What Is 'Real?'

[PearlSeeker]

I recommend this article:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mysteries-consciousness/201907/is-life-dream

Some states of consciousness (like NDE) are experienced as "more than real". This might suggest that we in fact live in a dream.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

...
I suppose you could say that epistemological solipsism requires rational empiricism. And that's why the argument can't stop at solipsism; it has to go all the way to nihilism.

Correct, but then what is beyond "the belief that nothing in the world has a real existence"? That it is still there and you give up on metaphysics, ontology and all there other attempts of really real.

I have figure out, that I don't have to do it like you and know. I just have to make sure that it seems to work, because that is apparently how it works in practice.
I am a strong philosophical skeptic and thus my religion is the Wrong One to most people, yet apparently we are still all here, so I can't be that Wrong.
We are playing cognitive relativism and your version of cognitive certainty is easy to falsify. I check if I can do it different and yes, I can.
Here it is: Strip away all the noise and all these debates end here - Someone: Reality has to make sense to all people as it makes sense to me and thus all other versions are wrong. Me: I have checked and apparently we are both still here, so I doubt your wrong really works.

Love
Mikkel

 

[Nakosis]

Please with observation and/or instruments answer, if "one need assume"? You can't. You demand a standard of understanding reality, you can't live up to yourself. You are doing a mental process to answer if the world is physical.
Science is in part to accept the answer you get. If the answer is that there things which can't be answered with science then that is the answer.

Here is what I have learn.
The claim that the world is from God is without evidence and so on.
The clam that the world is physical is without evidence and so on.

Now some people still feel that they have to defend one of them. I don't care if it is the one or the other being defended. Both are without evidence and so on.

Again the difference is consistency. If you're looking for absolute proof, science doesn't give that. However, the physical world is consistent which makes it reliable enough. And thank "God" for that, otherwise, we wouldn't be able to have this conversation. Unless you don't believe the computer you are using to which one might want to consider the sanity of a person using equipment that they have no proof exists.

 

[shunyadragon]

I don't have to. I know the answer and LegionOnomaMoi gave it.

Your model is not able to explain in necessary AND sufficient terms reality.

It does not explain what is necessary and sufficient terms of reality. It only falsifies and verifies Reality that is based on objective verifiable evidence. Beyond this it is the science of reality.

Nothing is necessary.

 

[Ponder This]

Correct, but then what is beyond "the belief that nothing in the world has a real existence"? That it is still there and you give up on metaphysics, ontology and all there other attempts of really real.

I have figure out, that I don't have to do it like you and know. I just have to make sure that it seems to work, because that is apparently how it works in practice.
I am a strong philosophical skeptic and thus my religion is the Wrong One to most people, yet apparently we are still all here, so I can't be that Wrong.
We are playing cognitive relativism and your version of cognitive certainty is easy to falsify. I check if I can do it different and yes, I can.
Here it is: Strip away all the noise and all these debates end here - Someone: Reality has to make sense to all people as it makes sense to me and thus all other versions are wrong. Me: I have checked and apparently we are both still here, so I doubt your wrong really works.

Love
Mikkel

Oh? You found a way to always remain conscious 24/7, never falling into a dreamless unconscious state? You are special indeed! What outstanding proof of your continuous uninterrupted awareness!
Not that having the thought that "I am" is any real proof in the first place, considering that thoughts are imaginary by definition. Just because you think something exists doesn't mean it does exist. So thinking "I am" is not acceptable proof. All you can really say is that a thought occurred for a moment - transitory, impermanent. Although I suppose that some people will say this world and everything in it that we consider real is impermanent by it's very nature - you still haven't resolved the fact that "I am" was nothing more than a thought, an idea, an imagination.

