I’m pretty new to this website so please excuse me if this is already being discussed. I was on work experience with a really interesting architect and he thought that whatever exists only exists because everyone belives it exists. For example would the table in your kitchen exist if everyone that ever saw it, made it, cut the wood, chopped the tree, or was the tree, truly believed that it didnt exist, would it? Likewise with time, if everyone believed it was the year 1916 would it be?
One’s perception of reality does not alter reality.
Kurt,
I’m not trying to pick on you, but I want to ask, why doesn’t one’s perception of reality alter reality? (I’m not saying I agree or disagree with the notion) Just trying to find out what you think.
What’s your take?
Judging by Kurt’s signature it would seem that he subscribes to the philosophy of Objectivism which believes that that reality is external to our minds. They claim that it is possible to use reason and logic to come to that conclusion but at the end of the day, it boils down to faith. “Cogito ergo sum” and even that is tenuous.
I like a lot of Ayn Rand’s literature and think Objectivism has a lot to offer. One thing I have learnt though, is that it is pointless arguing with a Rand purist because more often than not they have learnt the Rand-scriptures off by heart and recite them when challenged and not a single thing would change their mind. I personally believe that the external world is separate from our perception but I would readily admit that it boils down to a basic belief rather than suggesting there was some logical reason why it had to be true.
People who believe that things only exist when we believe (or perceive) in them are called Idealists. “Esse est percipi” (to be is to be perceived) was the term coined by George Berkeley when putting forward his version of Idealism. He claimed that things only existed when they were perceived by one or more minds. Berkeley differed from hardcore Idealists because when challenged with the idea that it was nonsensical to say that things stopped existed when we closed our eyes, he responded by saying that God was perceiving everything in the Universe and so it always existed. A load of old codswallop if you ask me, but I can’t prove that he is wrong.
The question that leads on from this is, as long as it seems like things are still existing outside of our perception, does it practically matter whether they are or not? If I am convinced that my bed exists when I leave my room, it makes no difference whether it does continue to exist or not because to me, I don’t notice the difference.
At the end of the day, we can’t prove it either way and so we have to live with what we are most comfortable with. If you choose to believe that things only exist when we perceive them, you travel the dangerous road to solipsism which is the belief that “I exist, and everything and everyONE else is a figment of my imagination.” Apart from being very similiar to megalomania, it would be very difficult to live out a life if you truly believed yours was the only mind. To believe in an external reality is the one that gives me the most satisfaction, although sadly, I cannot prove it.
The solar system didn’t suddenly change from everything rotating around the earth to everything rotating around the sun when Copernicus looked through that old telescope, the world didn’t fit in with the way that everyone thought it did, the facts did not match the belief. Not matter how hard everyone thought, they could not change the way our solar system was set out. Your architect friend is a fruit loop.
You could probably think of a million examples of the whole world believing something that natural philosophy (later developing into todays science) disproved so I don’t think we need to dive down in to the depths of Rand or Berkeley to answer this question! Being a philosopher doesn’t necessarily mean leaping at the old text books to find out what is right or wrong, a bit of considering the question is the best way.
Kurt is right, no matter how hard we’ve tried our perception cannot alter reality.
Okay using kurt’s logic.
Perception of reality does not change reality
But A perception is 1 view/understanding of reality.
My perception is diffrent from magius’s view. Does that mean we live in 2 diffrent realities?
In Kurt’s logic Perception is the result of reality. Then what is the cause of reality?
And if my reality is diffrent from Magius’s reality is the cause the same?
Are we not part of reality? Actually, “perceptions” is probably the wrong word to use here. If we don’t believe that a table is a table, then it’s not a table. This is not a staggering proposition of Idealism, it simply means that the concept table is a socially constructed term and therefore are perceptions will “see” something else. If we “see” something else, won’t our actions alter reality? If we see the ‘table’ as firewood, won’t we break it down and use it for that purpose? Doesn’t that alter reality?
Both Randian Realists and Berkeleyan Idealists presuppose a reality “out there” and a perception “in here”, buy why that necessarily must be is something I don’t understand.
I’ll stop there until we get into phenomenal properties and raw feels.
Is a blue table blue? It may be blue to me, but is it blue to magius?
Is reality universally the SAME or does it differ for each person.
