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Appearance and Reality

Angel

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Appearance and Reality

Once, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering about, happy with himself and doing as he pleased.
He didn't know that he was Zhuang Zhou.

Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou.
But he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou.
Between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction!
This is called the Transformation of Things.

— Zhuangzi, chapter 2 (Watson translation)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi_(book)



Those of us who have enjoyed an education in the Humanities recognize at once in the title of this thread a central theme in World Literature, and those of us who have studied Philosophy recognize in it the foundational question of both Eastern and Western traditions, and finally those of us who have studied neither the Humanities in general nor Philosophy in particular have no doubt become acquainted with the theme announced in the thread title by way of personal experience, and in the event have developed their own take on the implied distinction.

Now I have posted no videos or articles (save the famous Zhuangzi anecdote) in this OP in deference to those who have complained of my posting videos and articles, and instead appeal to members' personal exploration of the thread theme in inviting them to post their beliefs about Appearance and Reality, and in addition, if available, the reasons they hold their beliefs.

If one reads through the threads in the "Beliefs and Skepticism" forum, one will find frequent use of the term "Reality" -- often to point out someone else's error as regards Reality. So it does not seem an extravagant request to ask members to share with us here what they mean by the term.

It may indeed be extravagant to ask for their reasons for believing Reality is what they hold it to be, but a belief without a justification is not worth very much after all.

Naturally I have my own beliefs about Appearance and Reality, but to avoid initial reactionary posts and to encourage considered good-faith posts, I shall postpone making my own beliefs known until the occasion arises in subsequent posts.

Challenges to beliefs are welcome, inasmuch as only in the testing of beliefs is their merit shown.

The photo is of Marilyn Monroe, and I think it illustrates the theme of this thread rather well, in that the distortion in the funhouse mirror merely points up the distortion in the life of Norma Jeane Mortenson that led to her untimely death by drug overdose at age 36.


Please do not quote the entire OP on the first page. Save DP bandwidth.


Namaste
 
I'd describe reality as something that is known (experienced), and something that is justifiably believed in a properly basic way, yet it can't be scientifically proven.

And as a secondary thought to the OP's request to define/explain what "reality" is, this thread seems to be an adequate spot for a slightly altered version of gfm7175's unanswered question if anyone feels up to directly addressing it...

Why do you trust the reality/reliability of your sensory experience as objective truth but doubt the reality/reliability of your moral experience as objective truth?
 
I think we stumped 'em, gfm.

Maybe, while we enjoy the chirping of the crickets, you would kindly explain the concept of a properly basic belief for us, yes?
 
Angel said:
I think we stumped 'em, gfm.

Maybe, while we enjoy the chirping of the crickets, you would kindly explain the concept of a properly basic belief for us, yes?
Click to expand...

Well, I'd most certainly be glad to do so!!


A "properly basic belief" is a belief that is justifiably believed (through experience) in absence of a defeater for holding that belief, even though that belief is not based upon another existing belief, nor can that belief be proven with evidence.

An example of such a belief would be my belief that I exist in reality; that I am not simply a brain in a vat being stimulated by a mad scientist, or a body lying in the Matrix. My belief is not based upon another belief, nor can I use evidence to prove that I exist in reality, but through my sensory experience (given the reliability of it), I can justifiably believe that I exist in reality (in absence of a defeater for holding that belief).

This is the very basis of accepting the objectively true existence of "reality" as we know it. This is also why everyone is avoiding directly answering gfm7175's unanswered question presented in post #2 and why people instead choose to act as if properly basic beliefs are philosophical gobbly gook instead of taking them seriously; it directly and powerfully refutes their own worldview and they don't like that.
 
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GFM's Unanswered Question
gfm7175 said:
...
Why do you trust the reality/reliability of your sensory experience as objective truth but doubt the reality/reliability of your moral experience as objective truth?
Click to expand...
Why No Answer
I think you've nailed it. Absent any cogent reply, acceptance of the delivrances of Man's perceptual sense on the one hand, and on the other hand rejection of the delivrances of moral sense, this inconsistency makes no sense otherwise than as you account for it.
 
Angel said:
...
Naturally I have my own beliefs about Appearance and Reality, but to avoid initial reactionary posts and to encourage considered good-faith posts, I shall postpone making my own beliefs known until the occasion arises in subsequent posts....
Click to expand...

Looks like the occasion has arisen.

Mind is the fundamental reality.
Reality is fundamentally mental.
Appearance is reality.
Reality is appearance.
 