However, if you accept that you are able to distinguish real from imaginary in the first place - well, that's what I already said before isn't it? That's why we have a definitional (perceptual) difference between real and imaginary as opposed to an epistemic (thought-based) difference between real and imaginary. Like how I know something is red or green - I know it from a direct perception of red and green as opposed to thoughts about what red and green are. So just because someone else can't perceive the difference between red and green, doesn't mean my perception of red and green is invalid.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Oh? You found a way to always remain conscious 24/7, never falling into a dreamless unconscious state? You are special indeed! What outstanding proof of your continuous uninterrupted awareness!
Not that having the thought that "I am" is any real proof in the first place, considering that thoughts are imaginary by definition. Just because you think something exists doesn't mean it does exist. So thinking "I am" is not acceptable proof. All you can really say is that a thought occurred for a moment - transitory, impermanent. Although I suppose that some people will say this world and everything in it that we consider real is impermanent by it's very nature - you still haven't resolved the fact that "I am" was nothing more than a thought, an idea, an imagination.

However, if you accept that you are able to distinguish real from imaginary in the first place - well, that's what I already said before isn't it? That's why we have a definitional (perceptual) difference between real and imaginary as opposed to an epistemic (thought-based) difference between real and imaginary. Like how I know something is red or green - I know it from a direct perception of red and green as opposed to thoughts about what red and green are. So just because someone else can't perceive the difference between red and green, doesn't mean my perception of red and green is invalid.

Here is what you overlook. This started as a debate of real as being independent of the mind. That is neither true nor false, it is too simple.
So here it is with all the regularity that you allude to. For an certain variant of a Boltzmann Brain universe you could be the only mind around in this universe and yet you would be in an universe, which seems to be this and not a Boltzmann Brain universe.
So there would be no "we", because the "we" wouldn't be real. You would be all alone.

 

[Muffled]

In another (non-debate) thread, it was asked what 'real' is. A response to that question was the Google dictionary definition, "actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed."

How can one be certain something is real given that definition? I'm fairly certain nearly everyone has had dreams that, while dreaming, they thought were real until they awoke.

What one perceives is merely a model resulting from sense organs that create electrical signals as interpreted by the brain. How can one trust that these are, indeed, real? How do you know you won't wake up from this reality into a 'real' one?

I believe anything that is not fiction or fantasy is real. Dreams are usually fantasy because they come from ones spirit. However if they come from God they can be a prediction of the future.

 

[Muffled]

You called!

I will admit the following as per "trigger words". I am in some contexts triggered by the word "real".
Now I started out learning about the world as not just living in as an atheist, naturalist and skeptic. In process of that I were told that it was possible to have beliefs about the worlds as such, which were with strong evidence, logic, proof and/or what not. I check it out and found out it is not the case.
So in the process I became religious, without any strong belief about what the world really is and remained a skeptic.

In effect it connects to the question of preaching/proselytizing. Some non-religious people do that in effect with their subjective beliefs about real and all the rest as it amours to their authoritative beliefs about what really matters objectively and as better for all of us. In effect we always end in normative ethics in practice. I.e. how we all should behave!

I believe the ability to check things out is no better than the evidence. I suppose there could be contrary evidence but it has to be stronger than the evidence.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I believe the ability to check things out is no better than the evidence. I suppose there could be contrary evidence but it has to be stronger than the evidence.

We can't check metaphysics. What reality really is, is a matter of faith, if you believe in some version of what reality really is. And that has nothing to do with religion or not. That is so for all humans including the non-religious ones.

 

[Muffled]

You are perceiving something thereby you at least are real. The fact that things exist in your perceptions indicates something else is real. After that it is all subjective. Subjective does not mean reality doesn't exist just that it is subjectively defined, perhaps a problem for those that use word definitions as fact.

I believe I have said before that everything is a fact. Some people disagree and only think it means something that is true. It is a fact that there was a saying that the moon was made of green cheese. That statement is a fact but the concept of the moon being made of green cheese is a false fact.

 

[Muffled]

We can't check metaphysics. What reality really is, is a matter of faith, if you believe in some version of what reality really is. And that has nothing to do with religion or not. That is so for all humans including the non-religious ones.

I believe from the definition on Wikipedia that metaphysics is the philosophy of the supernatural. All that means is that things are happening in a way that is difficult to identify or measure. Granted most of the time it would be difficult to find evidence of what is happening. However some things that are happening are spiritual and those things are spiritually discerned. Some things are mental and only a spiritually discerning person can tell the difference between mental and spiritual things.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I believe from the definition on Wikipedia that metaphysics is the philosophy of the supernatural. All that means is that things are happening in a way that is difficult to identify or measure. Granted most of the time it would be difficult to find evidence of what is happening. However some things that are happening are spiritual and those things are spiritually discerned. Some things are mental and only a spiritually discerning person can tell the difference between mental and spiritual things.

