Reality, beyond logic and faith

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I've been arguing with Manus/31415 in another post, and rather than persist with our hijacking, I invite him (and all) to join me in this new one.

The question at hand is: how can we *know* what is real?

Manus, in another post, has written a lengthy post detailing his poetic view of the world, packed full of beautiful contradictions and lovely allusions to will, wisdom, deeper knowledge, and spirituality. I responded with a coldly rational reply, which earned me another warm, charming lyric laced with hints and allegations.

Unfortunately, as entertaining as our conversation is, we can't ever persuade each other - or others - if we can't even agree HOW to convince each other: by cold, rational analysis of absolute truth, or by mystical understanding in the context of deep, ancient spiritualities?

So again I ask all of you: how do you *know* what is real?

The deep, dark secret of logic is that it cannot defend itself. You can't defend logic logically, since that would be circular reasoning, which is strictly forbidden by the rules of logic. Similarly, science cannot prove itself, because empiricism only deals...empirically, and cannot "prove" that our senses are accurate. Descartes stopped too early when he ended with "I think, therefore I am" - from a materialistic perspective, "thinking" is really just nerves lighting up in arbitrary patterns. We use logic and science every day, but if we ever stop to think about it, we can't avoid the nagging feeling that...well...it ain't that logical to be logical.

The solution I prefer to this problem has been called the "warrant" approach - that everyone has a different threshold of proof to believe something, and that after that threshold takes the rest on faith. I can't prove, definitively, that Sorcerers' Place exists - it might be an elaborate AI program - but I don't need that much proof to convince me its members are real people. I can't prove that other people are self-conscious beings, but that doesn't stop me from treating them as if they were - and differently from, say, AI programs. I can't prove that I need food, sleep, and clothing, but all the same, I keep eating, sleeping, and dressing. I can't even prove that *I* exist, but even without that proof I still work plenty hard to improve myself.

The problem is when someone's threshhold is set to a ridiculously high level of proof. At that point, all that is left is to walk away (as Manus is no doubt tempted to do, seeing how unreasonably high MY threshhold is!), or to point out active contradictions. If I insist that no one can prove the need to breathe, my case is airtight - literally. My intellectual proof is perfect, but in three minutes I either take a breath or suffocate.

It strikes me that a lot of the arguments here in the Alley are because we have different proof requirements - sometimes too high, often too low - and that if we took some of our posted positions to their practical extreme, there'd be a lot of logical suffocation.

Anyone else think so?

 

Before even asking that question, I'd like to ask what you understand in the word real?
My definition of real would be anything that has a physical substance (be it molecules, particles, energy waves, super-strings, etc.)

love, hunger, emotions would be a product of a bio-chemical reaction in the body/mind (not in spiritual sense). Thoughts would be triggered by activity another bio-chemical reaction and not differ much from scent or sight. It would be a product of the mind to percieve whatever it is you want to percieve.

How do I know it's real? Well I have to trust the scientists on that till I can look for myself.

 

Logic is the science of rational thinking. Rational thinking is thinking according to the laws of logic. Ergo: logic is the science of thinking according to the laws of logic.

 

But that's just it, Lokken. You have to trust the scientists - you can't exhaustively prove it yourself, so you choose to put your faith in other people's judgements. But how do you argue with someone who doesn't accept the scientific judgement? Do you put your argument on hold until you both earn biochemistry degrees? What if the other person doesn't even accept the validity of biochemistry and therefore, regardless of how many PhDs you earn, your explanations still won't pass the proof threshold?

Anyway, as to your first point - I'd claim that "real" includes both physical substance and thoughts, emotions, appetites, etc. But I'll quickly qualify that by adding that these things have a true physical foundation. An example: this message that you're reading right now. The message deals with weighty topics of high philosophy from the humble perspective of computer gamers (and we are SO in over our heads!). But the message is also, ultimately, just a collection of ones and zeroes. Does its ultimately material substance - very "real" - mean that its own message (the words and ideas) are any less real?

Similarly, a thought is transmitted physically through nerves and signals - a good blow to the head or a bad dose of Alzheimer's can ruin the mind through purely physical means, because the thoughts themselves are founded on physical processes. But, those thoughts still have a reality beyond their nervous-system signals - just as a computer game is more than just ones and zeroes.

So if you claim that only the material is ultimately real, I'd have to ask how you can distinguish between things that are the same material substance deep down but have such different meanings to us. How do we recognize words if only the letters are real?

 

Edit - I was distracted while writing this and it predates GM's latest post.

