Reality is NOT absolute &#40;apparently&#41;

Read this e-mail I got about an obvious disagreement on my post on another board, and please tell me your opinions on this.

i totally have to disagree with this. reality is not an absolute, and you do not possess the means with which to grasp it. truth is an absolute matter, but reality is by it's very definition up to the individual to define. reality is not something that can be 'understood', but it is something that can be pondered. you're methods for percieving reality are, by their very nature and definition, akin to trying to understand a source of light solely by viewing the shadows that result from it. in this same way, you possess nothing which can justifiy the idea that you can truly KNOW reality. this is a very basic concept, which is the basis of modern science, and general philosophy.

human reason can only deal with reality by using basic tools that human reason possess. as the nature of reality is far beyond the reach of these tools, it is totally useless to suggest that our reasoning can even begin to grasp it. in truth human reasoning does not allow us to actually KNOW anything, but simply have ideas about, or ponder the nature of, things. to truly KNOW reality requires tools that we simply do not possess, and are not able to use.

i'm affraid you are very mistaken, the 'facts' are against you. there is next to nothing that is truly known, if any of it exists at all, so the facts you are talking about are not based on knowledge, but on thoughts, and ponderings, not 'facts' or knowledge. sense perception is wholey insiginificant to understand reality, and this has been emphasised greatly through quantum physics, which has forced quantum physicists to realise that they are simply observing the results and reactions of sub-atomic particles, as these particles totally escape the ability to be understood through sense perception, concepts or logic. and this seems to extend all the way out to all physical sciences to one degree or another. the facts seem to point to the fact that we are only ever able to percieve reality through our own preconcieved ideas, which filter reality. your logic is always limited by your ability to relate to and compare ideas. but the fact remains that the ideas that make up reality are far beyond the reach of you logic. i mean, can you actually tell me that you are able, through your logic and concept forming abilities, to fully understand the concepts of the bending of space-time, the wave-particle duality of sub-atomic particles, or hawking's suggestion that the universe is finite, but boundariless? the facts remain that our senses, concept-forming abilities, and our logic are all totally and utterly unable to ever 'reach' these possible truths, which are the basis of our reality.

the limitation, and reduction, of reality to five senses seems to fly in the face of your assumption that reality is absolute, as there is nothign to suggest that our senses are eve remotely absolute, and everythign to suggest that the perception of our senses rest heavily on our preconcieved ideas and notions of reality.

the statement that reality is absolute makes to reference to the ideas that wishes, whims, prayers or miracles are impossible. i think that the problem you may be having with this topic is your understanding of the word reality and absolute.

truth is what it is, but you are suggesting that you can know it. i do not reject consciousness as the ability to percieve, what i reject is the ability of consciousness to KNOW reality. there is a huge difference, a gigantic gap between percieving and knowing, and i am not sure how you justify jumping it. yes, consciousness percieves things that exist, but perception by it's very nature and definition is subjective, as is consciousness, this is a general fact.

yep, which seems to suggest that proof of something is very much different from saying that something is true. logic is all well and good, but it does not 'prove truth', but justifies and provides reason to believe ideas, nothing else.

and this type of proof is only applicable to a small amount of things, things that can be observed and measured. but the truth is that our perception of reality is unable to be observed and measured. granted, there are aspects of reality which we can observe and measure, we can 'prove' that a stick is exactly 5 inches long, and then we can 'know' that, but only in relation to the abstract ideas we have already made up for ourselves to understand it, those being what an inch is, what the number five relates to, and what a stick is. this isn't knowing reality, this is reducing it to abstract human ideas. but we can still not apply this type of truth is reality as a whole, for example, you cannot truly know that another person is thinking, and you cannot truly know what exists in the room beside you, all you can do is rely on your imperfect senses, your imperfect mental ability, and youf imperfect senses to think about, or percieve reality. this is very different from your idea of knowing reality.

I have already made a response, I found it quite laughable to be brutally honest with you all.

Post 1

Wednesday, July 30, 2003 - 3:57am

Nate - I hope you asked him how he *knows* all this?! :-)

A deformed, post-modern/Kantian chicken come home to roost. "Comprachicos," anyone?

Quite apart from anything else, someone whose spelling, punctuation & grammar are that bad should be dismissed out of hand.

Post 2

Wednesday, July 30, 2003 - 4:19am

>> Quite apart from anything else, someone whose spelling, punctuation & grammar are that bad should be dismissed out of hand.

That is so true!!

BTW, my history lecturer (an otherwise very astute man) said on Monday that 'of course, we all know that there is no such thing as a fact'. Somehow I just could not summon up the energy to ask him whether this assertion was itself a 'fact', and if so, how this left his argument that there is no such thing as a fact!

