Imaginary things

[Kikker]

Since it comes up on this forum a lot in some way or the other, I decided to make a topic about it.

Mainly people seem disagree about the difference between real and unreal things. It seems fairly simple to distinguish a unreal being like Santa from a real being like the pope. But that's not what the disagreement is about, it seems to me that the disagreement is about imaginary orders, whether they are real or not and what that means. To begin with, an organization is imaginary and to give an example; a government. When searching for something physical to represent a government you will find nothing there. Every single building or person part of a government can't represent it but more importantly when they're all gone a government can still exist as an imaginary organization.

That means government is not real right? Well, it depends, if you just mean that it has no single physical form to point to then yes. But not real doesn't mean it's not important nor easily discarded. A myth in the minds of millions of people becomes real because they will act according to that myth. It's actually observable, if you get a Birdseye view of a government you would be able to see certain behavioral patterns emerge from people believing in a government. Same principle for imaginary orders. Orders being overarching ideas about the workings of the world, for example: Christianity but also communism. The interesting part of imaginary orders is that religions and ideologies have the same origins, they just argue whether the world order is supernatural or natural.

But you could also go closer to reality. Someone on this forum said that a squirrel could see the white house but could never see the government, thus making the government imaginary. The problem is though, that a squirrel can't see the white house and identify it as the white house. It probably can't identify a house in general, making that imaginary too. I would argue that those concepts are indeed imaginary. Let's take a better example, a chair; there is no collection of features you can use the describe all the chairs in the world without classifying a bunch of non-chairs as chairs. However, there can be a decision tree describing every chair in the world without any mis-classification. Better yet, you probably have a similar thing constructed in your brain. Very small animals don't have the ability to do this kind of classification while bigger animals don't have any incentive to waste brain capacity on the classification of chairs. Nevertheless it doesn't make the concept of chairs less imaginary, while any instantiation of chair is very real.

 

Example of a simple decision tree. Notice how the feature Cone has different implications depending on the previous feature(s) identified.

[Mole]

If I understand the decision tree correctly, only the collection of descriptors is something real. Like a spherical green thing is real, but the meaning we give to it, either apple or tennis ball is not real? Maybe it would work for chair, however, something like an apple has very specific descriptors. Perhaps we would say an apple is real but a chair isn't?

You might be interested in semantic network theories. It's a bit different to the decision tree though, because everything kind of has meaning as its own thing. No 'root'. When asked the question 'is a fire engine red?', the concepts fire engine and red are activated in the brains neural network. Because they are in close proximity, the answer comes fast. But if you were asked 'Is a fire engine a vehicle?' it might take you a split second faster to answer.

 

[RichardY]

 

19 hours ago, Kikker said:

Mainly people seem disagree about the difference between real and unreal things. It seems fairly simple to distinguish a unreal being like Santa from a real being like the pope. But that's not what the disagreement is about, it seems to me that the disagreement is about imaginary orders, whether they are real or not and what that means. To begin with, an organization is imaginary and to give an example; a government. When searching for something physical to represent a government you will find nothing there. Every single building or person part of a government can't represent it but more importantly when they're all gone a government can still exist as an imaginary organization.

Interesting that you mentioned Santa and the Pope (archetypal father figures), although I guess they have come up a lot in Stefan's past and present Youtube videos.

Ego consciousness. Egypt for example, the Pharaoh was God, there is no distinction to government. I think for a human being to function, they need basic aprioi bootup instructions. To have consciousness, some level of neuroticism "Winter is coming". Lampreys(look a bit like Gu'ald from Stargate SG1, if you've watched it) are related to humans and I think they have some form of genetic memory or archetype. Apparently a very sweet meat

19 hours ago, Kikker said:

Orders being overarching ideas about the workings of the world, for example: Christianity but also communism. The interesting part of imaginary orders is that religions and ideologies have the same origins, they just argue whether the world order is supernatural or natural.

What's their origin(s)? I think with Christianity, whether the World is natural or super super natural, is besides the point. Metaphysically it seems to me Christianity is pretty fragmented. "There is One God Allah".  The idea being to follow the teachings of Christ and suffer.. or not.... as he suffered(ideally learn). Similar to following the teachings of the Buddha. No pain, no gain. Not so keen, on the pain part. Communism, if only there were some more nice people like uncle Joe. 

21 hours ago, Kikker said:

Let's take a better example, a chair; there is no collection of features you can use the describe all the chairs in the world without classifying a bunch of non-chairs as chairs. However, there can be a decision tree describing every chair in the world without any mis-classification. Better yet, you probably have a similar thing constructed in your brain. Very small animals don't have the ability to do this kind of classification while bigger animals don't have any incentive to waste brain capacity on the classification of chairs. Nevertheless it doesn't make the concept of chairs less imaginary, while any instantiation of chair is very real.

Many people in the 3rd and 2nd world squat to take a dump, no throne room for them, posture wise more healthy, tribal people bigger booty generally. When I was in Norway I heard a story of Somalis shitting on the floor and using the wooden flooring for heating. Chair related to the word Cathedral. I think to comprehend chair, you need to be either highly conscientious to follow cultural norms and order (Germans hyper clean), or neurotic where you compare alternatives and "attempt" to avoid pain. Apparently I sleep walked once to the bathroom, answer questions have at  least a basic level of conversation while asleep.