The true nature of reality

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Everyone who learns the scientific method and understands how science works understands that for an idea or explanation about reality to be meaningful, it must be testable. It must make predictions that we can verify through experiment.

 

Now, there are unfortunately limits to what is testable. That is, we can verify that a particular hypothesis is true, but we cannot distinguish between it and another hypothesis that makes identical predictions. They are indistinguishable, even if their mechanisms are completely different.

 

To make a fanciful example, I could argue that tiny demons move particles around according to the laws of physics as we know them. Since the demons know the rules, particles obey the same rules -- so there's no way I can verify whether it's demons or some other mechanism that causes particles to obey the rules. (The demons are clearly too small to be detected.)

 

Most scientists dismiss that sort of speculation as meaningless, since an untestable hypothesis is completely unhelpful. But due to our limits on perception, this means we can never actually know which of those indistinguishable hypotheses is right -- we know how the universe behaves, but not why.

 

Is the pursuit of that why, though not enabled by science and not aided by experiment, a worthwhile endeavor?

[Mr Skeptic]

Well to take that further, we don't know that reality "exists" in any physical sense. This could all be a simulation on some giant computer somewhere. Certainly, we define reality by what seems "real" to us, but it could also all be some sort of illusion. At the very least we know that it is something, as we can calculate which takes energy (I think therefore I am), so there is something real related to us.

[jimmydasaint]

Wow!! Outstanding sfn -religion AND philosophy sub forums. What marvellous additions. As to the nature of reality, I hate to argue with a purely materialistic and formalistic set of principles regarding reality. However, I have a thought experiment which could be interesting.

 

Imagine that you had a machine which would transmit all sensory input an motor input to your friend who is sitting on a sofa at home. Would he/she be able to feel what you feel? Moreover, if you have an unfortunate accident in which you and a double decker bus have a profound disagreement (and you die), and the machine sends all the data back to your friend, will your friend die as well?

 

So, is the nature of reality based on a reconstruction of sensory information?

Edited March 2, 2010 by jimmydasaint

[Sisyphus]

When you get hit by a bus, you aren't killed by sensory input. You're killed by your organs getting smashed. So whether your friend lives depends entirely on whether the machine's "motor input" includes similarly smashing his organs. That's not really a philosophical question.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Well to take that further, we don't know that reality "exists" in any physical sense. This could all be a simulation on some giant computer somewhere. Certainly, we define reality by what seems "real" to us, but it could also all be some sort of illusion. At the very least we know that it is something, as we can calculate which takes energy (I think therefore I am), so there is something real related to us.

 

Is it a worthwhile endeavor to speculate about the nature of reality, and whether it's an illusion, even if we can't prove anything?

 

There are many possible "solutions" for the underlying nature of reality. One postulates a supreme being that keeps the place running; the other postulates a computer program of some kind. Should we bother trying to figure out which is the most likely?

[Severian]

To make a fanciful example, I could argue that tiny demons move particles around according to the laws of physics as we know them. Since the demons know the rules, particles obey the same rules -- so there's no way I can verify whether it's demons or some other mechanism that causes particles to obey the rules. (The demons are clearly too small to be detected.)

 

I would take your statement further. If there is no testable consequences of a phenomenon, then the "truth" is subjective. It can differ for different people. So if someone believes in your little demons, then it is true for them - just as true as their non-existence for someone who doesn't believe in them.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I would take your statement further. If there is no testable consequences of a phenomenon, then the "truth" is subjective. It can differ for different people. So if someone believes in your little demons, then it is true for them - just as true as their non-existence for someone who doesn't believe in them.

 

So if there is no way of determining which hypothesis is correct, each person can call their own "true"?

 

I'm not sure I'm philosophically ready for an argument about what is "truth." But I can certainly see that in such a case, you cannot argue that any particular hypothesis is false. If someone says "this is true," you can't prove them wrong. But neither can they prove themselves right.

 

So for practical purposes, I could agree that they could believe it to be true, and there's no reason they should ever change their mind, but whether it is true seems to be a matter of whether truth is relative or objective.

[ecoli]

Is it a worthwhile endeavor to speculate about the nature of reality, and whether it's an illusion, even if we can't prove anything?

 

There are many possible "solutions" for the underlying nature of reality. One postulates a supreme being that keeps the place running; the other postulates a computer program of some kind. Should we bother trying to figure out which is the most likely?

 

You should read David Hume/ empiricist philosophers. Relevant to this discussion, science and observation.

 

Also useful is methods of Bayesian rationality.

 

I've been getting into this stuff lately and it's come in handy about thinking about these questions of reality and rational thinking.

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Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

 

So for practical purposes, I could agree that they could believe it to be true, and there's no reason they should ever change their mind, but whether it is true seems to be a matter of whether truth is relative or objective.

either way, we'd never know, since we are dependent on subjective sense data to sample any information from the universe.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

You should read David Hume/ empiricist philosophers. Relevant to this discussion, science and observation.

