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What is the real world but what we perceive? In any scenario, brain in a vat or in a body, it is trivial to think that what we are perceiving is not real. In Descartes' words about the senses, even if what we perceive isn't in actuality in the form as we perceive them, the source of these perceptions must be real. So in essence, perception is reality.
One may oppose this statement by comparing the differences between the rational and the empirical realms. One side proposes that there is only true reality in the rational mind. The other proposes what is clearly sensed around us is the reality. It wouldn't seem possible for these two realms to mix.
However, there is no point to argue whether either perspective provides more or less of a depiction of reality. Why is there this dichotomy of rationality and empirical thought? One would be quite bold to say that a blind man's concept of reality is lesser than one who is not blind. Or that this blind man has more of a concept of the real world than a deaf man. Say there existed a creature that had all of our five senses with an additional sixth sense. This creature would rationalize and 'sense' the world differently than humans however, the world is no more real to this creature than to us with our five senses. Reality is unique to each individual. The 'real world' is too broad of concept to have a concrete definition for it varies with different perspectives.
It is absurd to say the world exists in none other than the rational world while completely ignoring the tangible world. It is equally as absurd to say that what exists is only perceived by the senses because we would exclude all of reason and logic. What our world is, is a combination of the rational world and the empirical world.
Plato would argue that his Forms are the true substances and that, as Descartes would happily add, since the senses are unreliable, they cannot be trusted. But wait, isn't it every human's propensity to make logical fallacies? Since the senses have deceived him once, Descartes threw away all of his senses and said they were never to influence him again. But if one had stumbled upon a rational error, then should he throw rationality away as well? Apparently, both the senses and the mind are equally as unreliable according to the rationalists. Also, how is it that one can ignore the senses when they provide one with such vital information. Without the senses, how would one distinguish from night and day? How would one know to run from danger? It is only with these 'unreliable' senses that they have stayed alive in the world. To toss them aside because the senses do not flow well with the rational mind is quite the irrational thing to do.
On the empirical side, Berkeley proposed that absolutely nothing was outside of the senses. All reality existed as ideas perceived. But if reality is just a perception of ideas, where would logic since it is impossible to 'perceive' logic or any kind of cognitive process? Without logic or reasoning, we would be at a loss at what 'ideas' we perceive have anything to do with each other. The world to us would be a college of sensory input without any order. It would be as though we were watching a movie with each frame in a different scene. Nothing would make sense to us as this ability to distinguish one event from another would be absent.
Instead of isolating each of these realms of thought from each other, by bringing both rational and empirical worlds together, we get a full picture of what reality is to us. It is impossible to say one to exist without acknowledging the other. How is rationality expressed but through empirical means and contrary, how is empirical data understood without rationale? We talk to discuss and perceive information with our senses in order to rationalize; we must use symbols that we empirically learn, such as mathematics to even begin to rationalize. We use rational thought to organize our empirical world so that we gain understanding of how the perceived realm works. Both must be used in conjunction to produce what is 'real'. In addition, because each of us has varying amounts of empirical and rational information, each individual has their own 'real world'.
For example, suppose that person A works at a post office and person B has studied music for the majority of his life. Given that both persons see the same piece sheet music, to person A, the paper empirically exists as circles with lines and he would probably would think of the hundreds of papers he deals with per day. However, to the learned musician person B, the circles and lines on the page provide a channel to a his rational world of existence where these same symbols sing a melody. It cannot be argued that person A's reality of the paper is any less than person B's reality because as far as they know, what is real to them, is real. Even given the same empirical input, existence meant completely differently things in their rational worlds. For both the postal worker and the learned musician, their rational world exists in conjunction with their empirical world to produce their own individual realities.
Now, take for example two school aged children in school. After their first geometry lesson about what a circle is, they are let out for recess. One goes to the playground and finds a hula-hoop and the other goes to find a ball to play with. Empirically, these two objects are different objects with different dimensions. However, without a doubt, these two children would associate the concept 'circle' to both these objects. Both objects are fundamentally different, but both children conclude the same rational ideas. However, in the combination of their empirical and rational experiences, their perceived realities are in composition, entirely different.
Then we should conclude that reality should consist of both the rational and the empirical. Similar to the idea of the opposites, light and dark represent the concept of vision. Rational and empirical ways of thinking should be within the same spectrum, each of them not fully encompassing the 'concept' of reality but with both, in varying amounts, we truly experience reality.
  
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I'm confused.
What was your initial definition of reality?
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I'm gonna make an educated guess here. You're a freshman philosophy major.
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I'm gonna make an uneducated guess here. You just smoked weed.
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does this blog have anything to do with your quote?
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It does sound like you just smoked som. Still very interesting stuff to think about, A+.
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groooovy :3
@Kiarip
I didn't have an initial definition of reality. I concluded with what I thought reality was consisted of.
It's actually a paper i have to write for my philosophy class. I decided to discuss what reality was. In class, we learned overarching views on reality, the rational and the empirical.
Rationalists view the world in that true 'reality' existed solely in the mind. The sensory world is nothing but an illusion. Descartes' idea of "I think therefore I exist" is basically the mindset that rationalists have. Everything that exists, exists as thought.
