Philosophy Now Forum

Conde Lucanor wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 11:56 pm

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:17 am I agree with you in every aspect of independence you mentioned above, i.e. common sense, conventional, scientific and whatever except note this;

"But it is not that the moon is observed as independent from human conditions, it is known as independent from human conditions."

Note the following from a more refine perspective;

• human knowing (it is known as independent from human conditions)

From the above, what is realized and known as independent from human conditions, cannot be ABSOLUTELY independent of human conditions.
As such the human knowing [human conditions] is always a pre-condition to whatever is or reality.
There is no way you can disentangle humans from reality.

Of course one can disentangle humans from reality, one just needs to drop dead. The entire human race could cease to exist and the universe will still be there, being exactly as it has been before humans showed up. It will not exist for humans, evidently, but that would be only an epistemological condition that would not alter the ontological status of the universe.

The point often advanced by anti-realists is that ontology remains as a human enterprise of inquiry into the world, but the farthest that their arguments can reach is to deny all certainties, and that includes their own certainties. So, they can choose to embrace the belief that everything is an illusion and that reality in itself, independent of human consciousness, doesn't exist, but they can't surely assert as an indisputable truth that it doesn't exist. If they were sure, they would be losing in their own game. And then one can also check if they actually behave as if they really believed that everything is an illusion. Most often, they don't, and they even debate in internet forums as if they were real and there was other real people writing back.

..perhaps there is no table at all.
Such questions are bewildering, and it is difficult to know that even the strangest hypotheses may not be true.
Thus our familiar table, which has roused but the slightest thoughts in us hitherto, has become a problem full of surprising possibilities.
The one thing we know about it is that it is not what it seems.
Beyond this modest result, so far, we have the most complete liberty of conjecture.
Leibniz tells us it is a community of souls: Berkeley tells us it is an idea in the mind of God; sober science, scarcely less wonderful, tells us it is a vast collection of electric charges in violent motion.

I don't see any direct, necessary relationship, between philosophical realism and deism or theism. That things in the world exist independent of human consciousness does not entail that nature, the universe itself, can be thought to be separated from other (supernatural) domains. The proposal of supernatural domains may well be a response to our need to escape from our real existential sufferings, but it is by all means an unrealistic view, a set of illusions. And the best antidote against this self-deception is to look at the world as it actually is, independently of how we would like it to be.

• Philosophical realism is .. about a certain kind of thing (like numbers or morality) is the thesis that this kind of thing has mind-independent existence, i.e. that it is not just a mere appearance in the eye of the beholder.[1][2][3] This includes a number of positions within epistemology and metaphysics which express that a given thing instead exists independently of knowledge, thought, or understanding.
  -wiki

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:17 am When you dogmatically cling to the existence of an independent reality, you are complicit to the above potential theistic atrocities.

Not at all. By independent reality we mean just a reality that does not depend on our perception of it. We are all, humans and the rest of objects in the universe, part of it, but by no means in a state of subordination of things to consciousness, actually just the opposite, our consciousness subordinate to the state of concrete things. By independent reality it is not meant a domain outside the world.

Conde Lucanor wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:29 pm No possible criteria to define truth from falsehood, anything goes. So then, what would be the point of a character in this farce asking for any distinctions between reality and illusion?

Conde Lucanor wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:29 pm To assume that the 5-minute hypothesis is true is to assume that you and I actually don't exist, that we're not writing in a forum, that nothing we think or do is a reliable actuality, that we are just characters in a farce.

Conde Lucanor wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:29 pm The 5-minute hypothesis is just another version of solipsism, which is, of course, the real subject of this thread.

Conde Lucanor wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:29 pm What I do is that I ask you if you believe you're an illusion from the 5-minute universe.
If you don't, then I can proceed with the agreed assumption that the world is real and it can be distinguished from illusion.

Conde Lucanor wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:29 pm If you do, then for you anything goes and there's no point in arguing, since there's no foundational realistic state to start with.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Fri Apr 02, 2021 8:32 am

Conde Lucanor wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:29 pm No possible criteria to define truth from falsehood, anything goes. So then, what would be the point of a character in this farce asking for any distinctions between reality and illusion?

This is a very good question! Go ahead and perform the thought experiment. Assume that it is is indeed the case: no possible criteria to define truth from falsehood exist. Anything really does go.

