I think that it is a very easy assumption to believe in reality…it’s not like we can ignore the world is it ? If we go with the idea that it’s all a delusion where does that take us, what can we do with that ? So the acceptance of reality is the first step in learning to survive…and it is also the first philosophical fact that we have to accept if we are to make any sense of this place. It is an act of faith to believe in reality, but a completely necessary one, a leap (push) that we have no choice other than taking.
Interesting how you include ‘believe.’ It’s like saying if you don’t extract knowledge about the world around you and apply belief then you’re lost. What about clarity? Is one believed to be thinking clearly when busy with all the effort to maintain this so called ‘reality’ that’s been imposed upon him for its purposes? We can use the ‘world’ (as being that which we have been informed of)to function in it. What you are has little to do with how you fit into something that attempts to create you for something other than yourself.
All I’m saying is that accepting the world around you is the first act of belief/faith that you must take in order to use the knowledge that it imparts to you.
“Accepting” is necessarily an act of faith.
In other words , this existence could be a complete delusion, but there is no point in having faith in that…because it means you should stop breathing to prove your faith.
When you say the world imparts knowledge, what do you mean? How does it? Is that reality? I’m asking because it doesn’t seem quite right that there can be the experience of seeing or hearing without one’s mind. There is no receiving the understanding of any experience without knowing beforehand just what that experience is. So when you look at an object, the knowledge comes in and tells you that you are one thing and the object another: a separation. I propose that we use knowledge we have been given and call that sphere of knowledge the mind. It makes one wonder if a person would be able to singularly experience the world on his own if he had not been given the opportunity to gain any knowledge at all of what things are. Of course you and I can use our common fund of knowledge for purposes of identifying and communicating. Yet the knowledge we utilize came not from us. Our ‘minds’ were created by something that is not originally either of us. But I agree with you … this is the only reality we have, the world as it is today.
And if I read you right there may be many claimed truths that for those who believe in them risk not coming to terms with the reality of the world exactly the way it is. So, any invented reality brings with it the possibility of a precarious relationship between itself and the world’s reality.
Your point is interesting because it kinda backs up my theory that the world itself is a part of a greater mind and that we are a sub-set of it.
Your last point makes me think that even God may have doubts about what reality is…because reality is necessarily created (invented)… 
Reality and facts about reality are not the same thing. A word does not equal its concept, just like causes do not equal their effects, just like sensations do not equal perceptions. There are kinds of relations between things, and truth is the position of interpretation itself, which contains both subject and object.
The world does not impart knowledge, the world conditions beings which are capable of knowing things, given certain conditions. Conversely, these beings also shape and condition the world at large, to some degree. The kind of knowledge that would assume both movements together to discern their common and divergent laws would be called “philosophy”.
In order to justify this you would have to define word, concept, cause, effect, sensation and perception.
I suppose if you have no working understanding of those phenomena I could offer you definitions, but I’m not sure what that could accomplish, except force me to spend some time working ideas and logic downward into a more common parlance. But that would be annoying for me, and probably won’t make any sense to you anyway.
in order to justify this you would have to define in, order, to, justify, this, you, would, have, define ~
And you are a fact, Tina.
:-" …
I need a trip:
a trip what’s I need…
para…
…para
…para
paradise
:-"
Stay on topic, or warnings.
First of all, 11, I wish I had read your quotes before I went off the other night. Don’t I feel the fool! But in my defense:the pic of Tina Fey distracted me. That said, I owe you, as Humean insists, an on topic reply:
I’m not really sure facts really relate to anything in that they tend to work in isolation. 1+1=2. Water boils at 212 degrees at atmospheric pressure. These things are the result of scientific investigation that must, by definition, isolate systems. How they interact in a universe of other systems is generally a matter of speculation and inference.
And it is a common confusion. People tend to flash the term “facts” a lot, then make the mistake of acting like everything they say is a fact. It comes down to the non-sequitar of saying: 1+1=2, Capitalism is the only viable economic system in the world. Ayn Rand made as much of a mistake with her objectivism.
And this comes down to a failure to make the distinction between facts, data, and truths. Facts are, as previously described, isolated things that we can easily demonstrate. Data is the collective construct of facts that give us a general sense of how those facts work together. The problem with data is that it can never include all the facts in the universe. Therefore, it is always as interesting for what it doesn’t include as what it does. For example, during the Dewey/Truman campaign, they took a phone survey that showed Dewey winning. Of course, Truman won. And the reason for the miscalculation was that the survey being on the phone, it failed to account for the individual facts of the only people being able to afford a phone at the time generally voted Republican. Truth, as Rorty and Dewey defines it, is a belief that we extract from the data that seems sufficiently justified.
To give you a sense of what I’m getting at, take evolution. There are the individual facts of archeological and anthropological discoveries around the world. And there is the collective effect of the data that results from these discoveries. However, evolution is primarily a truth in that it is an assertion that seems sufficiently justified. One could reasonably argue that there is no way of knowing that some man with cloven hooves and horns is not going around planting this evidence in order to throw us off his trail.
In other words, when we’re dealing with brute facts, we can be pretty confident of ourselves. But once we move into the domain of data and truth, we’re always up against the inductive limit.
Physics talks a lot about energy. But what is energy but some inference derived from movement in the universe? So even though most talk about energy, and the calculations that come from it, do seem to be true, can we necessarily say that it is real?
This is one of the problems I have with the analytic approach you are taking to this –even if I admire it. We can take three routes to understanding:
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the syntactic which you are engaging in when you make points like A is B, B is C, therefore A is C. And you have to admire the mathematical precision of it even if it falls short of the reality you are trying to describe with it.
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The semantic which you were getting at with “all real things exist in reality” in that the premise of “real” is included in the conclusion of “reality”. But this comes with the disclaimer of recognizing that there is something about reality that always transcends the language we use to describe it.
And, finally, 3. There is the existential which has to deal with the inherently imprecise process of dealing with an infinite universe of interacting systems including language.
To give another example: nothingness seems true enough since anything we encounter in reality could not exist. Still, if such were true, we would have to admit that non-being has the same ontological status as being. So real or not real? Reality or not reality?
With all due respect, Humean, it sounds like you’re warning me already.
And isn’t that what philosophy is particularly equipped to do:
to make the obvious seem more profound than it actually is?
And doesn’t this go to the discrepancy between truth and reality?
Furthermore: let’s deal with the FACT, Humean, that I have asked you to ban me from these boards on Monday and Tuesday, which you have refused to do. However, what you have chosen to do is get sanctimonious every time I step out of line on Monday and Tuesday, which is the very possibility that I have asked you to ban me to avoid.
Therefore, the truth and reality of it is that my fuckups, as far as this board is concerned, are just as much your responsibility as mine.
Still: love ya, man!
Truth and reality:
brother…