Well, metaphysics is not just about the supernatural. It is also about whether the world is physical or indeed from God.

 

[shunyadragon]

I believe I have said before that everything is a fact.

Dragons and unicorns are not facts.

Some people disagree and only think it means something that is true. It is a fact that there was a saying that the moon was made of green cheese. That statement is a fact but the concept of the moon being made of green cheese is a false fact.[/QUOTE]

There is no such thing as false facts by definition, this is an oxymoron like military intelligence.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

It does not explain what is necessary and sufficient terms of reality. It only falsifies and verifies Reality that is based on objective verifiable evidence. Beyond this it is the science of reality.

Nothing is necessary.

Okay. Sorry for the later answer.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Again the difference is consistency. If you're looking for absolute proof, science doesn't give that. However, the physical world is consistent which makes it reliable enough. And thank "God" for that, otherwise, we wouldn't be able to have this conversation. Unless you don't believe the computer you are using to which one might want to consider the sanity of a person using equipment that they have no proof exists.

Well, sorry for the later answer. The consistency would be the same in Botlzmann Brain universe and for certain versions of it, you would be the only one with a mind.
For "this" universe and a BB universe the consistency is experienced as the same, but it is 2 different universes. One with many minds and one with only one.

We are playing "das Ding an sich".

 

[Ponder This]

Here is what you overlook. This started as a debate of real as being independent of the mind. That is neither true nor false, it is too simple.
So here it is with all the regularity that you allude to. For an certain variant of a Boltzmann Brain universe you could be the only mind around in this universe and yet you would be in an universe, which seems to be this and not a Boltzmann Brain universe.
So there would be no "we", because the "we" wouldn't be real. You would be all alone.

I already posted that something could be both imagined and real... So what exactly is it you claim is neither true nor false? (the OP was phrased as a question)

There are some serious assumptions behind the physics of a Boltzmann Brain. Is it fair to assume you are using a philosophical simplification of that concept? Or do you intend to assume unproven physical hypotheses?

Do you understand that the epistemic concerns of real and imaginary is not the same as the definitional concerns of real and imaginary? It is, for example, fine to define a thing without knowing whether or not the thing defined is real (and not merely imaginary)
For example of example, a Boltzmann Brain universe.

 

[shunyadragon]

Okay. Sorry for the later answer.

One correction on the previous post.

It does not explain what is necessary and sufficient terms of reality. It only falsifies and verifies Reality that is based on objective verifiable evidence. Beyond this it is NOT the science of reality.

Nothing is necessary.

 

[shunyadragon]

I already posted that something could be both imagined and real... So what exactly is it you claim is neither true nor false? (the OP was phrased as a question)

There are some serious assumptions behind the physics of a Boltzmann Brain. Is it fair to assume you are using a philosophical simplification of that concept? Or do you intend to assume unproven physical hypotheses?

Do you understand that the epistemic concerns of real and imaginary is not the same as the definitional concerns of real and imaginary? It is, for example, fine to define a thing without knowing whether or not the thing defined is real (and not merely imaginary)
For example of example, a Boltzmann Brain universe.

Boltzmann's brains are a philosophical thought experiment to compare theories, and not seriously considered the possibility that our brains are Boltzmann's brain or that they exist elsewhere.

 

[shunyadragon]

I believe the ability to check things out is no better than the evidence. I suppose there could be contrary evidence but it has to be stronger than the evidence.

This is not coherent, needs explanation. 'Check things out' is not a scientific proposition.

 

[Nakosis]

Well, sorry for the later answer. The consistency would be the same in Botlzmann Brain universe and for certain versions of it, you would be the only one with a mind.
For "this" universe and a BB universe the consistency is experienced as the same, but it is 2 different universes. One with many minds and one with only one.

We are playing "das Ding an sich".

Do you ever use the word real?