I love reality as it is, and I also love reality as it isn’t

Assumptions of dualism that don’t hold up under inspection.

A. I know an objective reality, my daily experience, distinct from
B. A subjective reality, your daily experience (if it is different from mine)

Why are the very real weaknesses of this thinking so readily and easily ignored?

It’s simple.

The person who claims A only knows one reality. For them, that is what they call objective. Could be entirely subjective. They haven’t a clue

And they do not recognize the different reality of anyone else as anything but subjective.

They label all the things that make up reality which science has yet to discover as “subjective”.

For them what they believe is objective is objective. Their ‘natural’ reality is all they need, they say, presuming that is an objective reality. What they do not know doesn’t exist in their reality. And the possibility of it therefore cannot exist unless it is labeled subjective.

But that ‘objective’ reality is just their opinion. It’s entirely subjective.

A single new, missing piece of information can entirely reverse their reality. Happens all the time in science.

Knowing nothing else, that have no basis to distinguish their own subjective reality from objective reality. Nor to appreciate the unknown objective reality.

Ignorance is the basis of dualism.

Ford’s ‘Magical Realism’ where he says: “It doesn’t ignore the material. It embraces it with abandon.” would simply be a way of describing what is experienced as amazing, outstanding or a wonder – what Stephen Batchelor calls the ‘everyday sublime’ and as Wittgenstein says the “The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is”. Different terms for describing the wonder and beauty of the world we are presented with. All terms that embrace the feelings we have when trying to comprehend the amazing fact that we are here perceiving this everyday sublime.

Experiencing the everyday, whether that is the external world of objects or the internal world of thoughts, feelings and emotions, is our ever-changing reality. I would think that practically everyone experiences an internal, subjective world and an external, objective world. It would be almost impossible to really look at a cloud or tree and not have a series of thoughts and feelings at the same time.

Unless, of course, when we look around at things, we fail to see them. The experience is then obscured by a series of unrelated thoughts; therefore, we don’t see the sublime realities around us, perhaps resulting in an impoverished experience of the world for ourselves. (Is that what fuels our hopes and beliefs in the supernatural?)

The problem arises when we take the thoughts and feelings generated to be part of objective reality, as when confusing a dream or a brain-altering experience with objective reality. Or, reading stories in the various religious scriptures or of people’s spiritual experiences. Where believed to be an account of reality, it is peculiar only to that person, and to his or her interpretations – as such, it is a subjective view.

Conversely, where the objective world is seen or believed to be vehicles for essences, souls or spirits, then that also, for that person, becomes a subjective view of the objective world.

Finally, yes, Zen must embrace both the objective and subjective world simply because both constitute our realities. If I were to sum up Zen, I would call it ‘the art of keeping things simple’, or, seeing what has been right here all along – reality, before we try to make something of it.

Fowl is just another word for chicken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl_dWH-UU5k

“Most of us have a fairly balanced perspective. We love reality as it is, for us and everybody else. We also love reality as it isn’t, for only ourselves. Maybe this is what Zen is all about, embracing both the objective and subjective aspects of the world in equal measure. But since I’ve never been part of organized Zen practice, I could be wrong about this from the standpoint of “is.” The nice thing is that I’m never wrong about “isn’t,” my subjective life, since I’m the sole experiencer of it.”

Fustian taradiddle.

Why I’m dismissive: University philosophy professors frown on students constantly invoking “Reality” because the term is hopelessly vague. Without clear definitions or distinctions, “Reality” becomes pseudo-profound filler masquerading as insight. Good philosophy demands precision, not grandiose abstractions.

Gurus justly get a lot of criticism for defining reality. But so should amateur philosophers who use this fuzzy term.

I’ve pointed this out here time and time again, but the author completely ignores it and regularly pens essay after essay talking about “Reality.”

Maybe if I run this latest essay through Grok and ask if his philosophical reasoning is sound? What better way to find out if my criticism is apt or off base?

Here we go: Grok, what are the philosophical problems with this essay?

—————–
The essay is a classic example of the kind of mushy, pseudo-profound writing that philosophy professors (and rigorous thinkers) criticize. It gestures at interesting territory — the interplay of shared experience and private inner life — but collapses under several core philosophical problems.

