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What is "reality"?

Suppose you were sitting outside at a cafe in the Univerisity's botanical garden one sunny day, enjoying the landscape, watching the birds, drinking some tea while and generally just pleasantly relaxing. A few tables away, you are aware of a conversation between two academics. You hear one of them (who is a professor) announce with a german accent "...and THAT is reality."

Soon, the professor's guest will leaves and the professor walks by your table to order more coffee, nodding as he passes. As you are the only two guests left, you begin to wonder if the professor will join you on his way back, and put the question to you: "What is reality?"

You have a few minutes to prepare your answer...
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Cluskitt
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It's the collection of all your perceptions and the inferences you make from them. Perceptions being all the inputs you receive through your varied senses and inferences the way in which you link all those inputs to form an idea.
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I disagree. Your reality can involve things that aren't true. Delusional patients are a good example of that. Just like hallucinations.
I think then we really ought to define what reality we're talking about here, because we've already come at two separate definitions.  What I was answering was absolute reality, from "God's" view if you know what I mean.  You were defining an individuals reality, which isn't necessarily true reality.
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Cluskitt, it seems you're saying that reality is relative, or rather, that reality is different for each of us. However, it seems wrong to say that things that aren't true can be one's own to reality. For example, I may believe that NASA put men on the moon, or I might instead believe in a conspiracy theory that maintains that the lunar expeditions were all an elaborate hoax. Often we hear people say "get real" or in "you don't understand reality". There seems to be a reference to truth implicit in the word "reality".

Raterus's definition seems more in line with a definition of reality, in that it implies that our thinking is in-line with truth, or some kind of objective reality.

So we have a subjective reality, in which dreams, delusions and conspiracy theories are real; and some kind of objective reality in which they are not.

A simple demonstration could be a perceived snake in the grass at the Botanical garden.  We could see it, think it is a snake, and avoid it. Or we could look more closely and see that it was just part of a hose pipe.

What was real about the "snake" and what was real about the hose pipe?
I think that's the whole point, though :)

After all, if you assume reality from "God's" view, you also have to assume truth in the same way, meaning that truth and reality are similar notions. If you assume them from an individual standpoint, they also assume similar notions, as they would be dependent on perceptions.

Basically, "absolute reality" is as hard to qualify as "relative reality". For the purposes of this debate, I would think it would be irrelevant which you discuss, as both would have to assume the same process, except "God's" would be all-knowing and perfect while ours would be flawed.
Jason, if you think you see a snake in the garden, and avoid it, the reality, insofar as you're concerned, is that there's a snake in the garden. From God's point of view, the reality is that there isn't one. Both are inflexible and immutable.

Descartes, for example, takes it to an extreme, doubting everything around him. He claims an evil entity created the whole world just to trick him. He then arrives at his "I think therefore I am". However, who's to say he isn't right? Maybe everything around you is false, like in the matrix.

The only way you have to assert reality is by your own perceptions of it and the inferences you make of it. There is no possible way for a human being to know what the absolute reality or absolute truth is. Everything you conceive is based on the sum of your perceptions and inferences since you were born. If your perceptions and inferences were flawed, so will your reality be. Therefore, you can never define absolute reality, because you don't have absolute perceptions.
There is no possible way for a human being to know what the absolute reality or absolute truth is. Everything you conceive is based on the sum of your perceptions and inferences since you were born.
But still, it is a hose pipe, and not a snake, regardless of what I may perceive or imagine. One is more real than the other. To call the perception of a snake "reality" seems wrong. Ther error is that one has an idea of a snake which one matches to a perception, erroneously. For me, this cannot be reality -- instead this seems to be the very definition of illusion. Otherwise, I could just say, whatever I believe is real.

What I want to understand from you is what is what aspect is real about the peception of the snake? Where does truth come in?
Who's to say that the hose is really a hose? A hose is as real as a snake in terms of absolute terms from our flawed point of view. You perceive that a hose is actually real, but you can never know in absolute terms.

What you're trying to ascertain is how can you define what reality is from a point of view shared by the majority of human beings. And that is basically a sum of perceptions and inferences averaged throughout the population. Most people would see a hose as the real reality, instead of a snake. And that's what you want to define.

However, reality as an absolute concept, is undefinable by human beings.
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>>Where does truth come in?

There's in fact no such thing. Our language only turns one term into another.  We describe something as red (rot, rouge) only because we have learnt at one time to associate that word with that colour, or roughly with things whose wavelengths are in that area. To most of us a particular colour red is the same, since we are built of the same basic blocks. Only on the boundaries of a particular colour will variations turn up - that's not red it's orange. Thus redness gains a universallity, and hence a "truthness", since most if not almost all people will say - that is red. But if you ask somebody to describe what red is, they'd be stuck without the aid of something which was red. The best they could possibly do is to show things which are not red and describe red therefore negatively.

Our language is nothing more than a sort of rewrite system. taking things to understand and translating them into previous experiences, abstract or concrete it doesn't matter. Thus we were once told that Napoleon was the Emporer of France. We have never ever met him. We are shown pictures of him - not photographs - and assume that he looked like that. We assume then that the phrase "Napoleon was the Emporer of France" is TRUE, although the pictures could have easily have been from Jean Duval (France's Joe the Plumber). Of course what we really mean by TRUE is that Napoleon was the Emporer to a very high degree of probability. That is that the probability of all other options, surrounding Napoleaon not being the Emporer of France, are so low that we can safely dismiss them, particularly if we are taking a history examination.

>>Otherwise, I could just say, whatever I believe is real.

I think what you actually mean is "Whatever I experience is real"
BigRat: Angela Merkel remaining Chancellor until 2013 is NOT a fact and is NOT unavoidable. Many things can happen which prevent that, like a civil war or her death.

Also, and again we come to the perceived reality issue, I can never be 100% sure that she actually IS the chancellor. Maybe someone else is chancellor and they're saying to the rest of the world (or even just to me) that she's the chancellor.

People can't fly. That's a fact. Meaning, that's what the majority of people believe. However, I can never be sure of that in an absolute term. Maybe everyone flies except for me, but everyone pretends they don't around me for sympathy.

This goes beyond mere language. This is about being able to trust your own perceptions. Can you be sure that what you see or hear is real? In absolute terms?
>>Angela Merkel remaining Chancellor until 2013 is NOT a fact and is NOT unavoidable.

I didn't say it was. I just said that the Germans use the expression in that way, and since the professor was German he might have meant it that way.

>>This goes beyond mere language

It does not, for language is the basis of all utterances. Take this :-

     "People can't fly. That's a fact. Meaning, that's what the majority of people believe"

The only way you can ascertain what the majority of people believe is to ask them. The very fact of forming the question requires language.

>>In absolute terms?

There are no absolute terms. The very concept does not fit into our experiences and hence it is not real. Absolute terms would require a position on which all would agree at all times. It would have to be something which not only is in every human's experience but beyond that. Since both are impossible there are no absolute terms.

>>It does not, for language is the basis of all utterances. Take this :-

     "People can't fly. That's a fact. Meaning, that's what the majority of people believe"

The only way you can ascertain what the majority of people believe is to ask them. The very fact of forming the question requires language. <<

Actually, you don't need to use language. You can use your own observations. You never see anyone fly, thus, people can't fly. However, maybe people just don't fly around you. Language is required to share and learn from other's realities. To form your own, you don't need any language at all. In fact, not having any language becomes part of your reality.
Who's to say that the hose is really a hose? A hose is as real as a snake in terms of absolute terms from our flawed point of view. You perceive that a hose is actually real, but you can never know in absolute terms.
What do you mean by "absolute" terms? Can we even speak about  "absolute" terms? There are no absolute terms.

You know full well that a simple inspection of the hose will reveal to us that it is a hose, and not a snake. One is false, the other true. It isn't neceesary to know the absolute to make this distinction. The distinction reveals that there is an objective reality of some sort.
I think what you actually mean is "Whatever I experience is real"
What I experience when I mistake a hose pipe for a snake is a process of perception/ interpretation of a sensation. That process is real. But the interpretation is not. The unquestioned and unconscious belief is that it is a snake.
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Now, why would a snake be less real than a hose? In practical terms, it seems to us that the hose is the "real" reality. But in philosophical terms, that isn't so. Again, imagine that you're in the matrix (or eXistenZ, or some other similar movie). You go back and see the hose and you think that that is the "real" reality. But in truth, it isn't real. It's not even something physical, but virtual. It exists only in your head. Is it any less real because of that? To an outside observer, yes, it is less real. To you, it isn't.
What you seem to be saying is that the contents of consciousness are made of the same stuff, in the same way as the different images we see on a TV screen are all made of the same stuff. I agree with that. But the nature of the image on a TV screen is not entirely the creation of the TV. There is a another source. From the image of the TV screen we can infer something about that source. This is what science does. If reality existed only in your head, then what is science striving towards?

Another thing. What about other people? If you are having a conversation with someone, does that someone also only exist in your head? Is reality different for both of them? Or is there a common reality?
In the end, this is like proving if there's a God. You can't prove it either way. And reality follows the same path.
Of course you can. You can prove that it is not a snake, and you can prove that it is a hose pipe. In this sense the word prove is risky of course, but just like we can never be 100% certain of a fact, we can be certain enough for all practical purposes. This is not like God, because God cannot be observed emperically.
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What is happening when we observe something in the grass is that an idea is formed in the mind by linking together two different sets of information. Long bendy thing in the grass + all our information on what a snake is.

The idea is real in itself, but may not reflect the empirical world. To this end all ideas need to be tested, and if it is repeatedly reflect the empirical world, then it will become more established in the mind, and more "probable". It's the same in statistics and the same in science.

Could we say that reality is that which is most probably true, if we just wanted a simple explanation?
Well, we have already established that reality and truth are similar. In that way, and following on your last comment, you could define the "real" reality as that which approaches the most to the absolute reality, or truth. And this can only be done within the realm of probability or, possibly, quantum.

So, in a sense, yes, you can define reality as that which is the most probable. Although that does raise the same questions.
For example, a mere 500 years ago, it was more probable (to the knowledge available at the time) that diseases were demonic in nature, rather than having very little organisms floating around in the air.
Being able to talk on the street to someone else on another street on the other side of the globe would also be very unlikely 100 years ago.
And so on.

So, if you do define reality as that which is more probable, then your reality is flawed by your knowledge. And your knowledge comes from your perceptions and inferences, so we're right back where we started :)
So, if you do define reality as that which is more probable, then your reality is flawed by your knowledge. And your knowledge comes from your perceptions and inferences, so we're right back where we started :)
I can't see how we are back where we are started because we now know that it is more probable, and therefore more realistic, to say that certain diseases are cause by viruses rather then demons. We can't say, well their reality was just as real, because their reality has since been proved false. Another thing is that now we are aware that our theories and facts about the universe are only relative and likely to improved upon in the future. As long as the ideas are standing up to our testing and producing useful, practical results, then can we get more real than that?
Well, some of us know that it is more probable. If you ask closed religious societies like the mormons, they'll probably tell you a demon is more likely. If you ask aborigines who live in seclusion in the Amazon jungle or similar, they'll probably tell you something different.

