Perception and reality

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: Perception and reality

Post by Terrapin Station »

RJG wrote: March 17th, 2020, 9:26 am Awareness is consciousness. Being aware of something is being conscious of something.
Simple awareness is different than recognition and doesn't involve memory.
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RJG
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Re: Perception and reality

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RJG wrote:Being aware of something is being conscious of something.
Terrapin Station wrote:Simple awareness is different than recognition and doesn't involve memory.
When you are aware, do you "know" you are aware?
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Re: Perception and reality

Post by Terrapin Station »

RJG wrote: March 17th, 2020, 11:33 am
RJG wrote:Being aware of something is being conscious of something.
Terrapin Station wrote:Simple awareness is different than recognition and doesn't involve memory.
When you are aware, do you "know" you are aware?
In a propositional knowledge sense? Or some other sense of "know"?
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Marvin_Edwards
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Re: Perception and reality

Post by Marvin_Edwards »

We are equipped to test one perception by confirming it with another. I see the apple. I touch the apple. I smell the apple. I bite off a piece and chew and taste the apple. The apple satisfies my appetite. And so on.

If it were not a real apple, but just a hologram, then when I tried to touch it I would discover it was not real. The same would apply to an artificial decorative fruit bowl. When I lift the apple it feels light. When I tap on it it sounds hollow.

We also have the confirmation of other people's perceptions, and we can discuss what we perceive and discover inconsistencies that may point to a perceptual error.

So, reality is something that we can objectively test via scientific objectivity: the same event described by many disinterested observers, or through a repeatable laboratory experiment.
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RJG
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Re: Perception and reality

Post by RJG »

Marvin_Edwards wrote:We are equipped to test one perception by confirming it with another. I see the apple. I touch the apple. I smell the apple. I bite off a piece and chew and taste the apple. The apple satisfies my appetite. And so on.

If it were not a real apple, but just a hologram, then when I tried to touch it I would discover it was not real. The same would apply to an artificial decorative fruit bowl. When I lift the apple it feels light. When I tap on it it sounds hollow.

We also have the confirmation of other people's perceptions, and we can discuss what we perceive and discover inconsistencies that may point to a perceptual error.

So, reality is something that we can objectively test via scientific objectivity: the same event described by many disinterested observers, or through a repeatable laboratory experiment.
Not so. We cannot test one subjective perception with another subjective perception to get objectivity (to determine 'realness'). Nor does the quantity of subjective perceptions increase the likelihood of 'realness'.

If I dream, delusion, or hallucinate touching, smelling, eating and tasting an orange, does it make the orange somehow 'real'?

And if I ask someone in my dream/delusion/hallucination to confirm that me and my orange is 'real', should I believe them? How about if I ask and get confirmation from 5 more people, does it then make it any more 'real'?

One (or more) dreams confirming another dream is real, is not a valid means of determining something is 'real'.

Since it is impossible to know if our current state of delusion is delusional or not, we therefore can't know what's real or not from our (delusional) perceptions.

To put it simply -- We can't ever get objectivity from subjectivity. -- If we want to know what's objectively real, we can't rely on our subjective perceptions. We can only rely on objective tools, such as math and logic to tell us what's really real.
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Re: Perception and reality

Post by Terrapin Station »

RJG wrote: April 15th, 2020, 8:53 am
Marvin_Edwards wrote:We are equipped to test one perception by confirming it with another. I see the apple. I touch the apple. I smell the apple. I bite off a piece and chew and taste the apple. The apple satisfies my appetite. And so on.

If it were not a real apple, but just a hologram, then when I tried to touch it I would discover it was not real. The same would apply to an artificial decorative fruit bowl. When I lift the apple it feels light. When I tap on it it sounds hollow.

We also have the confirmation of other people's perceptions, and we can discuss what we perceive and discover inconsistencies that may point to a perceptual error.

