Philosophy Now Forum

I find it interesting that people seem to have very
different views on what exactly is reality...
I have read plenty of people who have described a reality
that I can't even envision, or describe a reality that isn't
even close to the reality I see...

and example of this is the GOP/MAGA viewpoint of dystopian
America that is collapsing on itself...I don't see that at all...
I can see why they would describe America as that as a political
tool to frighten people into voting GOP/MAGA......but as a
real time description of reality, no, the GOP/MAGA vision of
America is about as wrong as one can get....

but this division of viewpoints of the reality of America, why
are these descriptions so,... different?

I suspect that we have vastly different understanding of reality
because of several reasons...one being the description of reality
we received as children.... from the day we are born, we are indoctrinated
with a vision of the country we are born into...I was born in 1959 in
Minnesota..... I got a midwestern, upper class description
of America.. and what it meant to be an American...if I were born elsewhere,
I would have gotten another description of that reality..
as we are born into different visions of reality, we are indoctrinated with
different views of America... the point of growing up is to create our
own vision or description of what we see, what our reality is today....
that is what growing up means.. to discover what the reality on the ground
looks like for us...the problem is that many people are unable or unwilling to
overcome their childhood indoctrinations of reality... they live within the reality
they were taught or indoctrinated with.. and they never overcome that.....

much of our ''enlightenment'' of adulthood comes from this overcoming of
our indoctrinations of childhood... to become an adult means to overcome
what we were taught as children.. what is reality is taught to us as children,
do we have the courage to overcome that education?

I am the second of 5 children.. and it seems even as family, we, each
of us, has a vastly different vision of what is reality? 5 related people
with 5 different understanding of what is reality?

but why do we have such different understandings of reality?
that is the question....

we reach the point where we can now bring in ism's and ideologies
into our discussion of what creates our different realities?

by holding to an ism or ideology, that ism creates our vision of
reality.... so, for example if we hold to the ism of Catholicism,
then we have a readymade vision of reality... we exists in
a universe where there is a god and heaven and hell and Satan
and angels.. and we have thus posited our own role within
that universe.. we see reality through a religious viewpoint...
and if we are atheist, then we see reality in a totally different
way.. there is no god, no heaven, no hell, no Satan and no angels....
reality is something vastly different in us believing in god
to a reality being something else if we don't believe in god....

the isms we hold, to a great extent, create the reality we see...
if I am a conservative and I hold to the MAGA/GOP world, then
I see the world vastly different then if I am a liberal and belong
to the Democratic party.... the ism we hold dictates the reality we see....
and that is the value of holding to isms and ideologies... we have a
readymade understanding of the world's reality...
all bright and shinny and tied up into a bow.. all pretty....

and it doesn't matter if, if we discover reality being something different
than our readymade reality that is created by the ism or ideology we believe
in... we can just hold onto our already created reality no matter what
the facts on the ground say.... and this is why the GOP/MAGA crowd
holds onto the ism before the facts.. it is easier to hold onto already
given values instead of thinking them through...it is hard work to
discover the values/beliefs that we actually do hold onto, to
overcome our childhood values and beliefs is hard work...
to overcome our indoctrinations.. that can be unsettling, at best...

nature appears differently to each of us for a couple of reasons,
one is that we haven't overcome our childhood indoctrinations...
we haven't overcome our laziness and discovered the values
that we actually hold, not indoctrinated into us, but the values
that we actually hold...the values that match the facts on the ground
as we see them...not as they might appear to us in the ism
and ideologies we believe in... but in the facts that we see...

the nature of reality depends on what isms and ideologies we hold
and thus, we have vastly different notions of reality....

in our usage of discovering reality in the facts on the ground,
as we see them, instead of seeing reality in terms of our isms
and ideologies, we go from the facts on the ground to the belief
system, instead of the believe system, the isms to the reality we believe in...

