Is there such a thing as objective reality?
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  Is there such a thing as objective reality?
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Author Topic: Is there such a thing as objective reality?  (Read 7695 times)
The Mikado
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« on: December 03, 2014, 02:00:32 PM »

My inclination is towards no, that the universe we perceive is at least partially created by our minds and preconceptions of how things work, and that therefore there are as many "realities" as there are people. To a person who strongly believes in the healing potential of fairies, illness that ends in recovery might well be the work of fairies, something this person strongly believes in, even though to the outside observer it is just a recovery. It's one issue I've always had with a lot of modern atheists: there's this unstated presumption that there's only one physical reality that is the same for everyone inside of it. The universe is, to me, equal parts the actual nature of things outside of me and how I choose to perceive and interpret it, and the intellectual structures that lead to my interpretation, everything from my past experiences to something like the English language which has words for some thoughts but not others and steers me towards things that I have words for, shape my view of how things work. This view is going to be very different from jmfcst's, for example, but in a real way, in jmfcst's worldview the salvation from sin by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is far more real than it is in my reality.

I don't feel that there's enough grappling with the distinction between whether reality is the things outside of us or the creation of our own perceptions, biases, and preconceptions. I very much dispute that there is such a thing as one "reality."

Just a thought of the day.
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afleitch
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« Reply #1 on: December 03, 2014, 04:05:42 PM »
« Edited: December 03, 2014, 04:07:56 PM by afleitch »

If reality is so loosely weaved, leave your house by the second floor window because you strongly believe you will be able to leave the house that way and then see if your assumption holds up.
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DemPGH
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« Reply #2 on: December 03, 2014, 04:18:10 PM »

To a person who strongly believes in the healing potential of fairies, illness that ends in recovery might well be the work of fairies, something this person strongly believes in, even though to the outside observer it is just a recovery.

No, and I can't help but chuckle a little. That's why there is such a thing as experimentation. If you have high blood pressure, you take a blood pressure pill and it goes down. You ask the fairies in the woods to bring it down, it doesn't go down.

As to the question at hand - no, I don't "believe" in objective reality. I accept it.
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The Mikado
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« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2014, 05:08:22 PM »

If reality is so loosely weaved, leave your house by the second floor window because you strongly believe you will be able to leave the house that way and then see if your assumption holds up.

From your perspective, I might be dead. From my perspective, though, the universe itself would have ceased to exist along with me. That's exactly what I mean. Does reality exist for me separately from my perception of it? Rather, it seems like it's constructed by my perception of it.
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afleitch
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« Reply #4 on: December 03, 2014, 05:33:48 PM »

If reality is so loosely weaved, leave your house by the second floor window because you strongly believe you will be able to leave the house that way and then see if your assumption holds up.

From your perspective, I might be dead. From my perspective, though, the universe itself would have ceased to exist along with me. That's exactly what I mean. Does reality exist for me separately from my perception of it? Rather, it seems like it's constructed by my perception of it.

But you do admit that you will fall? Therefore there is an objective reality to that outcome?
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bore
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« Reply #5 on: December 03, 2014, 05:38:43 PM »
« Edited: December 03, 2014, 06:11:15 PM by Senator bore »

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Basically what The Mikado's saying isn't that out there.
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afleitch
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« Reply #6 on: December 03, 2014, 05:41:25 PM »

But if all our bodies inhabit this reality to quote Schrodinger, then it is 'reality' for us only in the basis that we can never know any other plateau. There's probably a shared reality for cats. What Mikado is saying is that 'reality' depends on the individual and allows for a variety of differing truths.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
Ernest
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« Reply #7 on: December 03, 2014, 09:41:54 PM »

If reality is so loosely weaved, leave your house by the second floor window because you strongly believe you will be able to leave the house that way and then see if your assumption holds up.

From your perspective, I might be dead. From my perspective, though, the universe itself would have ceased to exist along with me. That's exactly what I mean. Does reality exist for me separately from my perception of it? Rather, it seems like it's constructed by my perception of it.

