IV: “Seeming” and “Appearance”

    It probably seems obnoxious how often this thread (and many of my other posts) use the words “seem” and “appear,” and their variants. It's for a few reasons: first, it's how I am the most honest with myself; all I feel I have is how things appear to me. It allows  me to keep any convictions I may have in check. Second it is for consistency of prose in many of my statements. Since I have acknowledged that I do not know, it seems necessary to pay careful attention to the tone I use and the emphasis I have, for that seems to have the ability to effect the receiver of information. Often, people seem to believe things partly as a result of the tone of conviction things are spoken or delivered in. For me to express too much apparent certainty would detract from what I actually mean. Third, to help avoid frivolous contradiction (because most paradoxes have already been permitted), because if I don't know, then saying anything (or maybe most things) in a tone of “knowing” would contradict the prior sort of axiom, by way of logic (an example of an abstract system employed even in skepticism, because one seems to need tools to explore, and skeptical “insights” can apparently be ingrained in its overall “nature” through it's mutability throughout other abstract systems).

This is also why I like conditionals. There's a lot I can say without saying that it's so :twisted: . More often than not, a conditional statement can be identified by it's form. If it starts with “if” or if the statement is split by “if” then it is likely a conditional statement. If a statement has “if” and “then,” then it's even more likely to be a conditional statement. If x, then y, or y, if x, or if x, y. They are contingent upon variables of a situation, otherwise they're just hypothetical . The sentences providing a definition of “conditional statements” are conditional statements. Sometimes “when” can be used to make a conditional. The when may never happen (when pigs fly, hell will freeze over; pigs will probably never “fly” and we don't even know if hell is a real place, and even if it were, if it could “freeze over”), so can also be treated as hypothetical.

I don't seem to be sure if/when I've (or we've) really “gotten” what is. I operate on what seems to appear to be the most  probable within this thing we call “reality.” But I “know” that I don't necessarily know (and being right doesn't solidify that something was known either, just that some prose was considered “right” about a particular context or situation; it could be that what was “right” was just guessed “right”).

Perception conundrum (or paradox, as re-titled by a friend I shared this idea with): If our perspective and perception (perspective being the function of the changing and fluctuating of vantage point of a subject, both physical and conceptual, and perception being the overall function and position from information derived from disparate, but connected, data inputs and internal functions) dictates our reality, then this coupling expresses the same (a dictating of reality) in attempts at objectivity. And if our perception dictates our reality, then how much of our perception is dictated by our perception, i.e. how much of our perception of reality being dictated by such is dictated by perception?

I feel similarly about the translation and interpretation of certain Buddhist and Hindu ideas about everything being “Maya,” an illusion. What does that say about the faculty and function of mind that led to such a conclusion?

Which leads me to the Buddhist saying, “Nothing is as it seems, nor is it otherwise.” 

It seems things seem differently to different people from disparate sense and thought experience, often seemingly unchecked and assimilated by and to the mind.

It also appears that something seems to be missing here, but I don't seem to be sure what...  and this is long overdue, imo, so here ya go.

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