Objective reality: How do we know it exists ?

[Norsefire]

I think there is a reality that exists in the way it does. How we perceive it and classify it and react to it, is all subjective.

I'm going to build from what Enmos said:

insects have six legs. They have six legs regardless (as far as our perception of reality is accurate)

However, if we change the requirements to be an insect, then they are not insects. They still have six legs, though.

 

[thinking]

I think there is a reality that exists in the way it does. How we perceive it and classify it and react to it, is all subjective.

I'm going to build from what Enmos said:

insects have six legs. They have six legs regardless (as far as our perception of reality is accurate)

However, if we change the requirements to be an insect, then they are not insects. They still have six legs, though.

thats the point

the concept is thought driven

but the reality of the object its self , is evident

 

[swarm]

Sure. Anything can be ignored.

Ha! The Nazis grusomely proved that even cataleptics will notice if you fry them in an oven.

 

[swarm]

I suggest you read some Hume, to begin.

Hume is fun, but he raises doubts not conclustions and his gripe is about absolute claims, not reasonable ones. Even he expects to wake up to the sunrise, he just says there is a posibility that one won't so there can be no absolute certainty of it.

For example we could get hit by a micro black hole and knocked out of orbit.

Observations cannot be sound or unsound.

Sure they can. Your senses are quite capable of mistake. This is why we check things which seem odd.

 

[EmmZ]

just like IN YOUR DREAMS: everything is inside the mind. everything that exists is thoughts, and we get our input from thoughts.

since the outside is inside our mind, there can't be a real inside either. nothing exists, that's why every possibility (everything) can exist.

I disagree. And this is why; there are fundamental principals of reality that are conventionally true. I do agree that in the dreaming world phenomena can exist, but only based on the subjective experiences of the conscious mind, and not on an infinite array of possibilities. In the conscious mind there can only be an experience of conventionally true phenomena, for example unicorns do not exist in conscious experience, but they could exist in dreaming consciousness. So all phenomena has the potential to exist within the individual's potential to experience them. I wouldn't say "nothing exists" because that falls into nihilism and it's clear we experience things, so they do exist, just not in the way they appear i.e. things appear to exist independent of other things, a chair a table an orange. This, however, contradicts how they function, which is interdependently and as a product of causes.

So the question "How do we know objective reality exists? becomes Does objective reality exist other then a mere concept. The answer to that is no.

 

[swivel]

I think there is a reality that exists in the way it does. How we perceive it and classify it and react to it, is all subjective.

I'm going to build from what Enmos said:

insects have six legs. They have six legs regardless (as far as our perception of reality is accurate)

However, if we change the requirements to be an insect, then they are not insects. They still have six legs, though.

Well-said.

The dream-reality concept erodes under the constant weathering of corroborating data. If I grope about a dark room and feel a chair with four legs, my internal description is pretty weak. If someone else comes in and finds the same thing, it is stronger, but I could also be dreaming a second person. As we add hundreds of people, shine lights on the object, X-ray it, photograph it, model it in 3-D in computers we build, add 6 billion more people, never once find that the thing fails to resemble a chair and never wavers from its status as a quadruped... we start to get an indication that the chair does in fact exist... and it has four legs.

Could a single entity be dreaming of every particle in the universe, maintain their exacting relationship to one another? Keep thoughts from certain dream-people from others, maintaining billions if individual entities that all act relatively consistently (i.e. never show up at school naked having forgotten there's a quiz that day or go flying around the treetops by flapping their arms)? If so, that creature is god-like, there is no evidence of their existence, and we may as well call this "dream" of theirs the "universe" and go on deducing its makeup.

I believe the deniers of Objective Reality are lazy posturers. Intellectual lightweights. They have nothing to add to our understanding of the universe, so they go about denying it. These are usually the same people you see clinging to ideas of subjective merit with all the fanaticism of an objectivist.

 

[Mr. Hamtastic]

Hmm. We experience things therefore they exist?

I imagined myself having sex with Angelina Jolie, it was terrific. It was so vivid I experienced every sensation. Therefore, I had sex with Angelina Jolie, right?