 

Also useful is methods of Bayesian rationality.

 

I've been getting into this stuff lately and it's come in handy about thinking about these questions of reality and rational thinking.

 

You've inspired me to ask about philosophical reading. Let's see what interesting books I can get on my Kindle.

[npts2020]

To paraphrase someone more famous. "I'm not sure if I can define reality but dammit I know reality when I see it".

[jimmydasaint]

When you get hit by a bus, you aren't killed by sensory input. You're killed by your organs getting smashed. So whether your friend lives depends entirely on whether the machine's "motor input" includes similarly smashing his organs. That's not really a philosophical question.

 

I disagree with the statement Sisyphus. I think that I may have gone overboard with the idea of transmission of motor output to the chair-bound friend. However, my main point was that hearing, sight, smell, taste, feelings of danger etc... are reconstructions in the brain.

 

Our reconstruction of reality depends on a lump of flesh that is suspended in the darkness in a quiet and warm environment. My thought experiment was to say that I think even the feeling of dying is a construct of the brain - I was merely extending the scenario to the point of death.

[mooeypoo]

To paraphrase someone more famous. "I'm not sure if I can define reality but dammit I know reality when I see it".

Are you sure about that? Isn't that the entire point of hallucinations, to be indistinguishable from reality?

[Kyrisch]

The assumption that our subjective and intersubjective experience actually lends information about objective reality is necessary for sanity. If it is any consolation, it makes the most sense in light of Occam's Razor. However, it remains true that we will never know if any such non-testable theories are true. If you believe that the only things that are real are those things we can interact with and observe, this solves the problem because it implies that entities which are not detectable do not, by definition exist. This again, however, is an 'unsupported' assumption.

 

In existentialism, this has a name; it is the fundamental idea that the universe is necessarily absurd. Absurdism is generally against scientific and rational thought, lampooning it for these very unsupported assumptions, but I still believe that to truly accept the Absurd is to be literally insane, and probably sociopathic. At best we can understand it, allow it to humble us, but find solace in Occam's Razor.

[foodchain]

I like to think of frostbite in these conceptual contexts. Sure you can assign all kinds of human devised attributes to it, such as calling it frostbite, but regardless of the perception of it such occurs in specific environments. To me that states reality exists outside of whatever human observer interacting with it.

 

If the universe exists, by some means this is made so I would wager, just as the action of frostbite. I will probably argue that humanity may never reveal the perfect natural state of it, but we do have to think in constraints placed upon us, like our brain organs, language, etc...

 

I always got confused by something. Humans are part of the universe just as anything else is. So in a sense its still just matter operating on itself to a certain extent by means allowable in the universe. I think how the question is phrased sort of not only denies this existence, it sort of places us outside of a world that we are fundamentally apart of just as any atom that makes up our bodies.

 

Also I think not every subjective conjecture could work, and after that is why would not every subjective conjecture work to describe something. I do eventually think humans could possibly come to understand the ultimate truth of everything, I just do not think such is possible right now.

[npts2020]

Are you sure about that? Isn't that the entire point of hallucinations, to be indistinguishable from reality?

 

If a hallucination is truly indistinguishable, it is reality. Reality is subjective, although I will grant that when more than one persons realities coincide, you are closer to a more "objective" reality.

[Mr Skeptic]

If a hallucination is truly indistinguishable, it is reality. Reality is subjective, although I will grant that when more than one persons realities coincide, you are closer to a more "objective" reality.

 

So if I hallucinate a giant hole in my chest, or a monster dismembering me, etc., then I'm going to die?

[Sisyphus]

I guess you could say that if the hallucination is consistent, then you would experience what a person with a hole in their chest would experience, which would very quickly include oblivion. And if it was persistent, then that would mean permanent oblivion, which I suppose could be called death.

 

In real life, though, there aren't any such hallucinations (unless one's entire life is hallucinated).

[mooeypoo]

If a hallucination is truly indistinguishable, it is reality. Reality is subjective, although I will grant that when more than one persons realities coincide, you are closer to a more "objective" reality.

Right, I think that some aspects of reality are subjective - like they way we perceive ourselves, for example. There are objective rules, though, that make our realities shared. Physics describes these objective rules, as does the rest of science.

 

I guess psychology is more about the subjective reality.

[Sisyphus]

My subjectively perceived reality is one of consistent rules and is shared with other beings like myself who observe the same. So you could say that reality is subjective, and therefore objective.

[pioneer]

Scientific Method, although extremely important, is actually only the first half of the process associated with discovering reality. The second half is connected to the reality checks associated with the engineering method.

 

For example, finding a statistically meaningful occurrence and then testing this observation and/or its theory in the lab for verification, may satisfy all the requirements of the scientific method. But this would never be enough for engineering to convert this into a production process. Production needs science that is either fully rational and/or can approach cause and effect with 99plus % reliability. There is much stricter reality check than is required of pure science.