reality becomes what we make of it, see of it, instead of what we belief
it to be in our indoctrinations...and in this, we might hold to
very different realities because for us personally, the facts on
the ground may change... I hold to a certain belief system because
I am old, my beliefs must change to match the reality I live in...
if I were to hold onto the isms of existence, the facts, the reality
I believe in might not change as I grow older....I see reality,
the universe different because I am 64.. and that reality has changed
because I can't hold onto beliefs that I held to when I was 34.. my reality
has changed and so my values, my reality must also change...
one who holds to isms might not change because they are basing
their reality on set principles of the isms... so, what dictates
the reality I see? it could be the isms I believe in or it could
be the facts on the ground as I see them....and as facts change,
so does the reality I see changes...holding onto isms doesn't
have this changing reality.. because isms don't change....
the religious ism is still exactly the same ism that has been in place
since the beginning of the creation of that ism.....

the nature of Catholicism hasn't really changed in 500 years,
nor has the nature of Buddhism nor has the nature of
conservatism changed because conservatism isn't about
the facts on the ground, it is about the traditional values
being held by the believer.....and those values don't change their
nature...the set beliefs of the ism of Catholicism is stronger than the
changing nature of going from the facts on the ground to the belief system....

so, do we go from the universal to the particular or do go
from the individual/the particular to the nature of the universe?

what is the nature of reality? the ism or the facts on the ground?

this is an age-old question of philosophy... and what is your answer?

Kropotkin

I think the best answer to this question is questioning:

- why should we answer this question?
- why do we make this question?
- what mentality, what mind structures are we making use of in making this question?
- what is the meaning of reality? How this meaning conditions the procedures we are supposed to follow in finding the answer?
- what is the meaning of “is” in the question “what is the nature of reality?”?
- what is the role of us in the question? Are we included as a supposed part of the answer? Are we a part of the reality we are talking about? Is the question itself part of the reality that it tries to understand?
- does the question consider that, so far, nobody has really ever seen anything steady? The consequence is that even our ideas are never steady, they are always changing; this means that, as soon as we think we have got an answer, actually it isn’t anymore what we think it is: it has already changed in our brain; how can we expect to get an essential answer to such a fundamental question, given our situation of humans whose ideas are never the same, whose ideas change every millisecond?
- how can we trust that there are no errors in the procedure we followed to get the answer? Who will guarantee us that our answer is correct? Who will guarantee us that we haven’t forgot anything essential in the whole process, from making the question to getting the answer?
- after considering all of these difficulties: what is the meaning of “answer”?
- what is the meaning of “question” and the meaning of “understanding”?

After considering these questions, you can see that the question “what is reality?” is quite a naive one, compared to the ones I showed here. We can learn and gain much more by dealing with the questions I mentioned, than by dealing directly with your question, by diving directly into it, as if the were no problems with all of the structures, difficulties, uncertainties and problems that it contains.

Angelo Cannata wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 9:00 pm I think the best answer to this question is questioning:

- why should we answer this question?
- why do we make this question?
- what mentality, what mind structures are we making use of in making this question?
- what is the meaning of reality? How this meaning conditions the procedures we are supposed to follow in finding the answer?
- what is the meaning of “is” in the question “what is the nature of reality?”?
- what is the role of us in the question? Are we included as a supposed part of the answer? Are we a part of the reality we are talking about? Is the question itself part of the reality that it tries to understand?
- does the question consider that, so far, nobody has really ever seen anything steady? The consequence is that even our ideas are never steady, they are always changing; this means that, as soon as we think we have got an answer, actually it isn’t anymore what we think it is: it has already changed in our brain; how can we expect to get an essential answer to such a fundamental question, given our situation of humans whose ideas are never the same, whose ideas change every millisecond?
- how can we trust that there are no errors in the procedure we followed to get the answer? Who will guarantee us that our answer is correct? Who will guarantee us that we haven’t forgot anything essential in the whole process, from making the question to getting the answer?
- after considering all of these difficulties: what is the meaning of “answer”?
- what is the meaning of “question” and the meaning of “understanding”?

