Does reality really exist?

So what's really going on?

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GreatandWiseTrixie
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by GreatandWiseTrixie »

Creation is a proximity based on the distance to conscious complexity.

When you draw on a paper it is said "you create something" because the action is very near to your inner mechanism of action. When an apple falls on you, it is said "it just happens" even though the action was also created by you in not so many words. Hadn't you moved there, you would have never seen the apple fall on you. You created the event, you created the scene, you created the picture. But you did not create, only participated in it's transformation.
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hammock
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by hammock »

Philosophy Explorer wrote:For example, with an apple, I can see it, feel it, taste it and smell it. But if I'm dreaming or under hypnosis or drug induced, the apple then isn't real. And being awake may not matter if the apple is an illusion or if my senses are altered to create that apple. So does reality really exist? When can we trust our senses with 100% reassurance?
A reality is any well-regulated continuum of experiences that you spend all or most of your life in, which other beings report and behave as if they are likewise sharing / experiencing along with you. It should defy obeying your own will or wishes. That its self-governance outruns your own subjectivity and that of others is what makes it objective, not metaphysical reifications / hypotheses which can't be satisfactorily validated.

In essence, if it hangs together effectively enough to convince you to respect or fear it over the long haul, then that's your litmus test for that extrospective environment warranting real status. Whether or not such is ultimately the case is irrelevant. For if you disappear after death obviously nothing will be answered certainty-wise; and if you persist in a different phenomenal continuum after death, then whatever angels / devils greet you to attest that you've finally made it to the "truly truly real world" can later turn out to be just as much full of #### as the authoritative sages of the former reality were.
Ernst Tugendhat wrote: The desire to be on sure ground is the relict of an authoritarian frame of mind. It's a relict of those times when people believed they would receive all that is essential through revelation from the Gods. ["The Time For Philosophising Is Over"; Die Tageszeitung, July 28, 2007]
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GreatandWiseTrixie
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by GreatandWiseTrixie »

hammock wrote: A reality is any well-regulated continuum of experiences that you spend all or most of your life in, which other beings report and behave as if they are likewise sharing / experiencing along with you. It should defy obeying your own will or wishes. That its self-governance outruns your own subjectivity and that of others is what makes it objective, not metaphysical reifications / hypotheses which can't be satisfactorily validated.

In essence, if it hangs together effectively enough to convince you to respect or fear it over the long haul, then that's your litmus test for that extrospective environment warranting real status. Whether or not such is ultimately the case is irrelevant. For if you disappear after death obviously nothing will be answered certainty-wise; and if you persist in a different phenomenal continuum after death, then whatever angels / devils greet you to attest that you've finally made it to the "truly truly real world" can later turn out to be just as much full of #### as the authoritative sages of the former reality were.
yep
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RG1
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by RG1 »

Philosophy Explorer wrote:So does reality really exist?
Who cares? Since we can never see beyond the (illusionary) reality that we 'perceive', why should we even care about the 'real' reality? Why care what's on the other side of the wall? We are trapped on this side! Live within your illusions (...that's all we can do anyways!).

Anything that we perceive is just a perception.
Last edited by RG1 on Thu May 28, 2015 10:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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RG1
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by RG1 »

Philosophy Explorer wrote:When can we trust our senses with 100% reassurance?
Never. Our awareness (i.e. sensory experiences) are on this side of the wall. Just because awareness exists, does not mean this awareness is a true representation of something ‘out there’. We are not privy to what is ‘out there’, but instead, only to the ‘experience’ of this awareness. It is only through 'pure speculation' that we connect that which we sense/perceive to an object/thing that is (really) real. There is no logical basis to connect the perception (illusion) to the reality. Those that make such a connective claim, do so merely to satisfy some need/desire (...imo), and not via logic.
Obvious Leo
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by Obvious Leo »