I'm understanding this question to be epistemological and not metaphysical. I only bring this up because if I'm understanding the question right Lokken's question, while certainly interesting, could potentially sidetrack into metaphysics.

I'd say first of all that there is a distinction between 'knowing' something and 'knowing that you know' something. You don't have to satisfy the latter to satisfy the former. Much of scepticism arises out of emphasising the latter (ad infinitum) but that is entirely separate from the former. Hence, most philosophers I know of have now, in the last oh... 5 decades give or take, abandoned the idea that knowledge requires certainty.

With this in mind, I have a fair amount of sympathy for G.E. Moore's "A Defense of Common Sense" who didn't reject the idea that certainty was a component of knowledge (at least what I've read of him in the early 1900's). His idea was quite simply was, if I'm remembering this right, 1. If skepticism is true, we don't have knowledge of the external world. 2. We do have knowledge of the external world. 3. Therefore, scepticism is false.

He knows the second premise is true because he is more certain of certain every day pieces of knowledge, such as "here is my hand" than he is of any of the sceptical premises.

The modern definition of knowledge though doesn't require certainty for knowledge. It simply defined knowledge as a: 1)true, 2) justified, 3) belief. Justification does not require certainty and by noting the difference between 'knowing' and 'knowing that we know' we turn out to know all kinds of stuff. A fellow named Gettier came along and threw a wrench into this with a short little paper and made things exceedingly complex. It turns out there is either a 4th criteria needed to make this previously simple explanation work OR the second criteria, justification, is more complex than previously thought. This Gettier problem may have been solved, various people think they have. It just gets pretty complex and makes the discussion kinda tough.

The one really heavy hitter in modern philosophy I'm aware of that is sticking to the idea that certainty is required for knowledge is David Lewis, an Australian teaching at Princeton. Lewis is really smart, really funny, and has really wild ideas. He doesn't do much epistemology but has a paper called "Elusive Knowledge" where he talks about the Gettier problem, the lottery paradox (not a problem imo)etc. Lewis thinks you can have knowledge without justification and sets out to break the link. Lewis' idea is neat: "Subject S know proposition P iff(if and only if) P holds in every possibility left uneliminated by S's evidence; equivalently, iff S's evidence eliminates every possibility in which not-P." The thing is, we're okay most of the time to ignore certain possibilities. The result is, we know lots of things normally but it is... compartmentalized for lack of a better way of talking about it. What I mean is, we know things most of the time but when we become epistemologists and start endulging our crazy conspiracy theories (every book in the world could be designed to mislead us into thinking 2+2=4 etc) then we are no longer certain and don't know it.

As for me, I'm in the camp that certainty isn't required for knowledge. I just point out Lewis because he may well be considered the most intellectually gifted philosopher today and he still seems to be using the infallibility definition of knowledge.

I'm not proofing this, I've been called away. I apologize that it is likely disjointed, rambling, and poorly edited.

[ October 03, 2003, 05:35: Message edited by: Laches ]

 

Don't worry, this is the Alley, we like dijointed rambling. Now that I've commented I have to say something worthwhile, here goes.

To disbeleieve all that we receive sounds to be going over the bounds of neurosis, there has to be a point where we can lay down a flag and say "here is the place, this is TRUTH" or we might as well all consighn ourselves to the mental asylum right now.

 

I firmly think that it is a computer simulation that we live in.

Yes, I have seen the Matrix too many times.

Reality is inside one's head. For someone insane, the reality includes little green men. For us "normal" people, it does not.

we all live inside our heads anyway.

To use a Pratchettistic comprasion: Let's say a man is sneaking inside a castle because he is a secret messenger to the king. A gurad sees him, and thinks he is a thief and gives him a crossbow bolt to the back. Dead messenger is the result... now, he was not a thief in the general world, but in the guard's reality he was, and thus, was treated as such.

Yes, I am of the ranbling kind.

 

ah, well you forgot my point. You're way off. It doesn't matter to distinguish it, just to prove that it's real (as in it's there). If you can distinguish it or not is not of importance for the reality issue.

I think you hit it spot on Ara. Even if we did live in a matrix world all things would have a physical manifest somewhere.

As to how I would know the difference between what's real reality, and what looks like one reality but is another, I don't know. It would be a matter of intuition/common sense for me.

Does this make sense? Ah.. then it must be real/truth.

Or I could say in other words, it's a matter of faith.

 

My many thanks, I do not think I have ever before been described as poetic.