After considering these questions, you can see that the question “what is reality?” is quite a naive one, compared to the ones I showed here. We can learn and gain much more by dealing with the questions I mentioned, than by dealing directly with your question, by diving directly into it, as if the were no problems with all of the structures, difficulties, uncertainties and problems that it contains.

K: having engaged in philosophy for many years, sometimes
philosophy needs to get out of its own way.. without some idea
about what ''reality'' is, we can't even begin to address other
philosophical questions.. what is politics? without an idea
about ''reality'' how are we to answer this question?
Politics is.... who knows... we have no sense of reality,
so we have no sense of what politics is or what logic is
or what is a philosophy of science is....or what history is....
in understanding what ideas are, we have to have an understanding
of what is, what is reality around that idea?

this may be more of a chicken and egg problem but I don't think so...
reality is, or idea's is and we infer reality from those ideas?

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 9:25 pm of what is, what is reality around that idea?

this may be more of a chicken and egg problem but I don't think so...
reality is, or idea's is and we infer reality from those ideas?

Kropotkin

I agree. Probably, after considering my questions, you can make sense of my short answer: I think that reality is not "something out there", but a structure of our mind. This is essentially Kant: structure meant as a category. I would say that, philosophically, when we talk about reality, we are telling, essentially, who we are, rather than what reality is. This way I am saying that, in my opinion, reality is who I am, how I perceive you, what sense I give to our conversation, to my here and now, to my intuitive and mysterious perception of feeling "I". In other words, I would say that reality is my subjectivity; objectivity is my subjecive perception of things that I perceice as different from me and out of my control.

Angelo Cannata wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 10:50 pm

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 9:25 pm of what is, what is reality around that idea?

this may be more of a chicken and egg problem but I don't think so...
reality is, or idea's is and we infer reality from those ideas?

Kropotkin

I agree. Probably, after considering my questions, you can make sense of my short answer: I think that reality is not "something out there", but a structure of our mind. This is essentially Kant: structure meant as a category. I would say that, philosophically, when we talk about reality, we are telling, essentially, who we are, rather than what reality is. This way I am saying that, in my opinion, reality is who I am, how I perceive you, what sense I give to our conversation, to my here and now, to my intuitive and mysterious perception of feeling "I". In other words, I would say that reality is my subjectivity; objectivity is my subjecive perception of things that I perceice as different from me and out of my control.

Why is it 'our mind'? Why isn't this just what is happening with your mind? Aren't you talking about what is out there to you, everyone else?

Angelo Cannata wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 10:50 pm

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 9:25 pm of what is, what is reality around that idea?

this may be more of a chicken and egg problem but I don't think so...
reality is, or idea's is and we infer reality from those ideas?

Kropotkin

A: I agree. Probably, after considering my questions, you can make sense of my short answer: I think that reality is not "something out there", but a structure of our mind. This is essentially Kant: structure meant as a category. I would say that, philosophically, when we talk about reality, we are telling, essentially, who we are, rather than what reality is. This way I am saying that, in my opinion, reality is who I am, how I perceive you, what sense I give to our conversation, to my here and now, to my intuitive and mysterious perception of feeling "I". In other words, I would say that reality is my subjectivity; objectivity is my subjecive perception of things that I perceice as different from me and out of my control.

K: and within your answer lies 2500 years of philosophy... where is
reality situated? in our minds or out there? You have everyone working
out this point from Plato to Heidegger and everyone in between..
and after 2500 years, we still don't have an answer... which
suggests to me, that there might not be an answer to this question....
or we haven't looked in the right place, yet?

Kropotkin

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 11:03 pm Why is it 'our mind'? Why isn't this just what is happening with your mind? Aren't you talking about what is out there to you, everyone else?

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 11:04 pm K: and within your answer lies 2500 years of philosophy... where is
reality situated? in our minds or out there? You have everyone working
out this point from Plato to Heidegger and everyone in between..
and after 2500 years, we still don't have an answer... which
suggests to me, that there might not be an answer to this question....
or we haven't looked in the right place, yet?

