Can we see reality as it is?

[FractalEternalWheel]

We see and understand the world/life with our emotions and thoughts,but if we remove all those thoughts and emotions do we see reality as it is or is there something else that is blocking us from seeing true reality. Do you think if we remove our thoughts and emotions does good and bad still exists? Do you think that if we look at the world with such a way when we don't make good or bad views on life would we be much more happier that if we say this is good this is bad,....

Excuse my english.

[SoothSayer]

I'm not sure what you are trying to say, if you remove someones thoughts and emotions he becomes empty shell like robot you loose consciousness and basically that is what I believe is you. You wouldn't have view of life you would have picture of surrounding which would mean nothing, good and bad would also mean nothing, plus what is true reality it's an abstract thing, how do you know that you aren't just nuts, how do you know that you haven't dreamed all your life, you just do because it's your reality.

It's like saying prove me that you are real, you can't.
Is reality real? Nonsense questions.

I have a lamp in my room.. I look at it, it's a lamp, i take a picture it's a lamp, i touch it if feels like a lamp and by now i believe it really is a bloody lamp.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Ideas are the means by which you know. Without a means of knowing you can have no knowledge.

[bennyboy]

To answer the OP:

No, we can't. All we can see is that some, many or most experiences seem consistent with each other-- or at least with an idea we have about what underlies them.

Or to put it another way, our reality is the convergence of many experiences toward a smaller set of "truths." But sometimes, with philosophical truths, you can realize that they are rooted in your genetics or in your cultural background, and you can wipe them away. You can say things like "good and evil aren't real except as ideas, and they aren't adding to my enjoyment of my life" and make a conscious choice not to filter your experiences through those ideas any more. I think that's what you're talking about.

[Whateverist]

Can we see reality as it is?

Well I see reality as it is seen (with my particular optical capacities, of course). I smell reality as it smells (same caveat). I feel reality as it feels, taste reality as it tastes and hear it as it sounds. I can't imagine what else it would be that I am experiencing. Something is ticking my sensory array. I'm a simple guy so I think it is simple, down to earth things I am in touch with.

[Neo-Scholastic]

To answer the OP:

No, we can't. All we can see is that some, many or most experiences seem consistent with each other-- or at least with an idea we have about what underlies them.

I respectively disagree. We do see reality as it is, we simply do not see all of reality since we are not omniscient.

[TudorGothicSerpent]

We see and understand the world/life with our emotions and thoughts,but if we remove all those thoughts and emotions do we see reality as it is or is there something else that is blocking us from seeing true reality.

Our emotions and our thoughts don't really block us from seeing reality. In a very really sense, it's pretty much meaningless to speak of an "I" who can perceive the world outside of emotion and thought, because those things, together with sense perception, go together to make up our consciousness. Without them, a person's body might still exist and could even still be alive, but without any ability to think or comprehend.

We don't perceive the world as it really is, because the structures that give us the ability to consciously comprehend reality also interpret that reality. As an example, the cones in our eyes have pigments that are affected by certain wavelengths of light. Those cause the cones to send a signal to the brain to comprehend a certain color. The wave of light isn't actually that color (it isn't any color, because color is just a mental structure used to interpret the world). We perceive things as solid and joined together when they're really mostly empty space because like-charges in the atoms of our skin and of an external thing repel one another without having to touch. Time is a dimension, like the spacial dimensions, but because of the way our consciousness works, we experience it differently than the way that we experience other dimensions (for some reason that no one is really all that sure of).

We can understand how the world is different from the way that we perceive it, but on some level, it's always going to somewhat incomprehensible. Thinking about it too much is kind of like staring into the abyss, only instead of staring back, it starts ranting off gibberish about wave functions.

[bennyboy]

To answer the OP:

No, we can't. All we can see is that some, many or most experiences seem consistent with each other-- or at least with an idea we have about what underlies them.

I respectively disagree. We do see reality as it is, we simply do not see all of reality since we are not omniscient.

People talk about reality, but they should talk about reality AS. Experiences are real-- as experiences. Red is really red. The taste of hot chocolate on a winter day is really just that. We are experiencing those things as they really are, because they are experiences. Do those experiences represent some underlying, objective reality? Not really.

But when the OP starts talking about "true reality," what does that mean? He wants to know whether a true objectivity, resulting in true understanding of what is real, is possible. My position is that it's impossible to know while still maintaining sentience. So long as you are perceiving, how can you ever know that what you think is cool, objective observation, isn't really just another layer of self-delusion?

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Thinking about it too much is kind of like staring into the abyss, only instead of staring back, it starts ranting off gibberish about wave functions.

[TudorGothicSerpent]

People talk about reality, but they should talk about reality AS. Experiences are real-- as experiences. Red is really red. The taste of hot chocolate on a winter day is really just that. We are experiencing those things as they really are, because they are experiences. Do those experiences represent some underlying, objective reality? Not really.

I've never really bought into arguments that our experiences don't really reflect material reality. I believe that they probably do, but our perception involves an interpretation of that reality through our mental structures. I wouldn't go as far as Kant and say that we have no access to "the thing in itself" and that the idea of objective reality outside the lens of our perception is in the realm of metaphysics, but I don't think that we can ever intuitively grasp what the world is like without our perceptions applied to it.

[Neo-Scholastic]

@bennyboy, you are correct up until you mentioned self delusion. You cannot be deluded about your experience although you can misinterprt its significance. Even still you can deduce logical absolutes.