Post 3

Wednesday, July 30, 2003 - 9:06am

Here is a factor that struck me as quite silly, besides his egregious spelling mistakes-- he is expanding the realm of reality and clearly assuming reality cannot be grasped my human logic and our senses. Basically, he believes reality is something "more" than we perceive it as. Simply put, how does he know? How can he claim he possesses a source of knowledge that I am uncapable of reaching?

Post 4

Wednesday, July 30, 2003 - 3:12pm

Nate, that's nothing new. Mystics have been playing the "higher reality" card ever since the first shaman waved a stick and yelled "Oogga-booga-boooooogaaah!" to chase away his tribe's nightmares.

Your friend's "reality isn't truly real" is the same tripe that Kant and Hegel tried to sell, and they succeeded just as little too well for my taste.

Post 5

Thursday, July 31, 2003 - 7:12am

Well, he's no philosopher.

He did come up with a lot of rhetoric for something that is based on complete idiocy. None the less, he is quite smart

Post 6

Thursday, July 31, 2003 - 7:13am

If I may ask, point out how his thoughts are relevant to these shaman you describe.:P

Post 7

Thursday, July 31, 2003 - 11:55am

Only the essence is relevant, Nate. Just as your friend prattles on about "higher realities", so do most mystics.

Post 8

Saturday, November 15, 2003 - 11:52pm

Well scientifically 'reality' has ultimately been indeterminate since Von Neuman. I think the mistake comes when the fact that at an ultimate level there is no provable determinism is expanded to say that no definative statement can be made on any matter. This is simply not so.

Post 9

Sunday, December 7, 2003 - 9:17am

Actually, "reality" itself has NOT been indeterminate. Only a very few things are 'indeterminate' according to quantum mechanics (the particle's trajectory, for example), and then only within a fairly wide range of POSSIBLE outcomes.
There was a guy who did some good writing on this subject, but I would have to go look him up....
Was it Sciabarra? I dunno. I'm confused now.

Question: does anybody find the "indeterminacy" thing in quantum mechanics eerily similar to Rand's idea about "measurement omission' in concept formation? (IE that a given concrete need not have a SPECIFIC length, let's say, but must have SOME length).

There are definite parallels.

Post 10

Thursday, December 11, 2003 - 11:12pm

my definition of reality: reality is what you believe is real or true.People live in different realities.Part of my reality may be that I can fly but this reality will change when my belief changes.
If I told someone i could fly and believed it would I be telling the truth -I think so.

Post 11

Friday, December 12, 2003 - 4:30am

"my definition of reality: reality is what you believe is real or true"

You = idiot. Your definition is precisely wrong in a most optimal respect - it is the epitome of wrongness.

You may fantacize about gods and goblins, but reality is what's still there after you open your eyes.

The simplest rebuttal there is : OPEN YOUR EYES !

Post 12

Friday, December 12, 2003 - 11:55am

Geez, Francois! Don't kill the poor guy! (grin)

Paul: if, as you assert, "your reality" is determined by your beliefs, then it therefore follows that there is no such thing as sanity, right?
I mean hey, if you "believe you can fly", and you jump off a building and -- voilla -- suddenly can't fly, then I can't see how your "beliefs" about the issue one way or another amount to much more than the capacity to go SPLAT-CRUNCH when you hit the ground.

I think I know how Paul made this mistake however: most non-Objectivists tend to equate "reality" with "viewpoint". This is the essential failure of Subjectivism: the idea that reality is whatever I want it to be, or hope it is.

I'm doing an article on the reasons people would opt against Objectivist principles: they all, as far as I can tell, boil down to Objectivism being TOO DIFICULT for some people. It's easier to not have to confine yourself to disciplined thought, and MUCH easier to go along with the Collective on everything. And it's REALLY easy to just assume that whatever 'problem" faces you, the government should fix. Thiking about the consequences of actions is hard, so people don't bother, and all of their post-modernist "justifications" for subjectivism/determinism/nihilism etc amount to NOTHING but trying to make themselves not look pathetic.

Does anybody else get REALLY bitter about this stuff, or is it just me?

Post 13

Friday, December 12, 2003 - 2:56pm

Is there only one true reality?I believe so but there are also uncountable false realities.These are the realities that people live in and for them it is reality.It is what they believe.
OK OK I know...the false realities don't count because they are false,not true ,not ...reality.But,their false realities are made up of many beliefs, many thoughts or statements that define their reality.Some of these thoughts may be correct and some incorrect so their reality isn't fully true or false.But the person believes that all of what they believe is true.It is their reality.
But what if one of their beliefs came into question.Things happened to make them doubt what they previously believed was true,like they went splat on the ground when they attempted flight.Well I guess they found out the hard way.