It seems to me, then that you are in a perfectly good position to answer your very own question. WHY do you want to distinguish between "reality" and "illusion"? WHY do you want to draw distinctions?

Seeming as the entire field of Philosophy is built upon this distinction and that, I think the question is worth examining.

Conde Lucanor wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:29 pm To assume that the 5-minute hypothesis is true is to assume that you and I actually don't exist, that we're not writing in a forum, that nothing we think or do is a reliable actuality, that we are just characters in a farce.

What? That's not at all the conclusion I am arriving at! I AM writing on a forum. Obviously! You are reading this very text right now! Obviously!

If the universe is indeed 5 minutes old, then the inference I make out of that is "Wow! Our perception of the passage of time is really misguided!".

Conde Lucanor wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:29 pm The 5-minute hypothesis is just another version of solipsism, which is, of course, the real subject of this thread.

No, it isn't. It's a version of a universe in which your perception/conception of time is an illusion.

Conde Lucanor wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:29 pm What I do is that I ask you if you believe you're an illusion from the 5-minute universe.
If you don't, then I can proceed with the agreed assumption that the world is real and it can be distinguished from illusion.

Well, that's a pointless question!

IF the 5-minute hypothesis were ontologically true, but epistemically I believe the universe is 14 billion years old then it would also be true that my perception of time (and perhaps other things) is absolutely unreliable. What I think time is, and what time actually is would be two very different things.

How is an unreliable perception to distinguish the "real" from the "illusionary"?

I choose the simplest way out of this (see first paragraph). I don't find the distinction useful.

For all intents and purposes given the limits of epistemology perception is the extent to what I know is real.

Conde Lucanor wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:29 pm If you do, then for you anything goes and there's no point in arguing, since there's no foundational realistic state to start with.

Sure! There is no point in arguing. The trouble with philosophical debates is that you want context-free truth. A foundation!

Anything does go. IN PHILOSOPHY.

There is no foundation. When you face daily life constraints/goals/objectives/uncertainties (CONTEXT!) emerges. We have a bunch of models, and we have a bunch of instruments.

For the purpose of argument we have Science experiment number 1: What experiment could we perform, what measurement could we devise or take to distinguish whether we are in a "real" universe or an "illusionary" one?

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:17 am As such the human knowing [human conditions] is always a pre-condition to whatever is or reality.

Age wrote: ↑Fri Apr 02, 2021 5:00 pm But if 'we' are in a Universe, then It HAS TO BE a 'real' one. There is just no escaping this FACT.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 7:45 am

Age wrote: ↑Fri Apr 02, 2021 5:00 pm But if 'we' are in a Universe, then It HAS TO BE a 'real' one. There is just no escaping this FACT.

The universe doesn't care about the adjectives we use to describe it.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 7:45 am Real, Fake, Illusionary, Existing, non-existing.

They are just silly words.

Age wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 3:22 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 7:45 am

Age wrote: ↑Fri Apr 02, 2021 5:00 pm But if 'we' are in a Universe, then It HAS TO BE a 'real' one. There is just no escaping this FACT.

The universe doesn't care about the adjectives we use to describe it.

Okay, but what has that got to do with what you said, and which I replied to?

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 7:45 am Real, Fake, Illusionary, Existing, non-existing.

They are just silly words.

But 'you', "skepdick", was the one who used some of these words, in the question you proposed. I was just replying to YOUR question.
So, here is ANOTHER PRIME EXAMPLE of what some people will say, and 'try to' DEFLECT to, when they have asked a question, which is Truly meaningless, and an answer SHOWS this.

You asked;
"What experiment could we perform, what measurement could we devise or take to distinguish whether we are in a "real" universe or an "illusionary" one?"

I was just pointing out the irrefutable FACT that 'you' are, and HAVE TO BE, in the REAL Universe. So, there is absolutely NO experiment needed to arrive at this CONCLUSION.

But, if ANY one thinks or believes that they could refute this conclusion, then please go on and do it.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 3:28 pm

Age wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 3:22 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 7:45 am
The universe doesn't care about the adjectives we use to describe it.

Okay, but what has that got to do with what you said, and which I replied to?

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 7:45 am Real, Fake, Illusionary, Existing, non-existing.