1. Vague and circular use of “reality”

The title and repeated phrases (“I love reality as it is… reality as it isn’t”) treat “reality” as a floating signifier that does too much work without definition. The author acknowledges the need to clarify “is” and “isn’t” but then offers only a loose, personal gloss. This creates the illusion of depth while saying something trivially true: people have both public and private experiences. Serious philosophy demands you pin down what “reality” means (e.g., mind-independent existence? Phenomenal experience? Consensus facts?) rather than using it poetically.

2. Oversimplified and philosophically naive objective/subjective distinctionThe author defines:Objective (“is”) = what multiple people can agree on (consensus).
Subjective (“isn’t”) = what only one person experiences (private).

This is deeply problematic: Consensus is a poor proxy for objectivity. History is full of widespread agreement on falsehoods (e.g., flat Earth, geocentric universe, various moral atrocities). Agreement can be intersubjective without guaranteeing truth or mind-independence.

Many subjective states have objective correlates or causes (emotions arise from brain states; perceptions track external stimuli). Dreams and hallucinations aren’t “outside reality” — they are real mental events.

The distinction ignores centuries of debate in epistemology and philosophy of mind: Kant’s phenomena/noumena, direct vs. indirect realism, the hard problem of consciousness, qualia, the problem of other minds, and debates over whether a clean subjective/objective split even holds (some views treat objectivity as an ideal limit of intersubjectivity, not simple majority agreement).

Calling this “astoundingly obvious” and dismissing the need for philosophical rigor (“won’t win me a philosophy prize”) is a tell: it dodges the hard work.

3. Naïve realism mixed with unexamined dualism

The essay assumes a straightforward “objective view of the world” that everyone shares (e.g., seeing the same letters on a screen) while private “inner speaking” is purely “isn’t.” This reflects naïve (or direct) realism — the commonsense view that we perceive the world exactly as it is — without addressing well-known challenges: perceptual illusions, hallucinations, variability in perception (color blindness, context effects), or arguments from science and philosophy that all experience is mediated by our senses and brains. Even the “objective” part is filtered through subjectivity.

The “is/isn’t” framing also flirts with a crude mind/matter or public/private dualism without exploring how they relate (e.g., does consciousness supervene on physical processes? Is the private truly inaccessible?).4. Lack of argument, engagement, or precision

No real thesis or defense — just personal reflection and anecdotes.

Trivial observations presented as insight (“every person views life through twin lenses”).

Casual dismissal of counterpoints (“I could be wrong… from the standpoint of ‘is'”) while claiming infallibility on the subjective side.

It reduces complex Zen/magical realism ideas to feel-good balance (“embracing both… in equal measure”) without substantive analysis.

This is exactly why professors frown on heavy use of “reality” by students or amateurs: it often masks sloppy thinking with portentous language. The essay isn’t terrible as casual blogging — it’s readable and mildly reflective — but as philosophy, it offers little more than warmed-over common sense dressed in quasi-Zen/spiritual clothing. It says almost nothing that withstands scrutiny and fails to advance, clarify, or resolve any genuine philosophical problem.

In short, it’s harmless personal musing, but it exemplifies the gap between sounding wise and doing actual philosophy: precision, definitions, distinctions, arguments, and engagement with existing ideas.

Sorry, Brian, but none of this works. Not in context of the specifics I’d raised, very clearly, in the last thread.

Ford’s saying here (and I specifically quoted this there, and based my critique around this): “As we live into our Zen lives, as we take up the practices and open ourselves to the mysterious unity of the many parts, things happen. We encounter disruptions of time and space, disruptions of our perceptions of reality. And with those disruptions we discover openings for us into new ways of being.” (…) “What is awakening? It is opening our senses, resting in the mystery, and finding the magical real.”

What things happen, exactly? What disruptions of time and space? What disruptions to our perceptions of reality? What new ways of being? And, in context of that, what awakening, what resting in mystery, and what magical real?

I’m sorry, but all of this detailed and somewhat convoluted defense here in this post, it does not even address my critique, far less actually resolve it.

———-

My specific critique in the previous thread, what I referred to as “Zen bullshyttery”, was specifically about the obscurantism that is endemic in Zen.

Obscurantism is the deliberate use of complex, and/or ambiguous, and/or difficult-to-understand expressions, to express something that can just as well be expressed in simpler, more straightforward terms.

