This place sure goes in "spurts"

[Donn]

On Tuesday, 21 July 2009 21:55:07 Peter Garrett wrote:
> Language has limitations, and
> verbosity becomes tedious. ;)
Yes, that's too true.

> "label" everything seems to be common in humans.
Hey, I'm not a "human" I defy that label :D

> What is "real"? Do you see the problem here? Is there a nice comforting
> equation of the form
> reality=something_knowable
Sure, words.. definitions... To me real is exactly something knowable. 
Something that registers on the detectors (senses/sensors), or the side-effects 
of the thing register.That which is not real does not interact with anything 
we know of now -- or we would know of it (at least as an observation.)

> What I was suggesting was that we can't "know" everything - and at some
> point the concept that there are things that are beyond human knowledge
Of course there are such things. What lives under the boulders on the far side 
of the seventh moon of the Ubuntu solar system beyond Gallifrey? We don't 
know!

What I was reacting to is the whole "Feelings (art etc.) are sacrosanct - thou 
shalt not attempt to explain or study them lest we vanish in a spray of mere 
atoms."

It's not easy to understand or to speak about -- but the fact that I can 
create a painting does not lead me to think this is a miracle. I can't put it 
any other way.

> I suppose that's what I meant by a worship of rationality.
I do see your concern. There was a show I saw recently about music and brain 
scans, and Sting was in it. He was shown what his brain was doing (well, what 
the scans showed) while he composed some music. He actually got a little pale 
and said that all the explaining was making him afraid -- afraid that he would 
lose the gift, the ability to compose if he understood what was going on. 

This is a very real fear and I don't know how to mitigate it. for all I know, 
there will indeed come a point when the understanding of our own intimate 
functions will cause us fatal depression. Could be a cool sci-fi plot.

> We are actually getting into some deep philosophical waters here, but
> there are a couple interesting leads to read:
Thanks for the links. I will go expand my horizons. Dunno if my memory will 
keep up though :)

\d