Is Jennifer Aniston Real?

Metaphysics & Epistemology
1

Of course she is. She is an American actor who played Rachel in Friends.

But there is another Jennifer Aniston: the Jennifer Aniston represented in my pattern of neural activity through which I recognize, remember and imagine her. Experiments with so-called “concept cells” have even found individual neurons that respond selectively when a person is shown or thinks about a particular individual.

And then there is a third Jennifer Aniston.

Not the woman herself,and not my neural representation of her, but the “culturally transmitted pattern”: the network of images, names, descriptions, stories, associations and references through which Jennifer Aniston can be represented and communicated between minds.

This Jennifer Aniston isn’t located in any one brain. She is instantiated in brains, photographs, films, books, conversations and other media. Those instances allow the pattern to be transmitted, modified and reconstructed.

So in what sense is this third Jennifer Aniston real?

She is not an additional physical object hiding somewhere behind the photographs and neurons. Yet she is not simply imaginary either. She is a pattern with physical instantiations and real causal effects.

Perhaps, then, reality isn’t restricted to things. Perhaps patterns can be real too.

If Jennifer is real, is love also real?

3

There is no third Jennifer Aniston. What you are calling a “third Jennifer Aniston” in that sentence is, as you said earlier, a “culturally transmitted pattern” of Jennifer Aniston.

4

So you’ve got three Jennifers:

  1. The flesh and bones Jennifer
  2. Your mental image of Jennifer
  3. Various symbols representing Jennifer.

So, let’s talk about what these three types of Jennifer are not:

Jennifer #1 is not your mental image of her nor the words and symbols you use to describe her.
Jennifer #2 is not her flesh and bones nor your representations of her.
Jennifer #3 is not her flesh and bones and is not your mental image of her.

So here’s the question, how can you describe Jennifer #1 if she is the very things not in your mental image? What else could you know of Jennifer #1 if you have no image of her.

Next, how can you know Jennifer #2 if she is neither the actual flesh and bones Jennifer and she is not any of the representations you have of her? How can you say she’s Jennifer at all and how can you speak without symbols?

Finally, how can you know Jennifer #3 if she’s neither the flesh and bones Jennifer and she’s not known through your mental state? If she’s just a raw symbol with no physical or mental image, how can you know what she is?

So, back to square one, who is Jennifer and does it make sense to say who is the real Jennifer versus who are the pseudo-Jennifers?

5

The problem Plato emphasized is how to think about copies.

However one approached the possibility of an original, the copy was less than that; Or, an image made through unverifiable depictions; Or, perhaps there are different kinds of being awake that make copies different from themselves.

6

But empirical concepts like neural activity and concept cells are themselves abstract theoretical interpretations. When we use an empirical model like neuroscience, we are applying an interpretation to explain an interpretation. This could lead to an infinite regress unless we stopped trying to ground concepts on the basis of some supposed more ‘real’ rock-bottom ground.

A concept cell may be correlated with our experience of Jennifer Aniston, but we won’t find the experience there, or. anywhere else beside in the act of having the experience.

Is this a third Aniston, or are these socially shared features already embedded within and implied by my personal experience of her?
In fact, the empirical-neural level of description is also a socially constructed, culturally transmitted pattern.

7

To think about Jennifer doesn’t make her real. It makes the thought real. To publish descriptions of the thought might cause a social pattern? But neither the thought, nor the pattern are ways in which Jennifer exists.

Jennifer exists as a biological phenomenon, whereas Rachel’s existence is constructed from playing the character and talking about it.

8

Neural activity and concept cells are not abstract theoretical interpretations, they are (if they exist) observed phenomena.

9

Observations only get their sense by reference to a pre-existing theoretical model. There is no such thing as a pre-theoretical observation. Wilfred Sellars called the idea of raw, uninterpreted dat the ‘myth of the given’. As google says:

The “Myth of the Given” is the mistaken philosophical idea that basic sensory experiences can justify our beliefs directly without needing any prior concepts, training, or logical proof.

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10

William of Ockham would roll in his grave. Or get out his razor. There is one individual of that name.

The moon is reflected in a million drops of dew.

11

What you have in your mind about her is a mental representation, nothing to do with the real.

As far as I know, the real JA is a living person who is residing in somewhere in USA. To meet the real person, you need to go and see her somewhere in the public venue when she is appearing as a guest or something like that or if there were any fan meeting venue held by her, and shake hands if it is possible or she is willing.

It is doubtful if it would ever happen in reality with the fact her being a super famous public figure and celebrity status, unless you too are the same status.

12

Technically, she’s a simulacrum, by Baudrillard’s definition. Wherein she’s a copy of something that never was. A representation of a real person, but within the descriptions that does not relate back to the original. The composite of Anniston within the cultural collective mind, is a simulacrum in which that composite is, by many, handled as the truth, even though it is related to no truth.

