Your thoughts on reality.

[Lizman]

Originally Posted by Louie Dawgs

Oh, hey. Over here looks like fun thread.

This could be a long post.

In my mind, personal reality is substantiated belief.

Now, don't get me wrong, I believe in a metaphysical reality, even if it exists at the most abstract level.

I'm a um..empiricist.

Anyway, that's for later.

What about a blind man, how does he understand sight? Because, from the word of others he can come to to some understanding of the reality of sight.

personal reality is not just defined by us, it's defined by our interactions with others around us.

In a slight twist on a classic transcendenal example, consider:

there is a red apple tree, and there is a color blind man. In his opinion, the red apple tree is in fact a green apple tree.

In a way, he can't be wrong, can he? Isn't color an abstract moniker we give a metaphysical wavelength? If he himself sees it as such, isn't it that for him?

what makes the apple tree red instead of green? Because his view is faulted. He has a physical condition which causes him to misperceive the nature of the tree. 99% of people in the world have named this abstract concept of a color "red." Every persons view is inherently flawed, but together we can come to even the smallest understandings of our world.

What about somebody who can't feel physical sensations? can he know that they exist? Well, they can never truly be part of his physical reality, but, (and here comes the empiricist part) he can understand that they exist.

Why? because they are testable. Whether he can or cannot feel physical sensations, he can go into a lab, stick 100 people in a room, test them, and find out that they react to physical stimuli. He can test that it exists.

And what if this is not reality??

umm..Ego er sum?? fuck I'm bad at latin.

what if we are imagining this? Well, it's impossible to prove we are or aren't, but it's honestly impossible to debate if we are or are not because either way has to infer the fallacy of ignorance.

that being said, at one time you had to experience something outside of yourself.

When we are born, we are, at least experience wise, very close (if not at) tabula rasa.

If you have never experienced, you can't create. If you can't experience a color, you can't know what it is. If you haven't experienced an idea, you don't know what one is. If you haven't experienced emotion, you cant' really know it. If you have experienced nothing, you can know only nothing.

at minimum, you have experienced. somewhere, no matter what thought problem you put yourself through, it is somewhere based in reality.

Okay, your in the matrix. but, the guy who created it? he had to base your matrix off experience. somewhere there is still a sliver of reality.


Okay, so...how do we know reality? first off, all of our experiences, are based somewhere in reality, even if at the slightest degree.

what is the best way to understand it?

Through testable and verifiable methods. Empirical methods. methods that eliminate your subjective ideologies as much as possible.

Thus, it's important to your understanding of reality to educate yourself in multiple disciplines of the sciences, mathematics, and logic. They are the most testable methods of thinking we have.

There is a reason I think it's important to study these disciplines. They are designed to eliminate your ideologies and use ration. There's also a reason I discard things such as religion, spirituality, and the whatnot. they are focused on subjectivity. People claim to know them simply because they are ineffable.

long post but, fire away.

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