Just because a very decent portion of the world has access to the overall human knowledge, doesn't mean everyone does. Or even that they accept that when they do.
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You'd do better to figure out what is truth.

Does "truth" exist in "reality"? I heard someone once say something like "If there are truths about numbers, then numbers exist." I'm sure that's a paraphrasing of some profound quote, but it seems to be near the heart of things.

Is there any relationship between "truth" and "reality"?

...a subjective reality, in which dreams, delusions and conspiracy theories are real;

When I dream, I perceive people, things, places and actions. I'm pretty sure that there must be an energy expenditure that 'creates' my perceptions. That is, some electro-chemical energy is involved in creating the perception of a thing in my dream. If that energy results in a 'dream thing', how exactly is it different from a thing made of non-dream energy?

"I think therefore I am"

I've always tended to interpret that as meaning "Because I can think, I can know that I am."

...and put the question to you: "What is reality?"

"I'm sorry, but could you define that 'is' in your question for me first?"

Tom
I think a better way to phrase this would be:

"Reality is knowledge."
It seems to me when we try to define reality we are moving away from it....
Obviously. As I pointed out earlier, without the benefit of an absolute point of view, you can only define small subsets of reality, which don't have to coincide with the absolute one, or even with other subsets. Thus, your knowledge defines your reality. The more you know (or don't know), the more your reality changes. Just think of all those things that were real and stopped being so as you were growing up.

You can even find examples of it in the education system and with something as exact as Maths:
You start by learning that you can't subtract a number by a larger one. Then you learn that you can: negative numbers.
You learn that you can't divide numbers more than their integer part (you first learn that there's a remainder which can't be touched). Then you learn about fractions.
You learn that you can't have square roots of negative numbers. Later you learn that you can (imaginary numbers).

This is necessary, obviously. If you try to teach maths to a kid and tell him about fractions from the start, they'll never learn anything. However, it does show that your reality is ever-changing.
Regarding absolute reality, we cannot know what that is, but there is common objective reference that is the basis of empiricism. It seems wrong to call that absolute, but it is a reference, a datum.
You can infer the existence of an absolute reality by observing that a larger subsystem of reality overrides the smaller one. That infers that there are larger and larger subsystems until you arrive at one that is the largest of all and encompasses all of existence. That is the absolute reality. However, it's only useful as a concept for debating, as it is forever unachievable by us.

The problem is that to discuss this properly you have to actually mingle maths and philosophy, which are two sciences that don't usually work together.
All maths does is help us to describe something, and would be just one approach at describing the indescribable. The absolute is indescribe because any description will always be from a particular interpretitve framework, ie. relative.

"that a larger subsystem of reality overrides the smaller one".
A "system" is simple a model created by the human mind. It sounds like you're describing science - that theories get successively more encompassing and refined?
A system can be anything. A person is a system. A person's heart is a system. A person's heart valve is a system. A white cell inside a person's heart valve is a system. A family is a system. A town is a system. A planet is a system. And so on.

Basically, a system is the world of whatever it is you're studying. It can be open or closed depending on whether you consider any interactions from outside or not. So, any system can be part of a larger one, which can be part of a larger one, and so on and so on until you reach the largest of all, which would be the absolute. Likewise for smaller and smaller.
>>The absolute is indescribe because any description will always be from a particular interpretitve framework, ie. relative

Quite. It is like trying to describe the infinite in finite terms. You only have to take any word you like and look it up in a dictionary. The words found to explain your word you then look up. You'll either end up in a loop or at a word which is not defined. In other words circularity or non-existance. We only understand things in terms of other things within your experience (or in the case of the dictionary in terms of the compiler(s) experience(s)). On that which cannot be put into words we must remain silent (which is pure Wittgenstein) When we reject the absolutism of religion this gives us problems with empiricism, when we experience things which go against experience, in fact when these things contradict our experience, Einstein and QM for example.

If the universe is actually bounded, then the "larger and larger" philosophy obtains an absolute, which would deny the existance - even conceptually - of transfinite numbers, and if there is a Planck length the "smaller and smaller" will also be limited. Both of these "philosophies" require the supposition that "what is true up to the limit is true at the limit", which is not held in general, and indeed there may not even be a limiting process.
It's always interesting when a discussion gets to this point -- contemplating the absolute.

Even though it is undescribable, it seems to me that it does have a structure, even if that stucture is changing and appears different within different reference systems.

If you remove time and space from the reference frame, you end up with everything and nothing, all at once and never, which seems infinite and without a structure.
Actually, the absolute's structure is immutable. It can't change by its own definition. It just appears to change from the point of view of any subsystems.

Removing time and space doesn't leave you with everything and nothing. You end up with one or the other, depending on what you mean by removing. If you just remove time and space references, then you end up with everything all at once. If you actually remove time and space, you end up with a complete absence of everything, meaning even the absolute ceases to exist. That, however, is a different discussion in itself. For the purposes of defining reality, time and space are irrelevant in themselves.
I don't see why you consider time and space irrelevant, since they are part of our experience and therefore, according our earlier definition, part of our "reality" :-)

I was thinking, perhaps we could apply the adjective "timeless" to the absolute, since time is really nothing more than change. Something that doesn't change is not subject to time. Then perhaps we can find something in our experience that never changes? Though we can't be certain, your earlier reference to the idea of greater systems containing smaller systems would, coupled with the idea of changeless, timelessness abosulte would suggest that the things in our experience which don't change, or are not affected by time, are closer to the absolute?

This would mean that things like atoms are closer to the absolute, than say, a planet. A planet is just an ever changing collection of atoms, where as atoms themselves last longer. We go down that route and find sub-atomic particles, such as electrons.

That's an interesting thought. Electrons. Electrons can be formed by processes such as radioactive decay, or high energy collision. They were also formed 14 billion years ago when the universe was formed. We know electrons have properties, such as spin, etc, but clearly they can be of different ages. The question is, is there any difference between an electron that is 14 billion years old, and one formed just now? If not, then an electrons are close to being timeless.

I don't know really where electrons come from, but since they do come, and go, they do change, even if while they are existing they can don't change in themselves. I'm not sure about electrons, but doesn't quantum fluctuation allow for and electron-positron pair to arise spontaneosuly and then annihilate each other? In which case, the energy that made that possible would be the timeless, changeless factor because the energy is present both in the point of space where there are no particles, and also in the particles created.

So perhaps "energy" is a good contender for the absolute? It's timeless, it seems, has no from but takes on numerous forms, and cannot be created or destroyed?





>>Even though it is undescribable,...

I think you're becomming tautological. This is like saying "What terms can I use to describe something which is not describable in terms?". Your "frame of reference"  is nothing more than the collection of terms which you use. So it is no wonder that it "appears" to be different, because the description is of necessity incomplete.

>>Actually, the absolute's structure is immutable.

No it isn't. In fact you cannot tell one way or another. If something is indescribable you cannot attribute to it any other properties. So whether the concept of changeability - whether something can change or not - is inapplicable. One cannot tell whether it has that property or not, so one cannot tell whether it is immutable or not.

In fact one could even argue that the "absolute" is nothingness, for nothingness is related to the concept of the empty set. The empty set is that set which cannot be put into one-to-one correspondance with any other set.

I don't think taht you can remove time and space from "reality". The only reality which we experience is our own perceptions. We assume that others perceiver similarly, and we can speculate that there are things beyond our perception and things which have a better (in some sense) perception that we have. And since we exist in time and space (as far as we can perceive that) one cannot remove them.

The problem with this "something existing on higher planes" is that without taking effectively a quasi-religious standpoint I can see no common ground on which such speculations could be based. One starts by eliminating earthly considerations, human emotions to an extent, human weaknesses are definitely excluded, physical reality is abstracted but usually not totally eliminated, and the whole placed outside time and space. The Big Bang has certainly helped here, in enabling a speculation of what is "outside the universe" (ignoring the obvious contradiction of terms) One collides branes and eventually turns up with an anthropomorphic principle - ie: religion by the back door of science.
I think you're becomming tautological. This is like saying "What terms can I use to describe something which is not describable in terms?". Your "frame of reference"  is nothing more than the collection of terms which you use. So it is no wonder that it "appears" to be different, because the description is of necessity incomplete.
Ok, but perhaps we can use words like timeless, changeless, formless, etc. Here we are describing something by negation almost. It may sound useless but as I pointed out in my previous thread, energy would fit that description. We talk about energy every day but we can't say what it is unless we talk about it in a particular form, but the fact that energy cannot be destoyed implies that it is beyond form.
I have to disagree on you regarding the absolute's structure. Either that, or define what I actually mean with that.

The absolute's structure, in itself, is immutable. It's the contents that keep changing. Kind of like a bottle of water. The water sloshes around, but the bottle doesn't change. For a structure to change, outside interactions are necessary. Seeing as the absolute system doesn't have an outside, it can't change structurally. Only its contents can change.

Time and space are actually irrelevant to the concept of reality. They are a part of our existence, and of our perceptions, true, but you don't gain anything by analysing them. They're always there. It isn't possible to imagine them not being there. Therefore they're part of reality. They don't help define it in any way because they never change in any subsystem.
>> but the fact that energy cannot be destoyed implies that it is beyond form

Actually, that isn't quite accurate. Energy can't be destroyed, true, but then again, nothing is destroyed. Like Lavoisier said: "Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything changes". Energy can be changed into something else. For all purposes, that energy disappears and something else appears. Just like burning a piece of wood. That piece of wood disappears and CO2 emerges (along with other gases).
Cluskitt
Energy can't be destroyed, true, but then again, nothing is destroyed. Like Lavoisier said: "Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything changes". Energy can be changed into something else.
Well, my counter argument to that would be that everything is a form of energy. Even empty space.
>>So perhaps "energy" is a good contender for the absolute?

Let's try it.

The absolute is energy.
Energy is the absolute.

Now where has that got you?

Your analogy with electons and planets is another good example of what I mean. You are attempting to describe something in the micro world with terms from the macro world. The macro world terms don't fit, since, for example, the spin of an electron has nothing to do with the spin of a planet. One could equally use the word phase, although that wouldn't be accurate either. One ought really to invent new words for the descriptions, but the German tradition (since most of the pioneers where German) only allows construction from existing words. In fact for the particles found later a name was invented, namely Bosons, from the Indian Bose, which is the English tradition of taking things from other languages.
Actually my reference to spin was merely as an example of the fact that electrons have a limited number of properties when compared to something large and comples like the earth. I was not even attempting to draw an analogy between the rotation of a planet and the "spin" attribute of a particle, nor imply that was is true on a cosmic scale is true on a quantum scale.

