Theme 1: Reflection

So, this week's seminar was cancelled, which makes reflection over it a bit harder (I would guess). But I thought that the theme was generally quite interesting, especially since it touches things I've been thinking about myself from time to time; what is real truth?; are there really any real truths? I do some painting and drawing, and as you develop that that skill you gradually learn that to create something realistic you need to see things for what they actually are. Colors are light and reflection, or the lack thereof. Proportions are just the angle of observation. Simply put, objects do not appear as the symbols we interpret or have learnt them to be. Sense-data gave me a name to the difference between the minds sensing of an object and the actual physical object. And from sense-data it's not a big leap to be thinking about what the actual truth of an object is. Are there really physical objects or just interpretation of them? And when speaking about descriptions passed between people, whether or not the people have acquaintance to the object, can there really be a description that really represents a physical object since every mind interprets it differently. And if every mind that has sensed an object has their own interpretation of it, one could consider the object to actually be multiple objects existing in the minds of different observers. Is the world as every person sense it therefore a world on its own? Does every mind contain their own dimension? Is every man actually his own island?

It would've been interesting to have the actual seminar so that people could have shared their own thought about this subject. Just reading the blog posts with the answers to the questions did not really reflect on what people were thinking themselves, and the seminar probably would've offered a greater insight. It also feels as though I missed a lot of the texts, since I didn't have time to read them all.