A question about reality

[needimprovement]

Can anyone provide any evidence that our body is more real than our intangible thoughts, feelings, sensations and decisions? We know our body exists only because we infer its existence from our perceptions. Our mind is our primary datum and sole certainty.

[UC]

Honestly, this is philosophy, not biology. You might want to consider reading some Descartes if you haven't already.

[Marat]

How do we know that we exist as the conscious subject of our experience? If there were no world independent of our minds, we would never find anything determinate in opposition to us, so we would never be able to perceive our own minds as the determinate, continuing, subjects of experience. If there is nothing coherent happening on the stage in front of us, we would lose our bearings and have no awareness of ourselves as a coherent, perdurant perceiver of what was happening on that stage. Instead we would just be lost in a fugue of sensations and have no reason to identify some of those sensations as belonging 'inside' to the perceiver while others belonged 'outside' to the world. So our ability to know our own mind, our own selves, is parasitic on having some stability in things opposed to us outside of us. On this view, self-knowledge is no more primary than knowledge of the world.

 

This is essentially Kant's epistemology. Wittgenstein goes a bit further, saying that unless we were in a community of other people using language, we would never know ourselves as the continuing, inner subjects of experience, since nothing outside and around us would be available to give us any reason to notice ourselves as something equally substantial and real. If I had lived alone on an otherwise deserted island all my life, there would have been no need to distinguish myself as 'I' independent of other 'you's' around me, so I would not even know or be aware of myself as 'I,' as a subject of experience, or as conscious. Instead I would just have sensations of things inside me and outside of me, but I would have no reason to distinguish 'inside' from 'outside,' since I would not be living in a community where only some subjects could see the 'outside,' while I could experience both my own 'internal' experiences and my 'external' experiences which I could expect others to know.

[Mr Skeptic]

No, I don't know whether I really exist. I mean, that I can think means that there is something to me, but I can't prove this isn't a dream, simulation, etc. I assume all this is real, since it doesn't really make any difference (unless there is a flaw somewhere that would allow me to escape to the real reality).

[Marat]

You have to start by asking yourself what your terms mean. Why do you need some reality in back of the reality of everything you see, hear, and feel for it to count as real? Are there really different depths of reality? What would be the use or even the meaning of a phrase like 'it could all be just a dream' if we had no secure access to something which was certainly not a dream?

 

Since we can only first gain access, become aware of, ourselves as a thing which thinks if we are brought into focus and visibility as such a thing by the contrast with other thinking things and objects around us, then the fact that the outside and inside worlds both come into visibility only by the same contrast shows that neither has priority over the other. So the inner world of the mind is no more real than the outer world of objects, since conscious awareness of either depends on the existence of both together. This now means that there is no contrast of inferior and clearly demonstrable realities next to which we could denigrate some experience as being possibly unreal, less real than it should be, or 'just a dream.'

[needimprovement]

How do we know that we exist as the conscious subject of our experience? If there were no world independent of our minds, we would never find anything determinate in opposition to us, so we would never be able to perceive our own minds as the determinate, continuing, subjects of experience. If there is nothing coherent happening on the stage in front of us, we would lose our bearings and have no awareness of ourselves as a coherent, perdurant perceiver of what was happening on that stage. Instead we would just be lost in a fugue of sensations and have no reason to identify some of those sensations as belonging 'inside' to the perceiver while others belonged 'outside' to the world. So our ability to know our own mind, our own selves, is parasitic on having some stability in things opposed to us outside of us. On this view, self-knowledge is no more primary than knowledge of the world.

 

This is essentially Kant's epistemology. Wittgenstein goes a bit further, saying that unless we were in a community of other people using language, we would never know ourselves as the continuing, inner subjects of experience, since nothing outside and around us would be available to give us any reason to notice ourselves as something equally substantial and real. If I had lived alone on an otherwise deserted island all my life, there would have been no need to distinguish myself as 'I' independent of other 'you's' around me, so I would not even know or be aware of myself as 'I,' as a subject of experience, or as conscious. Instead I would just have sensations of things inside me and outside of me, but I would have no reason to distinguish 'inside' from 'outside,' since I would not be living in a community where only some subjects could see the 'outside,' while I could experience both my own 'internal' experiences and my 'external' experiences which I could expect others to know.

If what you state is true it is difficult to understand how God could be aware of Himself before He created anything! I grant that the Supreme Being is a special case but your argument suggests that we need a body to be aware of ourselves - unless we can communicate with others without words or physical gestures...

 

No, I don't know whether I really exist. I mean, that I can think means that there is something to me, but I can't prove this isn't a dream, simulation, etc. I assume all this is real, since it doesn't really make any difference (unless there is a flaw somewhere that would allow me to escape to the real reality).

Well said. Do I feel like I need proof that I exist? Not really- if I assume correctly that I exist, then I love my life appropriately. If I assume falsely that I exist, what do I loose? Is my nonexistence any less meaningful?

Edited August 11, 2010 by needimprovement

[wanabe]

Can anyone provide any evidence that our body is more real than our intangible thoughts' date=' feelings, sensations and decisions? We know our body exists only because we infer its existence from our perceptions. Our mind is our primary datum and sole certainty.

[/quote']

Define real.

[snowflake]

Of course we need our bodies to be aware of ourselves, in other words we need to be in order to feel "being".

What is real? A first guess might be "possible to be experienced", in that case I am real as I can experience myself.

But there is a presumed "I" in my sentence which is a flaw.

And my definition of real is also not satisfactory as it implies reality might be different for individuals...

Seems like we should make a distinction between the subjective notion of "I"

and the objective experience of me which leads to dividing reality to subjective and objective compartments.