The fact that a planet rotates, or has a kind of "similarity" with an electron of no relevance to the point I was making. Such similarities were coincidental. The only point I wanted to make that something large and complex like a planet is subject to change over time, whereas somethin simple like electron which just has a few simple properties (such as charge, spin, etc) does not appear to change over time. It is stable, and in that sense, somewhat timeless. That is why I asked if there is any difference between an electron formed 14 billion years ago, or one formed today.

The only reason I am going smaller is because smaller building blocks like molecules and atoms outlast the larger structures they can form, and therefore seem to take us closer to something that is changeless, fundamental.

The absolute is energy.
Energy is the absolute.

Now where has that got you?

Well, energy can be defined. As I said we talk about energy every day, and even have definitions for it in science. Though we can't say what it is, we can only talk about it in a particular form and we can see from the fact that the energy cannot be destoyed implies that it is beyond that form. In short, it's easier to think about energy than the absolute!







>>The absolute's structure, in itself, is immutable.

Bordering on religion, I think. It seems from your posts that you think of the absolute as the unification of everything (you've mentioned that process before). If that be the case, then it is describable in terms of the terms unified. But the absolute, at least conceptually, is something which transcends everything, it is something by which everything else can be measured (in the widest sense) and if were such a unification that cannot take place, since all such measurements would be circular.

Jason wants a reality which transcends all experiences, something by which all other things can be measured, tested, compared, etc..His question, what's reality, is trying to determine this thing by which he can compare his own reality. For one's own reality is not enough. It is like Wittgenstein's point on private langaues. One experiences things and turns them into symbols, pictures, grunts, words, or whatever. One can only communicate the experiences by using a common agreed terminology. A private language, one which oneself uses for the experience, is no language at all, sinfce it cannot be communicated. In this sense a private reality, the reality of our own perceptions, is not enough for Jason. He wants more of that. he's searching for the commonality with which one can communicate, measure, compare, and so on, other realities. This I maintain is not possible, unless one takes on the principles of religion, where one arbitarily (arbitary in the sense that it is a personal choice) selects premises, possibly inconsistantly, and then builds on that. Like having something existing beyond time and space, God that is, precluding that there is something outside of time and space, and possibly precluding that the only such entity that can do that is God (then later adding angels, devils and a host of other beings). Thus statements like "The absolute has structure" where the "absolute" is indescribable is one such religious position.
Actually, I think I just failed to carry my point across. Maybe cause of language (though I speak decent english, it's just my second language).

Every closed system has an immutable structure. The structure is what defines the system, thus it can't be changed from within. To change it, you require interactions from outside the system. Once a system has its structure change, then it becomes a different system. The absolute, however, being the largest system there exists (if one does exist) cannot, by definition, receive any interactions from outside. Therefore, it's structure is immutable.
And I'm failing to carry my point.

>>The absolute, however, being the largest system there exists (if one does exist) cannot, by definition....

Being indescribable you cannot attribute it as "being the largest system which exists". As I said before, you seem to consider the "absolute" as the union of all things, rather than something which transcends all things.

Exactly. By the definition I present, the absolute is the largest possible system. That would mean everything that is. There can't be anything which transcends it. If there was, THAT would be the largest possible system, and therefore the absolute.

So, you either keep going on and on, in which case the absolute doesn't exist, or you eventually bump into the largest, and that is your absolute.

Also, I never said the absolute is indescribable. It was Jason that mentioned indescribables :)
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>>When there is an attempt to perceive 'nothing', does 'size', 'volume', 'location', 'small', 'large' or any other property seem to fit?

In mathematics the empty set is the set which cannot be put in one-to-one correspondance with any other set. Intuitively if it has no members it cannot be lined up with any set containing members, indeed it cannot be lined up with any other "empty" set for the same reason. Hence empty sets are not equivalent, which corresponds intuitively with "no apples" not being equal to "no pears". "no apples" and "no pears" might belong to "no fruits" but they are in no way equivalent.

The attribution of a property to a set will make it differ from some other set. Thus size (number of members) is a property which by the correspondance principle it is possible to distinguish sets. Similarly sets of even or odd members, red or blue balls and so on, are distinguishing properties. They all however require members, which the empty set does not have.

If I have four identical baskets two containing apples and two containing pears and I put all the apples into one basket and all the pears into another, I'll have two empty baskets. Now side by side who can tell me whether one is "no apples" or "no pears"?
Bigrat
If I have four identical baskets two containing apples and two containing pears and I put all the apples into one basket and all the pears into another, I'll have two empty baskets. Now side by side who can tell me whether one is "no apples" or "no pears"?
Using the mathematics of set theory there is no difference between the two baskets. An "empty set of _something_" in mathematics is just that: an empty set. It's a definition.

But one could develop a model to describe differents kind of empty sets, and hence different types of baskets. The traditional set theory model would deal with zero like this:

112 x 0 = 15 x 0

Yet, presented like this it seems a little strange and for me raises a question as to whether we ought to consider this a definitive or is it merely one way out of many of modelling the world? I mean, why should this model ALWAYS apply? In the "real" world there's always a context, and that context could be represented by a letter, as in algebra. In the "real" world nothing is defined by the absence of something. For example, if we look in an emtpy room, and say there is nothing in there, what we mean is there is no furniture, or nothing of interest. Nothing is always talked about in reference to something.

In this simple algebraic representation a represents is something.

112a <> 15a

However it's not quite algebra because the a represents something, rather than a number. You can never substitute the "a" for a number. Thus:

In classic maths:
112/0 = undefined.

But I could invent an alternative system that does away with zeros and replaces it with concepts, symbolised by letters, for example. For example, if you have 112 apples, you can't divide it by an apple because an apple is not a number, so this is not allowed:

112a/a = 112

The closest you could do is this:
112a/1a = 112a

Another example:
112a/16a = 7a

7a/7a = 1a

7a - 7a = a (which is nothing, but it is an apple flavoured nothing).

7a + 7a = 14a

7a x 7a = 49a

The you can bring in b, inventing new notation for we show it combined with a.

7a + 7b = 7ab (which means seven apples and seven bananas).

7ab - 7a = 7b

7ab x 7b = 7a + 49b

etc













[112]0 < > [15]0



An alternative could be a system like surreal numbers, but one where an empty set cannot be just an empty set, it must be an empty set of something.

For example:




qz

qz (quasi-zero) is "almost zero, but not quite", or defines the non-existing smallest possible real non-zero number. For all practical purposes, it acts like zero, except that the division isn't undefined or illegal.

Using that number, call it qz for quasi zero, you can compute qz*15 as:

    { {} | { 15/2, 15/3, 15/4, ... } }

Also

qz*3 * qz*5 = qz^2*15...

but

qz^2*15 = qz for any practical purpose.

We can also argue that qz/qz=1!

Also, my favourite:

qz*15/qz*3=5

;-)


a <> b

._.
"almost zero, but not quite", or defines the non-existing smallest possible real non-zero number.

Makes me think of Planck units, e.g., Planck time. There apparently is a very real sense in saying that the universe did not exist until 10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang. What was happening 10^-44 seconds earlier? Nothing we can make any sense of.

Almost zero-hour... but not quite.

Tom
I often find myself trying to determine "reality" regarding the news: "What really happened?"

To take a current example, here in the Al Jazeera is a news article about a boy who has supposedly been tortured and killed in Syria.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/05/201153185927813389.html

My first reaction was one of anger against Syria, but then I began to wonder, how much of this is really true?

It's alright to do our armchair philosophising and say reality is whatever we experience, or that reality is the absolute etc, but in practical terms, reality has a meaning in our lives. And the meaning in this case would be, what really happened to this poor kid?

When trying to determine reality in a case like this we are trying to find out what happened, a causal chain of events. While you might say that this is all made up and there is no boy, it's all in one's mind, I don't think the boy's parents would appreciate that.

There is a truth out there and it can be determined. How can this be explained philosophically? What are we doing?




What do you have to say about that?



It's pretty much the same problem. Perceptions will create your own reality. In this case, you're fed the perception that the kid was killed. You might infer other data from previous experiences, but that is your input.

A very good example about this is:

Vikings never wore horned helmets. Only the shaman or the chief of the tribe would use one and only for ceremonial purposes. However, Verdi used horned helmets for his Valkyries. Disney then did the same and now you have a whole generation that actually believes that vikings wore horned helmets. When there comes a time when EVERYONE believes vikings wore them, the reality will be that they did wear them.

So, we come once again to the problem of your own personal reality vs the absolute reality. In your personal reality, vikings wore horns. In a relative reality of the majority of the human population, they wore horns. In an absolute reality, they never did. Same thing applies to this news, and all news, facts and theories.
It seems to me in your example that this idea of vikings wearing horned helmets is a popular belief, while the reality is that they didn't wear horned helmets. And I don't see that reality as being absolute. It seems the wrong word for it.

Well, it does play into what you're looking for, though. There isn't much difference between popular belief and fact. Many of the things we take as facts may not have happened. In other words, aren't real. However, we've learned them that way and we view them as real. Now, if you had a way to go back and see what happened you would what you thought was real wasn't actually real. But without the means to do so, you just accept your inputs as real and move on.

Similarly, for this boy case, you receive inputs that he was killed by syrians. You might doubt it, based on previous experiences. But until you can go to the place and time where/when he died, you'll rely on inputs given to you by other people. You may chose which you think are more reliable, but you can't know the reality of the events. You just chose that which seems more probable to you.

If pretty much everyone believes in something, then it's probable that it's real, no? Or is it? ;)
Yet behind the probable causes is a dead body. Factual evidence. Almost everything leaves a footprint or mark of some kind, our ability to decypher or understand why it is there doesn't change the fact that it is there, nor the reason why it is there.

If we look at evidence and established theories and say "well, this is probably what happened" we do so with an awareness that it may not have happened. This is more real than claiming with certainty that something happened. An awareness that we don't really know.

And yet, somehow, the event is recorded, it has left it's unique footprint on our universe. You could also argue that the universe prior to the event made the event inevitable. The event, isolated in time and space, is not so important, just a freeze-dried moment in what you call the absolute.

>>But one could develop a model to describe differents kind of empty sets,

Russel's theory of types. One runs into the same problems as soon as one considers something which cannot be typed.

We were trying to lay our hands on the concept of absolute and I don't think that it is the collection of the whole and I don't think that typing will help in its description either. It seems to me that the Absolute has the same conceptual problems as Nothing and that therefore our reality is relative. Like I said it has to do with language, with description and one can only describe something in terms of something else - OR - and here's where Nothing comes in, conceptually, and it is going to be something which cannot be put into correspondance with something else and is therefore like Nothing.

>>It seems to me in your example that this idea of vikings...

Yes, it is along the same lines as our German professor uses the word Realitaet.

>>Makes me think of Planck units, e.g., Planck time...