Perhaps if they are diffrent then maybe their are universal conectors that keep everything linked. so we dont start chopping up people’s tabled thinking its firewood.
Yes, a blue table will be a blue table to both you and magius, it absorbs certain wavelengths of light and our definition of blue, whether you realise it or not, could be seen as “that patch in my perception that I am getting a certain stimuli from”. Whether the “colour” is the same in each of your your heads is largely irrelevant each time you guys meet and see something blue you will be recieving the same stimuli and say the saame word “blue”, that the mechanism for conecting the stimuli to “blue” might be slightly different cause of brainwiring is neither here no there. A computer can still recognise blue, though it “sees” blue completely diffferently.
Reality has to be the same for everyone, othrewise there would be no language as if we had differing realities things like ostensive teaching would not work.
If they were different but linked, you could just say that the linkages constitute connection and thus it is just part of the whole, and so yet again, we are all part of the same reality.
And if we start naming things differently why would that change our perception? I see a table and I could equally think “perdopper” cause that’s what I’d been taught a tablke was called. The only thing that would make me chop it up for fire wood is if I had no use, or further use for the table and had a desperate need for firewood. Take a bottle of spirits, it has two different uses, one as a means to get blotto, the other as a means of fire lighting, I will use it according to my needs (or not use it at all at the moment as some exams are looming 
BluTGI wrote:
We merely denote a convention by our use of the word “blue.” We’ve agreed to refer to the visual sensation of electromagnetic radiation having a wavelength lying between two approximate limits as being blue. This convention works because all individual human brains are patterned on the very same evolved model. You might think of a television receiver as an analogy to our brain. The make of the television in your living room is probably different than the television in your new girlfriend’s living room, but when you tell her that you enjoy watching channel six (the Science channel), you may be reasonably confident that if she tunes to channel six on her television, she won’t instead see channel seventeen (the Playboy channel). The reason is that both receivers were factory calibrated to the same standard. Our brains were similarly calibrated through the long history of our common evolution. I’m speaking here only of our convention, not of any ultimate reality.
Matt wrote:
Matt, I understand what you are saying. It makes perfect sense to me. Unfortunately, the reality just beyond our everyday macroworld does not appear to make much sense. Bohr’s “Copenhagen Interpretation” of quantum physics, for example, suggests that observation constructs reality. The physicist John Wheeler takes this idea even further. He believes that the observer literally creates his own universe. The nonlocality implied by recent experiments is even more unsettling. Everything appears to be intricately connected to everything else, as if ultimately the words “this” and “that” have no meaning.
This is a tremendous problem, Matt. Philosophy is not generally afforded the luxury of experimental validation. Philosophy’s primary tool is reason. What shall we do if it turns out that our reason is only a useful guide for the familiar macroworld in which we live?
In retrospect it appear to have been presumptuous of us to assume that the provincial organization and nature of the human brain would have validity in non-human realms. This puts me in mind of the story about the drunk searching for his keys under the lampost because this is where the light is shining. Though we’ve no reason to assume that the world ultimately should make sense to us, what other hope do we have of understanding the world, except by the employment of our reason?
“If a hammer is your only tool, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” Abraham Maslow
Michael
I know where you’re coming from, but I’m always healthily sceptical of the actual implications that quantum physics has on our reality, which is based on macro level Newtonian physics. I’m quite happy to accept that the observation of a quantum particle changes it’s state, but I’m certain that the ball’s gonna roll down the hill whether I look at it or not (excluding the intervention of a mischevious friend). It’s like Schrodinger’s cat, in reality it is dead or it is not dead, it never exists in a quantum state of flux. Just because we do not observe when it died does not mean that we cannot determine what time it died at a later date (from the extent of rigermortius, etc.).
Well, there are philosophies that argue this, but I’m quite happy thinking of myself as a discrete human, as I’m sure you do. They hve meaning because we use them (but I suppose it depends on what philosophy of meaning you subscribe to). I find it more useful to realise that there is a possibility that it’s all a sham, but that as I accept the reality around me I can operate with these presumptions to have useful terms like truth and knowledge, to rely without guilt on induction. The idealists are losing the battle, what use is it saying that there is no reality? If I I kick that stone, it’s still going to hurt
Ah yes, I saw a documentary about the superstring theorum last night that said much the same thing. It basically states that everything that “is” is in some way linked to these tremendously large “strings” that in their 11 dimensional oscilations give rise to it all. Anyway, the intricacies of the theorum are not as interesting as the consequences of it so far as I am concerned.