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13

Nietzsche would often allow HIS Zarathustra to overtake him and do the writing for him. He details this in Ecce Homo.

Hence…

“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”

It was on these two roads that all Zarathustra came to me, above all, Zarathustra himself as a type—I ought rather to say that it was on these walks that he waylaid me…Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If one had the smallest vestige of superstition left in one, it would hardly be possible completely to set aside the idea that one is the mere incarnation, mouthpiece, or medium of an almighty power. The idea of revelation, in the sense that something which profoundly convulses and upsets one becomes suddenly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy—describes the simple fact. One hears—one does not seek; one takes—one does not ask who gives: a thought suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes with necessity, without faltering—I have never had any choice in the matter.

14

Thanks everyone for commenting.

I think what I am concluding is that the flesh and blood Jennifer Aniston is real.

The others are real only according to a particular definition of the term. What probably matters for philosophy is whether they are causually effectacious. I will return to that at the end.

@hanover The flesh amd blood Jennifer will be slightly offended to hear that she may not exist and that confirmation is only obtained when you have experienced her.

@Hanover @Paine @Joshs provide us with a number of rather laboured attempts to turn this into a conversation about metaphysical idealism. I think the issues are covered in other threads and I won’t respond to them here.

Turning to the subject of concept cells. I agree that the term “real” confuses the issue. Concept cells are real but they are not the real Jennifer Aniston.

Indeed.

There is a risk as Wittgenstien would have noted that all this becomes an argument about the use of the word real. I will try to avoid that

I think that the nature of neurons is partly influenced by gene culture co-evolution but they are ontologically different from culturally transmitted patterns.
Or are they. I will think further.

Onto the the third Jennifer.

The photo of Jennifer that I posted here has disappeared. Perhaps it was never real… or perhaps the moderators removed it.

I am slightly bemused when @Wayfarer lectures me on Occam’s Razor and fiction. It seems that we can have a transcendent gods but not emergent properties.
But I will happily concede that there is only one Jennifer Aniston. She lives in LA not inside my head.

Mmmm thats beyond me. I am not saying its wrong but I don’t find it sufficient clear to be useful. Thats Baudrillard’s lack of clarity not yours Christoffer.

Yes, Neitzche characterisation is interesting.

So some concepts have efficacy. They exist only in our heads and within neurons. But their effect is given form by the information they contain.

If things have effect, we must be careful not simply to dismiss them as unreal. We need to say why we think they have no effect.

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15

It’s like is (insert your own name here) real? Why can’t I be “Kit” or “so and so”? But obviously there is no shared stimulus of nerve endings and many other factors like previous memories that alter current perceptions etc etc as the famous Jennifer Aniston… but Nietzsche details the Typus as something hereditary. But that genius within that typus is always earned…

The short duration of beauty, of genius, of the Cæsar, is sui generis: such things are not hereditary. The type is inherited, there is nothing extreme or particularly “happy” about a type——It is not a case of a particular fate, or of the “evil will” of Nature, but merely of the concept “superior type”: the higher type is an example of an incomparably greater degree of complexity a greater sum of co-ordinated elements: but on this account disintegration becomes a thousand times more threatening. “Genius” is the sublimest machine in existence—hence it is the most fragile.

16

Again you are confusing observations with what is observed. Neural activity and concept cells (if they exist) are not observations, they are what is observed.

17

Right, they are objects of observation. And these objects are not interpretation-neutral. Their very status as empirical object depends on conceptual interpretation.

18

But in neoplatonism and the Grand Tradition, the transcendent is not an existent or a kind of entity or thing. It’s a difficult point to understand or articulate, but something like it can be conveyed with the hologram analogy. If you take a photograph and cut it into pieces, you have fragments of the image in each piece. However when a holographic image is divided, each piece still contains the whole image albeit at a lower resolution. But there still just one.

19

I love your posts. They are always clear and measured. I just don’t agree with them.

Thats not to claim I know everything I need. I am unclear as to how a pattern like a community or a commitment to truth can appear to exist without having physical form. How we can describe an obligation or a relationships as real in the absence of a single agent or a physical manifestation. The question in the OP is therefore an honest one.

I just dont think Plato is going to help.

20

Given our shared cultural situation, that is quite understandable.

21

Thanks for your contributions. Heres a litle story to conclude-

For my birthday, my friends gave me a very special present.

When they gave it to me they explained that I will not be able to see it.

It exists outside time and space.

I cannot see it, measure it, or hear it.

Nevertheless, it is mine to keep.

I’m loving it - hoping I can have another one for Christmas.