Do we exist separately from others' perceptions of us?  Rather than "Cogito ergo sum", might not "Videmus ergo sumus" be a more accurate view of reality?
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Beet
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« Reply #8 on: December 04, 2014, 10:32:29 AM »

If reality is so loosely weaved, leave your house by the second floor window because you strongly believe you will be able to leave the house that way and then see if your assumption holds up.

From your perspective, I might be dead. From my perspective, though, the universe itself would have ceased to exist along with me. That's exactly what I mean. Does reality exist for me separately from my perception of it? Rather, it seems like it's constructed by my perception of it.

If the universe does not exist apart from you, what accounts for discovery and surprise? Wouldn't you have to argue that when you are surprised, it's really some part of your mind revealing itself to some other part of your mind? Also, it seems a bit implausible that a universe constructed by the mind (or "perception") would be so precise. When I dream, the laws of physics are certainly not precise. But when I am waking, they are. The only way this could be internally generated is if all the laws of physics were somehow inside of me, and I brought them forward by some ulterior process akin to the doctrine of recollection.
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memphis
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« Reply #9 on: December 04, 2014, 10:39:39 AM »

Even if it does, our perceptions of it are so profoundly limited that it doesn't really matter.
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anvi
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« Reply #10 on: December 04, 2014, 10:49:43 AM »

Just because something isn't perceived doesn't lend warrant to the inference that it's unreal.  The fact that the world wouldn't be experienced by, say, human beings if human beings didn't exist does not imply with necessity that human beings' perceptions "created" the world.  In addition to that logical point, there is the added fact that much in the world we've discovered is real despite the circumstance that we can't immediately perceive those things, but need inferential techniques and instruments to detect them.  Among these are electrons, x-rays, radiation bombardment from outside our atmosphere...and even numbers; no one has ever seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched the number 3, and yet we do a stupendous number of things successfully with it.  Berkeley's infamous equation of perception and existence is then one of the most notorious philosophical conflations ever made.  Perceiving something certainly helps lend great credibility to our belief in its existence, but that doesn't make the converse true; a failure to perceive something does not imply with necessity that it doesn't exist.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #11 on: December 04, 2014, 02:48:52 PM »

The one thing that is very clear is that we ourselves experience everything subjectively; I can only see with my eyes, I can only hear with my ears, and (most importantly) I can only think with my mind. This is an extremely obvious truth (to the extent that it is actually self-evident), but it's one that can be surprisingly easy to forget. Assuming that there is an objective reality, we cannot ourselves experience it - or even observe it - objectively.

A source of considerable amusement to me is the fact that many of the scientific breakthroughs of the past hundred years tend to back this up; no one knows what an atom looks like, for instance (let's not even think about the composition of an atom). It's interesting that the language of popular science struggles to describe this accurately; atoms are often described as being building blocks of matter even though strictly speaking this is not exactly true.
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Beet
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« Reply #12 on: December 07, 2014, 12:01:00 PM »

A better statement of the idealist view might be that there is something out "there", but the minute we try to observe it or think about it in any way, we are committing an act of the mind, as Al mentioned. A peculiar implication of this might be that the statement "the universe would still exist without any mind" is incoherent, for it presupposes meaning to the term "universe", which is a mental creation. It also presupposes a distinction between existence and non existence, which is a mental creation.

In any case, I believe memphis is correct.
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anvi
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« Reply #13 on: December 07, 2014, 09:35:17 PM »

Well, there are lots of things at issue here. 

One is the way that the phrase "objective reality" has been applied.  It's supposed often to denote either "reality independent of the mind" or in some way reality as it would appear to a being who could know everything "as it is in itself."  But that conception of "objective reality," it seems clear, demands an impossible standard of knowing.  We can only experience and know the world as the kinds of beings we are.  But if some artificially perfect standard of objectivity is not and will never be attainable by us, that doesn't entail that we don't know anything about the world that we can justifiably suppose are natural facts. 