Yes, a nice diversion. The idea of Planck length is one which is defined quantum mechanically and has the interesting property of whether it is relativistically invariant. If it is, then the speed of light is not constant. If not then the Uncertainity Principle is at stake.

I have a lot of problems with the Big Bang model. The first problem is that we measure time ONLY via the electromagnetic force. Of the other forces of nature (excluding gravity which Einstein said wasn't a force) we know very little. Ostensibly the electriomagnetic force was the last to "drop out" of the symmetry. The question naturally arises whether space-time is also a broken symmetry which appears when the energy mass has changed it's state. The life-times of many particles are measured always in half-lives, thus their decay is not directly coupled to time, as strongly as the relationship between the metric and the electromagnetic force.


Augmenting reality, or filling in some blind spots -- 'Mixed Feelings' (the feelSpace belt).

If we create enough new senses, 'reality' should change considerably.

Tom
Actually, you only need to change the way you look at the world. No new senses required. For example, you had a deterministic universe for a long time. Then Einstein presented you with a relative universe. And now you have a quantum universe. Each changes the reality of what we see.
The more you look, the more there is to see...

The deterministic, relative and quantum Universe are still valid models within certain space-time windows. In our every day life for example, we use Newtons theories with out a second thought. When determining the time it will take to travel to a customer, we don't use Einstein's equations.

So all three models have some objective, practical basis. However, a hose pipe mistaken for snake is has no basis in any objective, practical reality.

Suppose we mistake a snake for a hose-pipe and step on it. Perhaps I step on it's head and kill it, and am none the wiser. But the snake is dead. Can we simply ignore the snake's consciousness and say, well, since you thought it was a hose pipe, then that is the reality? Notice how I avoid any reference to an objective reality.
>> The deterministic, relative and quantum Universe are still valid models within certain space-time windows.

Again, we come to the issue of sub-systems. In some you use one model, on others you use a different one. And it does relate to the snake/hose pipe issue. In the sub-system of just yourself, the reality is you stepped on a hose pipe. In the sub-system of you plus the snake, you stepped on a snake. The snake died. The sub-system was again reduced to just you. You stepped on a hose pipe. Someone saw it. The sub-system is now you and the spectator. You stepped on a snake.

It's hard to escape this logic. It becomes circular. We intuitively know that there is something called reality that is independent from our senses. But in practical terms, there actually is no reality. Just sub-systems of inputs and interactions that change slightly (or even quite a bit) as you switch the sub-systems.
Can there "really" be a sub-system of reality based on gross mistakes?

On an evolutionary level, such gross mistakes would have no survival value...
And yet, they do occur. If there were no such mistakes, no species would have supremacy. A predator would always catch its prey, but the prey would always flee. Even more to the point, you have the lemmings example of evolutionary misconceptions of reality. Or the examples of crabs that lay eggs where there is now a highway between there and the sea.

Lots of other examples have similar conclusions. Also, gross mistakes have no survival value on those that make them, but usually profit some other species that has an evolutionary boost from them.
My point was that a gene for making mistakes will not persist.

Perhaps another way of discussing this problem is by the concepts of subjective and objective reality. Subjective reality is your closed system, it is what you carry inside your mind, objective reality is a shared reality and therefore partially independant of mind.

Subjective reality is created entirely in the mind based on what is already there in the mind, and describes the reality of subjective experience, nothing more. Like a dream is very real ....as a dream. But if you confuse the dream with objective reality, then that would be a form of dillusion, or unreal.

It does seem that there is an absolute reality that can only be known relatively. Like a multidimensional shape of which only a limited number can be experienced.
Yes, that has always been my thesis. :)

You can infer its existence, or the possibility that it exists (there is a possibility that the systems just keep on growing and there never is an absolute reality). You can never experience it. And you can never be sure that your inferences are correct because they arise from your flawed perceptions.

However, as a rule, the larger the sub-system, the closer you are to the absolute reality, or the real reality.
Ok.

But since we only know the subjective, we're back to Descartes, doubting everything around him.

However, if we, in our subjective realities, are aware of these two kinds of reality -- that our realities are intrinsically limited and subject to constantly revision, then we would no longer be mistaking our reality to be the "real" reality. The new awareness would mean that ultimately, the only common denominator, the one thing that never goes away, is the idea that we don't really know reality.

In other words, reality is not knowing.
If you ask me is that a snake...or a hose-pipe...and I say "I don't know" I am admitting what we have been arguing about all along.

So perhaps, the answer to the question, what is reality, is, "I don't know".
>>So perhaps, the answer to the question, what is reality, is, "I don't know".

Of course you know what reality is. It is just that you cannot communicate it to somebody else.
Bigrat

Stop spoiling everything :P
>> But since we only know the subjective, we're back to Descartes, doubting everything around him.

Actually, that's not true. The human being, as a rule, only cares about his personal subjective reality, and treats it as absolute, doubting anything that goes against it until satisfactory evidence has been presented.

Also, BigRat is correct. Reality, as a pure absolute concept, is something which can't be put into words. In which case, "I don't know" would actually be, not just the best answer to the question, but also the best definition of reality.
Cluskitt

Who's rule :-)

We have a new rule now -- the awareness that our realities are subjective and limited, and subject to change, and given this, cannot be taken as reality.

Bigrat
You say I know what reality is but I cannot communicate it to something else. So you must be referring to ....er...the experience of experience?

I just came accross this proverb:

He who does not know and does not know that he does not know will remain something in the prison of ignorance forever.

He who does not know and knows he does not know, his lame donkey will eventually get him to his destination.
Corrected:

He who does not know and does not know that he does not know will remain suffering in the prison of ignorance forever.

He who does not know and knows he does not know, his lame donkey will eventually get him to his destination.
The way I've always read those kinds of statements is:

Those that only see their own personal subjective reality will never evolve.
Those that try to see other realities outside their own will come closer to the truth.
>>You say I know what reality is but I cannot communicate it to something else

Should read : someBODY else.

>>The way I've always read those kinds of statements is:

Quite. But it is beyond the bounds of philosophy. Which is the reason why, after comming to this point, Wittgenstein left Oxford and went back to Austria to become a Kindergarten teacher.
In a way, reality is outside all bounds. Which means reality doesn't exist in an infinite universe.
If reality is outside bounds, what are bounds?
They don't exist as well. Else the universe wouldn't be infinite. And now we have a chicken/egg thing ;)
lol
Surely one example of a boundary must be the boundary of the universe, but since the universe is within ones mind, then that boundary must be the boundary of our subjective knowledge - it's limits. Yet such limits are not fixed but ever changing. As soon as we learn something new, the boundary has changed.

Another thought for you Cluskitt. Your thesis asserts that the absolute is the biggest of all subsystems, a view which pitches consciousness outwards towards the unfolding of the cosmos, acquiring knowledge and refining models. The logical conclusion would be ulitmate knowledge.

What about the other direction? I mentioned before that atoms which form the physical world are more stable and long-living than the physical world, and sub-atomic particles that comprise the atoms more stable and long-living than the atoms themselves. This progression shjows that the smaller also approaches the changless, ie the absolute. Perhaps this goes on until we reach, as mentioned earlier, energy itself, which cannot be defined. Also a perfect candidate for the absolute.

The obvious differernce between the two directions is that as you move towards the cosmos, you get a structure, but as you move smaller, into atoms, you lose the structure. Yet both seem to approach the absolute...



I think moving in the smallest direction leads you towards the nothingness you mentioned earlier. If one direction leads you into the everything, then the other must lead you into the nothing. Both are absolute.

However, if the universe truly is infinite, then there are no boundaries. In which case, there can be no absolute. There would be no end, no matter which direction you move in.

Planck proposes a number after which you can't get any smaller in practical terms. Now, suppose he's right. You can still keep going on in theoretical terms. Which would be more absolute? The number that can't get any smaller, or the smaller number that can't exist?
Well it wouldn't be nothingness really because it is full of energy.
Found this really interesting web page:

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/science-physics-wsm-wave-diagrams.htm

The animation combining waves from eight different directions is what caught my attention the most, as well as the philosophical comment made by the creator.
Well, right now physics are pretty much divided into two camps: String and wave. That link is about wave, but string has its merit as well. I have no idea if it's at all possible to prove it's either one, or some combination of both. I do doubt that it will give us any further knowledge about reality, though, other than expanding our knowledge itself.
Nice visualisations though.
Nice program on The Science Channel last night (and will be again late tonight, I think.) Title was 'What is Reality?'

They didn't have an answer that I could lift for this thread. Sigh.

Tom
Did they say the same stuff we've been saying?
Parts were along the same lines of this thread.

However, the beginning paradigm was structured around particle physics -- the search for underlying physical components and relationships between them, the irreducible particles and forces that make up everything.

The paradigm changed as the program continued. By the end, it had morphed into something that could include a holographic description of the universe and current experiments that might validate some of the potential for that theoretical direction.

How physical 'reality' becomes subjective 'reality' was a parallel topic throughout.

I recorded it last night and will watch again while paying better attention. There was one particular personal definition that was offered by one interviewee that caught my attention. I'll make sure I accurately get it to add here.

Tom
Cheers. Look forward to reading about it!
Avatar of atlas_shuddered
Okay, I'll bite.

To BigRat's comment:

>>So perhaps, the answer to the question, what is reality, is, "I don't know".

Of course you know what reality is. It is just that you cannot communicate it to somebody else.

Do we?  I would go so far with you to say that we "know" that there is something there.  We can conceive of it.  We can sense it.  But to "know" would mean to be able to define.  To be able to define it, would mean we have some capacity to communicate, if in less than eloquent terminology, but nonetheless doing so meaningfully.

Take it a different tack.  Who is truly able to communicate the perfect?  We all sense it.  Intuitively we seem to know it is there and even push to achieve it, but never quite doing so.  I think that it is something that we would both recognize when we came in contact with it and be unable to bear the contact of it.  I think that reality is much the same in that fashion.  We existing with it but we are not it.  We are fully possessed by it but do not, and quite possibly cannot, fully possess it.

What do I think we would find if we could understand it, express it, evaluate it?  I think that we would discover something fully composed of itself, possessing and containing much but depending on and determined by none of which is sustained within itself.  A something that has no need to question reality or perfection or any of the other "noble" or "high" questions as it itself would either be those things fully or would present explanation of them solely by it's own existence.

Sure we exist in something that is.  In what is.  The question is though, is this existence truly being?  Is it truly reality?  I think it is real but I think it falls far short of actual reality.

Cheers
...we exist in something that is.  ...  Is it truly reality?

If it's not reality, then how could it be "exist"?

Tom
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SStory:
Not bad. I find nothing inconsistent with what you're saying here, even though you represent it from a religious point of view.

God seems to me to have similar properties to energy - timeless, formless, everywhere etc. The only difference seems to be awareness/intelligence. We don't consider energy to have these qualities, yet it would make senses if it did. Perhaps any kind of transformation or exchange of energy gives rise to some kind of awareness. That would explain a lot.

tliotta:

If it's not reality, then how could it be "exist"?

