"Illusion is an illusion" is an illusion.

Odradek

Think about it, bro. Like, would there be such things called illusions if there weren't any people for them to be illusions? You can't have an illusion floating around in space by itself. And what's space without human perception of it? Nothing. Therefore, space is an illusion. I'm also using words in a language but animals don't speak languages! Trees and rocks don't have language. Therefore, this whole paragraph is an illusion and illusions are always wrong so I'm wrong about everything. However, you have to perceive me for me to be wrong, so my failure to be correct is an illusion and I'm right about everything.

I'm 35 and never had a skeptical thought in my life until I saw a youtube video and now I'm leaving my girlfriend and job because they're illusion-loving illusions.

Justice4243

It's like solipsism explained through someone who just did a couple bong loads. 

lee4hmz

IlLuSiOnS :o)

Odradek

We really can't trust our senses. But that concept is far older than Descartes. Socrates first made that point. His Theory of the Ideals.

Human senses are objectively limited and distorting.

That's the one drawback of Science. It's at rock bottom rooted in "observable phenomena". And when your very organs of observation are faulty, it makes the whole endeavor compromised and suspect.

That's why Science will never be a replacement for Philosophy. Science is inherently limited. It runs up against the brick wall of the senses. It can stray no further.

That's why so much of theoretical Physics starts to verge into Philosophy. So much of it can't be proven by means of "observable phenomena". When you can't objectively prove things, it lapses into the field of conjecture.

So many things that are presented to people as "facts" can't be proven in a laboratory.

It's a pity science majors aren't forced to study Philosophy (as they were in Antiquity and the Renaissance). Philosophy is a way to train the mind. A muscle-building course.

Without that ability to expand your thought-processes, you'll always be a second-rate scientist.

Take Socrates, for example.

He contradicted Democritus and his theory of atoms (which the whole West would embrace for the next two millennia). Socrates said that all matter was based on mathematical constructs he called "triads". I was reading an article by a Physicist on it. He said that, in the end, Socrates was actually right. His model is closer to what we actually found out several thousand years later than Democritus' now debunked model.

And Socrates arrived at it using the power of his mind.

That's the sad shame about the modern world: We've taken an emphasis off of teaching people how to think. We forget that Science is an offshoot of Philosophy (and not the other way around).

Where Science hits the brick wall of the senses, Philosophy soars over and gets to the truth.

It may take several thousands of years for our technology to catch up to it. But it's amazing that (without the technology) people got to the truth just by using the power of the mind. Like how Ptolemy correctly calculated the circumference of the Earth in Antiquity. No GPS. No fancy modern technology or satellites. Just the power of the mind, and boom: He was right.

Just staggering what human beings are capable of without appliances.

(But, then again, that leaves the nature of reality to geniuses. Appliances are convenient for those who aren't.)

Justice4243

Was that one supposed to be a text dump of an obnoxious internet philosopher? Because I found it to be rather agreeable.  

Odradek

Not all of it is disagreeable to me but it is very hello i am 16 years old and have been studying philosophy for a year and

lee4hmz

Thing is, that branch of physics is called "theoretical" for a reason, and it seems to me that he's saying that because one branch of science is dealing with the unknown means that all science is untrustworthy. For things where the results are measurable, we have peer review and double-blind testing to compensate for our senses' failings.

Previous Calica

I could have sworn Ptolemy actually got the circumference of the Earth wrong, and that Columbus blindly trusting this incorrect calculation is why he thought he could sail from Europe to India easily.

Tachyon

Ptolemy's overestimate was widely believed at the time, but Columbus was using an even worse estimate (this was the reason his plan was so commonly criticized, not due to belief in a flat Earth, which few educated people held even back then).

In any case, Ptolemy's calculations were still based on observation, as were al-Khwarizmi's more-or-less accurate calculations way back in the 9th century.  It wasn't a question of pure speculation.

ProfessorGator

If I recall correctly, legend has it that Columbus's underestimate was 4000 miles. Either I don't recall correctly, or I have to wonder why someone would conclude that when the distance across the world known to the West at that time was clearly longer.

Tachyon

Ptolemy had overestimated the size of Asia, which threw the calculations off further.

Beholder

Short version: Just because something would not exist if there was noone to observe/make/understand it does not mean that, in present circumstances, it doesn't.

Thoughts would not exist if there weren't sapient beings to think them. But sapient beings are there, so thoughts are, too. Illusions would not exist if there weren't people to be fooled by them. But there are, and so illusions are.

It's the same as to claim that the house I live in does not exist because it wouldn't exist if the builders who built it did not exist.