PureX said:
Maybe, but I don't agree with that proposition. We aren't creating reality. We're creating a human idea of reality, in our minds. Sometimes we do get confused and forget that the idea of reality that we hold in our minds is not actual reality, but whether we forget or not, reality is still reality, and our idea of it is just our idea of it.
Ahh... if you want to speak ony of the labels of these things, as if only the labels exist, and not the things themselves, then truth does become relative. Truth belongs to the things themselves, not the labels of them (which, yes, are relative because, with the introduction of a labeller (us), they become subjective). Then everything becomes a "relative thing", yes. But then you ignore objective reality (eliminate it from the picture).
PureX said:
They are distinct by our methods and abilities of perception, yes. But they aren't really "distinct" from each other in reality. A tree is not distinct from a forest, except to us, if we choose to view it that way.
How can you know that? I'll answer for you: you can't, but it doesn't matter. We either accept that "reality" is real, or we move into solipsism.
PureX said:
If we are the subject, then their distinctness is relative to us, not to each other.
PureX said:
These individual "things" only exist as individual things because we chose to view them that way. A valley, for example, is only a valley because of the hills that are surrounding it. If there were no hills, it would be a plain instead of a valley. Everything is like this. We label this as distinct from that because we are able to perceive a difference.
We perceive a difference, because there is one. The alternative is that we create reality in our minds.
PureX said:
We don't label other things as distinct from each other because we are not capable of perceiving them as different. These "things" and distinctnesses, are generated by our own structural capabilities and limitations. Their identities are dependent upon us, and therefor they are relative to us.
What things do you mean, that are different but we don't perceive it, and hence don't label it?
In my opinion, perception does not create reality, just records it. The label of an thing's identity is not the thing itself.
PureX said:
But how do we take ourself out of the picture? We are the observer. We are the point of view, and the lens through which the vision is defined and understood. We can't escape ourselves.
We take ourselves out of the picture imaginatively. The objective perspective is one that includes us in the picture as one of the 'things' looked at in relation to other things, rather than as the subject who is looking at everything. The objective 'subject' is 'universal', and not us. 'Me' is not in the picture; it is replaced by a person (you or me, he or she) whom we can talk about.
PureX said:
Perhaps existence itself is absolute. It's true that everything within existence is relative to everything else within it (as near as we could tell) but existence itself could be absolute, as there is nothing outside of it that it could be dependent upon or otherwise related to.
If we cannot accept an existence that is absolute, we fall into solipsism.
PureX said:
But we're falling into meaningless tautologies, again. "We call it red because red is what we call it, and it's still there no matter what we call it!" Maybe, but it's no more or less there than anything else is or ever was.
Not a tautology at all, because I wasn't talking about the label "red" but the thing the label represents. What we call it is irrelevant.