To quote another... What deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?

I agree with Grey Magistrate's original post, and Lokken's latest; that of a threshold of proof after which we must all simply have faith, and believe.

I believe what some of you speak of is known as existential angst, that, upon reaching the conclusion that the world exists in your mind, and that there is nothing you can know you know, nothing that you can truly be certain of, not even your own existence for sure, that your world begins falling apart, losing meaning.

Four paths are left to such a one, to ignore it, block it out and continue regardless, to lose all care, slip over to purely seeking the carnal gratification and entertainment, to collapse, be at a loss for anything, unfeeling, uncaring, or to find some sort of meaning, some sort of purpose, for good or worse, often for worse, upon which to fixate oneself in this sea of unknowing.

If one has a purpose, however slender, a great weight is lifted from your shoulders.

The collapse takes a long time to recover from, you will never be the same, if purpose is found, you will never allow it, for to lose that purpose, is to lose all self respect.

 

I like the response of Dr. Samuel Johnson as reported by James Boswell:

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existance of matter, and that everything in the universe is merely ideal. I observed that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus"

 

As a matter of fact, Depaara, that was precisely the anecdote that came to mind when I first spotted GM's debate with Manus in the other topic...

But, on a deeper level, one has to admit that there can be no absolute certainty based on empirical observations. Without a foundational framework of assumptions, observational data is meaningless. In other words, we *must* make a certain set of assumptions (which varies according to your "threshold of proof", to borrow GM's phrase) in order to assign any meaning to what our senses perceive. However, without the perceptions of our senses, there is no knowledge of existence and therefore might as well be no existence. It seems rather pointless to me to argue the existence of a world that in no way perceptibly affects our own.

I'm a bit rushed, but I'll flesh this out more fully as the discussion continues.

It's good to be back! And I welcome Grey Magistrate into our midst; it's nice to have yet another deep thinker debating on the boards -- particularly one who is considerably more articulate than I am.

 

Well, I'm just opening my mind to the wonders of the world around me and I myself often seriously sit for ages just looking at my hand or some such and try to appreciate this existence.

I'm still having a bit of 'fun' wondering if the world goes away when I close my eyes and wondering if this is all real or just some Matrix-style VR world. And no, this wwas not all brought on by seeing that film, I'd wondered about this before even seeing it but I guess seeing it helped me put a form on my thoughts.

In short, I have no idea what is 'reality' and I agree with Lokken - it's a matter of faith

 

Manus - if you truly believe that quote, then how does it affect your day-to-day life? How do you *live* that "final truth"? I'd (politely) defy anyone to consistently live a contradictory negation. The very act of posting on this site is an act of creation and destruction - little ones and zeroes are born and slain at our keyboards' commands. And "path nor achievement" is just a poetic way of saying "means and ends".

Also, Manus, per existential angst - the point is that no matter how "angsty" you get, you still keep on eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, talking, breathing, etc. An emotional and intellectual acceptance of purposelessness cannot entirely stop the self from living as if there were a purpose (even if that purpose is just to survive the day). Even suicide is a deliberate act with a self-conscious purpose, even if that purpose is kinda thin - "I cannot live with purposelessness, therefore I will kill myself" - the purpose of the suicide then, clearly, being to deal with the sense of purposelessness.

[Off-topic, but this reminds me very little of the old argument to support abortion for the poor and disabled because the kids would have such a rotten life that it would be better that they never be born. Yet the suicide rate in the ghettos hardly reaches 1%, much less 100%. Why should so many angsty, hopeless, penniless people cling so fervently to life?]

Lokken and Aldazar - now that we've agreed that we have to take reality on faith, what's the next step? If I have faith that the sky is green and you have faith that the sky is orange, heaven help the fella that tries to convince us the sky is blue. If we have strong, determined faith that the sky is really green or orange, what does it take to convince us otherwise? If we say "logic" (the sky is blue for the following scientific reasons...) or "empiricism" (look up, it's blue!) or "authority" (everyone else thinks it's blue, it must be true), then all we're really saying is that our blind trust in reason, senses, and opinion trumps our blind trust in other things. Why should we trust frosty logic over our lovely orange skies?

 

You should trust your intuition IMO. I just solved a complicated math assignment using intuition alone, since I wasn't really sure what I was doing was correct, but I just dived into my "better knowledge" of exploration and solved it in the end. I could sense the realization breathing in my face, but couldn't see it till I made the ultimate jump into the unknown which thus became solid, complete and correct.