Firstly, as stated above, it is impossible to pinpoint the exact locality of any subatomic particle. It was this realisation, as much as anything, that gave rise to the superstring theorum: in three (or even four) dimensional space, particles can be said to exist in more than one place at once, which obviously is a direct contradiction to everything we previously thought we knew about particles and the concept of “location”. I think, in a more primative form, this was known as the “uncertainty principle”. However, if we do the sums and assume that there are 11 dimensions (as opposed to the 4 postulated by Einstein and the 10 postulated in the original string theorum) then it all begins to make sense, and the discrepencies caused by this uncertainty principle can now be explained in terms of these 11 dimensional strings. The strings can explain everything from the creation of the universe, to the existence of gravity (and why it is so weak) and to why matter exists at all. Everything, if the theorum is correct, can be traced back to these grandiose oscilations that occur in 11 dimensions, though it is only those in the first 4 that we can ever comprehend on any basis beond that in equation form.
It is the closest we have come to a theory of “everything”.
However, I suppose the philosophical consequences of such a theory would be immense. Firstly, as everything can be traced back to forces well beyond our everyday human comprehension, our picture of reality is immediately blurred. We see things in three dimensions, where as the forces that dictate how everything exists, behaves and “appears” to us are unintelligable: we see in three dimensions (or four depending on how you interpret time), but this is only a small fraction of what is. We are slaves to our ancestory. Our evolution necessitated the comprehension of just three dimensions to survive, so this is all we have learnt to comprehend. However, given that there are dimensions beyond this anthropocentric perspective, how can we ever properly comprehend reality? Sure, we may be able to elucidate “the-everything” in the form of equations, using the language of mathematics, but we cannot yet transcend our pre-ordained methods of intuition and perception. We can talk of eleven dimensions, but, so long as we are human, we are forever doomed to think in three. Our perception of reality will forever be incomplete, if we do our best to examine our own situation from “beyond” our own situation: that is to say, that so long as we can assume that the reality we perceive is different from the reality that actually “is”, the best we can do is to think beyond our prejudices and examine the universe as objectively as possible, postulating the existence of elements (such as sub-atomic particles and forces, dimensions beyond our own et cetera) that we can never really be properly “conscious” of, nor “perceive” in any way beyond the highly abstract method of theorising.
The implication is - however - that so far as it can be demonstrated that this “theoretical” reality (the reality that can be shown, in some way, to exist beyond what we humans are aware of) is imperceivable due to the way we have evolved to think, then it can be demonstrated, quite easily, that we therefore must be determining our own version of reality - a reality which, at base, is no more true than in the way it has evolved to allow us to survive. Therefore, if the string theories are correct, we have been able - using the more universal, objective method of mathematics - in some way to transcend the reality we are aware of, and the reality we immerse ourselves in day to day, to identify a reality that entirely transcends that which we can perceive. We have been able to identify the flaws in the way our mind perceives and comprehends what it is stimulated by and shown, in some small way, that our everyday conception of reality is quite different from what - in all likelihood - actually “is”.
The flaw in this idea, naturally, is that the only way we can transcend our human way of thinking, is by employing methods that - when all is said and done - were still created and employed by humanity itself. The only way we can transcend our human reality, is to employ it in a different way. We are using human systems of logic, to try and overcome human logic itself. We may say that mathematics can postulate a more “real” reality than the one we perceive day to day, but how can we ever know? It was our day to day reality that made possible the system of mathematics that denies it and instead offers a seperate, supposedly more “real” representation of reality that is rapidly different from our own. But the question must be asked, how can we transcend our nature with such confidence?
Perhaps all that is left to say, is that which Friedrich Neitzsche a good hundered years before the superstring theory sent me into this existential headspin:
“We have abolished the real world: what world is left? the apparent world perhaps?.. But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world!”
- Neitzsche, Twilight of the Idols
Oh, and take a look and my “Reality, Truth and Pragmatism” topic too, if you can be bothered, as it touches on many of the concepts explored here.