Maybe I should get in touch with her and ask if it was good for her or something.

 

[Mr. Hamtastic]

Swivel-You're missing the key to it all. I say the sky is blue. You say the sky is blue. Can either of us verify what the other has actually experienced? Perhaps what you were taught was the color blue is what I experience as the color green. So long as neither of us can supplant the other's conscious mind, the idea that our subjective experiences are the same simply cannot be shown to be true.

For example: Do you think I exist? Why? What makes you so confident that this is not all in your "head"? (I say "head" because you can't truly be sure that you exist either, which makes your head theoretical)

I don't think believers on either side are intellectual lightweights or anything. Solipsism v. Objective Reality is a topic which requires almost religious faith for either side. The intellectual "game" is what happens when we try to defend our position.

(IOW-insults are a sign of a weak position. Leave them out and maybe you'll have something of merit)

 

[Billy T]

... For example we could get hit by a micro black hole and knocked out of orbit. ...

I do not know if you consider one of 2.2 solar masses as "MICO BLACK HOLE" or not but that is what passed, without warning* 12 AU from the Earth in my book Dark Visitor. the gravitational impulse only increased Earth eccentricity but it still was less than Mars has. None-the-less, that caused a permanent ice age in the Northern Hemisphere with almost all residents dying and made ports everywhere usless as sea levels fell as ice accumultated on land.

Dark Visitor is really just a vehicle to teach some physics to students who would not knowingly open a physics book. - A recruting tool for the hard sciences. For example, one chapter describes mechanisms of climate pre-Dark Visitor and next describes it after Dark Visitor has passed. The ice age it induces differs from prior ones. Earth is closer to sun in the Northern Hemisphere's winter and farther away in its summer - milder winters and cooler summers sounds nice, but huge snow falls come in relative mild winter weather, which post DV is all winter long. Not all of the huge snow accumulation melts in the following colder summer in Canada the first summer so Earth's albedo is increasing and in a few decades even Floridia is under a thick layer of ice all year.

-------------
*The DV can not be seen approaching as does not reflect light to telescopes. Only was discoverded by fitting the disturbance of Pluto's orbit to get idea of its trajectory and mass.

Web page under my name, if still functional, has sub page listing all the physics hidden in the book.

 

[swarm]

as I thought you can't " perceive " oxygen but oxygen is vital to life on Earth

What makes you think you can't perceive oxygen?

Not only can you perceive it, you can also pretty accuately perceive its concentration in the air you breath. You can also see its light scattering if you look through enough of it and there is a bright light source.

You can also light it up directly by ionizing it with the right frequency of laser or using other means like sperating it and running high voltage through it to excite it.

Its just so ubiquitous you over look it.

 

[swarm]

I think part of the problem is the implicit assumptions in "Objective reality: How do we know it exists?"

There aren't multiple realities. There is just reality and since there is nothing comparable and it is vast beyond comprehension, knowing about reality, per se, is limited to fragments.

We know it exists because reality is by definition those things which exist. But really the more interesting question is how do we know anything which doesn't exist? All we really know is that some concepts have no immediate referent or no longer have referents. Then there are ones which get referents or the referent changes. The linking between concept and reality can be difficult and confusing.

But I would have to say we don't actually know things which don't exist. We just have unresolvable concepts of things.

Then to make things more fun there is the fact that the concept is a thing in and of itself.

 

[swarm]

I think the burden of proof is the other way: By definition, solipsism does not need an "outside."

Who are you talking to figment?

 

[swarm]

The basic problem with solopism is if it is true, then you are just a figment of my imagination and frankly I don't really bother with uninteresting stray thoughts.

In order for you to prove any claim you make about solopism is worth considering by me, you have to disprove solopism first.

So either its just me and frankly I need not care about "your" opinions or there is an other who is confused about my existence. Amusing but not much else.

Solopism is an inherantly self defeating proposal.