Empirical views, in a nutshell, are about the sensory world. "to be, is to be perceived" - Berkeley.
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So it's like asking the question, in the movie matrix what's real, the matrix in which all those people think they live, or the world dominated by sentinels...
and the answer would strongly depend on your definition of reality. Seems like a question of semantics to me.
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Skip forward to Nietzsche and just become depressed already!
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Our senses are just that - part of perception. They are tools to absorb the world around us. There is a very definite and finite reality - it is the matter and energy that makes up the world outside of us. Our perceptions, however, can change wildly depending on many things.
For example, suppose that person A works at a post office and person B has studied music for the majority of his life. Given that both persons see the same piece sheet music, to person A, the paper empirically exists as circles with lines and he would probably would think of the hundreds of papers he deals with per day. However, to the learned musician person B, the circles and lines on the page provide a channel to a his rational world of existence where these same symbols sing a melody. It cannot be argued that person A's reality of the paper is any less than person B's reality because as far as they know, what is real to them, is real. Even given the same empirical input, existence meant completely differently things in their rational worlds. For both the postal worker and the learned musician, their rational world exists in conjunction with their empirical world to produce their own individual realities.
Person A is correct. He knows the most basic reality of it - the piece of paper is just that - paper with ink on it. In the most basic, fundamental sense of the universe, that is what the sheet music is. That is the definite reality of the universe. What a musician like myself or person B would see is not only the basic reality, but our creativity and perception would allow us to create a different existence for this piece of paper, something that's completely different and more complex from what you can see, but is a very relative reality, a reality that only humans can perceive, and not the universe in general.
Now, take for example two school aged children in school. After their first geometry lesson about what a circle is, they are let out for recess. One goes to the playground and finds a hula-hoop and the other goes to find a ball to play with. Empirically, these two objects are different objects with different dimensions. However, without a doubt, these two children would associate the concept 'circle' to both these objects. Both objects are fundamentally different, but both children conclude the same rational ideas. However, in the combination of their empirical and rational experiences, their perceived realities are in composition, entirely different.
This still doesn't change the fact that child B is incorrect and has actually picked up what our language dubs a sphere. Shapes (circle, sphere, etc...) exist outside of the human mind, outside of perception. They are finite and very real concepts outside of the human brain that exist.
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lol, we did actually study Nietzsche...and I don't see how you would be depressed learning his philosophy...
Today is our last class and all we got to was how his idea of language being spawned from the weakest of the race....yea i can see where that's coming from :S
@ Kiarip
yes in essence, i'm trying to ANSWER that question. I don't care if we live in a vat..that the sentinels were controlling. That's my reality and there's nothing I can do to change that so I'll go ahead and accept it. My definition of reality is stated here: it's the combination of our rational minds and empirical experiences, the sensory information that I perceive.
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On July 23 2010 03:31 zhul4nder wrote:
lol, we did actually study Nietzsche...and I don't see how you would be depressed learning his philosophy...
I've read some good quotes of Nietzsche but one that I really remember had to do with him claiming that his own philosophy wasn't good for the pursuit of happiness in life. When you really get into it and understand the total scope of it, it is very very depressing lol.
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On July 23 2010 03:31 zhul4nder wrote:
lol, we did actually study Nietzsche...and I don't see how you would be depressed learning his philosophy...
Today is our last class and all we got to was how his idea of language being spawned from the weakest of the race....yea i can see where that's coming from :S
@ Kiarip
yes in essence, i'm trying to ANSWER that question. I don't care if we live in a vat..that the sentinels were controlling. That's my reality and there's nothing I can do to change that so I'll go ahead and accept it. My definition of reality is stated here: it's the combination of our rational minds and empirical experiences, the sensory information that I perceive.
Isn't existence just relative to the domain?
I can say a dog exists, but a dog doesn't exist here in my room.
Similarly you can say tooth-fairy doesn't exist, but if some 4 year old believes otherwise it actually does just in the domain of his/her mind.
Hell even if no one believes in the tooth-fairy it still exists, because the concept exists in people's minds, but we do not have evidence of it existing in the sensory domain.
"Reality" just seems like a unique domain that you pick to identify things as existent or non-existent based on situational convenience.
This is a model that makes sense to me (if you have a different one, I'd be interested to hear about it,) but I don't understand how you're planning to combine two common domains of consideration (conceptual, and perceptual,) without breaking the practical purpose of their conventional existence.
Or how are you going to combine/apply techniques for "proof of existence."
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haha I remember reading that paper, brain in vat and the brain and a computer are switched, right?
I tend to side with people that say it doesn't matter. There's enough paradoxes and problems to disprove almost everything we do, so if you continue down this road you'll just want to kill yourself.
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@Kiarip
What you're saying is reinforcing what i'm saying even more. The notion of a picture of a zergling doesn't make much of an rational imaginary reality to a person that doesn't play starcraft. But to me, that picture is to me, a picture of a zergling as well as its characteristics in gameplay.