A lie, once spoken exists but is in no way reality.  In fact, it exists and is antithetical to reality.

But a lie has no physical existence or form you say?

All, Tom is a purple polk-a-dotted, orange haired, hagmathanon named Klepto.

Look.  A form, which exists in something that is representitive of reality, but is not actually reality and is (I'll go out on a limb here) a lie but exists none the less.
Well, we are limited finite beings... The universe is enormous.  We perceive only a part of the universe.
Even our Declaration of Independence of the USA mentioned that all men are CREATED equal.  The creator of it all, God, knows reality in every realm and aspect.  None of us are really qualified in our limitedness to define reality.  I accept the reality that Jesus, who is God, gave to us and the revelation given by the Holy Spirit in the Bible.  This defines an invisible kingdom that will prevail in the end. So it defines what ultimate reality is.  I am convinced that this is right....and for those who aren't...if I am correct, no matter how you defined reality, you will one day find yourself in the reality I have spoken of and see that like it or not, believe it or not, it is reality.

Someone said "He who owns the gold makes the rules."  I agree!  But the Bible teaches that God created everything, so He actually owns it all and He has set forth the rules. The REALITY is that we get to use things and claim temporary ownership...don't pay your property tax and see if you really own your land.  Have a war and see if your country really owns the land.  In the end God owns it all and we just get to use it.
Tom, Atlas. This is the hose pipe and snake again. Or dreams. Dreams are real, but it is a mistake to take dreams as waking reality. In that sense everything is real, but not necessarily a reflection of objective reality.
Jason

Agreed, dreams should not be taken as a waking reality.  However, I suppose that the question is to be begged in this regard is whether all that we refer to as dreams, are in fact, what we determine a dream to be.

My point is this.  Humanity (to risk the hasty generalization), posits existence in purely material parameters.  I have heard, I think, most every argument there is for limiting all propositions within these material bounds.  However, what I find intriguing is that we, having limited ourselves to the material, still inquire concerning questions that quickly range into the extra-material.

Thus my question above.  What, in fact, is a dream?  And are all "dreams" created equal?

What is reality?  From the position of materialism, it is a ridiculous question, since reality would be easily defined as only that which is composed of matter and the subsequent forces which that matter imposes or produces.  The interesting thing is, that as neat and tidy as it is, it immediately sets up a long list of items to be quietly placed in the bin so as not to expose the mess that still exists, it having simply been displaced for matters of proposition.

Some of these include:

What is law, how is it defined, why and by what authority?
Speaking of authority, is that authority just?
Speaking of just, what in fact is justice and is that justice in fact good?
Speaking of good, what in fact is good?

ad nauseum

The problem with materialism is that it cannot present a reasonable argument for, much less justification of, any of the above nor any of the questions falling in similar realms.  Why?  Because these questions are posited from without a material base.  How does one define "good" inside material means.  At best, opinions are proposed and interestingly, those definitions tend to be 1. achievable by the one which proposes them and 2. flexible.  In short, relative, a base which rapidly breaks down under reasonable scrutiny (whatever reasonable would be), which that comment itself raises a beautiful point, that being; is it possible for matter to define itself?

All of this to come to the point that, it is only an argument of hose/pipe/snake, in so far as we dictate that the only "reasonable" answer is that which is definable within a materialistic framework.

Cheers
Atlas, to me, if there is no God, there is no definite reason for any of the things you listed...law, authority, justice, and good.  

I propose that God defines law, by His authority as Creator, Ruler and Owner of all things, and the definer of reality.  Since He is good, and will eventually right all wrongs in His time, without partiality, He is the reason for these things.  Without which, anarchy, such as the days of barbarians, seems to be the way....each does as he sees fit...and why wouldn't he if there is no one to whom he must give and account.  Admittedly God seems slow by human minds, but if you've been around for ever, a few 1000 years isn't that much knowing that one way or the other you'll have the final say.  Death is but a door to the reality of being before God and thus in the final reality that our state with Him will forever determine all future reality after that point.  

Jesus came to tell us about this reality...to warn us. What He taught seemed so foreign to us since our world is so upside down. It is so flipped that people call good evil and evil good even now.  

I'd suggest there is no way to define good apart from God, because good would always be relative and thus worthless because what is good for you might not be "good" for me.  Relativism --no absolutes--means, rape was "good" to the rapist, so why is he wrong for doing what is "good" for him?  Without an absolute authority and law, it is really hard to say.

I'm not familiar with hose/pipe/snake so I can't say much about that.
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"God defines law as an outflow of Himself, his being, his character, etc.  This defining is not an act, it is a consequence of His being"

Agreed!
Snake, Hose Pipe.

If it is a snake, and not a hose pipe, then the snake has a consciousness, that is there whether we think it is a hose pipe, or snake. Therefore, it does not depend solely on what we perceive, or upon some kind of objective reality.

The same argument can be applied to yourself, and another person you are conversing with. It's not just about you, and what you perceive.
The snake is assumed to have a cousciousness by some, not necessarily by all.  What can be observed and "verified" is that it has some form of existence and that it is also animate.  Consciousness by default prescribes awareness of the surroundings.  If it is in fact just "being" a snake, then it does not necessarilly follow that it must also have consciousness.  Just as it does not follow that if the hose pipe is "being" the hose pipe, it must or must not retain consciousness.

As to our perception, agreed, it doesn't depend solely on my perception, or anyone else's for that matter.  In fact, I would argue that they are, as and what they are, without regard, consideration, objection or assention on anyone's part.  That in fact is the very matter which would make them wholly part of "objective" reality and consequentially, what seperates us from it, our assertion of perspective and our assertions of any one of our's over the other's in an endless tirade of hierarchic re-ordering and demanding for substantiation to position, authority or recognition.

About not being just about me, true.  All the more reason that it is because it Is.  Completely independent of me, you, SStory and every and any other reader of this thread, et al.

Put another way, reality can be either objective or subjective.  No in betweens and no third options.  It either depends upon me or it does not.  It goes on to exist whether you do or you do not.  If it has continuance (which I claim it does as it continued to exist following the passing of all those in the obits last week), then it would tend to lead me to objective.  If on the other hand, you made a claim about it and it bent to fit that claim and then you made an opposing claim, thus causing it to bend again, I would think it subjective.

The whole of my argument has but a few basic tenants.  The most constructive in this current line of discussion is that a thing, any thing, is what it is absent any consideration whatsoever of my perception.  Perception is nothing more than a change on the part of the perceiver, not on the part of the perceived.  Through a shift in perception, we come to understand either better or worse.  To view clearer or fainter.  All through those changes in our vision, the perceived remains.

This is the way of reality.  It doesn't matter what I think, or you claim, or SStory scribbles down.  It just Is.  We can complain, champ, moan, twist, war, hide, disagree or resist in any other fashion we so choose, it will be more than content to go right on being what it Is without the least consideration any of our complaints.

Reality Is.

And that, is my contention, and as near as anyone of our ilk will ever come to "defining" it.
Of course a snake has consciousness!

Let's forget the snake and the hose pipe, and instead use a scarecrow and a human being. Now there can be no doubt that the human being has consciousness.

If you think the human being is a scarecrow, you are wrong, not matter how you complain, champ, moan twist, war, hide, disagree or resist in any other fashion ;-)

If you think it is a scarecrow, you are deluded, and delusion doesn't have much to do with reality.

Another way of looking at it is this. It is not just about that moment you see the figure in the field. Both a scarecrow and a human being have a history, and tgheir histories influence the universe. If you are mistaken, you have mistakenly understood part of the universe.
Of course a snake has consciousness!

Believing it so, does not make it so.

Let's forget the snake and the hose pipe, and instead use a scarecrow and a human being. Now there can be no doubt that the human being has consciousness.

In a subjective reality, there is nothing but doubt.  That was Descartes' problem.  Everything is predicated on perception and nothing is truly knowable.  The only thing that even comes close is that the part of me that is thinking this is conscious of doing so, therefore, it must exist in some form or other.  However, is the form that I perceive at this moment actually the existence that houses the consciousness thinking these thoughts and typing them out?  Are you even there or is that some mad demon outside my perception playing games with me?

You cannot make the claim that there is no objective reality, leaving only a subjective reality by default and then posit that anything is knowable or true when the basis of knowledge and truth now becomes my perception.  What happens when my perception of reality doesn't align with yours?  Does that make you, me or reality wrong?  Maybe all three?  Maybe reality is something else entirely?  How could it be if it is dependent upon my perception to be?

Another way of looking at it is this. It is not just about that moment you see the figure in the field. Both a scarecrow and a human being have a history, and tgheir histories influence the universe. If you are mistaken, you have mistakenly understood part of the universe.

Isn't it?  If it reality is subjective, all that matters is my perception.
Put another way, reality can be either objective or subjective.  No in betweens and no third options.  It either depends upon me or it does not.

Another thought experiment. A man is given a book and told to place it in black box. The box, when sealed, just looks like a cube, with no openings. The man places the cube on a table in room, and asks people to come in the room. The people enter room and see the cube. What is reality? Their perception would be a black cube.

What is reality?

With the snake and the hosepipe, it doesn't really matter if the snake has consciousness, or if "snake" is only our subjective reality. What matters is that it IS NOT A HOSE PIPE. If you think it is a hose pipe, you are wrong. This is a mistake of perception. On examination, everyone would agree that it is a snake. Therefore, your perception of a hose pipe cannot be called real in any sense other than it is real as process of perception. The content of perception, which is what we are interested in, can only be called real if it corresponds to the objective reality of a snake.

Clearly there is a macroscopic objective world that is the same for all of us, and reality can be said to correspond to how much we understand that world. Obviously we can't contain all that world in our heads, but we can focus in on part of it, and remind ourselves that what we know is only part of it.

It seems to me that when we speak of reality in every day terms, this is what we are talking about.

However, in the quantum world things may be different. The question of realism in sub-atomic physics has be the subject of a long debate ever since Bohr claimed that QM was a "complete" theory back in the 1920s.
Jason

I am not arguing for a subjective statement of reality.  My point is that reality is, by definition, objective, period.

My points concerning reality being subjective are in direct statement to the hose pipe/snake argument in whole.  If reality is subjective (subject to), then it is shaped by my perception, ergo, reality is what I perceive/will it to be and the hose pipe may be a snake or a snake be a hose pipe or maybe neither is reality and what is, is something else altogether.

Regarding the black cube, again, if reality were subjective, perhaps it would be pink daffodils beneath a purple elephant.  Subjective reality would mean that it would be what they perceived it to be.  If one argues that it cannot be something, then it must immediately be determined that there is some objective position by which this position can be claimed.  Otherwise, the man's black box is whatever I want it to be, if I even deem it to even exist in the first place.