Another thing raised here are the limitations of our observational perspectives, and hence the limits of our descriptive capacities.  But I'd argue that the limits are not necessarily fixed in one place.  We can make decisions and cultivate habits that contract the limits of our observation and knowledge, but we can also do things to expand them. 

Finally, there is the observation that everything we think and say is the result of mental activity.  True enough, of course.  But human minds are not disembodied realms of abstraction; they are physical organs that are integrated with organs of sense and activity and locomotion, and they interact with an environment.  That means our thoughts, distinctions and language, while obviously mental constructions, can bear relations with the natural world and be informed by those relations. 

Idealism, most of the time, does not merely stop with making statements about the limits of our ideas and language, but reaches for metaphysical inferences about the world on the basis of these limitations.  I'm perfectly comfortable with the pointing out the limitations of human experience and knowledge.  But the idealist metaphysical implications of these, despite a previous fascination of mine with Kant, don't convince me anymore.  We are physical creatures living in a physical world, and our knowledge and language are flawed but often quite functional outgrowths of that situatedness, not walls that make nature utterly inaccessible to us.   
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DC Al Fine
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« Reply #14 on: December 07, 2014, 10:29:26 PM »

Sure. At minimum the cogito applies. I think therefore I am. Once you know you exist, you have an objective piece of knowledge, even if everything else is questionable.
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DemPGH
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« Reply #15 on: December 08, 2014, 11:26:11 AM »
« Edited: December 08, 2014, 11:28:07 AM by DemPGH »

I was thinking about a little experiment that could be done.

1. Gather 15 mentally healthy people in a room.
2. Have a black medium sized dog (like a lab) walk into the room.
3. Call the dog out.
4. Ask immediately what everyone saw (or if anyone saw anything other than a black dog - a man, a woman, a fairy, an elf, a dragon, etc.).

I guarantee that everyone will have seen a black dog. Then, if there is still skepticism, repeat the experiment with, say, a woman in a red dress with raven hair. Then check immediately to see if anyone saw anything other than a distinct woman in a red dress with dark hair.

Of course this would be a colossal waste of time to prove the obvious, but nonetheless if there exists doubt concerning objective reality, or if we're bending over backwards to say that there is no such thing, then these kinds of things can prove useful to demonstrate that there is.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #16 on: December 08, 2014, 01:44:44 PM »

Back in the 19th century Catholic priests in Italy had a special tactic to rout Idealists in public debates; they would pound the table in front of them and insist that the Idealist sitting next to them believed that the table did not exist. Worked like a charm and would presumably (ironically?) have been approved by all the various materialists (philosophical, scientific, whatever) out there. As far as was known at the time it was not even exactly dishonest (except in spirit. Such tactics are always dishonest in spirit). The trouble with similar tactics now,1 is that scientific breakthroughs have destroyed the materialism on which it rested (material reality turns out not to exist in its own right: it is effectively some kind of abstraction). Or to put things a little differently, we now know that the universe is not structured according to manmade rules and so cannot be explained by logic.2

1. Although I'm sure that they would still work in a public debate!

2. Which turns out to be excellent news for science because, damn, doesn't that make things interesting?
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Foucaulf
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« Reply #17 on: December 08, 2014, 02:18:47 PM »

On a different angle, it sounds like people who ask this question are really asking a question about the existence of objective value, and the denial of objective reality is intended to kick away any appeal to "ontological arguments" in support of certain values. This wouldn't be sufficient to end the discussion, though; objective value theorists can appeal to claims about what we have most reason to do or appealing to the "impersonal view of the universe".

On the other hand, do atheists even appeal to objective value? There are religious beliefs in the world that profess objective value (as in the existence of God's power of salvation), as well as those who profess subjective value (when it's all about "a personal relationship to Christ"). It would be hard to pin down exactly what kind of value system atheists support if there were no opposition to unite them.