They are just silly words.

But 'you', "skepdick", was the one who used some of these words, in the question you proposed. I was just replying to YOUR question.
So, here is ANOTHER PRIME EXAMPLE of what some people will say, and 'try to' DEFLECT to, when they have asked a question, which is Truly meaningless, and an answer SHOWS this.

You asked;
"What experiment could we perform, what measurement could we devise or take to distinguish whether we are in a "real" universe or an "illusionary" one?"

I was just pointing out the irrefutable FACT that 'you' are, and HAVE TO BE, in the REAL Universe. So, there is absolutely NO experiment needed to arrive at this CONCLUSION.

But, if ANY one thinks or believes that they could refute this conclusion, then please go on and do it.

What does your post have to do with anything?

I am in a Universe; or a Simulation; or a Dream. What does the adjective "REAL" tell me about the Universe/Simulation/Dream?

Nothing. So why say it?

Age wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 3:43 pm 'you', "SKEPDICK", was the one who used the word 'REAL', in YOUR question.

Or, did you forget this?

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 3:45 pm

Age wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 3:43 pm 'you', "SKEPDICK", was the one who used the word 'REAL', in YOUR question.

Or, did you forget this?

I also used the word "imaginary" in my question.
And I also asked how we could distinguish "real" from "imaginary" in my question.
And I used inverted commas too.

Can you even read whole sentences?

Age wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 4:55 pm And I told you that you are in the REAL Universe. And that this is a FACT, which can NOT be refuted.

But you seem to have just DISREGARD all of this.

If you disagreed with ANY of what I wrote, then just say so, and then I will SHOW 'you' how to distinguish 'real' from 'imaginary', in regards to this.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 5:06 pm

Age wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 4:55 pm And I told you that you are in the REAL Universe. And that this is a FACT, which can NOT be refuted.

But you seem to have just DISREGARD all of this.

If you disagreed with ANY of what I wrote, then just say so, and then I will SHOW 'you' how to distinguish 'real' from 'imaginary', in regards to this.

And I know you are lying. That's a fact which cannot be refuted.

So I am not interested.

Age wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 5:22 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 5:06 pm

Age wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 4:55 pm And I told you that you are in the REAL Universe. And that this is a FACT, which can NOT be refuted.

But you seem to have just DISREGARD all of this.

If you disagreed with ANY of what I wrote, then just say so, and then I will SHOW 'you' how to distinguish 'real' from 'imaginary', in regards to this.

And I know you are lying. That's a fact which cannot be refuted.

So I am not interested.

LOL ONCE AGAIN, you revert to this tactic. What do you now CLAIM I am lying about this time, EXACTLY?

Or, are you to afraid to answer this clarifying question as well?

You CLAIM that I am lying is a FACT, which can NOT be refuted. But let 'us' SEE if you can actually write down what the lie, supposedly, is.

You CLAIMING you are not interested, is just YOUR way of "running away", as some say.

WHY can you NOT just say whether you agree or disagree with 'me'?

If you agree that 'we' are OBVIOUSLY in A REAL Universe, then great. There is NOTHING more to discuss in this regard.

However, if you disagree, then I can and will REVEAL how to distinguish between the 'real' and the 'imaginary'.

But, like in some of our other discussions, you appear way TO SCARED and AFRAID to be totally Honest here also.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 5:26 pm

Age wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 5:22 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 5:06 pm
And I know you are lying. That's a fact which cannot be refuted.

So I am not interested.

LOL ONCE AGAIN, you revert to this tactic. What do you now CLAIM I am lying about this time, EXACTLY?

Or, are you to afraid to answer this clarifying question as well?

You CLAIM that I am lying is a FACT, which can NOT be refuted. But let 'us' SEE if you can actually write down what the lie, supposedly, is.

You CLAIMING you are not interested, is just YOUR way of "running away", as some say.

WHY can you NOT just say whether you agree or disagree with 'me'?

If you agree that 'we' are OBVIOUSLY in A REAL Universe, then great. There is NOTHING more to discuss in this regard.

However, if you disagree, then I can and will REVEAL how to distinguish between the 'real' and the 'imaginary'.

But, like in some of our other discussions, you appear way TO SCARED and AFRAID to be totally Honest here also.

I disagree with your lies.