Obscurantism befuddles the understanding of the audience, and fools them into accepting, or at least giving the benefit of the doubt to, what they might have rejected directly and out of hand. That is the whole point of obscurantism, when done deliberately.

Obscurantism is the stock in trade of the poseur and the charlatan. Someone like Deepak Chopra, for instance.

Obscurantism is the obverse of clarity.

Feynman I think it was, who’d said that no matter how complex some specific scientific knowledge, someone who cannot explain it briefly and clearly the essence of it in terms that a reasonably intelligent schoolboy can understand, does not himself understand his subject matter fully.

That’s clarity in expression — explain truly complex things in terms that make for clear understanding.

The complete obverse of that is obscurantism — discuss something in deliberately complex expression that ends up making understanding much more difficult than needs be.

Again: deliberate obscurantism is the go-to of poseurs and charlatans. And this obscurantism is conspicuously endemic in Zen.

———-

None of this is actually a criticism of Zen per se.

(Bypassing all of this, Ron presented me with a clear discussion of what Zen is, which made full sense. Not in context of what Ford had said, but in context of his own understanding of Zen. Which I loved, and took on board, and rephrased myself to make sure I’d got that right. Basis that understanding, Zen itself is perfectly cromulent.)

I said none of this is actually a criticism of Zen, right? In context of your excerpts from Ford, I mean to say? That is because, in order to critique Zen, you need to first understand what he’s saying Zen is. After that you can proceed to examine it, and, like I’d said, either accept it, else reject it, else file it away for further investigation. But absent clarity in understanding of what exactly is being said, that critique simply does not — cannot — happen.

If a discussion of what Zen is, is itself made deliberately convoluted, so that people are left guessing about what on earth you’re trying to say: well then, cogent critique is impossible; and oftentimes the reaction from the audience is to conflate their lack of understanding with some deep wisdom that is beyond their full grasp.

I’m sorry, Brian, but your detailed and convoluted attempted defense of Ford’s obscurantism in this post, it serves as a perfect example of this. I mean, he’s discussing Zen, isn’t he? Why on earth is he making you spend two pages worth of text in order to guess at what he’s saying tjere, when he can directly explain that clearly in just one paragraph?

And again: Much of Zen pronouncements, they’re a textbook example of obscurantism.

———-

One important qualification here:

It could well be that Ford has clearly written about what exactly is Zen, either elsewhere in this book, or maybe elsewhere in some other book/s or paper/s. And that in these excerpts he’s simply waxing poetic about something he’s already discussed elsewhere. Like, someone that’s an expert in relativity, or QM, or evolution, might well one day try to express their inner poet, and compose a poem, or a whole book of poetry, about these subjects; or simply talk loosely about incidental ideas around those subjects. That’s fair enough, that’s a perfectly cromulent thing to do, right?

So, if you’re aware of Ford having done this — of having written clearly about Zen elsewhere, and here simply talking more loosely and poetically about what he’s already detailed elsewhere with clarity — and if you should care to defend those excerpts of his in those terms: why then, that’s a perfectly cromulent defense, assuming it’s true. After all, there’s no reason why Hawking or Sagan shouldn’t try their hand at poetry, or poetic expression, on the subject of cosmology, if they were so inclinded, or Darwin or Dawkins on evolution; and nor is there any reason why we might not enjoy reading up such.

…But that isn’t the defense you’re presenting here, at all, is it?

You’re going to great lengths to “guess” at a whole bunch of this and that and the other thing, and tying yourself up in knots to defend those excerpts from Ford. And in the process completely glossing over something that would have directly leapt on to your attention, had the original exposition itself been based in clarity in the first place: something that seems to have escaped your radar under the weight of Ford’s flowery verbiage, even despite my clearly highlighting it and talking about it: the part about the disruptions in our perception of time and space and reality, and the awakening it leads to.

That’s what is obscurantism. That’s how it befuddles our understanding. That’s what I’ve tried to critique in the previous thread. And that’s my objection to Zen — its endemic obscurantism, the endless obscurantism that flows out every time a Zen “sage” opens his mouth. It’s as if “Thou shalt not ever speak clearly”, and “Thou shalt always speak in riddles, and keep thy audience guessing about what thou meanest” were their two all-important Commandments!

Nah. Let’s not be taken in by this faux-profound bullshyttery.