In short:

Subjective reality - what, what.  No is, is.  Whatever may be.  Definitive terms cannot even rightly be used to attempt to describe it as nothing could be definite.  Substance without substantiation, material without form or format.

Since we are so keen on thought experiments, I'll suggest one.

On a plain piece of paper, without lines, holes, etc., place a dot.  Before placing your dot though, imagine that the paper has no edges and that what would be the edge, extends infinitely into x and y, and that the only two things that exist in this reality are the dot and the paper.  Having done thus, attempt to place the dot, with a pen or pencil, solidly in the center of the page and then define or coordinate the position of that dot.

Once the dot is placed, you call it centered, I say it is left of center.  Who is correct?  Who is wrong?  How can either be defended if all we have is a subjective reality to work with?

I appreciate your attempt to pull particle physics into our discussion, however, I also appreciate the fact that for all the excitement over relativistic particles, string theory and quantum physics, they are still described in objective terms, the "are", they "move", they "act".  If this space of reality was in fact "subjective" or more precisely "relative", there would be no way of even beginning to describe them.  There is no defining where definition, excuse me, definites, do not exist.  What is the use of understanding if understanding is incohesive and abjectly incoherent from one person to the next??!!

No, I think, as I noted above, that we want desperately to believe that what we perceive is reality, without ever daring to consider that it is in fact, at least in part, illusory.  This is not to say that there is no existence but rather that the existence that we perceive is not what that existence truly is.  The fault lay with our sight, not with existence.  In other words, what is, is.  What we understand, perceive, visualize, etc. of it, well, that is another point of discussion altogether.
>> 1.On examination, everyone would agree that it is a snake
>>2.The content of perception, which is what we are interested in, can only be called real if it corresponds to the objective reality of a snake.

There is no such thing.

You are born and see a small long thing without legs. Mother says that's a snake.
You go to the Zoo. You see a boa. Mummy says that's a boa constrictor snake.

We associate the two images with the word snake. We also learn that snake is generic, it can apply to other things which only roughly compare to what we have learnt so far. One day we learn thw word hosepipe and associate that, in the same way, to the relevant images.

There is no objective reality here.

One day we ask a lot of people, who have all been through the same experiences to learn the words snake and hosepipe, about an object. Their judgement (if you want to call it that) is snake.

If you'd asked a lot of Germans who don't speak English you'd get no agreement, since they'd say Schlange. If you look it up in a dictonary you'd get snake or queue. The dictionary is made by asking people who have the word associations and then writing them down. When you first learn a foreign language you use such means, but after a while you learn by association, just like when you were small and had no language, you associate words to images.

The only way of communication is by language. Language works by association. There cannot be an objective reality, since that would require something absolute, something outside language.
I am not arguing for a subjective statement of reality.  My point is that reality is, by definition, My points concerning reality being subjective are in direct statement to the hose pipe/snake argument in whole.  If reality is subjective (subject to), then it is shaped by my perception, ergo, reality is what I perceive/will it to be and the hose pipe may be a snake or a snake be a hose pipe or maybe neither is reality and what is, is something else altogether.
How about reality is what happens when objective and subjective come together? The unknown objective world interacts with consciousness to produce the subjective result. Now, since we are all human and all share the same basic mechanism of perception, then no-one is going to percieve a black box as pink daffodils beneath a purple elephant, unless they have some serious psychological problem.

Bigrat
There is no such thing.

You are born and see a small long thing without legs. Mother says that's a snake.
You go to the Zoo. You see a boa. Mummy says that's a boa constrictor snake
You make it sound like language is all there is. Prior to any language there must be a concept from which language arises. This must also have been the case in our evolution. Before communicating, surely we must have had a concept of the thing we wish to communicate.?

I wonder if the words subjective and objective are really helpful? The more I think about them the more blurred the distinction between them seems.

We humans share the same mechanisms of sense-perception, and to a large extent the same cultural interpretitive framework. Thus the unknowable absolute manifests within the world of human awareness in each individuial in fundamentally the same way. I could use the analogy of a camera. We can have hundreds of differnent cameras, ranging from the first brownie camera, to the lastest digital wonder, taking a snapshot of a flower. The image they record are all going to be fundamentally the same because the apparatus that produces the image is fundamentally the same, and because the absolute is. The image is not the thing in itself, but the result of two things coming together - observer and observed.

Thus we have evidence of an absolute reality. Although it is unknowable, it produces a result in  our minds and even though our minds shape that result, they all do so in pretty much the same way. I would define the objective reality as that reality which is shared according to the empirical interpretative framework. The process of perceiving that reality begins with our senses and finishes with our scientific knowledge about what we are observing.
>>Thus the unknowable absolute manifests within the world of human awareness in each individuial in fundamentally the same way.

Try reading logic into that sentence.

>>You make it sound like language is all there is.

For the purposes of communicating you can replace the word "language" by almost anything you like - eg: sticks laid in a certain pattern, heiroglyphics, etc..

>>The image they record are all going to be fundamentally the same because the apparatus that produces the image is fundamentally the same, and because the absolute is

"fundamentally the same" is a rather weak, non-specific way of describing things. It is alos judgemental, for a camera buff would certainly disagree as to the meaing of "fundamentally alike".

The problem with your "philosophy by examples" is that it fails to get to the core of the matter because you get involved with irrelevant details and fuzzy definitions.

Try this one.

A private reality is the same as a private illusion.

(If I may paraphrase Wittgenstein).

Concept must come prior to the symbol that represents it.

What is fuzzy (specify)?

Wittgenstein is correct, but we need to define "private reality"
It is alos judgemental, for a camera buff would certainly disagree as to the meaing of "fundamentally alike".
But the camera buff would clearly see the content represented in cach case. Also, would you say that humans are fundamentally alike or not? Or are we fundamentally different from each other? Are black people different to white people? Are religions fundamentally dfifferent to each other or fundamentally the same...

>>Thus the unknowable absolute manifests within the world of human awareness in each individuial in fundamentally the same way.

Try reading logic into that sentence.

I find it harder to see any logic in your reactions.

The absolute is everything everythere all at once. There can be no differentiation, boundaries, or framing. What is there to know? Also, what of the knower? Can the knower ever know itself? The human mind has boundaries, frames and it's fundamental function is to differentiate. Thus the mind reveals to us a freeze-dried portion of the universe, a snapshot in terms of time and space, a fragment. If we are fundamentally the same in how mind works, and how we are, then there must be commanality in how we experience the uninverse. And there is, otherwise we wouldn't have science .

Atlas Shuddered
Since we are so keen on thought experiments, I'll suggest one.

On a plain piece of paper, without lines, holes, etc., place a dot.  Before placing your dot though, imagine that the paper has no edges and that what would be the edge, extends infinitely into x and y, and that the only two things that exist in this reality are the dot and the paper.  Having done thus, attempt to place the dot, with a pen or pencil, solidly in the center of the page and then define or coordinate the position of that dot.

Once the dot is placed, you call it centered, I say it is left of center.  Who is correct?

Well, to define the coordinate position without any references would be arbitrary. I would call it 0,0. If you have another coordinate system, with 0,0 elsewhere, so what? We are still dealing with an infinite plane.
As for private reality, it would surely mean an individual's view of reality that is not shared with any other, and which therefore is unlikely corresond to the objective reality that is defined by empirical science.
>>objective reality that is defined by empirical science.

That went out in the 1920s.
Language works by association.  Agreed.

As far there cannot be an objective reality as it would be dependent upon something absolute, you run contrary to your own rational within your own argument.  You make an absolute claim in the attempt to objectively define reality within subjective only limits?  Limit, which again, by definition, cannot exist without the objective waypoint to serve as a reference.

Jason, as far as your coordinates being arbitrary, true.  And that would be the point.  If I tell you to go up the street, make a left, make another left and then a right, this will put you at SBucks, the directions themselves are meaningless, valueless and unexpressive of reality.  Without the input of a fixed, objective point of reference, they are entirely subjective.  This in turn promotes only chance as the avenue or vehicle for understanding or reference.  If chance is the reference, then will has no standing as it, in and of itself would be the express attempt of the exerter to impart direction, structure, current, etc.

As far as the paraphrase of Wittgenstein?  Sure, as long as we insist that:

1.  Reality can in anyway be private
2.  And therefore, is established, maintained and existent only within the individual
3.  Ergo, nothing exists outside the individual absent same foisting their will upon that which resides outside of it
4.  Moreover, if "private reality" is achievable and these things be so, then you are right back to where?  Descartes?  I think therefore, I am?  His self confirmed reality discovered, defined and confirmed within a consciousness he cannot be sure really is since he may or may not be able to trust that he is?  No, because his argument isn't predicated on the assumption of his existence but upon the receipt, processing and reaction of/to his argument by other "I think, ergo, I ams".

A snake not necessarily being a snake but that the word is used simply as a point of commonality shared among humanity, translated across syntactic bounderies, but the communicative expression of an idea all the same.  Agreed.  However, whatever it, in reality, is, it nonetheless, is.  Apart from our perception, will and arguments about what it, in fact, Is.

As far as science defining a thing.  If it did, it would not be science and it definitely would not be empirical.  A thing is what it is and is thus defined as it is, with or without the "assistance" of science.  Moreover, if science attempts to define a thing, then it fails in the first noble tenant of remaining, oh, objective, and allowing a thing to be what that thing is.  In short, science is about discovery and understanding, purportedly to understand the is of the is it studies.  It holds no authority to define as it holds no authority over the is of the is or the is itself.  In order to objectively study and understand, it cannot define lest it re-define the is as something it is not.

Again, Reality, Is.
Atlas
Thanks for the time you put into your responses.

Without the input of a fixed, objective point of reference, they are entirely subjective
Indeed. In fact I'd say that we are part of that reference - a fixed objective point of reference. Time and space, by human standards, forms a frame through which we see. Science is only our way of describing nature, and as such is only a sophisiticated extension of what we do naturally - problem solving and the acquisition of knowledge. Even animals do this.

Bigrat
Are you saying that there is no such thing as objective reality as defined by empirical science? You needn't get hung up on the word "science". After all, science is only how we observe nature. Do we all observe it differently? No. We see things the same and we have a more or less fixed set of rules as to how to interpret and describe what we see. That makes a large part of it objective. If there were no such thing as objective reality then we wouldn't have aircraft that fly. We'd still be trying to make wings out of feathers and glue and jumping off buildings, and believing that the wind is the will of the Lord. As far as defining reality goes, objective reality defined by empirical science this is the most useful, practical definition, and it is what the sciences are based on and how our day to day world is understood. The rest is philosophical chatter that only leads up into the clouds.

Of course, empricism is limited in many ways. It can't say anything meaningful about the subjective world. The imagination, dreams, spiritual experiences and so on. Perhaps this is why you react. But even subjective reality has commonality. Jung perhaps was the first to write extensively about with his idea of the collective unconscious. The idea of archetypes, and so on, symbols that recurr throughout cultures and history. Then we have religions which, from an empirical point of view, seem incompatible, but clearly make sense to those who believe.