RG1 wrote:
Philosophy Explorer wrote:When can we trust our senses with 100% reassurance?
Never. Our awareness (i.e. sensory experiences) are on this side of the wall. Just because awareness exists, does not mean this awareness is a true representation of something ‘out there’. We are not privy to what is ‘out there’, but instead, only to the ‘experience’ of this awareness. It is only through 'pure speculation' that we connect that which we sense/perceive to an object/thing that is (really) real. There is no logical basis to connect the perception (illusion) to the reality. Those that make such a connective claim, do so merely to satisfy some need/desire (...imo), and not via logic.
A simply worded Kantian perspective which pretty much says it all. We instinctively assume that the "objects" represented to our senses determine our cognition of them but in fact the exact opposite is true. Its is our cognition of the "objects" which define the objects for what they are. The apple is only an apple because that's what we've all agreed to call it but its "apple-ness" is not a property of the physical world. We instinctively assume that we see with our eyes but this is also a flawed intuition. We see with our minds.

It was once thought that human infants were born blind but this has now been shown not to be the case. Human infants are not born blind but they are born without the ability to see. They gradually learn this skill in the first 6-12 months of their lives but nothing much changes in the visual hardware of their eyes. Almost from birth their eyes can detect the same visual data as an adult can but they literally have to learn how to cognitively construct this data into a meaningful representation of their external environment. A baby needs to LEARN to see an apple.
van Keister
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by van Keister »

Reality is a construct, human construct in that man is the measure of all things.
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Greta
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by Greta »

In short, reality would seem to "really exist" but the nature of that reality is only partially known.

Leo's apple (LTNS Leo!) exists and its "appleness" can be experienced or perceived in numerous ways. After all, you get apples the end of stalks of apple trees as opposed to plums, boulders or reality show contestants. So I suggest that there is an intrinsic "appleness" of which we limited mammals perceive only a tiny subset.

For instance, apple maggots and the coddling moth larvae will have their own very different perceptions of apples and "appleness". Ditto microbes. The apple tree itself has an entirely different relationship with the fruits again.
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Rumours of my death have been grossly exaggerated, Greta, when I merely sought asylum from the religious zealots and the boot-heel of authority descending from the thought police protecting them. Life and work proceed in an orderly and meaningful fashion as always and the garden is once again becoming warm enough for its seasonal weed growth, so I've been a busy bloke.
Greta wrote:In short, reality would seem to "really exist" but the nature of that reality is only partially known.
I think it's probably more precise to say that the appleness of the apple can only be partially specified rather than to suggest that it can only be partially known and that the nature of this partial specification depends on which aspect of the apple the observer is interrogating. The QM geeks get into the same problem with wave-particle duality because when they're trying to fix the location of their particle they see a particle and when they're trying to determine its momentum they see a wave. The astonishing thing about this is that anybody reckons there's anything astonishing about this. Minkowski really led Heisenberg up the garden path big-time.
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Greta
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by Greta »

Obvious Leo wrote:Rumours of my death have been grossly exaggerated, Greta, when I merely sought asylum from the religious zealots and the boot-heel of authority descending from the thought police protecting them. Life and work proceed in an orderly and meaningful fashion as always and the garden is once again becoming warm enough for its seasonal weed growth, so I've been a busy bloke.
I've been lurking for a while and seen you here:) Most of the theists and spruikers of pet hypotheses also fled after The Moderation Firestorm. Unfortunately so did the most scientifically literate, so my learning curve on that forum slowed. There's a new member who I resonate well with because we share the view that everyone is probably wrong about everything. A civilisation a million years more advanced than ours would surely use models of reality that we would find unrecognisable.

When I point this out the hoped-for sobering effect never occurs. Like every generation we labour under the delusions that there's natural limits as to what can be known and that we are almost there.