Post 14

Friday, December 12, 2003 - 3:35pm

Yea, you're right. I should just let you two talk it out and stop raising my blood pressure.

Post 15

Friday, December 12, 2003 - 6:52pm

Yeah but Paul, that just highlights exactly what I was talking about:
If a guy goes up on a building and yells out "I can fly!", the fact that he "believes in it a whole lot" isn't going to make a difference. he's gonna go splat.
Okay, let's try this again:

You would (i presume) admit that there are "true realites" as well as "false realities", correct?
(By this I mean, beliefs which actually involve what is really true. Facts, in other words.)
Now "false realities" (as far as I can figure it out), consist of beliefs that are in error?

Remember when your dad came into your room and showed you that there wasn't REALLY a monster under the bed? That didn't change anything in reality, except for the fact that you were no longer mistaken about what you believed. That's all we're saying. the big long involved philosophical debates over the meaning of "A=A" boil down essentially to recognizing that no matter what you think or wish or believe or WANT, if there's no monster under the bed, then there's NO MONSTER UNDER THE BED.

The whole thing is summed up, by the statement "Existence exists." Facts are facts, and the attempt to evade, ignore, or "disbelieve" those facts, is going to end badly for anybody who does it. They will (as you so aptly put it) "learn the hard way".)

Francois, please take note: I'm being nice to Paul because from what he's asking, he seems like he's really sincere in discussing this. If he came off like some other people who've posted to this board, I'd be all over him like a steam-roller. But he seems to really be interested in learning about Objectivism. You pounced on him a little to fast. Remember: not everybody who asks these type of questions is stupid.

Don't get me wrong -- a few days of "Supreme Commander" and I'm ready to bash somebody's skull in with a shovel, myself!

I hope I clarrified things for you, Paul.

Post 16

Sunday, December 14, 2003 - 6:46pm

Lemme try.

At any point in time, we can't really know what will happen next. Through experience, we learn that generally if you jump off a building you will fall to the ground.

How do we gain this understanding? Perhaps we are walking, and trip. We fall and hurt ourselves. We have observed this new phenomenon. From this we deduce that in the future if we trip we can expect to fall.

Before we tripped for the first time, perhaps we didn't know we would fall. At that point we hadn't had the opportunity of observing a similar episode, as to form a prediction.

However, what was real was that once we tripped we fell. Essentially, reality is what is 'real'. If a person jumps off a building, then falls, that is the reality. Before he jumps, any beliefs he holds about the outcome don't change the outcome, unless he decides not to jump, or something stops him.

While reality is real, we can only form opinions of it, based on previous eperience. As before we had tripped, we didn't expect to fall. After that episode, we had the knowledge that tripping leads to falling.

In an utmost theoretical way, we can't really be sure of anything. There is no way to perfectly predict the future, no matter how sure we are.

We might believe the earth exists. We know this because we have sailed around it, seen it from space, etc. Of course, we must tackle the meaning of 'exists' in this case. 'Exists' means we experienced it.

Potentially, our brain could be recieving inputs via computer, matrix style. Were this the case, we wouldn't be able to tell this. In this case, the earth wouldn't necessarily exist, as it could be data sent by computer to our brains, tell us what we see and feel, etc.

There is a potential pitfall here which must be addressed. To say something 'exists' implies a frame of reference. Before we attain knowledge of our matrix-style incarceration, to what extent doesn't the earth exist?

I put it to you that it does exist, until we learn that it doesn't. It exists because we observe it, etc. I think this was the essence of Paul's posts. The frame of reference of the viewer determines to what extent something exists. Obviously, in this example it can be argued that the earth didn't exist in this case, but it does in our reality. Of course, we are ourselves in the situation of the humans before discovering their matrix-style incarceration.

They didn't know of the actual reality. They had a false idea of what was 'real'. There was no way for them to know what the real reality was.

It should now be obvious to see that we are in the same situation. While for the moment we believe our reality is of the earth existing in space, etc, there is no way to be sure that some other reality abounds.

Hence it follows that Paul's case for belief instituting reality can be understood. What we think is reality is our reality, while this may not be the 'actual' reality. As it is impossible to know when we have found the 'actual reality', our reality is all that we have.

Of course, it can be argued that recognising that our reality might be false doesn't really mean much, since as soon as we observe some contradictory evidence we will form a new idea of reality. Worrying about it now might be somewhat pointless.

I think the misunderstand of Paul's intentions is the misinterpretation of the word 'belief'. In the general context, 'belief' is absolute to the individual, at least this is the common interpretation. However, and I imagine especially among Objectivists, belief is not absolute, as we should recognise the possibility of being wrong.

