Originally posted by WrathfulDwarfYeah there are. As Gav pointed out quite decently and you disregarded with silliness (as usual).
You never seen Sesame Street in your life?.....Oh, it's you...nvm.Let's continue...
Imagination and are there limits....anyone?
And I have heard of Oscar the Grouch (through The Office, but nevermind that), I have no idea what "One fine stroke" means or refers to.
Originally posted by Grand-Moff-Gav
Digi, i was reading what you said, would you say imagination is limited by our knowledge. Therefore to expand ones knowledge one is also explaining their ability to imagine new things?
Basically, yeah.
Take an emotion. Any will do. Happiness, maybe. We have the word for it, and we have experiences of happiness, which aren't happiness itself but are manifestations of it. So there's a frame of reference. And the events are the physical, tangible way of representing that feeling, along with the word(s) associated with it. Your lover's face, for example, might be an internal representation of it...part of the meta-language that allows you to understand and imagine happiness. We imagine in symbols, not in literal emotions...we can imagine happiness, but it's an abstract. A collection of words and symbols that we play together, not something that can be understood in pure ethereal form.
Now say you knew the word, but hadn't experienced happiness. You could imagine the word, perhaps its function in a sentence. But you couldn't imagine happiness the emotion. No frame of reference. No knowledge of it. And until that experience occurs, you couldn't spontaneously generate it on your own (i.e. imagine it).
In other words (which re-caps my earlier points) consciousness (and therefore imagination) are only as broad as our language, so long as we interpret language in its broadest sense of symbolic representation, not merely spoken language. Otherwise there is no frame of reference, nothing we can imagine. No "pure" abstract consciousness within us. Then to gain knowledge, experience, words, whatever, is to expand the limits of our consciousness.
So yes, the two are tied together interchangeably imo. Glad you're interested.
🙂
Originally posted by Grand-Moff-Gav
Draw an animal that is totally unique to your imagination- it can't be based on anything you have seen before or have knowledge of.Thus you can't draw a unicorn with a snakehead on its butt- because you have knowledge of those things.
Draw something, totally and utterly new in every respect...
In this exercise your imagination MUST NOT be limited by existing shapes, existing animals in reality or mythology or existing materials.
Originally posted by Mindship
Imagine nothing.
Originally posted by Grand-Moff-Gav** sigh **
...you say imagination is limited by our knowledge. Therefore to expand ones knowledge one is also explaining their ability to imagine new things?
Originally posted by Mindship
I would imagine that if reality is infinite, then human imagination must be infinite, because it will always have something more to play with.
My wife currently teaches grade four students. When she tries to get them to do some creative writing or use their imagination, she continually gets regurgitated ideas of video games, cartoons or t.v. shows.
Every year this seems to be getting more and more prevalent.
So I would think that, currently, ineffectual parenting and corporate marketing are putting limits on the imaginations of children. Interesting to see where this trend leads.
Originally posted by Bardock42Interesting thing about Infinity: it should include limits, otherwise there is something "outside of infinity," in which case it really isn't infinite.
Even if imagination can be "infinite" it doesn't mean that there aren't limits to it.
Originally posted by Grand-Moff-GavI can type mine out faster. 😛
Yours is crap, mines is good.
Originally posted by Mindship
Interesting thing about Infinity: it should include limits, otherwise there is something "outside of infinity," in which case it really isn't infinite.I can type mine out faster. 😛
That's not really correct though. For example take numbers. The Natural Numbers are infinite, yet they have many limits (for example no negative numbers). So, infinity, doesn't imply everythingness or lack of limits.
Which is funny considering the root of the word. Still true though 😐
Originally posted by Bardock42I should've qualified...
That's not really correct though. For example take numbers. The Natural Numbers are infinite, yet they have many limits (for example no negative numbers). So, infinity, doesn't imply everythingness or lack of limits.
Originally posted by MindshipEven assuming that this infinity is a sort of everything exists (which is quite hard to even phrase in words), I still don't think that it means that imagination itself is limited. The existence of such an "infinity" does not mean that our imagination can grasp and conceive of it.
I should've qualified...
In the case of natural numbers, I would call this an example of linear infinity, and what you're saying is true. It's rather one-dimensional ("1, 2, 3..."😉, therefore things can be "outside" of it (eg, neg #s) w/o contradicting its infiniteness. But I was referring to (for lack of a better term) "full-dimensional" infinity.
Originally posted by Bardock42Agreed, and I believe this was my initial point: if (as Digi elucidated) imagination is dependent on inner representation (concrete or symbolic) of our experiences, then an unending supply of experiences would permit an unending supply of what can be imagined (ie, there's more stuff for imagination to play with). Our imagination just might not be infinite in the same sort of way (linear, as opposed to full).
Even assuming that this infinity is a sort of everything exists (which is quite hard to even phrase in words), I still don't think that it means that imagination itself is limited.
It is hard to phrase in words. Let me throw this into the discussion: What does it say about imagination--about human beings--that we are even aware of the idea of infinity, if being unable to actually imagine/envision it?
(Personally, I always found the following to be the closest thing to imagining infinity: the many-worlds hypothesis. To imagine that universes are constantly splitting off from one another everytime any given atom zigs instead of zags...I find my mind just stops dead in its tracks after a second or so of trying).
Originally posted by KharmaDog
My wife currently teaches grade four students. When she tries to get them to do some creative writing or use their imagination, she continually gets regurgitated ideas of video games, cartoons or t.v. shows.Every year this seems to be getting more and more prevalent.
So I would think that, currently, ineffectual parenting and corporate marketing are putting limits on the imaginations of children. Interesting to see where this trend leads.
Agreed.