My garden's being overrun with clover. I'm feeding the lawn and garden beds to help the grasses compete without poisons but it's like spitting at a bushfire. I spent most of my life (like an increasing number of people) immersed in anthropocentric illusions and basically saw plants as objects, resources or "nurture toys". Like many, I deluded myself that plants were peaceful and relaxing things as they aggressively jostle and strangle each other in slow motion as they compete for the best sunbathing spots.
In short, reality would seem to "really exist" but the nature of that reality is only partially known.
Obvious Leo wrote:I think it's probably more precise to say that the appleness of the apple can only be partially specified rather than to suggest that it can only be partially known and that the nature of this partial specification depends on which aspect of the apple the observer is interrogating. The QM geeks get into the same problem with wave-particle duality because when they're trying to fix the location of their particle they see a particle and when they're trying to determine its momentum they see a wave. The astonishing thing about this is that anybody reckons there's anything astonishing about this. Minkowski really led Heisenberg up the garden path big-time.
Yes, in context more "specified" than "known" but, in hindsight, the "appleness" can only be partially known too, as per Nagle. We'll never fully understand the relational connections that grubs have with an apple, which acts as a womb and first home for them.

Physicists try to explain how "observation" of quantum phenomena doesn't actually mean a human looking at the entities but an instrument making an automatic measurement, as though it renders the observation problem non-spooky. They are seemingly loo limited by the agenda of their specialty to think of "consciousness" as not a separate "spooky" phenomenon to be explained away with Dennettesque rationalism but a subset of the larger phenomena of general reactivity and responsiveness, be it gravity at cosmic scales, machines interacting with quanta via photons or the interactions of what we currently define as life.

So at present the Standard Model has been effectively rendered immutable by its predictive efficacy and the fact that physicists are unable to professionally move beyond their professional brief. Unexplained spookiness is attempted to be shoehorned into the model (not miles from theists trying to shoehorn new discoveries into their models). In time the Standard Model will go the way of Newton's laws - an important predictive device in certain domains but not reality per se. Or it may be entirely replaced by deeper principles.
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Greta wrote: Unfortunately so did the most scientifically literate,
My feeling was that scientific literacy was an undervalued commodity at OPC, which was rather disappointing. There were quite a few members with some genuinely significant contributions to make on matters of science and more than a few with a keen interest in reading them. Like you, I've noticed that almost all have fled in horror.
Greta wrote:A civilisation a million years more advanced than ours would surely use models of reality that we would find unrecognisable.
I suspect you're being somewhat pessimistic with this view. My own prediction is that this will occur within a generation and perhaps even within a decade. The current models of physics are dead and buried and are merely awaiting a decent burial. Already the buzzards are circling and many of the new generation of theorists have lost all patience with the eternal verities which have stalled their progress for a century. A few of them are even openly defying their masters to suggest that sacking the philosophers may have been somewhat premature.
Greta wrote:My garden's being overrun with clover. I'm feeding the lawn and garden beds to help the grasses compete without poisons but it's like spitting at a bushfire.
I know the feeling. Unfortunately your clover will love the feed as much as your grasses will and for broadleaf weeds the only remedy is on hands and knees across the surface with a sharp flat knife. A light top-dress and over-sowing in the autumn is probably your best option (after the weeds are out, alas.)

Greta wrote:Physicists try to explain how "observation" of quantum phenomena doesn't actually mean a human looking at the entities but an instrument making an automatic measurement, as though it renders the observation problem non-spooky. They are seemingly loo limited by the agenda of their specialty to think of "consciousness" as not a separate "spooky" phenomenon to be explained away with Dennettesque rationalism but a subset of the larger phenomena of general reactivity and responsiveness, be it gravity at cosmic scales, machines interacting with quanta via photons or the interactions of what we currently define as life.
YES. For some reason physicists seem to think that detecting a particle on a screen is in some way a more "objective" observation than eyeballing the thing directly but this is simply nonsense. Experiments are set up to test a prediction and a prediction can only reflect the narrative of the observer, not reality as she is being enacted. The worm in the apple will not be testing his prediction about the behaviour of the apple by using the same experiment as the orchardist growing it for commercial consumption because each of these observers is asking a totally different question of his apple.