If you feel that your sky is orange, well, ask yourself what orange is? Who is to say that your orange is not another person's blue? Or is it only orange because you want it to be different from the others' blue?

The ultimate limitation of perception is the language. I can only try to define the bombardment of my senses from the world in words to you, and thus orange and blue sky might as well be the same damn thing since we both can point to the sky and say "That color there is the sky."

 

You're getting into semantics here - If you have "faith" or "believe" that the sky is green, then it is, to you, green. However, the word "green" is nothing more the sounds that our mouth produces to communicate the idea of our perception of the general concept of some thing. But does the word actually have some value? (some would say yes, others no.)

I think that what I am trying to get at (and badly, might I add) is this question: Does what we call some thing change its inherent quality/value as a thing? If I call it green and you call it blue, does that really change what it IS? Basically - does it all really matter?

And then there is the magic question: So What? Isn't there is a bigger question at stake here than "is the real world actually the real world?

Such as: how does our perception of the "real world" affect us? What is the difference if we are seeing the real world or seeing nothing more than a computer program in our minds? How does that affect our everyday lives? Our actions? Our morals and our codes of ethics? How we relate to and interact with other people?

 

That's the key to it all, for me. There has to be some level of shared perception - as well as tools for measuring those perceptions and a vocabulary for describing them - if people are to be able to interact at all. We have chosen to call our common surroundings "reality" or "the real world." If each person existed alone in his or her own little realm, there would be no way to interact with any one else because no one else would share your context or your vocabulary. How easy it is when we can all point to the sky and say, "that's blue." It doesn't matter that no two of us will perceive the color exactly the same, we all have an understanding of what "blue" means and can move forward from there.

Context is everything.

 

OK, then let's take a starker example. Suppose you're convinced that the earth is round and I'm convinced that the earth is flat. You have arguments on your side - the scientists tell you it's true and your neighbors agree (human authority), you've seen satellite imagery (empiricism), and you can calculate star and planetary movements only insofar as the world is round (logic). I have arguments on my side, too - the traditional views of our ancestors (human authority), the ground is flat when I walk on it, no matter how far I go (empiricism), and a flat earth fits nicely with my perception of sunrise and sunset (logic).

Lokken, if I merely "feel" that my earth is flat and you "feel" that your earth is round, fine - but our warm, fuzzy feelings don't make the world any flatter or rounder. As you get at, Falstaff, our perceptions don't substantially affect what we perceive. (Yes, I know that the act of observing affects things, but that's because of the act required to perceive, not the perception itself.) If my friend convinces me that the world is actually round, then my corrected perception doesn't make the world any less flat. (Manus is free to disagree here.)

So Lokken, although language is a huge limitation, it's not the major one. Flatness and roundness exists independent of language - or even observers, for that matter, since humans could go extinct and the earth would STILL be round.

Also, per language limitations: we might have different definitions of "orange" and "blue", but they shouldn't be THAT different. My idea of "blue" is a personalized compilation of all the different "blue" things that I've seen in my lifetime, which is a different set from what you have personally witnessed as "blue". But despite our different individual senses of "blueness", we still should be enough overlap that we can agree when things are more or less "blue". If I insist that the sky really is orange and it looks blue to you (and everyone else!), then either I have a completely alien understanding of the color orange (possible) or I'm inconsistently perceiving one aspect of blueness (more likely). I think the next step would be to watch to see if I treated all blue things (or things you thought were blue) as orange, or if the sky is an exception. Can I live consistently by my different perception?

And Falstaff - if there isn't a "real world", then how do we morally judge the deeper "real" (ourselves, presumably) that is being affected by our virtual interactions? We all play computer games, and I trust that we can recognize the real difference between playing a Chaotic Evil in a game and playing Chaotic Evil in "real life". If we decide that the real world is really just a glorified computer game (whether electronic or mystical), then who's to judge us for indulging a li'l Chaotic Evil?

 

A good point, Rally, and not only that, but also: there would be no reason to interact in any positive way with other people at all. Essentially, if we really are all in "the matrix" (for lack of better terminology) then who really cares about "who does what to whom?" Laws, respect for the individual, humanitarianism could all go out the window - because if those people aren't really there and are only in our individual minds, then we can do anything we want to - no consequences.

ps - OMG - I am actually posting in the Alley - someone give the Devil a space heater!


Edit - @ Grey - it seems we are on the same page - we asked each other the same question at the same time.

[ October 09, 2003, 00:24: Message edited by: Falstaff ]