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| ISBN-13: | 9781532044854 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | iUniverse, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 04/23/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 196 |
| File size: | 267 KB |
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CHAPTER 1
Perceptions of Reality and Heuristics
At any given moment, a perception of reality is given shape by complex constructs. These constructs can include some or many of the following from this short list of possible ingredients:
• Ideologies: Bodies of doctrines, myths, beliefs, and so forth, that guide individuals, social movements, institutions, social classes, or groups. Ideologies are generally taken to be prescriptive.
• Metaphysics (a subfield of philosophy): A study of the most general features of reality, such as existence, time, the relationship between mind and body, objects, and their properties, wholes and their parts, events, processes, and causations.
• Physical cosmology: The study of the origin, evolution, dynamics, and ultimate fate of the universe and the scientific laws governing these considerations.
• Religious/mythological cosmologies: Bodies of beliefs based on the historical, mythological, religious, and esoteric (i.e., with meaning for only a few) literature and traditions of creation and eschatology, theologies concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the cosmos, such as:
° Hindu cosmology, dated 2000 BC, is cyclical or oscillating, with one cycle of existence being about 311 trillion years and the life of one universe around 8 billion years, including an infinite number of universes at one given time.
° Biblical cosmology, dated with the Genesis creation narrative (c. 500 BC) is based on Babylonian cosmology (c. 3000 BC), with the flat earth floating in infinite waters of chaos.
° Multiversal cosmology. Fakr al-Din al-Razi, a Persian Sunni Muslim theologian and philosopher (1149-1209), submitted the idea that there is an infinite outer space beyond the known world and that God has the power to fill this vacuum with an infinite number of universes.
° Big bang theory (Friedmann-Lemaitre Model), 1927-29. Lemaitre is considered to be the father of the big bang model.
° Eternal inflation, Andrei Linde, 1983. This is a multiverse system, with some expanding into bubble universes supposedly like our entire cosmos.
I'm fortunate to have many unique settings and mentors who brought and bring new shapes to my thinking. At the same time, I make sure that I do not miss the traditional education, resources, and images. I take verbatim notes, sit in the front seats of lecture halls and tour buses, write summaries of each textbook's pages on the margins, and sometimes take on the look of an orthodox, knowledge-filled Lutheran pastor with colorful stoles and chasubles. I even listened intently in grade school to Miss Rowe's teaching out there in the classroom from the confines of the coatroom, standing in there for punishment with cocomedian Scott Harding and a few other classmates following our predictable but class-interruptive behaviors.
But instead of simply hanging out in isolated but admirable places like coatrooms, I love heuristics, a trial-and-error path that leads toward a goal that is not clear.
To live life without a specific direction is quite joyful, for it is full of surprises.
These new adventures are detour routes that are messy and muddy, untidy, cluttered, sloppy, dusty, and bumpy. They are the metaphorical highways of curiosity!
To travel heuristically is to love orange detour signs. As a kid, I was always filled with great joy when orange detour signs would be set up on our family's chosen highways from Minnesota to visit my Detroit uncle and aunt and cousins. Back then the signs were enigmatically lighted by round oil lamps. At dusk, the flames and their smoke introduced a haunting obscurity about the road ahead.
The mysterious adventures of traveling those detours through forgotten little villages with people sitting on their front porches waving at multitudes of newcomers in buses and trucks and automobiles opened whole new worlds to the travelers as well as otherwise-isolated villagers.
I still love detour signs. They invite us to learn in a nondogmatic fashion. Detours encourage learners to explore without the confines of an interstate highway or a global positioning system or back seat drivers. Of course, GPS voices are very mild-mannered, pleasant, patient, and understanding, but I really prefer the two-way conversational one-on-one voices of detour flag women.
The heuristic method is not anti-presuppositional or antitraditional but opens a route of discovery where people are given the tools to learn for themselves even when the detour ends and there is a return to the familiar road. The heuristic method is one of ideas with new and broader horizons.
Ecumenical, interreligious, and pluralistic conversations or thoughts that often occur on the detours can lead to new concepts created by looking at things in novel ways. The heuristic style is also called lateral thinking and sideways thinking.
This valuable variable provokes fresh ideas or changes the frames of reference. Otherwise, more normal logical, vertical thinking simply carries a chosen idea forward.
On a personal level, my sideways thinking is replicated by our daughter, Abby. We enjoy laughing about the ways we think.
One day my wife Linda called my iPhone. I was driving, so at the red light I answered. Sure enough, the conversation spurred me on to sideways thinking and spiced up our consciousnesses.
Linda said, "On your way home, pick up a jar of whole coriander and some fresh thyme." I immediately imagined that this would uniquely cause me to arrive home later than I had planned. Why? Because I would have to meander to find the coriander and it would take even more time to find the thyme.
Vertical thinking tends to be repetitious and boring and robotic. Vertical thinking responses can go like this: Okay. I'll get the coriander and some thyme because the light is green.
CHAPTER 2Where Is Reality? The Philosophies of Sense Perception
Consciousness is given shape by complexities that go beyond ideologies, metaphysics, and cosmologies. There are questions about how mental processes and symbols depend on the world internal and external to the perceiver.