Kropotkin

I think that both questions assume the existence of reality as something objective, which is actually what I continuously try to question all the time. I acknowledge that language forces us into such a structure of thoughts, but, despite this difficulty, I want to question this mental structure. I think we need to question our instinct to place things "somewhere". Buddhism tries to do this questioning by saying that we are not something different from what we consider, but, still, I think that Buddhism just replaces a mental system with another one, while I want to question everything. As soon as I sense that something is left too unquestioned, I think we should get alarmed. On the contrary, if we agree that whatever we talk about is assumed as radically questionable, then we can talk plainly about everything, without need of many explanations, clarifications or other cautioning.

Angelo Cannata wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 11:40 pm

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 11:03 pm Why is it 'our mind'? Why isn't this just what is happening with your mind? Aren't you talking about what is out there to you, everyone else?

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 11:04 pm K: and within your answer lies 2500 years of philosophy... where is
reality situated? in our minds or out there? You have everyone working
out this point from Plato to Heidegger and everyone in between..
and after 2500 years, we still don't have an answer... which
suggests to me, that there might not be an answer to this question....
or we haven't looked in the right place, yet?

Kropotkin

I think that both questions assume the existence of reality as something objective,.

My point was that your description was presenting reality as objective.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 11:49 pm My point was that your description was presenting reality as objective.

This is what I try to avoid and question as much as possible. But I understand that I am prisoner of my language and my mental structures, so, I agree that my attempt might be a complete failure, I might be a full realist while thinking that I am the best non-realist. What I do is just an effort, an attempt. Actually, sometimes I think that a "philosophy of attempt" might be a good philosophy, considering that we never know what we are really doing and thinking: we just make attempts, all the time.

Angelo Cannata wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 11:57 pm

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 11:49 pm My point was that your description was presenting reality as objective.

This is what I try to avoid and question as much as possible. But I understand that I am prisoner of my language and my mental structures, so, I agree that my attempt might be a complete failure, I might be a full realist while thinking that I am the best non-realist. What I do is just an effort, an attempt. Actually, sometimes I think that a "philosophy of attempt" might be a good philosophy, considering that we never know what we are really doing and thinking: we just make attempts, all the time.

OK, fair enough.

From my perspective, I have trouble when people universalize from an antirealist position. It either seems to imply there is only one mind - which is fine to speculate about, of course, but then this is a realist ontological position. Or it is universalizing, which is talking about what is not that person as if they know about what is not that person. It doesn't have to be out there - a different in location. But it seems like we are not transparent to each other or one with each other - unless someone is arguing in favor of solipsism. If there are more minds that are not the speaker's mind and that speaking doesn't experience reality (at least not some objective one) but rather the structure of the speaker's own mind, then how does the speaker know what other minds are experiencing or must experience? It presupposes we are all the same, which is a presupposition about things outside/not part of/not wholly part of/not transparent to the speaker's mind. It seems cake and eat it to, to me. 'I really want to talk about all of you also, not just me.' But is that justified? My skepticism doesn't need to rest on location. That my mind is in England and yours is in Ireland (or down the block) and separate in some objective independent world with a hard geography. But either there is a separation in some sense and plural minds. Or, it seems to me one mind. But your post seems to assume multiple minds all with the same ontology. But those mind don't seem part of the observables of the speaker mind. They don't seem to be of one identity.

Note I am not ruling out solipsism. I am not assuming there is a hard and fast mind independent reality.

But regardless, it seems like a problem know what is going on in other minds, if there are any. If there aren't well, they it's a form of solipsism - it seems to me. If there are then there are things not my mind.

(it also doesn't have to be binary to me: either other minds are purely separate or totally interconnected, but it seems like they are at least not identical/merged completely, so if someone is both metaphysically antirealist and claiming to know the structure of other minds, I wonder how that works).

And yes, this is rather hard to write about, I think regardless of realism or antirealism.

But that's where my reaction came from.