In other words, without Mind there is no Reality.
 
In a manner of speaking, Mind is more real than Matter.
 
Spam spam spam spam......
 
zyzygy said:
Spam spam spam spam......
Click to expand...
"Spam" has three (3) meanings according to the God Google:

https://www.google.com/search?q=spa...la:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&gws_rd=ssl

Our own DP Forum Rules, at #2, hews to #1 of the God Google's meanings:

https://www.debatepolitics.com/misc.php?do=vsarules


Which meaning are you relying on in your malignant post, zyzygy?

None of the meanings seems to fit, you see.

Or does your post in fact test the parameters of DP Forum Rule #4?


This thread is off to a slow start, to be sure, but there is no rule against slow-starting threads, and no rule against trying to generate interest in a thread.

If you have nothing to say on the topic of "Appearance and Reality," then don't say it.

But don't be a spoil sport.


Namaste​
 
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Your thread title is also the title of a book by British Idealist Francis Herbert Bradley. IIRC it was published in 1898. It has some arguments for a version of idealism that differed significantly from the (at the time) more popular German Idealism. I think it's fairly easy to find a facsimile copy these days.
 
spud_meister said:
So reality didn't exist prior to humans evolving consciousness? How does that work?
Click to expand...
Not necessarily human consciousness, but consciousness of some sort and degree, yes: this is what I believe. "Reality" is the name of an experience. Reality is experience.
Reality outside experience is impossible to imagine. When we imagine it, we experience it in imagination; we peep in on it and tend to forget that we are peeping and that peeping is an experience.

One way to wrap the mind around this notion is to think of color. Take any color. Red is my favorite, so let's take red. The color red as we experience it does not exist outside the experience of red. Remove the experience of red -- remove all animal consciousness capable of experiencing red -- and red is no longer part of experience; therefore, red is no longer part of Reality. Because "Reality," remember, names an experience, because Reality is experience.

This view of things comes out of British Empiricism -- out of Locke, Berkeley and Hume -- the view that all knowledge begins with experience. It has a pedigree; it's perfectly respectable, even if no longer popular. A hundred years ago, it still had serious proponents, and for a hundred years before that it was the dominant philosophical view. The distinction between Appearance and Reality goes back to Plato. The restriction of Reality to Appearance starts with the Empiricists.
 
6 minutes

Surely open-minded materialist members can spare six minutes to hear the argument on the other side!
 
Humankind has nothing to lose. Reality has always been bursting with spiritual brothers and sisters whose brains are enveloped in nature. Who are we? Where on the great journey will we be reborn?

It is in invocation that we are recreated. Imagine an invocation of what could be. Eons from now, we storytellers will believe like never before as we are aligned by the planet.

Where there is selfishness, guidance cannot thrive. We can no longer afford to live with dogma. Yes, it is possible to confront the things that can eradicate us, but not without ecstasy on our side.

Nothing is impossible.

Understanding is the healing of passion, and of us. We exist, we self-actualize, we are reborn. The goal of meridians is to plant the seeds of peace rather than desire.

We are in the midst of a conscious ennobling of presence that will let us access the universe itself. We are at a crossroads of complexity and discontinuity. Our conversations with other messengers have led to an unveiling of hyper-consciousness-expanding consciousness
 
I'm trying to track down the unattributed passage posted by RAMOSS at #16. He has me on IGNORE, however, and so he won't see this post.
Someone in his magic circle might rack up some good karma by bringing this question about his post to his attention.

In language and tone the passage sounds like it came from this source:

The Quantum Self by Alice Sentient
http://sentientlabs.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/TheQuantumSelf_AliceSentient.pdf

Can anyone verify this? Does anyone know anything about "Alice Sentient"? As far as I can make out, this is the name of an AI program developed by Sentient Labs.
Can anyone verify that?
 

Reality is not the name of an experience. The world as pieced together by our brains is a rough approximation of reality, as extrapolated from sense-data our bodies collect and a variety of predictive analytics performed by our subconscious to fill in gaps. The rough approximation--which comprises our experience--is the best we can do but it's not more real than the reality it attempts to convey. Our senses can fail, our memories can be corrupted, our perceptions can become misperceptions, our predictive analytics can be wrong. But we create an internal representation or picture of reality and that's what we each inhabit. It's as real as we can get but it's not real.