Part of the reference we may well be.  The Reference, we cannot be.  If humanity is defined by anything at all, it is change.  This being said, a reference that is in a constant state of change is no objective reference, but relative.

Objective reality defined by empirical science??  Again, if science defines anything, it is no longer science.  Additionally, if reality were defined by anything, it no longer would be objective but subject"ive" to the defining component.

Reality Is.
Part of the reference we may well be.  The Reference, we cannot be.  If humanity is defined by anything at all, it is change.  This being said, a reference that is in a constant state of change is no objective reference, but relative.
Mind is constantly changing and the way we interpret things is constantly changing too, so mind cannot be the only reference. But, if mind is a machine, a kind of complex mirror, then must be a part of us that is aware of mind, or illuminating the mind, so to speak. This might be defined as a kind of primal awareness. As such, it would be the same for all of us, and all animals, and so on. Could this be The reference?

Objective reality defined by empirical science??  Again, if science defines anything, it is no longer science.  Additionally, if reality were defined by anything, it no longer would be objective but subject"ive" to the defining component.
Science is not subjective, and science defines reality - at least one aspect of reality.
As you are part of and not reality then there is no part of you that could be the reference, regardless of how you attempt to displace the point.

Science can be very subjective as it is wholly subject to the interpretation of the data and whether that intepretation be correct, in that, whether it coincides with reality!!

Science defines nothing, especially reality.  The lesser doesn't hold the capability or capacity to define the greater.  The best it can hope for is that ability to "understand" but understanding, interpreting and defining are far from the same things.
As you are part of and not reality then there is no part of you that could be the reference, regardless of how you attempt to displace the point.
There is no part of you that could be that reference. You certain of that? Explain how and why.

Science defines nothing, especially reality.  The lesser doesn't hold the capability or capacity to define the greater.  The best it can hope for is that ability to "understand" but understanding, interpreting and defining are far from the same things.
Try walking in front of a bus. That's reality. That's a definition. An empircial one.
Last first, etc.

Walking in front of a bus is what it is and results in what it results in but it does not none of it occurs by definition of reality, rather as a consequence of it.  You think to yourself " I will walk in front of this bus."  Your nervous system then processes the necessary inputs needed to respond to the commands thus generated after the conscious mind enacts will.  Your legs move.  You displace spatially to a new point in the universe that is now in a position to now challenge Newton's maxim and subsequently are duelly dispersed in accordance to the laws of physics and in direct proportion to the idiocy you have displayed.  Yes, you have just come fully into contact (and quite possible into a more direct relationship than ever before) with reality, but you have defined nothing.  You have only confirmed.  Not sure about empirically, but definitely emphatically.

Now, there is no part of you that could be that reference.  As I stated above, you are not reality.  Being a particpant of it does not make you it by default.  Residing within it's bounds does not make you a part.  You participate in many things daily.  Driving, walking, thinking, hoping, challenging, etc.  This does not make you the drive or the walk or the thought or the hope or the challenge, etc.  You reside in many things.  Am I to believe that you are part of your house?

Better proof?  Okay, if you are not, does reality change into something other than what it is?  If not, then you are definitely not reality.  Moreover, you are not reality's reference, for if you were then you would be its dependency, as reality will go right on with or without you, I am willing to be that you are not the reference.
Moving away from the bus idea...

This strikes me as being an assumpition taken as a fact:
Now, there is no part of you that could be that reference.  As I stated above, you are not reality.  Being a particpant of it does not make you it by default.  Residing within it's bounds does not make you a part.  You participate in many things daily.  Driving, walking, thinking, hoping, challenging, etc.  This does not make you the drive or the walk or the thought or the hope or the challenge, etc.  You reside in many things.  Am I to believe that you are part of your house?
For one thing, I am the common denominator in all those activities you mention. Without me, those activities would not be.

Better proof?  Okay, if you are not, does reality change into something other than what it is?  If not, then you are definitely not reality.  Moreover, you are not reality's reference, for if you were then you would be its dependency, as reality will go right on with or without you, I am willing to be that you are not the reference.
Lot's of "you are nots". May be we ought to define exactly what this "you" is...

Ok, it's the same as "I" which is consciousness itself. Or rather self-consciousness. Now, your self-consciousness, and my self-consciousness. Are they different? Or are they fundamentally the same? If the same, then the body is irrelevant which might make reality dependant not on an individual, but on collective consciousness. But there's more. The idea of self-consciousness implies that the is a state of consciousness that does not include the self. This would be a state of consciousness prior to self consciousness. This could be defiend as a kind of presence-awareness, and would not require a sophisticated mind as self-consciousness would. That is why I believe that a snake has this consciousness. And many other creatures such as insects, mites, bacteria. If that were so, then we could even go on and say that virus and atoms also possess some primitive consciousness.

The conclusion would be that consciousness seems to be fixed, absolute.  In which case it wold be The reference point, upon which reality depends.


For one thing, I am the common denominator in all those activities you mention. Without me, those activities would not be.

No without you, you would not be doing those activities, ergo you doing those activities would not exist.  The potential for thinking would still exist, however, it would not be you who would be doing the thinking, etc.  You are the common denominator as we are considering your participation in the acts.  However, those acts could just as much be acted in with myself or The Cat In The Hat as anyone, even yourself, should any of us actually exist to participate.  Moreover, your existence or non has absolutely no affect on whether I am able to participate or perform the activity, the only advantage you would have over me would be that only you can be the you walking in you walking, not I.  However, I hold the same advantage over you.  Again though, neither of us is necessary for the activity itself.

Onto your "you" vs. "you are nots"

You, the same as I?  I don't think so.  You are not I and I am not you.  These are identifiers and descriptors for a "something" based on the point of reference, self or other.

If what you are attempting to get at is "the being or thing that is currently identified as Jason210 or the being or thing that is currently identified as AtlasShuddered" then I will get further into your statement before I begin to take issue.  Are our "self-consciousness" different?  I would ask:  Does my self-consciousness depend on your's to be?  No.  Therefore, are they different?  Yes

Again, so far as reality being dependent upon consciousness, of any type and regardless of how we wish to displace it or redefine it, it is not a connection that can be made absent the dismissal of the fact that in order for something be a reference point, it would have to stand apart as an independent datum.  In other words, your consciousness would have to be able to exist absent any reality whatsoever.  It cannot, you cannot, it (reality) does not depend or reference you or any part of your being (consciousness or otherwise).  Reality is the precedent, not the consequent in your equation.  You may desire for reality to depend upon you for it's measure, stature and foundation but, even though I cannot "empirically" prove it so, I am quite sure that your being or not would hold no threat to its pillars or tides.

I will reiterate.  Being Is.  Everything else is a consequent of this.  In the framework of what we are discussing here, reality exists as a direct consequence of being.  If being were not, reality could not be as there would be no being to be.  What is reality?  It is the output, consequence, manifestation, etc of being, being.  It is without flaw, without deception, without misunderstanding.  It cannot manifest any of these as each of these and their cousins all reflect something that is not reality.  Can I define it for you?  Can anyone of ilk do so?  No.  Why?  Because we are part of the larger (in that we exist within it and are able to exist as a consequence of its being) and unable to plumb or define it.  Not that we lack the proper tools or perspective but that we unilaterially lack the ability the same way that a chair could ever define the carpenter who constructed it.  The lesser cannot define the greater as it is the lesser and does not hold the capacity, in the least and among other things, to define the greater.  Can we wonder about it and begin to hold some degree of understanding?  Yes, I think so as it is and so are we.  In this we can find commonality, which is the first thing necessary to understand, even in language (the point that BigRat either chose not to mention or missed above).  Absent that commonality, it is simply noise and there is no understanding.

Here, let's really cook our noodles!!

If I were and were the only that was, would I be?  And being and being the only being, would I exist?  How would I know?  Moreover, if you were and were the only that was, would you be?  And being and being the only being, would you exist?  How would you know?  Would I know?

Now, since I am feeling narcissistic today, I will choose me, to be, the first to run with for the rest but really, either would do.

If I were the only, would reality exist?  Ready?  If I were not and there was none other, would reality exist?  Can reality exist in nothingness or absent anything?  Is nothing really a possibility? If reality can exist with nothing, then how exactly would it be that you can conceive that anything could be a reference, much less the reference and define?  I propose that reality is.  If I was the only and I existed not, it would still be, for the reality would be that nothing is, but reality.  Reality is by no means dependent on my consciousness or any other for that matter as if I am not, it is.  If I am, it changes not, for I am only able to act within the confines of it, unless I am it, which we have already determined that I am not.

Reality Is.
Depends what you take the "I am" to be.
I am is simply a first person possessive statement and who I or you or anyone else want to take the "I am" to be, has no bearing or effect on who or what the "I am" is.

I can take the I am Jason210 to be BigRat, it doesn't make it so and taking Jason 210 to be BigRat has no bearing upon reality.  You have already made this point above with your argument concerning snakes and hose/pipes and as you have thus stated, to insist that something is other than what it is is delusional.
to insist that something is other than what it is is delusional.
To insist than it is something else other than what? You haven't given a definition, except a grammatical one, which is not satisfactory. We discussed language earlier and I suggested that there can be no word without an associated concept which means that "I am" has a meaning beyond it's grammatical definition. All you give is a grammatical definition, which by the way, was wrong, as it isn't the "first person possessive". That would me "my" or "mine".

I can take the I am Jason210 to be BigRat, it doesn't make it so and taking Jason 210 to be BigRat has no bearing upon reality.
I wasn't asking about I am Jason or I am Bigrat. What I suggested was that I am does not depend on a personality. Is "I am" the body, or is it the mind, or is it a focus in the mind or what? Does it require the words "I am" to exist? If we put aside the words "I am" for a moment, the sense of "I am" remains, like a kind of thought or feeling, or a centre of awareness. Now, we all share that. It's consciousness, and it clearly doesn't depend on any personality.

It simply is.

My dog has it too, and there is no reason to believe that it doesn't exist in all living things. Since it is always there, as far as we know, that makes it a good contender for an absolute.



Thank you for the grammar lesson.

Moving on.  "I" is a normative expression that identifies the individual, singular and in being in possession of the personality, entity, substance, etc. whatever is determined to constitute the object of reference.  "You" on the other hand is a normative expression utilized to identify the individual(s), not necessarily singular and in being seperative or other of personality, entity, substance, etc. by another other than I.

We all share....what?  Is there in fact something there to share or is that something singular within each and every one of us?  You make a hasty generalization me thinks.  In this and in your attempt to connect it to consciousness.  What happens when a person is no longer conscious of the "feeling" that remains?  And again, what happens when that "feeling" is not necessarily achievable, your dog is a fine reference though I would have prefered to have used a rock as an example, in order to avoid having to make the point that it is highly suspect that any animal is self aware as they are unable to draw a distinction between their own reflection and the presence of another animal.