Einstein understood this very well when he said this

"It is the THEORY which determines what the observer will observe"....Albert Einstein

and this:

"Mathematics can be used to prove ANYTHING"....Albert Einstein.

The pioneers of the quantum theory in the early part of the 20th century ALL understood this perfectly well and it was only considerably later that the geeks decided that the universe could only be understood in the language of mathematics. They got this badly wrong because what they should have said was that their models of the universe could only be understood in the language of mathematics and ever since then they've conflated their map with their territory. This, too, a paraphrase from the great man:

"We should never forget that spacetime is NOT a physical model of reality but a mathematical representation of a physical model of reality"...Albert Einstein.
Greta wrote: So at present the Standard Model has been effectively rendered immutable by its predictive efficacy and the fact that physicists are unable to professionally move beyond their professional brief.
Correct. They can't move beyond the SM because of its own inherent theoretical framework. It is inextricably interwoven into SR and SR is a model which specifically excludes gravity. They actually know what the limitation is but simply can't see how to move beyond it and bring the SM into line with GR. As I've said time and again, Greta, they're overlooking the elephant in the room. Their continuum of time and space is an observer effect and the truth of GR is hidden in plain sight. The ding und sich is the continuum of time and gravity and entanglement is the proof of it.
Greta wrote: Or it may be entirely replaced by deeper principles.
Deeper and far simpler principles. Maybe somebody will realise that the universe is exactly what it appears to be. An EVENT.
Dubious
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by Dubious »

Obvious Leo wrote:Maybe somebody will realise that the universe is exactly what it appears to be. An EVENT.
...and you're back to square one trying to figure out what caused it. If it's an "EVENT" seemingly without cause, it defaults into an act of God which requires no further definition. It is what it is meaning an IS that cannot be deconstructed. Your use of the term would seem to preempt the necessity for any further questions but it may be that you defined the term more analytically elsewhere and I simply missed it.
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Dubious wrote:
Obvious Leo wrote:Maybe somebody will realise that the universe is exactly what it appears to be. An EVENT.
...and you're back to square one trying to figure out what caused it. If it's an "EVENT" seemingly without cause, it defaults into an act of God which requires no further definition. It is what it is meaning an IS that cannot be deconstructed. Your use of the term would seem to preempt the necessity for any further questions but it may be that you defined the term more analytically elsewhere and I simply missed it.
I have indeed defined the term a lot more analytically elsewhere but in a nutshell my basic premise is that the universe is an eternal event and thus self-causal. More specifically I define it as a Universal Turing Machine, the cyclical and eternal reality maker which programmes its own input. Such a paradigm removes the metaphysically absurd notion of a "first cause" from consideration as well as removing the need for a creator entity on the grounds of Occam economy. That which is unnecessary cannot be.
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Greta
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by Greta »