 

[swarm]

in the case of the forest I hardly think that Hume would be so confused as to think the forest doesn't exist

Hume is arguing we can't know about the future or the past with absolute certainty. These things are really more forces of habit and watercolor memories. This erodes the notion of strong determinism to one where it is not possible to distinguish between coincidentally conjoint and causality.

Of course that just one tiny bit of what he talks about, but its the part that gets every one up in arms.

Also it gets way over played. Hume would have no problem saying sure that's a tree and my previous recollections lead me to think it will be there tomorrow. But I don't KNOW it will be there. I just EXPECT it from the habit I've form over ther years of previously finding it there.

People often explode this into an extreme skepticism where they deny everything, but that itself requires an absolute certainty which I feel is unsupportable by Hume.

I do not see Hume arguing against reasonable certainty or even the forming of reasonable expectations based on past experience. I see him as more saying remember "no matter what you think you know for sure, shit happens."

An interesting (well to me at least) physical example of this is that there is an irresolvable infomation blind spot to all actions.

If you hit a cue ball at a billard ball, the time it takes to cross the table defines a sphere at which that many light seconds away there are photons which will possibly effect the outcome which you cannot account for due to the limit of information placed by the speed of light. Because of this ALL actions have a degree of uncertainty equal to at least the time they take. It is extremely small, but non zero.

 

[swarm]

What are the criteria for determining burden of proof?

The one who makes the claim.

For example, on the question of god the theists often claim the atheists are making a claim that god doesn't exist.

Which is ridiculous.

The theist has to posit a god or there is nothing to talk about. The atheist just has to not be convinced. There is no actual counter claim the atheist must put forth - so the burden is on the theist.

An atheist who tries to make a counter claim to something which has not yet been supported is succumbing to the constant special pleading of the theist. He should consider if he feels the need to make a counter claim about unicorns, fairies or Qerg.

The proper responce to any claim of existence is "show me."

 

[swarm]

A lot of people use Ockham's Razor to determine burden of proof. Solipsism posits less entities. It is more parsimonious.

Um, no they don't. At least not if they understand what it means. Also it is only unnecessary entities which are cut out. solipsism cuts out too many to be parsimonious.

Positing requires an other as a base minimum.

 

[swarm]

Occam's razor, also Ockham's razor,[1] is the principle that "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." It is apocryphally attributed to 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony", "law of economy", or "law of succinctness"): entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, roughly translated as "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity." An alternative version Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate translates "plurality should not be posited without necessity."[2]

When multiple competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities while still sufficient to explain the question. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood. To quote Isaac Newton: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. Therefore, to the same natural effects we must, so far as possible, assign the same causes."[3]

To straightforwardly summarize the principle as it is most commonly understood, “Of several acceptable explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest is preferable.”

Originally a tenet of the reductionist philosophy of nominalism, it is more often taken today as a heuristic maxim (rule of thumb) that advises economy, parsimony, or simplicity, often or especially in scientific theories. Here the same caveat applies to confounding topicality with mere simplicity. (A superficially simple phenomenon may have a complex mechanism behind it. A simple explanation would be simplistic if it failed to capture all the essential and relevant parts. Instead, one should choose the simplest explanation that explains the most data.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

 

[swarm]

Because you are construcing these alter egos and their counter points - don't you trust yourself?

How I care to amuse my self is no concern of yours figment. Dance puppet. Amuse me with your protestations.

 

[swarm]

Mod hat:

You were asked to do your own research to make a point:
the purpose of this forum is not to explain philosophical concepts. If you are unclear with respect to particular philosophical terminology, concepts or schools of thought, it is up to you to resolve this difficulty yourself.

Given the varied positions possible in the field of ontology it doesn't seem unreasonable to have you clarify yours since him "doing his own research" could lead him to positions you don't in fact advocate. That doesn't mean you have to dumb it down but blowing him off seems disingenuous and using mod to support yourself in this way seems a clear conflict of interest.

 

[swarm]

I do not know if you consider one of 2.2 solar masses as "MICO BLACK HOLE" or not but that is what passed, without warning* 12 AU from the Earth in my book Dark Visitor.

While its nice you wrote a book, I'm not sure how this is relevant to Hume.