So, reality is something that we can objectively test via scientific objectivity: the same event described by many disinterested observers, or through a repeatable laboratory experiment.
Not so. We cannot test one subjective perception with another subjective perception to get objectivity (to determine 'realness'). Nor does the quantity of subjective perceptions increase the likelihood of 'realness'.

If I dream, delusion, or hallucinate touching, smelling, eating and tasting an orange, does it make the orange somehow 'real'?

And if I ask someone in my dream/delusion/hallucination to confirm that me and my orange is 'real', should I believe them? How about if I ask and get confirmation from 5 more people, does it then make it any more 'real'?

One (or more) dreams confirming another dream is real, is not a valid means of determining something is 'real'.

Since it is impossible to know if our current state of delusion is delusional or not, we therefore can't know what's real or not from our (delusional) perceptions.

To put it simply -- We can't ever get objectivity from subjectivity. -- If we want to know what's objectively real, we can't rely on our subjective perceptions. We can only rely on objective tools, such as math and logic to tell us what's really real.
Completely off-topic, but I just asked about you in the lounge. I was wondering if you worked in a toilet paper factory or something, because we haven't seen you post in a month.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: Perception and reality

Post by Terrapin Station »

RJG wrote: April 15th, 2020, 8:53 am
Marvin_Edwards wrote:We are equipped to test one perception by confirming it with another. I see the apple. I touch the apple. I smell the apple. I bite off a piece and chew and taste the apple. The apple satisfies my appetite. And so on.

If it were not a real apple, but just a hologram, then when I tried to touch it I would discover it was not real. The same would apply to an artificial decorative fruit bowl. When I lift the apple it feels light. When I tap on it it sounds hollow.

We also have the confirmation of other people's perceptions, and we can discuss what we perceive and discover inconsistencies that may point to a perceptual error.

So, reality is something that we can objectively test via scientific objectivity: the same event described by many disinterested observers, or through a repeatable laboratory experiment.
Not so. We cannot test one subjective perception with another subjective perception to get objectivity (to determine 'realness'). Nor does the quantity of subjective perceptions increase the likelihood of 'realness'.

If I dream, delusion, or hallucinate touching, smelling, eating and tasting an orange, does it make the orange somehow 'real'?

And if I ask someone in my dream/delusion/hallucination to confirm that me and my orange is 'real', should I believe them? How about if I ask and get confirmation from 5 more people, does it then make it any more 'real'?

One (or more) dreams confirming another dream is real, is not a valid means of determining something is 'real'.

Since it is impossible to know if our current state of delusion is delusional or not, we therefore can't know what's real or not from our (delusional) perceptions.

To put it simply -- We can't ever get objectivity from subjectivity. -- If we want to know what's objectively real, we can't rely on our subjective perceptions. We can only rely on objective tools, such as math and logic to tell us what's really real.
At any rate, I agree that what Marvin Edwards suggested doesn't work.

But I don't agree that "it's impossible to know if our current state is a delusion or not." The thing to remember is that knowledge doesn't imply certainty. (And certainty isn't what's it's cracked up to be at any rate, so that makes it even sillier to worry about.)
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RJG
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Re: Perception and reality

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Terrapin Station wrote:At any rate, I agree that what Marvin Edwards suggested doesn't work.
Agreed, -- one subjective perception cannot vouch for another.

Terrapin Station wrote:But I don't agree that "it's impossible to know if our current state is a delusion or not."
How could you possibly know? ...one subjective perception cannot vouch for another.

Terrapin Station wrote:The thing to remember is that knowledge doesn't imply certainty. (And certainty isn't what's it's cracked up to be at any rate, so that makes it even sillier to worry about.)
Certainty may not be as uncertain (or "silly") as you suspect. Certainly, we can know of some things with absolute certainty and logical certainty.
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Re: Perception and reality

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RJG wrote: April 15th, 2020, 8:53 am
Marvin_Edwards wrote:We are equipped to test one perception by confirming it with another. I see the apple. I touch the apple. I smell the apple. I bite off a piece and chew and taste the apple. The apple satisfies my appetite. And so on.

