What if? A sort of philosophical question.

Medusa said:
I don't, but my questions are: how and why?
And I mean this gently and respectfully, but why are we having this conversation?
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Good question. Reality according to Webster is "the quality or state of being" . In other words you are who you are. That's your reality. Mine is different. There is no universal definition. If your looking for universal truth then reality is the wrong word. People have search for ages for universal truth and still it alludes us. I won't go in to the reasons why it has not been discovered other then to say that we are not qualified or have the capacity to understand. We are not the creator, we are the creations. You won't know more then the creator tells you. I am done with this thread. With all due respect to all there is nothing else to consider.
all have a good evening
rbtvgo
 
This exemplifies the self-importance that our arrogant human animal species has ordained ourselves with. Humanity in its entirety could be eliminated in an instance and the universe would continue doing its thing without any notice of our demise. Despite what religionists and (some) scientists would have you believe, we do not somehow imbue the universe with some metaphysical meaning. Reality is not subjective, except in our own minds.
 

oldlongwalker said:
Empedocles discovered air by finding that something was preventing a jug from being filled with water when help upside down under water. (It is a bit more complicated, but the point holds.) As for fish, the only way they could have a word for water is if they were able to detect it. The only way to do that would be to isolate themselves from it. One such way would be to get out of the water.

Imagine one of these fish gets caught by a fisherman. It flops around on the deck and realizes something has changed. By luck it jumps back into the water. It relates the experience to others. They figure out that maybe swimming up and jumping up out of the water might work to confirm the experience. It does. Thus they discover water and give it a name.

If you don't mind I'm going to break this up a bit.
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So the intelligent fish figure out they are in water, and come up with a word for water. They do this by isolating themselves from it, by getting a standpoint outside of water whereby they can discover it. How does this apply to the question of our perception of reality?

We use language to describe our perceptions. We take it that these perceptions are of something outside of us that isn't altered by us. It is reality in the sense that what it is, is so for everyone and is independent of us. But, what if it were different than how we perceive it?

The very idea that reality itself could be different assumes that there could be some standpoint from which we could attain a clear, unfiltered view of reality. But there is no such standpoint from which we can view language. We think using language, and the idea that we could attain a neutral standpoint outside of language itself is meaningless.

What we perceive then must be real in an objective sense. For the possibility of it being otherwise is meaningless.
 
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