Ta.
Do you know what existence is? if so, please tell in order to dedectively come to a conclusion like in plato’s republic.
Reality is individually subjective. People define reality of everything in existence for themselves. When an individual has a perception of reality that is drastically different from our own we consider them insane (this explains why the insane don’t believe they’re insane). The realities generated by them are real as the reality “normal people†experience. We do create and effect reality because, reality is generated ourselves and we alone exist within our reality, every body else experiences though their reality us, but we are never in their reality only the perception of us is.
Further more you cannot will your self away for two reasons. One, you have to exist to cause yourself to not exist. Two we are affected by other people’s realities they believe we exist and our minds use the common consensus as a base on which to build reality.
Evening, gents.
I’d agree with the core of this statement allowing a slight modification. Instead of connecting existence to belief, and thus invoking the problem of social knowledge, we need to connect becoming to desire–not perception. As Ben has realized, it doesn’t matter whether we are perceiving reality or an appearance of reality. Even Kant says we can’t tell the difference-- after Bergson, we’re in the world like our heart is in our body.
So I would rather formulate it this way:
“All that exists is desire and the social.”
I’d like to take this question of the virtual and the actual as essentially molecular categories. JP seems onto this. A strict distinction is impossible: nothing is ‘really’ fully actualized, just as nothing is ‘really’ purely virtual. We’re always dealing with a mixture of becomings and counter-actualizations, always territorializing space and time with our ‘truth’; in short, we’re always seeing what we want to believe we’re seeing.
This is a good place to ask a big question, and this is especially for Matt and Kurt. Our perception doesn’t alter reality, but what if our perception is reality? There’s no reality “underneath” the world as we phenomenologically experience it. And, since only about 1% of our information-processing is conscious, it begs the question…
How does desire relate to sensation? In short, how does society make ‘sense’?
Oh, and welcome to the forums, we_the_state and ftheunion.
Excellent, Ben. Contrary to these Randters, you acknowledge that the belief in an external world is only a belief, and then you make good points as to why you’d rather believe in its existence.
From your description of solipsism I get the idea that you have at least more or less imagined how it would be to be a solipsist.
I wonder if our Randters would see anything, i.e., would dare to see anything, in Harry Neumann’s definition of science:
“[S]cience is the simple realization that whatever is experienced – a self, a world, the law of contradiction, a god, or anything else – is nothing apart from its being experienced.”
[Politics or Nothing!]
I would adjust this definition a little, saying that as far as we can know, it is nothing apart from etc.
We are presented by one of these Randters with the supposedly absolutely objective reality of light; but light is only an impression, or a bundle of impressions, and one can never prove, not even to oneself, that it exists outside of one’s mind.
Randian philosophy would be a more reasonable thing if, from the beginning, it would ask us to suppose that what modern “science” describes is objective reality, rather than present it like this:
This quote is from capitalism.org/tour/preamble1.htm, the first page of The Capitalism Tour. If you will move on to the second, you will see that not only does it suppose that “the real world” exists, but also that it is accessible to reason - as if Kant had never existed, not to mention Nietzsche. “Let us go back to Aristotle, when philosophy was still simple: for what is simple must be true, must it not?”
I agree with much that has been said by both Sauwelios and ben.
What we call reality is a shared abstraction.
But this does not negate an actual world it only maintains an uncertainty.
We perceive sensual information which we translate in accordance with our biological predispositions.
This translation, we can suppose, is relatively successful since we persists in existing using it but we cannot say that it is complete.
For me this ‘actual’ world is change itself.
We are – and I agree with Heidegger on this – temporal manifestations perceiving our own temporality.
A Zen koan, which is another way of describing process of inquiry. Because the inquiry is an empirical process, some infer objectivity when, of course, it’s always subjective. This doesn’t address the problem, it’s just an accurate description of the path.
Fundamentally, I think there is a key apporach that is missing here that may illuminate things: if you sense NOTHING (all of your 5 senses are gone) then does the world outside of your mind exist? If you are nothing but cognition with no empirical sensation to indicate anything beyond you, then is there anything beyond you? (Also, if all you can know is yourself then are you everything?) It seems extreme but pays to think of it from a Berkleley-ian perspective: if we cannot sense anything then we have no reason to believe there is something, so if we can only not sense a specific thing then what reason do we have to believe that thing exists? Causality is imperfect, I think we can all accept that: so the causality of non-Being’s seems to be suspect at least.