The majority of people on earth wake up each morning and assume existence to be ad infinitum work, play, surroundings, communities, education, nurturing, or mowing one's lawn. One then simply labels all thoughts and all perceptions "life" — and generally life means what one sees, hears, smells, tastes, and touches.
On the other hand, the word philosophy calls attention to speculation. The word comes from philo and sophia, love and wisdom. Philosophy is the love of wisdom, which includes pursuit, inquiry, and study.
When we become cosmically curious and have questions about reality, the field of metaphysics suspiciously wonders about the most basic features of reality, such as existence itself, time, and the relationship between mind and body.
Let's get on the bus! Buckle up! I love buses! I used to drive a ninety-passenger school bus down assumed streets in St. Paul, Minnesota. But now I invite you to board one that travels along metaphorical highways!
Philosophies of sense perception focus on the nature of conscious experience and are contextualized in two different ways. Idealism is the theory that reality is mentally construed, an internal perceptual copy generated by neural processes in the brain. Realism holds that reality, or at least some part of it, exists independently of the brain.
Direct (naïve) realism counters indirect (representational) realism. Indirect realism is the position that our conscious experience is not of the real world external but an internal representation, a tiny virtual reality replica. Both direct and indirect realism acknowledge that there is a world external.
The most common philosophical theory of sense perception is direct (naïve) realism. When people don't recall the science of biology, they take this childish theory into adult life. This theory regards sense perception to be directly of the external world.
Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid (1710-1796) advanced this theory, saying that sensation is composed of a set of data transfers that, in some way, are transparent, allowing a direct connection between perception and the world, a direct naïve realism.
Indirect (representational) realism is much more at home with my thinking. This holds that we can only be aware of external objects by realizing representations.
Over the years I have become comfortable with directly saying that indirect realism is really the way to go.
Again, indirect realism holds that sense perceptions only represent external realities. In somewhat of an amusing way, these representations of the external bring wonderment. Sometimes the representations are freaky and weird; other representations are sophisticated and beautiful. Over the long run, however, we cannot claim that representations of the external are one or the other.
I recall an example of indirect realism from the late 1950s in Altona, Illinois.
Many of us students rode in a school bus, at least a representation of a school bus, which continues to push my funny bone to this day. This thing, represented as a 1951 International with a Wayne Body was mysteriously ... there.
This thing was a forty-two-passenger faded yellow perception. Its suspension springs in the back were too hefty, causing the rear to be maintained about four feet higher than its front. The left front spring was obviously either broken or very weak, causing the whole thing to list to the left.
Its wheels were unusually small, causing the perception of wheel wells to have no relationship to the wheels and having no reason to be. The long exhaust pipe was located at a normal height from the ground, thanks to the longest strap hanger I have ever perceived.
The driver, Carl McClay, was also a Lutheran farmer. I enjoyed Sunday afternoon family drives even more when we would drive by his farm, for he parked this thing near his barn. Just to observe this thing sitting motionless was pleasurable.
Carl was not tall or short. His driver's seat behind an enormous steering wheel was only 2.7 inches off the floor. With difficulty he could peer through the spokes of the steering wheel and have a view of the road ahead through the very lowest portion of the windshield.
It was especially frustrating for him in a heavy rain downpour or snowstorm, for the windshield wipers, suspended on arms attached at the top of the vehicle, were unusually short, leaving the lower portion of the windshield untouched.
To sit in the back seats was comparable to being in the back seats of a movie theater with twenty-first-century stadium seating, and even higher on the extremely elevated right side. It was somewhat frightening to barrel down narrow US Highway 34 at fifty-five miles per hour, especially not being able to see Carl down there in front very near the floor.
This is, by the way, as are all of my stories, cosmically true.
It was also my delight at a younger age to live down the street in Montevideo, Minnesota, from a charter bus driver. He always parked it in front of his house on North Sixth Street. Again, his thing in any realm of direct realism would be questionable.
This item had silver, scroll-like designs on the sides, was too tall for its width, and had the entrance/exit door well behind the front wheel well. But most amazing was the location of the gear shift. It was perceived to be about 4.3 feet long, with a crook in the middle, immediately behind the driver's seat.
I enjoyed watching this act, with the driver trying to look at the street ahead, slightly turned in his seat, attempting to reach the gear shift behind him as he manipulated his feet on the clutch and accelerator.
Montevideo, sister city of Montevideo, Uruguay, is impressive but quite small compared to her South American sister. This explains why she had only one city bus. I will never forget that it was constantly, and I mean constantly, being repaired. In fact, the vertical hood, with license plate, taillights, brake lights, and turn-signal lights that covered the rear-mounted engine, was never shut, saving some time for the mechanics. Of course, the license plate and lights on the opened, horizontally positioned hood could only be seen from the air.
Going back to direct realism and indirect realism, these two are called realist philosophical theories of sense perception because they postulate that there is a world external to the mind. Direct realism says that one's perception of an object is exactly the way the object is out there. Indirect realism contends that the perception of an object out there is brain activity.