The model i'm proposing is that everyone's idea of reality is different from each other due to experience. If you were to only stick to one or the other, the percept versus the concept, then an object would mean the same thing to every single person in the world. That point, I disagree. Even with the same sensory input, the rational side of reality gives the sensory world another perspective which is unique to the individual. It also works the other way around, how different sensory inputs can spark the same rational thoughts but when combined with their sensory counterparts, creates a completely different experience/reality.
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If this is from a paper you plan to hand in for a class you might want to delete it when you're done. It'd suck if you got a zero for plagiarizing yourself.
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On July 23 2010 03:43 Scorcher2k wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2010 03:31 zhul4nder wrote:
lol, we did actually study Nietzsche...and I don't see how you would be depressed learning his philosophy...
I've read some good quotes of Nietzsche but one that I really remember had to do with him claiming that his own philosophy wasn't good for the pursuit of happiness in life. When you really get into it and understand the total scope of it, it is very very depressing lol.
So you've never actually studied Nietzsche.
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I'm going to make an educated guess - you think that talking about this stuff gives a sense of character and style/
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On July 23 2010 03:27 Stratos_speAr wrote:Our senses are just that - part of perception. They are tools to absorb the world around us. There is a very definite and finite reality - it is the matter and energy that makes up the world outside of us. Our perceptions, however, can change wildly depending on many things. Show nested quote +
For example, suppose that person A works at a post office and person B has studied music for the majority of his life. Given that both persons see the same piece sheet music, to person A, the paper empirically exists as circles with lines and he would probably would think of the hundreds of papers he deals with per day. However, to the learned musician person B, the circles and lines on the page provide a channel to a his rational world of existence where these same symbols sing a melody. It cannot be argued that person A's reality of the paper is any less than person B's reality because as far as they know, what is real to them, is real. Even given the same empirical input, existence meant completely differently things in their rational worlds. For both the postal worker and the learned musician, their rational world exists in conjunction with their empirical world to produce their own individual realities.
Person A is correct. He knows the most basic reality of it - the piece of paper is just that - paper with ink on it. In the most basic, fundamental sense of the universe, that is what the sheet music is. That is the definite reality of the universe. What a musician like myself or person B would see is not only the basic reality, but our creativity and perception would allow us to create a different existence for this piece of paper, something that's completely different and more complex from what you can see, but is a very relative reality, a reality that only humans can perceive, and not the universe in general. Show nested quote +
Now, take for example two school aged children in school. After their first geometry lesson about what a circle is, they are let out for recess. One goes to the playground and finds a hula-hoop and the other goes to find a ball to play with. Empirically, these two objects are different objects with different dimensions. However, without a doubt, these two children would associate the concept 'circle' to both these objects. Both objects are fundamentally different, but both children conclude the same rational ideas. However, in the combination of their empirical and rational experiences, their perceived realities are in composition, entirely different.
This still doesn't change the fact that child B is incorrect and has actually picked up what our language dubs a sphere. Shapes (circle, sphere, etc...) exist outside of the human mind, outside of perception. They are finite and very real concepts outside of the human brain that exist.
How can something such as the concept of a circle be more or less real than what we sense? What is real is real. Child B is not wrong in associating the circle with the ball. A circle is an integral part of a sphere: if one were to take an infinitely small slice of a sphere, what you would have is the circle. In fact, a sphere is made of infinite circles.
Then what about child A? A hula-hoop most certainly does not represent a circle as we image it. It's a doughnut. If you are to go down to the true fundamentals of rationalism, we should not have any idea of what a true circle is at all because nothing we experience is actually a perfect circle.
Having these abstract concepts existing outside of our perception doesn't mean they can't coexist with what we sense. Here's a thought experiment for yourself.
Can you think of the concept of three without associating symbols that represent three? Either you think of "3" as the symbol or three sticks to represent it, rationality is totally dependent on the senses. Only in combination of both rational and empirical knowledge does what's real come to surface.
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How can something such as the concept of a circle be more or less real than what we sense? What is real is real. Child B is not wrong in associating the circle with the ball. A circle is an integral part of a sphere: if one were to take an infinitely small slice of a sphere, what you would have is the circle. In fact, a sphere is made of infinite circles.
Then what about child A? A hula-hoop most certainly does not represent a circle as we image it. It's a doughnut. If you are to go down to the true fundamentals of rationalism, we should not have any idea of what a true circle is at all because nothing we experience is actually a perfect circle.
Having these abstract concepts existing outside of our perception doesn't mean they can't coexist with what we sense. Here's a thought experiment for yourself.
Can you think of the concept of three without associating symbols that represent three? Either you think of "3" as the symbol or three sticks to represent it, rationality is totally dependent on the senses. Only in combination of both rational and empirical knowledge does what's real come to surface.
Semantics about the two items aside, my point is this.
There is a definite reality. That reality is what would exist if we didn't. This is the most basic and concrete reality of our universe.
Humans (and to our knowledge no other creatures) are capable of an incredible thing - creativity. Our mind can mold our perceptions and ideas to mean so many different things. To me, this is a completely separate zone in comparison to reality - what exists outside of us.
The quantity "3" exists outside of us in the universe. Our language and representation of it does not.
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EPT
