who - was it Anscombe? I'm meaning to read that Murdoch book, but as always, books are many and time is short.)
In any case the broad underlying idea is a real scale (scala = ladder) or a 'domain of values,' an actual good that is not a social construction or a matter of subjective conviction. It's also not objective - there's the difficulty. For moderns, only what is objective is taken seriously. But the general idea is that there are degrees of reality, such the higher degree of reality is what 'the philosopher' aspires to and which is therefore the ultimate source of ethics. I don't think that it too foreign to Spinoza, but there are other examples in Hadot.
I don't think so. Amor dei intellectualis is in what understanding (scientia inutiva) of substance (natura naturans) consists – wholly rational, impersonal and immanent (non-transcendent). The other term for this praxis – it's not a "goal" (re: Hadot) – is what Spinoza calls "blessedness". Read that most radical of anti-woo books, Wayf, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP) for critical context to his Ethics (E).
More than objective – also, not yet falsified or soundly judged.
If by "higher degree of reality" you mean transcendent (re (neo)Platonic forms, universals, essences, emanations...), such a notion merely begs the question (e.g. infinite regress) and fallaciously reifies abstractions. 'Natural goodness', as Philippa Foot, says is the immanent "source of the ethics" for natural beings – pursuing what is good for ((our) natural species') thriving and avoiding / reducing what is not good for ((our) natural species') thriving. A modern formulation of fundamental insight shared by Laozi, K?ngz?, Buddha, Hillel the Elder, Epicurus-Lucretius, Diogenes the Kynic, Seneca-Epictetus, ... Spinoza, et al.
The Buddha is 'lokuttara', it literally means 'world-transcending' or 'above the world', and also 'lokuviddu', knower of worlds (i.e. the six realms of existence). So leave him out of your procrustean naturalist bed.
Sometimes I act in a way that isn't "real" to myself. In reality, nothing has changed about "me", at least not physically, but I carry a sentiment that i'm not true to my character. I would then suggest that when we perceive a realer reality, its not the reality thats changing, it's us.
I appreciate the sentiment. Age research gives me hope. NAD+, senolytics, stem cells, gene therapy. The future looks somewhat bright if I live long and well enough. Apparently they regenerated the optic nerve of a mouse using 3 Yamanaka Factors. It's an amazing concept.
How? And what proof?
There is a problem with basing ethics in what is good for one particular species. Much will be sacrificed for the good of that particular species.
Please, Blue Fairy, make me into a real live boy.
Watch the film and notice the use of the word "real".
Anything other than that particular species.
Oh yeah, there's plenty of exciting new technology around the corner.
I think there were two versions. One left off the ending I think.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. But now the sentence appears incoherent to me. Obviously what is good for some species is not good for other species. There is a natural competitiveness in the world which leaves most organisms in a state less than "thriving". The thriving of all species is completely counter to the natural process of evolution. Are you suggesting that morality should be based in an effort to put an end to evolution? This would not be naturalistic at all.
Excellent question!
I'm sure you will agree that the actual experience of these mental states cannot be adequately described to those who haven't enjoyed them. Years ago Steven King in one of his books narrates an instance of one of his characters emerging into an alternate reality in a country meadow so fresh and invigorating that one could smell an onion pulled from the earth a mile away.
However, this thread includes possible physical realities as well. Nevertheless, I encourage Tired Thinker to study the sort of practices you and I have enjoyed. Excursions into the realm of pure will.
How can you show a reality you have experienced is more real than the one most of the rest of us experience? Can you return here with information that we don't already have?
You might call my reading "uncharitable", but I simply do not understand how you can propose an ethics which proposes to give priority to all natural species. Clearly that is not a possibility. And regardless of how many names you can list off, of people who have supported this unrealistic idea, it flies in the face of the natural process which we call "evolution". So until you can provide some explanation as to how you can produce consistency between "what's good for each species for thriving", and the natural process called "evolution", I'll assume that your proposed type of ethics is a very unnatural attempt to constrain this natural process, therefore not a naturalistic ethics at all. It is an ethics of artificial interference.
I do not understand it either since I have not proposed that. :roll:
Essentially. Lol.
Yes. Brains on hallucinogenic drugs create imaginary realities that seem more real than mundane materiality. The "could" is easy to answer : the brain produces it's own chemicals to adjust its reactions to perceptions (e.g. endorphins ; opioids). But the street drugs merely exaggerate those normal effects. Sometimes the distorted feelings may feel heavenly, but they may also seem hellish . Take the drug, take your chances.
As, to "why" the brain would release abnormal amounts of those intrinsic neurotransmitters, when it detects signs (stress hormones??) of impending death, many NDE researchers are still looking for the answer. But most assume that it may have some last-ditch self-protection purpose. Why does consciousness black-out when you get hit on the head? Perhaps that allows you to roll with the punch. I don't know. :cool:
Hallucinogens are a diverse group of drugs that alter a person’s awareness of their surroundings as well as their own thoughts and feelings. They are commonly split into two categories: classic hallucinogens (such as LSD) and dissociative drugs (such as PCP). Both types of hallucinogens can cause hallucinations, or sensations and images that seem real though they are not.
Note -- drug addicts and NDE survivors typically wake-up to the same old sh*tty reality as before.But if the effect makes a deep impression, it may lead to changes in lifestyle. Maybe to quit sinning, or to get off the drug.
On this basis it is reasonable to conclude that "what we normally see" is more useful for reasoning about the true nature of reality than what we see on drugs.
https://www.quora.com/If-drugs-can-alter-the-way-we-perceive-reality-how-can-we-be-sure-that-what-we-normally-see-is-the-absolute-reality
I agree with you that language is not suited for the job of fully conveying the experience, at best it can only tiptoe around the border
However they are not necessarily less valid than a physical experience although I understand why one would hold this physical realm to a higher standard than a mental state however the mental states and their experiences may very well be just as real as this physical state it's just that it's not as easy to share with somebody as this state is.
Like I said I've had experiences that make the "real world" feel like a joke where everything felt more real then "reality" and that goes for all of your sense organs and hypothetically speaking what if we are part of an endless amount of realms and we hop through all of them and this is experienced as different dream states and so we wake up in a different realm every time we have a dream. It would be impossible to prove one state as real to the other because well it's different realm so one measuring rod won't stretch far enough to measure the other so to speak. Ps my experiences were drug free Incase anyone was wondering.
Matter is an image of energy. Energy is more real than matter. The material world is an image of real things. Things of the mind and spirit. These are more real than matter.
It was about forty-five years ago when I decided to try Castaneda's simple instructions. They worked the first time, and the experience was astounding. No drugs. To become pure unrestrained will is indescribable. However, picking up a newspaper in this realm I could see the print clearly but could not process the meanings of the words.
We see what we consider physical reality and our minds process what we see or otherwise experience. When the processing is separated from its input the mind becomes very creative. More philosophers should engage rather than only talk. Just my opinion.
Some argue matter and energy have equivalency.
In practical terms they are equivalent but energy precedes matter in the sense that you cannot have matter unless you have energy.