Maybe we should get back to evaluating specific value propositions, like "It is a fact that DemPGH had the worst Atlasian administration."
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anvi
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« Reply #18 on: December 08, 2014, 03:55:11 PM »

I'm not sure scientific breakthroughs have destroyed materialism.  The smallest elements of matter may be more energetic dynamics than "elements," and they may have a lot of "empty space," but that doesn't mean the compound things that they combine and accrete to make up aren't material.  Only an insistence on reductionist moves to the exclusion of everything else would call matter a 'mere abstraction."  What modern physics has killed, it seems to me, is a certain view of material mechanics that lended warrant to determinism, and that killing was correct.  I don't know many lab scientists who are trying to use logic to explain the world, but most of them still use mathematics, as well as various kinds of measurement, and all these are human-made techniques. 
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DemPGH
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« Reply #19 on: December 08, 2014, 04:13:03 PM »
« Edited: December 08, 2014, 04:15:07 PM by DemPGH »

Al, I think you're refering to quantum properties, and there is an answer to that.

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Also, yeah, logic alone would be a limiting way to look at the world. Rather, it is one tool amongst many that scientists use.

I also managed to find this argument, which I think speaks to the big picture here. That's a little sobering to me, to be perfectly honest, and I can't emphasize enough how I think efforts to portray science as "just another narrative" are really killing "the arts." I don't actually think that that view is dominant, but there are certainly substantial pockets of it, and the quicker the idea dies, the better.
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Associate Justice PiT
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« Reply #20 on: December 10, 2014, 06:04:05 AM »

     I tend to adopt the view that there is an objective reality, but I agree with Memphis and Beet that in the limited nature of human understanding we cannot claim to truly know what it is. As Nietzsche argued, we operate based on reasonable certainty, not absolute certainty. This philosophy also plays a fundamental role in criminal procedure.

    When people reject "objective reality", my understanding is that they are rejecting the usefulness of the philosophical idea. People are concerned about the true essence, or the Thing in Itself. You see this all the time when a politician speaks to something semi-abstract such as "the will of the people". An election may not be the most accurate measure of the will of the people, but on some level it is the only useful measure.
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Cory
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« Reply #21 on: December 15, 2014, 11:17:18 PM »

The correct answer is yes.
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The Mikado
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« Reply #22 on: December 19, 2014, 01:30:18 AM »

I was thinking about a little experiment that could be done.

1. Gather 15 mentally healthy people in a room.
2. Have a black medium sized dog (like a lab) walk into the room.
3. Call the dog out.
4. Ask immediately what everyone saw (or if anyone saw anything other than a black dog - a man, a woman, a fairy, an elf, a dragon, etc.).

I guarantee that everyone will have seen a black dog. Then, if there is still skepticism, repeat the experiment with, say, a woman in a red dress with raven hair. Then check immediately to see if anyone saw anything other than a distinct woman in a red dress with dark hair.

Of course this would be a colossal waste of time to prove the obvious, but nonetheless if there exists doubt concerning objective reality, or if we're bending over backwards to say that there is no such thing, then these kinds of things can prove useful to demonstrate that there is.

And then the blind man in the room does not perceive the same reality as the other participants in your experiment and the results are called into question, yes.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
Ernest
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« Reply #23 on: December 19, 2014, 02:30:41 AM »

And while there appears to be a physical phenomenon that produces the color red, we have no way of knowing if everyone actually perceives red the same way.  Maybe what red looks like in your brain looks like green in my brain.  We'll never know, but does it matter?  Even if we have what could be considered different subjective experiences internally, if they are stimulated by the same external stimuli and we respond externally to them identically, is there really a subjective difference?
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Cory
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« Reply #24 on: December 19, 2014, 09:22:21 PM »

And then the blind man in the room does not perceive the same reality as the other participants in your experiment and the results are called into question, yes.

But that's because he's blind. All because he can't see it doesn't change the actual, physical reality.
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