So to Paul, believing we can fly means harbouring no doubt about it at all. We believe it as strongly as we believe we exist. Pursuant to my points above, and in this context, the participant's view of reality is that he can fly. That is what is 'real' to him.

On the other hand, if belief is equated with thought, as it probably should be, we realise that although we believe we can fly, there is a chance that we might fall. With this mindset it would be foolish to jump off the building, at least without doing some tests first, like throwing a stone off the side of the building.

In this case our 'reality' is that we realise we aren't sure what the actual reality is. Pursuant to this, we are cautious to jump off the building.

They are possible reasons why such a person might not fall when jumping off the building. The air might be rising at a great velocity, or the building might be underwater. Obviously we would quickly be able to determine this, and therefore alter our prediction of the consequences.

However, theoretically there could be unknown factors which determine the end result. Again, while some might believe (in Paul's sense) that such factors are impossible, others might not be so quick to dismiss the possibility.

It is said that to be creative we need to think outside our normal bounds, and to invent we must believe in the impossible. This hinges on 'impossible' meaning that which hasn't been shown to be possible. Righteously believing in the substance of reality doesn't change the possibility that perhaps we are mistaken.

How you choose to respond to that possibility largely determines what philosophy you ascribe to, or if you prefer to 'go it alone', without being wholly adherent to any one viewpoint.

Post 17

Monday, December 15, 2003 - 1:28am

"belief is not absolute"
To me that is perhaps the same as saying we don't know anything.
Someone once said to me in reference to an argument I was proposing:"you really believe that don't you?",to which i replied "well,I am seriously considering the possibility and if I had to put odds on it ,I would say I am 90% sure."
Does this mean I believe it? or that I know it?What about if it was 99%,or 99.99%.At some point one has to decide because for one thing it can be very emotionally unsettling to be undecided (depending on the issue of course)and for another thing you can't act if your undecided.
Do people decide what to believe?Like as in when one considers the possibility and thinks about it and questions and looks for answers to those questions and gradually comes to a decision.But I for one can't just choose to believe something that I have no evidence for and that I am not at least 99% sure of.Many beliefs come from our subconcious, being beliefs formed as part of our childhood conditioning or by the power of suggestion (explicit or implied by the actions and attitudes of those we observe)
Anyway I give up. I was wrong (I think) Reality isn't just what you believe is real.

Post 18

Monday, December 15, 2003 - 10:28am

"Reality isn't just what you believe is real."

Did you read my post? As I pointed out, it would be foolish to presuppose that what we view something real is ipso facto real. We really can't ever be sure.

The crux is that it 'might as well be real', until we find evidence that proves otherwise. So although in my matrix analogy the earth didn't exist, to the humans it might as well have existed, since they knew no better.

What was the tallest mountain before Mount Everest was discovered? The answer is Mount Everest. Just because it wasn't discovered yet didn't stop it being the tallest mountain. This is a common stated example of what reality is to most people, but I put it to you that before Mount Everest was discovered it might as well have not been the tallest mountain.

We cannot ascertain for certain whether something exists in the absolute sense, therefore I say it exists until potentially we discover it doesn't.

To harp on the semantic difference between existing and potentially existing is meaningless; I choose to recognise the possibility of error in our views of reality.

Recall that I said we can never be absolutely sure. This is incorrect. We can be completely sure. This doesn't mean we can't be proven wrong though. Being completely sure simply means you don't find any reason at all to doubt something.

Again, I simply try to realise that there is always a chance we are wrong, and this attitude usually precipitates more detailed study, especially in respect of theories with disagree with our own.

So henceforth let's say we can be sure of reality, but we can be wrong. You can think of reality as being something absolute, which we will never truly ascertain to be absolute, or choose to view it as simply our opinion of what is 'real'. The semantic difference between these opinions is negligable. Neither is 'right' or 'wrong'.

I see no problem with stating that 'real' is what we believe to be real.

"Do people decide what to believe? I for one can't just choose to believe something that I have no evidence for and that I am not at least 99% sure of."

They do. These comments of yours show me you stance on the word 'belief', as I discussed it in my previous post. Christopher Columbus viewed all the information available, then formed a judgement that china could be reached by sailing west. He 'believed' that he could reach it that way.

Did he choose to believe it? I think so. Another person presented with the same evidence might have concluded that it was unlikely to be true. That sounds like choice to me.

Moreover, some people believe that the US invasion of Iraq isn't justified, while others believe it is. The same evidence abounds. Can you put forward a positive argument to prove they don't 'choose' which to believe?

Post 19

Monday, December 15, 2003 - 10:39am