 

For example, we can apply the scientific method to infer the composition and mineral distribution on a particular location on Mars. But from the engineering point of view, no engineer would pre-lable all the collection containers, with an elemental analysis based on those scientific method predictions, even before we launch the rocket. It may satisfy the scientific method but not the entire engineering method, which will have to confront hard reality and suffer the consequences.

 

Not all science can be extrapolated, beyond the scientific method, all the way through the engineering method. But those science things which can, are very close to what we know as reality, since these aspects of science can used to produce repeatable results, in the factory, sometimes in the order of millions or billions of repeat units.

[Skye]

My subjectively perceived reality is one of consistent rules and is shared with other beings like myself who observe the same. So you could say that reality is subjective, and therefore objective.

 

This seems to be an intersubjective concept of objectivity. So something is objectified if conceived of as a joint subjective experience, per repeatable experiments. The problem here is that culture itself is a joint subjective experience. Astrology can be a "perceived reality" following "consistent rules," or a woman is a short skirt can be universally considered a slut, with obvious ramifications of those questionable positions.

 

I think a better way of looking at objective reality is that rather than a joint subjective experience, it is something that produces the same result regardless of whether the subject is a person, another person, an instrument or perhaps a rock, depending on the effect in question.

[foodchain]

This seems to be an intersubjective concept of objectivity. So something is objectified if conceived of as a joint subjective experience, per repeatable experiments. The problem here is that culture itself is a joint subjective experience. Astrology can be a "perceived reality" following "consistent rules," or a woman is a short skirt can be universally considered a slut, with obvious ramifications of those questionable positions.

 

I think a better way of looking at objective reality is that rather than a joint subjective experience, it is something that produces the same result regardless of whether the subject is a person, another person, an instrument or perhaps a rock, depending on the effect in question.

 

I know, saying all of reality of human experience is subjective is a pretty objective statement.

[Genecks]

Yes, it's a worthwhile endeavor, which I think not many people agree upon.

However, I'd like to think that it's impractical if not impossible to achieve.

I have the belief that the universe is more intricate and that which allows it to exist would attempt to protect itself from being fully understood: a type of intelligence and a self-defense mechanism, if you will.

 

Given such a mechanism, perhaps only the "pure of heart" could know why.

 

The Tao is not the Tao, yet it is the Tao; the Tao cannot be explained, yet we try.

 

An interesting thought:

Maybe we should investigate what we know and why we are allowed to know it.

I have often considered that the ability to understand the universe is limited by a physical constraint, and to fully understand it, a person would have to "jack into" the universe by becoming "one" with it.

Edited March 5, 2010 by Genecks

[foodchain]

Yes, it's a worthwhile endeavor, which I think not many people agree upon.

However, I'd like to think that it's impractical if not impossible to achieve.

I have the belief that the universe is more intricate and that which allows it to exist would attempt to protect itself from being fully understood: a type of intelligence and a self-defense mechanism, if you will.

 

Given such a mechanism, perhaps only the "pure of heart" could know why.

 

The Tao is not the Tao, yet it is the Tao; the Tao cannot be explained, yet we try.

 

What would be the pure of heart?

 

I can understand that nobody agrees totally, or that everything thinks the same, but that does not answer the question. I guess to get platonic its like a chair, what is the chair but a concept overall without any one absolute immutable chair:D

 

We dont allow subjectivity to rule automobile production, at least not literal if you want. Why should anyone place any value on anything being true then about anything, or why does that word even have the definition it holds? To accept that literally as a law of nature means you might as well be a nihilist. I mean if everything is subjective how can we even agree to the fact we exist?

 

I understand the question could easily be reduced to matter of faith or opinion, but I still fall back on the aspect that we are part of this world fundamentally, its not so mysterious to me as something supernatural I guess.

[Genecks]

Given that the universe has a self-defense mechanism, I suspect the "pure of heart" don't want to hurt the universe nor destroy it.

 

In a way, subjectivity rules automobile production. Some people choose cards for utility, others for aesthetics and credo.

 

It's really curious if we can really question reality on reductionist grounds.

If the universe came from nothing, its existence totally denies thermodynamics.

 

It's seems like some kind of Buddhist reductionism, to which we take everything around us, and at their ultimate reductionist level, they exist as nothing.

 

Reality becomes if not subjective but unreal and totally illogical. We can only hope that what we've established as probable and true as continual and repeatable.

 

I think if the universe can exist from nothing, then we can surely create something from nothing and disobey thermodynamics. I think most philosophers counter such a claim by saying "nothing does not exist." As such, to consider that nothing was before something is illogical. Sure, it's illogical, but isn't existence illogical?

 

We can try to use science to achieve scientific realism.

I believe in a functionalist approach.

Use what you have until it becomes obsolete. Afterward, upgrade.