What is Reality? Philosophers' Views

[mww]

Right mww, but you still make an assumption that our body or the external world is still out there after we die. Solipsism will always be true, on a deeper level, it is everywhere, the possibility that everything that exists is just a figment of someones imagination. I could be dreaming...with complex computer equipment around my head...

Yes, we have to make that assumption for just this one specific definition. What I'm saying is, if we do make that assumption, this single definition of reality (among the many possible definitions) equates to the complete and utter rejection of solipsism.

I'm definitely not trying to say this is an interesting definition -- quite the opposite. The tether definition is probably the first thing the cavemen philosophers thought of. If my twin brother gets stepped on by a mammoth and I'm still here, when I die these other cavemates of mine will probably live on. But the main problem I have with this definition is that it costs an unproductive amount of humility. To discard the notion that my reality feels to be revolving around me -- and to acknowledge that, instead, it is I who revolve, around a hard-and-fast reality that requires my consciousness as a part of it about as much as a fish requires a bicycle and a few spare bicycles in case the first one breaks -- doesn't promote self-worth.

Unfortunately if we look at each historical discovery about humanity's place in the universe, it does have inductively logical support. Primarily our discoveries would seem to seat us in a smaller and smaller cosmic throne, bringing us further and further down off of our supremacy pedestal. Heliocentrism enlightened us that we're not the center of the solar system, and so, not as important as we thought. Each further peering into the skies revealed that we're not really the center of anything. The ant, on the front porch of the cosmos.

But the tether definition is still less existentially blasé than solipsism. What need would a true solipsist have of progress for humanity if all humans are removed from existence upon the solipsist's death anyway?

Perhaps every plausible secular philosophy includes a pinch of existentialism, so that the challenge in our lives is to create good, earned value from an (albeit possibly high potential energy) initial state of very low significance.

I enjoyed your post however it does not address the probablility of a type of consciousness that is in superposition and not tethered to the sequences found in past, present or future states. This mode of consciousness would require no beginning or end nor would it rely on birth or death but would exist inextricably from all other states, elements and events...

Thanks baywax. It's true; it doesn't address this probability at all. And independence from the time frame really makes spontaneous timeline changes possible; a friend of mine likes to say that the dinosaurs didn't exist until he did, at which point the past rewrote itself to include dinosaurs. (He's a bastard: I liked dinosaurs first.)

 

[baywax]

This looks a lot like Spinoza's "eternal mind", which, I concluded after skimming through his 'Ethics' stands for "all knowledge". In other words the record (external) of our observations and the learning (internal) that is required for the first to exist (knowledge is meaningless without mind).
Individual existence is possible because of the existence of others. This could mean that if you were the only individual (there were no "others") around to observe, then observation and learning would only be meaningful to you, so why bother to "record" it (externally)? In other words the "principle" of knowledge extends beyond the concept of individuality to a universal, even an infinite, notion. Then God and the unknown appear...

Knowledge is an anthropomorphic and anthropocentric concept. Its our way of processing information. Information is another anthropomorphic way of quantifying events like when there is a super nova or an electron is lost from an atomic structure. These kinds of events take place with or without our knowledge of them. Yet, they take place and are part of the "fabric" of the overall universe. In quantum terms I couldn't tell you what's happening. But, events take place at the microscopic level as well. I'm still trying to figure out how an event or "change" takes place without the phenomenon of "sequence"... that is... when you take away the macroscopic condition of "time".

 

[Phred101.2]

events take place at the microscopic level as well.

Have you considered that even bacteria 'observe' their environment? Even something that 'tracks' chemical gradients must have the equivalent of a memory, or it would not be able to 'respond' to changes. Phototropic algae don't grow if there's no light, so do they "remember" where it is?
You could also say that an atom "communicates' with other atoms (with photons)...

 

[octelcogopod]

Great post mww!

I don't have much to add/criticize on this(nothing actually.)
But your point about worth made me think..
I personally find much more comfort in the fact that what I do is actually real to someone else in the same way it is real to me when something happens to me. In a solipsist existence one would not get this sense of "real."
A typical existing object/organism in the world doesn't have much worth outside of their immediate family or surroundings, but we each have the chance to create our own value, both for others and for ourselves.
Now this is a very interesting topic and should have its own thread or something, but it is a bit off topic.

What I can say though, is that all worth (even private ones that are only in the individual) are all emerged on the fact that they represent a real state somewhere else in the universe.
The worth happens because something is more or less worth it to YOU.
If solipsism was a fact of sorts, and that say the universe was created in my mind and nothing really meant anything because nobody else existed or something, then all values would really be null.
Worth, in the purest sense of the word, means that something is in some sense unique but mostly /important/ to /something or someone/

Examples could be as simple as love, but also things like doing something that affects something on an unusual scale etc.

I do believe then that we need to make the assumption that we do revolve around the world, but we can have so much worth for each other and for the things we do, that living on the idea that we can never really prove reality as existing completely outside of ourselves would destroy all value, and in the end ourselves.

Yes, we have to make that assumption for just this one specific definition. What I'm saying is, if we do make that assumption, this single definition of reality (among the many possible definitions) equates to the complete and utter rejection of solipsism.

I'm definitely not trying to say this is an interesting definition -- quite the opposite. The tether definition is probably the first thing the cavemen philosophers thought of. If my twin brother gets stepped on by a mammoth and I'm still here, when I die these other cavemates of mine will probably live on. But the main problem I have with this definition is that it costs an unproductive amount of humility. To discard the notion that my reality feels to be revolving around me -- and to acknowledge that, instead, it is I who revolve, around a hard-and-fast reality that requires my consciousness as a part of it about as much as a fish requires a bicycle and a few spare bicycles in case the first one breaks -- doesn't promote self-worth.

Unfortunately if we look at each historical discovery about humanity's place in the universe, it does have inductively logical support. Primarily our discoveries would seem to seat us in a smaller and smaller cosmic throne, bringing us further and further down off of our supremacy pedestal. Heliocentrism enlightened us that we're not the center of the solar system, and so, not as important as we thought. Each further peering into the skies revealed that we're not really the center of anything. The ant, on the front porch of the cosmos.

But the tether definition is still less existentially blasé than solipsism. What need would a true solipsist have of progress for humanity if all humans are removed from existence upon the solipsist's death anyway?

Perhaps every plausible secular philosophy includes a pinch of existentialism, so that the challenge in our lives is to create good, earned value from an (albeit possibly high potential energy) initial state of very low significance.



Thanks baywax. It's true; it doesn't address this probability at all. And independence from the time frame really makes spontaneous timeline changes possible; a friend of mine likes to say that the dinosaurs didn't exist until he did, at which point the past rewrote itself to include dinosaurs. (He's a bastard: I liked dinosaurs first.)

 

[baywax]

Its fairly obvious that "change" is relative and what we see as "change" is actually our own awareness of our own roving observations and focus . There are conditions and potentials for anything to be taking place at any "time" and "anywhere" and its more than likely they were, are and will be. It's our subjective nature that renders those conditions and potentials in a sequence by way of a point of view. Therefore, change, like many other attributes of existence, is a subjectively determined phenomenon and not a constant as has been proposed. So, in this light, reality takes on the air of a simultaneity of function and basically contradicts what we accept as the normal 'way of seeing'.