Obvious Leo wrote:My feeling was that scientific literacy was an undervalued commodity at OPC, which was rather disappointing. There were quite a few members with some genuinely significant contributions to make on matters of science and more than a few with a keen interest in reading them. Like you, I've noticed that almost all have fled in horror.
Currently we are batting around speculative ideas which I'm finding most enjoyable (and of course a serial perpetrator). Most of the mad fundies have left, which is helpful.
Greta wrote:A civilisation a million years more advanced than ours would surely use models of reality that we would find unrecognisable.
Obvious Leo wrote:I suspect you're being somewhat pessimistic with this view. My own prediction is that this will occur within a generation and perhaps even within a decade. The current models of physics are dead and buried and are merely awaiting a decent burial. Already the buzzards are circling and many of the new generation of theorists have lost all patience with the eternal verities which have stalled their progress for a century. A few of them are even openly defying their masters to suggest that sacking the philosophers may have been somewhat premature.
A million years was a risk management figure. Whatever, we agree that the current models are clearly only formative, despite Stephen Hawking's rash claim that philosophy is dead.
Obvious Leo wrote:I know the feeling. Unfortunately your clover will love the feed as much as your grasses will and for broadleaf weeds the only remedy is on hands and knees across the surface with a sharp flat knife. A light top-dress and over-sowing in the autumn is probably your best option (after the weeds are out, alas.)
I've relented and resorted to poison. Disappointing to have to poison the garden but if I tried digging the blighters out my boobs would be down to my knees by the time I finished.
Greta wrote:Physicists try to explain how "observation" of quantum phenomena doesn't actually mean a human looking at the entities but an instrument making an automatic measurement, as though it renders the observation problem non-spooky. They are seemingly loo limited by the agenda of their specialty to think of "consciousness" as not a separate "spooky" phenomenon to be explained away with Dennettesque rationalism but a subset of the larger phenomena of general reactivity and responsiveness, be it gravity at cosmic scales, machines interacting with quanta via photons or the interactions of what we currently define as life.
Obvious Leo wrote:YES. For some reason physicists seem to think that detecting a particle on a screen is in some way a more "objective" observation than eyeballing the thing directly but this is simply nonsense. Experiments are set up to test a prediction and a prediction can only reflect the narrative of the observer, not reality as she is being enacted. The worm in the apple will not be testing his prediction about the behaviour of the apple by using the same experiment as the orchardist growing it for commercial consumption because each of these observers is asking a totally different question of his apple.

Einstein understood this very well when he said this

"It is the THEORY which determines what the observer will observe"....Albert Einstein

and this:

"Mathematics can be used to prove ANYTHING"....Albert Einstein.

The pioneers of the quantum theory in the early part of the 20th century ALL understood this perfectly well and it was only considerably later that the geeks decided that the universe could only be understood in the language of mathematics. They got this badly wrong because what they should have said was that their models of the universe could only be understood in the language of mathematics and ever since then they've conflated their map with their territory.
I think they have been thrown by the speculative claims about consciousness and seem so determined to keep a lid on it that they ignore the, well, bloody obvious.

My latest idea in this area is that what we call consciousness is simply part of a broader spectrum of reactivity, just as visible light is the visible part of the EM spectrum. Everything reacts to some extent, but when the reactions are at a certain level of sophistication then we call it "consciousness". So, quanta are reacting to all sorts of things because reactivity is everywhere but we and our machines observe them in a particular way and then we say that that's reality.
Obvious Leo wrote:As I've said time and again, Greta, they're overlooking the elephant in the room. Their continuum of time and space is an observer effect and the truth of GR is hidden in plain sight. The ding und sich is the continuum of time and gravity and entanglement is the proof of it.
Struggling to keep up with this, but I agree that entanglement suggests that there's more (or less) to the concept of space than meets the eye.
Obvious Leo wrote:Deeper and far simpler principles. Maybe somebody will realise that the universe is exactly what it appears to be. An EVENT.
Although it's also a thing - a constantly changing thing.
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Re: Does reality really exist?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Greta wrote:despite Stephen Hawking's rash claim that philosophy is dead.
"Well... they would say that, wouldn't they?"...Mandy Rice-Davies.
Greta wrote:if I tried digging the blighters out my boobs would be down to my knees by the time I finished.
Gravity...the great leveller.
Greta wrote: I think they have been thrown by the speculative claims about consciousness
Physicists are notoriously suspicious of physical phenomena which they can't study by accelerating very small entities to ludicrously fast speeds in absurdly expensive particle accelerators. It's just the same old boys and toys shit.
Greta wrote:I agree that entanglement suggests that there's more (or less) to the concept of space than meets the eye.
Spooky action at a distance is hardly a trivial inconvenience, Greta. Albert Einstein never had another decent night's sleep for the rest of his life after he found out about it.
Greta wrote: Although it's also a thing
I've made a note of this for further consideration in due course. The universe is a thing. Right.
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