I'd say I tend towards metaphysical antirealism, but it seems to include the possiblitity of minds creating realism. And I don't mean finding realism or assuming realism, but actually communally contructing independent stuff. But I'd be hard pressed to conclude anything should believe that.

"While realism offered supposedly objective descriptions of real conditions with the hope of improving society, naturalism often focused on determinism, or the inability of human beings to resist the biological, social, and economic forces that dictated their behavior and their fate." study.com

Excluding solipsism, sim worlds, dream worlds and Matrix contraptions, there are clearly things that are applicable -- real -- to all of us: the laws of nature, mathematics, the empirical world around us, logic etc.

What I keep waiting for, on the other hand, are arguments from moral realists...

"Moral realism is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world, some of which may be true to the extent that they report those features accurately."

...that are able take these "objective features of the world" and note how, given a particular moral conflagration like abortion or gun control or homosexuality, there are in fact moral obligations that philosophers are able to establish. Without [as with Kant] it all coming back to a God, the God.

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 7:06 pm I find it interesting that people seem to have very
different views on what exactly is reality...
I have read plenty of people who have described a reality
that I can't even envision, or describe a reality that isn't
even close to the reality I see...

You need to define what is real first, but there is a problem.

The problem is there are two senses of what is reality i.e.
viewtopic.php?p=649012#p649012

• 1. The human-based FSR-FSK-ed sense of reality [scientific-FSK - the Standard]
  2. The philosophical realism mind-independent sense of reality. [is illusory]

In addition, we need to take into account general-reality and moral-reality.

As such, whatever the reality that emerged and realized via a FSRK we need to consider its morality where necessary.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 1:34 am

IOW, hey, the issue of this thread seems, like, resolved to me. Like, I'm so sure it's the way I think it is, but I don't wanna justify that.
So, hey, like let's hijack the thread and talk about something that interests me, cause, like, no one participates in my threads.

Angelo Cannata wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 10:50 pm

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 9:25 pm of what is, what is reality around that idea?

this may be more of a chicken and egg problem but I don't think so...
reality is, or idea's is and we infer reality from those ideas?

Kropotkin

I agree. Probably, after considering my questions, you can make sense of my short answer: I think that reality is not "something out there", but a structure of our mind. This is essentially Kant: structure meant as a category. I would say that, philosophically, when we talk about reality, we are telling, essentially, who we are, rather than what reality is. This way I am saying that, in my opinion, reality is who I am, how I perceive you, what sense I give to our conversation, to my here and now, to my intuitive and mysterious perception of feeling "I". In other words, I would say that reality is my subjectivity; objectivity is my subjecive perception of things that I perceice as different from me and out of my control.

Why choose between the two primitive notions of reality as 'out there' and reality as a 'structure of our mind' when probably they need to be combined?

Moe wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 5:20 am

iambiguous wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 1:34 am

IOW, hey, the issue of this thread seems, like, resolved to me. Like, I'm so sure it's the way I think it is, but I don't wanna justify that.
So, hey, like let's hijack the thread and talk about something that interests me, cause, like, no one participates in my threads.

We'll need a context of course.

And how, in making this all about me again -- Stooge Stuff -- is that not a hijacking in turn?

And, sure, I'm more than willing to let others here decide for themselves if my post above has any relevance regarding the nature of reality.

This part:

Excluding solipsism, sim worlds, dream worlds and Matrix contraptions, there are clearly things that are applicable -- real -- to all of us: the laws of nature, mathematics, the empirical world around us, logic etc.

What I keep waiting for, on the other hand, are arguments from moral realists...

"Moral realism is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world, some of which may be true to the extent that they report those features accurately."

...that are able take these "objective features of the world" and note how, given a particular moral conflagration like abortion or gun control or homosexuality, there are in fact moral obligations that philosophers are able to establish. Without [as with Kant] it all coming back to a God, the God.

Not interested in exploring this aspect of reality. The "nature of reality" in the is/ought world? Fine. Just ignore my posts.