Try to grab a red shirt in a dimly lit closet and you'll find out just how reliable your ephemeral perception of the pigment in the shirt is in helping you find the correct shirt. Or damage the cones in your eyes or the vision-processing regions of the brain. None of those shifting circumstances change external reality but they may drastically shift your experience of it, as they impair the internal representation of reality you're able to generate for yourself.
 

I very much appreciate your post, Greenbeard. It is lucid and illuminating. I especially like the opening line, though I have certain philosophical misgivings about it. "Reality is not the name of an experience." Well put. However, if "reality is not the name of an experience," and if all our knowledge begins with experience (empiricism), then reality is an inference from experience, an "extrapolation" and "rough approximation," to use your words. And while you caution against taking our experience of that reality as "more real" than the inferred reality, you seem comfortable with taking the inferred reality as "more real" than our experience of it -- i.e., the inferred reality is really real whereas our experience of that reality is "as real as we can get but it's not real."

Have I fairly characterized your argument? If so, my philosophical question is on what basis do we privilege an inference to an unknown X (the really real reality beyond our experience) over what we do experience, the appearance of that reality? The basis, it seems to me, must be provided by rationalism, a privileging of reason over experience (empiricism). Am I correct in this assumption?
 

Yes, you've more or less captured what I'm getting at. But this is largely definitional: the inferred independent, external world that the sum of our experiences suggests exists is what "reality" refers to. And that inference is inherently empirical, as the existence and attributes of external reality are derived from sense-data. We all have internal worlds built up from what our sense-data and our cognitive processing machinery combine to concoct (these worlds are where the level of experience sits): if you assume that representation is in fact derived from something external and maps to it, however imperfectly, that external something is what "reality" refers to.

Choosing to regard individual perception/experience and the internal world as fundamental, and not derived from interaction with an independent external world, is an anti-realist position. That approach precludes the possibility of ever being wrong about anything because it eliminates the concept of an external reality against which my perceptions can be checked (and either confirmed or found wanting).

When I was a kid I enjoyed a children's book series called the Berenstein Bears. Except, as I recently found out, there's no such thing. The series is actually called the Berenstain Bears. I vividly remember calling them the Berenstein Bears throughout my childhood. But I accept that there is an external reality outside of what's in my head and ultimately the validity of what's in my head can be challenged by it. Those books exist externally from my brain, they were written by real people that exist out there, and they have an independent reality. My current memories (and apparently my perceptions at the time, years ago) are simply wrong. I accept that those books have always been called the same thing, and had the same word printed on their cover all along, and I've simply mis-perceived or mis-remembered it for years.

If I instead regard my perceptions as fundamental, then I have to accept that those book covers did say "Berenstein Bears" when I was a kid and now the same exact book covers now say "Berenstain Bears." There is no external book, all there is is my internal experience of it which now exists in two mutually exclusive variants.

You can spin a worldview out of a realist or anti-realist philosophy, but I prefer the former. There's a real world out there somewhere and I'm doing the best I can to cobble together some approximate representation of it with my senses and brain, but sometimes my perceptions and experience simply get it wrong. And even when they get it "right," the world I experience is just a representation that can be comprehended by my mind.
 
Angel said:
...he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou.
Click to expand...
--until he proved by intuition who he was. There are many whose powers of intuition are so limited that they've decided that there is no external objective reality --and when they spout off about something they call "science" I write them off as idiots.

So the first question we need to agree on is whether reality exists in the first place, and once we're together on that one we can talk about managing appearances.
 

Reality exists.
 
Greenbeard said:
...There's a real world out there somewhere and I'm doing the best I can to cobble together some approximate representation of it with my senses and brain, but sometimes my perceptions and experience simply get it wrong...
Click to expand...
--and the trick is figuring out how to latch on to reality in a world w/ so many that prefer nonsense.

Realty is like the old Hindu tale about the king who sent his bunch of old near-sighted wise men to examine the first elephant and report back (more here). Sometimes we can get a better approximation of the real world through checking w/ others, but as seen on these theads w/ so many posters soaked in delusion it can get downright toxic.

The problem is the fact that normal human beings decide things in a few seconds on an emotional level, and all the 'reason and logic' are simply contrived to buttress the emotional decision. Salesmen know this and sink the bulk of their efforts into that first impression --after it clicks they can just babble their way to a signature.

Our job is to recheck our beliefs and be ready to move w/ the evidence. I've given up on finding many others doing this on sites like this...
 
zyzygy said:
Reality exists.
Click to expand...
Sure, but where? Do we agree that reality exists outside of us and that different people can see it independently and make the same report, or are u one of those who say that reality is just something we think we're seeing?
 
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