Moreover, your dog is animate.  It moves, it eats, it does much and does not much as well.  This does not dictate that it is "conscious".

Let me say it again and try to be clear.  The fundamental problem that I have with each and every one of your arguments, assertions, attempts, etc. is the simple fact that there is the seeming single minded attempt to force the definition of the greater by the lesser.  The part does not, nor can it, encompass the whole, therefore, the part cannot define the whole.  The part is defined by the whole.

Apply this to your question of reality.  It, again, Is.  Whether you are, I am, they may be, who cares!  It most certainly does not and is in no way dependent on you or I or anyone else.  You could remove all the matter of the universe and reality would still remain.  It is the precedent, not the antecedent.  It is that which upon which all existence depends, for existence, must by definition, exist, and it must do so in reality.  It cannot do otherwise.  More over, the attempt to create and existence in reality that does not exist or cannot exist in reality is none to us as a deception.  No matter how much we may desire a deception to be, it is not and it cannot be exist as it is not reality.

The "I am" that is you or me?  These do not matter in defining reality.  Reality matters in defining us.  Without us, reality was, is and continues (at least we assume it continues without us, but if we weren't, it wouldn't matter would it as there would not be a me to ask if it continued after me.)  That part of you that grants you and allows you "consciousness" does not have bearing to the subject as it 1.) allows you the ability to be aware of and perceive the reality we so much discuss and 2.) is itself an outflow of that same reality being.  Again, reality can exist whether we had consciousness or not.

I take you again to the "nothing".  If it were and there was no matter in it, reality would still be.  How so?  Nothing is still something and "something" cannot exist outside or seperate from reality.  Reality is the precedent.

Reality Is (period)
Let me say it again and try to be clear.  The fundamental problem that I have with each and every one of your arguments, assertions, attempts, etc. is the simple fact that there is the seeming single minded attempt to force the definition of the greater by the lesser.  The part does not, nor can it, encompass the whole, therefore, the part cannot define the whole.  The part is defined by the whole.
Ok, so what you're saying, is that reality is. Doesn't help us much. How can something bre more real, or less real, with that defintion? I want a proper definition. That was my question.

Here are two kinds of reality:

1. Objective reality. Scientific reality if you like. That's a good one because it can be shared and trusted. But limited and only a fragment of the whole.

2. Subjective reality, which are qualia, thoughts, and everything we exeperience in consciousness, the content of which can correspond to the former kind of reality, or be private (and anythign in between).

In the second definition, there is the possibility of delusion. These are ideas that one believes to apply to the objective world but are in fact private and have no relation to the objective world. The only real aspect about them is the fact they we experience them, meaning, they appear in consciousness. But, the former kind of objective realily also appears in consciousness.

But....we know that that even what we take to be objectively real can change, when the is a new theory or paradim shift. So the content of both kinds of reality is changing. What can we say? Well, I would say the more real is that which doesn't change, or which is slower to change, where as ideas that change are less real.

All we need to do now is ask, what aspect of these two realities doesn't change? Answer: consciousness. The experience. Therefore, my argument that consciousness is more real than anything else. This fits in with Descartes and Wittgenstein's views also. This question of reality, for me, leads to an enquiry into consciousness. Is there an aspect of consciousness that is unchanging? Yes there is. "I am" is the same whatever the content of consciousness, be it dreams, or whatever. Furthermore, "I am" is a level of consciousness we all share, and I argue my dog has it to. My dog may not be conscious of the same things that we are conscious of, but she has conscious in the sense of being a point in time and space.

How far down do we go? It seems probable to me that any organism that is sensitive in some way to its environment has a degree of interior experience. Many single-celled organisms are sensitive to physical vibration, light intensity, or heat. Who are we to say they do not have a corresponding degree of consciousness?













Now, you claim that reality would still exist even if there was no-one or nothing there to be conscious of it. Perhaps. But that is your view, not a fact. But suppose awareness is present everwhere? Then it would be like the canvas upon which the universe is painted. With such a definition
The last line above was meant to be there but I'll finish it and add it anyway:



Now, you claim that reality would still exist even if there was no-one or nothing there to be conscious of it. Perhaps. But that is your view, not a fact. But suppose awareness is present everwhere? Then it would be like the canvas upon which the universe is painted. With such a definition, it would mean that there is an aspect of consciousness that is ever present, everywhere, and therefore more real than anything else because of it's unchanging nature.
Reality is.  A thing isn't more or less real.  It either is or is not.

In either case, "objective" or "subjective" you lead it back to subjection.  In both definitions you try to incorporate change even though you hint at the fact a few lines further that reality cannot change.


You keep telling me that you want a proper definition.  I keep giving one to you and you continue to reject it, even though you utilize components of its composition in your own statements.  I honestly don't think that it is a problem with my definition.  A definition is created, by your own admission, by utilizing words to convey meaning and thought.  Words, or as has been more properly pointed out earlier, symbols, are used as they hold the ability to communicate ideas by connection and association.  Those symbols are only as effective as:

1.  The mutual agreement of association (coding)

2.  The mutual interpretation of coding (protocol)

Moreover, a proper definition uses the capacity of categorization in order to effect understanding by limiting the ability of confusion within shared containers:

Ex.  The {[Yellow] [Labrador] [Retriever]} is a {species of [canine]} bred through the expression of {[recessive] alleles}, belonging to the .........


as expressed in the statement above.  The definition uses the combinations of associations of variables in an attempt to create a downwardly focusing objective, capable of communicating sufficiently a mutual idea.  The thing that I really want you to get in this is that it is downwardly focusing.  In other words, the most effective definitions a generated by cross associating multiple general ideas and higer order specific ideas to create a sieve through which only the desired reference can pass.

A+B+c-1.....=dog

Though +A or +B or +c or -1 may be dog it does not follow that it is dog.

Now, how do we define the other direction?  The difficulty begins in going this direction.  First, we define A, B, c, +, -, 1.  From there we dive into alphabet, uppercase, lowercase, number, expression, symbol.  From their we move into idea, thought, etc.  The farther we go up the stack, the fewer containers that we have to reference to.  The fewer the containers the more general the definition becomes.

This process would continue to the container that contains all other containers.  Reality.  Again, I believe that the problem does not lay with my definition.  Reality Is.  Not Is If.  Not Is When.  Not Is Not.  Is.  Not more real.  Not less real.  Is.  Almost reality, regardless of how close you shave the line, is still, not reality.  Is reality, regardless of how unsavory and undesired, is still reality.

Regarding the point of facts, I am glad that you finally breached that point.

You argue that your dog has consciousness along with rocks and atoms and amoeba.  Assumption, not fact and definitely not measurable.  To use your own words, that would make it your view, not fact.  I then get the impression that I am derided or corrected for what is at least the same on my part.  Please refrain.

If we want to get down to "facts" then the definition I have presented "Reality Is", most definitely fits much better than the definition you have presented "Reality is the consciousness assumed to be shared by all matter in the universe" which begs the question of what happens when there is no matter?  Even more interesting, noting Descartes to assert known, when he himself never really expressed anything with certitude beyond "I think, therefore, I am."  Everything else was shrouded in the constant spectre of the daemon he raises right out of the gate.  The thing that I really appreciate about Descartes is the fact that he lays in crystal clear terms just how dependent man is.

Moreover, Reality Is, is irrefutable.  You could argue against it and the entire time, do nothing but defend the assertion by virtue of your argument!!  Cease attempting to divide reality into two worlds, objective and subjective.  As I have stated before, if reality is subjective, it is no reality at all as it is subject to change from one to the other observer and cannot Be.  It would only be illusion, delusion, mis-interpretation, lack of informatic, etc.

As to simple questions.  Try this one.  Could reality exist absent consciousness; could consciousness exist absent reality?
You argue that your dog has consciousness along with rocks and atoms and amoeba.  Assumption, not fact and definitely not measurable.  To use your own words, that would make it your view, not fact.  I then get the impression that I am derided or corrected for what is at least the same on my part.  Please refrain.
Oops. Well, your belief that these things are not conscious is also assumption, and not measurable.

Reality is.  A thing isn't more or less real.  It either is or is not
Is this your view or a "fact" ;-)

Newton's laws seemed very real when they came out, but now we know that they are really only approximations that work at low speeds. Relativity gives us a more accurate picture. It is not helpful to say that Newton's is not real and Einstein's is real. One could argue that neither are real, as both will ond day be succeeded. But that is not helpful either. We could say they are both real, but that doesn't differentiate in any helpful way. Or we could say, one is closer to the truth than the other, which seems to me to the same as saying one is more real than the other. And that is actually useful information.

I could give other, cruder examples.

If we want to get down to "facts" then the definition I have presented "Reality Is", most definitely fits much better
Says who :-)

when he himself never really expressed anything with certitude beyond "I think, therefore, I am."  
Which is another way of saying "I am conscious". Also, mans dependance has nothing to do with my suggestion regarding consciousness.

Moreover, Reality Is, is irrefutable.  You could argue against it and the entire time, do nothing but defend the assertion by virtue of your argument!!  
:-)

Cease attempting to divide reality into two worlds, objective and subjective.  As I have stated before, if reality is subjective, it is no reality at all as it is subject to change from one to the other observer and cannot Be.  It would only be illusion, delusion, mis-interpretation, lack of informatic, etc.
The content may be delusional, but the experience is real.

As to simple questions.  Try this one.  Could reality exist absent consciousness; could consciousness exist absent reality?
Who knows? I guess you'd say yes. I say not, because I think the two are the same.

which begs the question of what happens when there is no matter?
Well, what is matter? Even in between masses there is something. Einstein called everything spacetime. Quarks and anti-quarks can appear out of nowhere and anhililate each other. In fact it is this process that allows black holes to "evapourate". Electromagetic radiation has mass. Perhaps matter is just a condensed form of what we commonly refer to as "nothing". But matter does allow the formation of self-reflecting mechanisms.




Cheers

TBIC
TBIC = reality
This question was suggested to me by an actually incident. I really was in Lund University's cafe at the Univerisity's botanical garden one sunny day, enjoying the landscape, watching the birds, drinking some tea while and generally just pleasantly relaxing. A few tables away, I really was are aware of a conversation between two academics. I really did hear one of them (who is a professor) announce with a german accent "...and THAT is reality."

I wonder what he said? I guess it doesn't matter. He may just have been talking about something else.
I think Bigrat was right. The reality in this case, was that the professor was talking about the German word "Realitaet" which Bigrat informs is often used to denote the inevitable, the unavoiable, the unchangeable. "Hence one might say "Angela Merkel wird als Kanzelerin bis 2013 bleiben. Das ist die Realitaet" (Angela Merkel will remain Chancellor until 2013. That's a fact. That's unavoildabe. That's how the cookie crumbles. etc.)"
Thanks everyone. Been fun.