These three bus stories indeed favor for me an indirect realism track. Direct realism would support the manufacture or the sale of these things only by saying that, for some odd reason, these three buses out there are monstrosities and that they were sold at night on an unlighted bus lot. On the other hand, indirect realism could optimistically explain that they were sold by a bus salesperson who suggested that, in reality, these buses were possibly much better than they looked.
CHAPTER 3The World of Solipsism
It can be comforting to hear that both direct and indirect realism postulate that there is a world external to the mind, that were sometimes passengers in some kind of thing. But don't sit back in your seat and leave the driving to Carl. Welcome to the world of solipsism.
This is the speculation that nothing can be proven to exist outside one's own mind. The word solipsism comes from the Latin phrase solus ipse, which means "myself alone."
Solipsism denies that houses, cities, buses, newspapers, kids, malls, colleges, pubs, and spouses have a real, independent existence. Instead, they are conceptions in one's mind, much like objects on a movie screen that appear to be real but are just projected. Solipsism says that a mind is the projector in one's theater in which no one else is present and there is a need for only one box of popcorn. Solipsism holds that the entire cosmos and everything in it is created by the subconscious of the individual.
Solipsism can be traced back to Rene Descartes's famous statement, "I think, therefore I am!" This celebrates that one can be sure of her/his own existence because she/ he is thinking and able to be doubting, because thoughts and doubts must have a source. So, can one then be sure that anything else exists? No.
Absolute solipsism is the stance that the mind is the only thing that exists. Trees, the sky, the earth, people, exhaust pipes and mufflers, interstate highways, ants, uncles, ladybugs, gentlemen bugs, and one's own body are perceived by one's subconscious mind.
Philosophical solipsism can become more understood by "us" as we consider the infant's solipsist view of life. An infant human being crawls through unknowns, alone, looking for meaning and connectivity. As an infant matures, solipsism is replaced with the belief that others share an intrinsic experience.
Glimmers of the solipsist perspective do continue to play in adulthood in the religiosity of the status quo. This can be represented with the conviction that only "my God" exists or that gays are an abomination. The addiction to iPhones and texting can also transport one to a solipsist philosophy, denying that signal lights and speed limits and cross-traffic independently exist.
There, of course (duh!), are not many true solipsists. It is curious that the most popular and legitimate solipsist for consideration could be the deity of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These cousin faith traditions claim that the deity creates (his) own world and all the acts in it; therefore, the solipsism philosophy could say that the world, the adherents of the traditions, and all the acts are in the mind of the deity.
CHAPTER 4Taking a Walk Down the Sidewalks and Edge-Thinking
Consideration of these far-out complexities of sense perception are connected to visits all of us seem to make with our optometrists, audiologists, and other health care practitioners who check out our senses.
When we seem to walk down the sidewalks, we do experience the external world mostly through our five senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. The reality is, however, that human beings, dogs, cats, squirrels, gnats, and mosquitos do not perceive the external world in parallel ways. Creatures who have the sense of sight serve as an example.
What one is looking at forms on the back of an eye, and this image is then turned into an electrical signal that is sent to a brain. The brain of a Swede and the brain of a Norwegian elkhound then construct the data in very diverse ways.
In either case, there is no evidence of a real, corporate world. Carried another step, it can be entertained that it goes against common sense to suppose there is a material world, for we have no direct experience of it with any of the senses.
The perception of reality problem continues to this day. The identification of the problem generally goes to Rene Descartes when he asked how the material mind can connect to the assumed material external reality. He ultimately identified the tiny pineal gland as the point of contact between the two.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Cosmically Curious"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Len Jepson.
Excerpted by permission of iUniverse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Preface, ix,
Acknowledgments, xv,
Introduction, xvii,
1 Perceptions of Reality and Heuristics, 1,
2 Where Is Reality? The Philosophies of Sense Perception, 7,
3 The World of Solipsism, 14,
4 Taking a Walk Down the Sidewalks and Edge-Thinking, 17,
5 Bumper Stickers, 25,
6 The Infinite Unknowns, 33,
7 The Mind/Body Connection, 37,
8 The Complexities of Identities and Edge-Thinking, 41,
9 The Limited Scope of Ancient Cosmological Stories, 55,
10 Beliefs and Societal Changes, 61,
11 Worldviews and Radical Openness, 66,
12 Mysticism and Radical Openness, 72,
13 The Spectrum of Spiritualities and Phenomenology, 77,
14 The Cosmic Christ and the First Incarnation?, 87,
15 The Postmodern World, 93,
16 Quantum Theory, 96,
17 The Observer-Created Universe, 103,
18 Postmodern Religion, 106,
19 Postmodern Religion and Nondualistic Thinking, 111,
20 More Nondualistic Connections, 117,
21 Rigidity and Isolation, 122,
22 Introducing and Sustaining Postmodern Religion in America, 129,
23 Worship and the Cloud of the Impossible, 136,
24 Parallel Realities, 154,
Bibliography, 167,
About the Author, 171,