Talk:Reality

From RationalWiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Yeah I know that this is an essay rather than an article, but it's early days, and I have written an extended version of this in another Wiki, and I want some feedback on it.--CatWatcher 11:20, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

"Reality has a liberal bias" - Stephen Colbert. Totnesmartin 07:58, 29 July 2007 (CDT)

An often used SF plotline (See: The Matrix) is that we're all in a computer simulation, I dimly remember this as early as the 1960s. If you were in a simulation then, if it were good enough, how could you tell?

There's also " if (God) created everything 30 seconds ago - even the memories in my brain & the fossils in the ground & & & ... - then how could you tell?"

You couldn't.

Keepawake 10:55, 29 July 2007 (CDT)


The idea that we are simply in a simulation has long been considered in the philosophical field of metaphysics. Some people are prone to take a practical view of metaphysics, and presume that what they perceive as the world, is in fact, very literally the reality of what exists. This is usually sufficient for most people, because due to the inescapable prison of our senses, we could never distinguish between our sense of reality, and the true reality as it exists. Of course, there is, and must be a "true reality", however-very eloquently put by the article-we cannot perceive it outside of our senses. As noted, for some this is enough to call it reality. Others may have a conscious "knowledge" of reality, that they perceive as trumping any perceptions that they might receive, and colors all information and stimuli that are coming to them. This is now people like Andy can "ignore" reality. He's not really ignoring reality, he just has an entirely skewed sense of what it is, as he is asserting that his constructed reality is the only true reality that exists, and thus denies things and arguments that would in any way conflict with his "known" reality, or as it seems, anything that would even partly conflict with his "true" reality.
Read the rest on my talk page --Eira yay! 13:59, 7 January 2008 (EST)

[edit] OR

This would be called Original Research on The Other Wiki. Peterdjones (talk) 17:20, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Counter-argument

My counter argument to the second section of this article "The use of the scientific method in constructing reality", which has now been twice reverted (strangely, the second time without explanation) is basically this. The argument in the second section holds that we have different realities by stating that we have different models of reality. The basic point of my argument is is that to posit two things are different, indeed implicit in the concept of them being "different", is the assumption that there is some baseline that they are different against. Things cannot just be generically "different" they must differ in some characteristic. And that is why the argument in the second section is contradictory, it relies on the fact that there are many different models of reality to lead to its conclusion that everyone has a personal reality, while ignoring the fact that in order for models of reality to "differ" they must differ with reference to some external characteristic (i.e. external reality, I gave the example of differing with regard to interpretation of sense data).--90.221.42.106 (talk) 00:18, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Suppose I ask a room full of eight-year-old kids each to draw a picture of a catawhompus. The drawings will most likely be different. That says nothing about the existence or reality of the "underlying catawhompus." How is your argument different from that? Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 01:32, 11 October 2013 (UTC)


"If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. -- Spock

Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support