OpenMind5 Posted June 1, 2004 Report Share Posted June 1, 2004 What is reality? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Martin Posted June 1, 2004 Report Share Posted June 1, 2004 What an individual consciousness perceives to be reality is real to that consciousness. It is impossible to know conclusively if any two consciousness' share the same perception. Therefore reality is a personal, subjective interpretation of the universe and may not exist in the classical sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GAHD Posted June 1, 2004 Report Share Posted June 1, 2004 Everything you don't see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freethinker Posted June 1, 2004 Report Share Posted June 1, 2004 Originally posted by: Uncle MartinWhat an individual consciousness perceives to be reality is real to that consciousness. It is impossible to know conclusively if any two consciousness' share the same perception.OK Therefore reality is a personal, Your argument construction falls apart right here. There is a BIG difference between PERCEPTION of reality and REALITY itself. In the first part you set up the discussion based on an individual person's PERCEPTION of reality. It is not logical to conclude that personal perception and physical reality are the same thing. The assertion that there is no ACTUAL reality, just a "personal, subjective interpretation" of reality that allows each individual to structure their own reality, is "Postmoderism". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Martin Posted June 1, 2004 Report Share Posted June 1, 2004 Nowhere did I imply that personal perception and physical reality are the same. But thanks for pointing out where my "argument" fails and then labeling the premise for me. I feel much wiser now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tormod Posted June 1, 2004 Report Share Posted June 1, 2004 I think one would have to accept that the word "reality" has many meanings. For example, we say "Well, in reality it is otherwise" - meaning that we are hypothesizing about something but know (or assume) it is not correct. Or we say "it is not for real" meaning that it is a lie, a joke, or otherwise "not fact" And that connection is interesting. Is "reality" the same as "fact"? It would depend, since there are many meanings to the word "fact" as well. "The sun emits solar rays" is a fact - if one can agree that solar rays are in fact what are emitted by the sun. Could we then say that in "reality" the sun emits solar rays? How could we be sure? (Plato would probably say "the sun only mimics the ideal sun" - implying that we live in a world which is a shadow of the ideal world, that reality is only what we perceive it to be). "The sun shines" - is it a fact? Well, again we need to define the word "shines". If we look up at the sun and it is indded shining, then yes, it is shining. But 10 miles down the road there are clouds and showers. So the statement only has local and temporal reality. My point with this little exercise is to point out that I consider "reality" to be what we think of as "the truth". We may know that we don't have all the facts and thus don't know the entire truth, or we may think that we know everything and thus that we know that something is "real". Take particle physicists - they work with things we can only have theories about. Yet we use those things, without seeing them, to create nuclear weapons or fusion drives. So learning about the unknown is how we uncover "reality" - but I don't think we can ever know all there is. A great book about this is John D Barrow's "Impossibility - The limits of science and the science of limits". Tormod Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tormod Posted June 1, 2004 Report Share Posted June 1, 2004 Originally posted by: OpenMindFive"Death should not be feared! It should be excepted. For death will come, no matter what. So set a plate for death at your table." Death should be "excepted"? Tormod Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freethinker Posted June 1, 2004 Report Share Posted June 1, 2004 I would like to be "excepted" from death. How do I sign up for the program? :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim_Lou Posted June 1, 2004 Report Share Posted June 1, 2004 my opinion: reality doesnt exist.whatever you say is reality, cannot be proven to be reality. i think the reality that most people refer to, is the society...stuffs like how you life, how you work, how you make money... simply stuffs that everyon knows and feels. (hey, tormod, nice picture, is it yourself? or your son?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freethinker Posted June 1, 2004 Report Share Posted June 1, 2004 Originally posted by: Tim_Lou (hey, tormod, nice picture, is it yourself? or your son?) Hahahahahahahah !!!!!!! Old man Tormod... It's his grandchild! ROTFLMAO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tormod Posted June 1, 2004 Report Share Posted June 1, 2004 Originally posted by: FreethinkerOriginally posted by: Tim_Lou (hey, tormod, nice picture, is it yourself? or your son?) Hahahahahahahah !!!!!!! Old man Tormod... It's his grandchild! ROTFLMAO Well, the thread is about "reality"...here is the full picture: http://www.hypography.com/personal.cfm?id=6142 Tormod Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tormod Posted June 1, 2004 Report Share Posted June 1, 2004 ...except that I now have TWO of the little critters so I'm two years older than the photo. Reality bites! Tormod Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanctus Posted June 2, 2004 Report Share Posted June 2, 2004 I like the answer somebody gave reality is what you don't see, but I would make stronger: realitiy is what you don't perceive with any of our 5 (6?) senses. Think about how general relaativity says that space is curved, I imagined that all our body could be some round shape but our brain makes us see/fell/hear/... things so that we got the idea to have the shape we have (I know that the curving of space-time is spposed to not be negligible onlly for big distances, but I liked this idea anyway). One of my faavorite SF books speaks about perception of reality:"The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy" by Stanislaw Lem Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freethinker Posted June 2, 2004 Report Share Posted June 2, 2004 Originally posted by: sanctusI like the answer somebody gave reality is what you don't see, but I would make stronger: realitiy is what you don't perceive with any of our 5 (6?) senses.So REALITY is things that we can not perceive as REAL. Interesting convolution. Think about how general relaativity says that space is curved, I imagined that all our body could be some round shape but our brain makes us see/fell/hear/... things so that we got the idea to have the shape we have (I know that the curving of space-time is spposed to not be negligible onlly for big distances, but I liked this idea anyway).OK, I am not sure of how to deal with "not be negligible". It is a double negative, so would seem to be intended to mean "be detectable" (if "detectable" is a suitable opposite of "negligible" here). Thus what you are saying is "the curving of space-time is spposed to be (detectable) onlly for big distances". This is obviously erroneous. We would be floating off into space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim_Lou Posted June 3, 2004 Report Share Posted June 3, 2004 isnt general relativity more like a fantasy thing? such as "space is curved", b4 this theory, people would never think about this...does it mean that reality didnt exist in the past?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Martin Posted June 3, 2004 Report Share Posted June 3, 2004 You must think abstractly to understand GR, and although the math is way beyond me, there are too many experts in the field that corroborate it for me to have any serious doubts of it being a valid theory. Reality is what you think is real at this moment. 20 years from now you will have a new reality. Their reality was just as real to them. Our's is closer, but not the ultimate reality. We think we keep getting closer, but we may sometimes we go off on the wrong tangent. History will be the judge of our perceptions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freethinker Posted June 3, 2004 Report Share Posted June 3, 2004 Originally posted by: Tim_Louisnt general relativity more like a fantasy thing?QM definately, but GR is not that abstract. In a very elementary nutshell, GM states that any event has not only an X,Y,Z locational description, but also a Time domain dimension attached to it's description as specifically as the X,Y,Z. such as "space is curved", b4 this theory, people would never think about this...does it mean that reality didnt exist in the past??"REALITY" exists independant of perception of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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