If they TRULY believed it then the question would be more of the form of “which table”? They could only not believe it doesn’t exist if they had not sensed it. If a table was mysteriously in my living room when I came home and I was absolutly certain (if such a thing is possible) it had not been moved there by a friend then I would conclude up to the moment that I sensed it the table had not existed. Only through NO sensation of the table could all those people believe the table didn’t exist. It isn’t a mere “everyone think the table doesn’t exist” and BAM it is gone… it isn’t the conscious thought that dictates belief, but the ones you can’t control.
Interesting thought: when everyone did believe it was 1916 was it 1916? If they did then was it not so?
“If everyone believed it was the year 2007 then would it be?”
I think this reaction to Berkeley is common, but the issue I believe is more how we are unwilling to accept it rather than it is flawed. The common rejections of Berkeley have been to show why there is an objective reality, not that his arguments why there isn’t is in any way flawed. This seems to generate hostility at best, with something like Moore’s "‘Proofs’ of an External Reality (scare quotes added) written to contradict Berkeley without actually accomplishing the goals. That I can sense hands does not prove an external reality.
And I think that Hume would have been more akin to the ‘hardcore’ idealists you speak of. Skepticism of causality would also indicate a skepticism of being-causality, no?
And just remember the argument: we can find reason to doubt an external reality in reason but only a suitable reason to believe an external reality based in intuition. If you feel that reason can adequatly determine reality there may be an issue…
I think what you are having trouble with is categorization: the table it a ‘table’ because we designate the category ‘table’ for any thing exhibiting certain qualities deemed necessary of the ‘table’ category. This categorization only operates on a social level though, if we found a tribe of neolithic humans and showed them my flute they would perhaps sharpen the end of it to use as a weapon, or even scratch their rumps with it (indicating it as a categorical ‘weapon’ or ‘butt-scratcher’) but would probably fail to classify it as ‘instrument’ and play Beethoven’s Polonaise on it. This does not alter an objective reality (assuming one exists) but merely how we view it’s use to us: even in a subjective view of reality what we see is the same regardless of how we classify it. A name is just a name, calling it a table or a cliffoglouglibitty does not change it or what we can do with it.
And don’t stop before you discuss phenomenology! That is just when it becomes reasonable to doubt the table at all!
Using the formation of a common language to defend why reality must be so seems weak on it’s basis… just an observation.
As for HOW it operates, remember that words do hold different meanings based on subjective experience. I would not think of the buck knife I carry as a sword but me 5 year old neice has accused me of being a knight because I carry it. She refered to my sword and I knew what she was talking about even though her and my conception of the word seems to be different in many respects. This is a simple example, but imagine it for something like ‘love’: discussing love is a difficult concept because of how it is subjectivly defined… I love my best friend to death, a friend of mine loves pie and would defend to the death his love is the same as my love (something I would doubt, his love of pie is not the same as my love of my diabetic). Yet we still have coherant discussions of love. Language can work without common consensus.
And would your argument indicate one grand reality or MANY personal but similar realities? Seems either is plausable, but explaining subjective differences might indicate credance towards the multiple-reality theory?
I must say I agree here almost wholeheartedly. And excellent quote =D> .
I simply take issue with the concept of everyone creating their own universe. Would this not indicate: a) solipsist b) not subjective, but independant objective realities c) the interconnected nature of infinite universes into one another? This seems to be contrasted to the idea you bring up of everything being connected through the proposed string theory, which brings forward the notion that everything is somehow everything else (an idea I am sure Buddhists love). I fail to see how the ideas of independantly constructed universes and the interconnectedness of matter can co-exist (perhaps ignorance on my part?).
Also, how does this theory of interconnection work within a Heisiggerian context of Dasein? Has it been attempted yet (anyone?), and if so how did it work?
I would just like to end with a question: would it be more reasonable to believe that when I cannot sense the world anymore it ceases to be or that it continues on as long as SOMEONE senses it? For my conception of the world: does it die when I cannot sense it or is there a shared element where me not sensing reality any more in inconcequential as long as someone can carry the torch of sensation?