RE: The ways to know reality?
August 25, 2012 at 6:22 pm
(This post was last modified: August 25, 2012 at 6:23 pm by Cyberman.)
Philosophy gives me headaches, but I can share the method I myself use to know reality if you like. Or even if you don't.
If I close my eyes for a moment and things seem to be the same when I open them, I accept those things as being real. If I place an item somewhere and though untouched it's still there next time I see it, and is also the same item as before, I accept it as real. If I type on my keyboard and the same, expected characters appear on the screen as every time I hit the correct keys, I accept the situation as real.
Of course, my experiential reality may be nothing more than an illusion - my keyboard might be a real, naturalistic one that is incapable of being anything else (though as I said before, in an emergency every tool becomes a hammer) - or the keyboard might be an illusory, non-naturalistic one that just happens to behave like a naturalistic one up to now or while I'm looking. However, as a human I have to function within these limits, if limits they are, and operate on a human level. It's sort of like what Prof Dawkins has said about humans having evolved to live and function in "Middle Earth", on the level that consists of objects, forces and measurements of time that fall within human comprehension. My keyboard, for instance, is ultimately made up of subatomic particles and the forces that hold those together and which influence their behaviour - I don't need to function at that level. It doesn't make that subatomic level and beyond any less real; it simply has no real relevance to the level at which I think and operate.
And if anyone can understand what I just wrote, please explain it to me.
If I close my eyes for a moment and things seem to be the same when I open them, I accept those things as being real. If I place an item somewhere and though untouched it's still there next time I see it, and is also the same item as before, I accept it as real. If I type on my keyboard and the same, expected characters appear on the screen as every time I hit the correct keys, I accept the situation as real.
Of course, my experiential reality may be nothing more than an illusion - my keyboard might be a real, naturalistic one that is incapable of being anything else (though as I said before, in an emergency every tool becomes a hammer) - or the keyboard might be an illusory, non-naturalistic one that just happens to behave like a naturalistic one up to now or while I'm looking. However, as a human I have to function within these limits, if limits they are, and operate on a human level. It's sort of like what Prof Dawkins has said about humans having evolved to live and function in "Middle Earth", on the level that consists of objects, forces and measurements of time that fall within human comprehension. My keyboard, for instance, is ultimately made up of subatomic particles and the forces that hold those together and which influence their behaviour - I don't need to function at that level. It doesn't make that subatomic level and beyond any less real; it simply has no real relevance to the level at which I think and operate.
And if anyone can understand what I just wrote, please explain it to me.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