If it were not a real apple, but just a hologram, then when I tried to touch it I would discover it was not real. The same would apply to an artificial decorative fruit bowl. When I lift the apple it feels light. When I tap on it it sounds hollow.

We also have the confirmation of other people's perceptions, and we can discuss what we perceive and discover inconsistencies that may point to a perceptual error.

So, reality is something that we can objectively test via scientific objectivity: the same event described by many disinterested observers, or through a repeatable laboratory experiment.
Not so. We cannot test one subjective perception with another subjective perception to get objectivity (to determine 'realness'). Nor does the quantity of subjective perceptions increase the likelihood of 'realness'.

If I dream, delusion, or hallucinate touching, smelling, eating and tasting an orange, does it make the orange somehow 'real'?

And if I ask someone in my dream/delusion/hallucination to confirm that me and my orange is 'real', should I believe them? How about if I ask and get confirmation from 5 more people, does it then make it any more 'real'?

One (or more) dreams confirming another dream is real, is not a valid means of determining something is 'real'.

Since it is impossible to know if our current state of delusion is delusional or not, we therefore can't know what's real or not from our (delusional) perceptions.

To put it simply -- We can't ever get objectivity from subjectivity. -- If we want to know what's objectively real, we can't rely on our subjective perceptions. We can only rely on objective tools, such as math and logic to tell us what's really real.
The brain-in-a-vat and solipsism puzzles have the same solution: the reality you perceive is for all practical purposes objective reality. If you cannot know objective reality and cannot discover that you're having a dream or delusion, then that's your objective reality. Ironically, objective reality is a subjective experience. I don't think that math and logic can tell us what is real, because they must reference objective reality in order to return objectively real results.
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Re: Perception and reality

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Marvin_Edwards wrote:We are equipped to test one perception by confirming it with another. I see the apple. I touch the apple. I smell the apple. I bite off a piece and chew and taste the apple. The apple satisfies my appetite. And so on.
Yes, absolutely. That is how we arrive at the notion that there exist things that we call objects, and how we make objective propositions about them - by proposing them to be the single cause of multiple sensations, in ourselves and/or others. Several times in various previous posts I've used the Macbeth dagger scene to illustrate the point that you are making here. Macbeth sees a dagger and, to test his theory that it is "but a dagger of the mind" he attempts to touch it. i.e. he attempts to find patterns across different sensations. Obviously that still doesn't prove (in the logical sense of that word) the objective existence of the dagger. But it does prove, in the sense of "test", its objective existence.

The proof of the pudding/apple is in the eating.
The proof of the dagger is in the touching.
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Re: Perception and reality

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RJG wrote: April 15th, 2020, 9:21 am
Terrapin Station wrote:But I don't agree that "it's impossible to know if our current state is a delusion or not."
How could you possibly know? ...one subjective perception cannot vouch for another.
By there being better reasons to believe the realism hypothesis than the antirealism hypothesis. And there are better reasons for it, on my view.

Those reasons, which we went over months ago, include qualitative phenomenal distinctions between, say, hallucinations and imaginings and other experiences and the fact that there are no good reasons to assume that some phenomena are mental at all, because there are no attendant notions of mentality with them.
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Re: Perception and reality

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Marvin_Edwards wrote:The brain-in-a-vat and solipsism puzzles have the same solution: the reality you perceive is for all practical purposes objective reality. If you cannot know objective reality and cannot discover that you're having a dream or delusion, then that's your objective reality. Ironically, objective reality is a subjective experience. I don't think that math and logic can tell us what is real, because they must reference objective reality in order to return objectively real results.
Marvin, we can know with objective certainty, that we experience something (i.e. experiencing exists!) and that we are the experiencer of the experience (i.e. the experiencer named "me" exists!). ...right?

Now the 'content' of our experiences is another matter altogether. For the 'experiencing'-of-something is much more certain than the 'something' itself.


By the way Marvin, did we have conversations a few years ago on my WordPress postings (my name was Simple Logic)? Your name is very familiar. I remember good discussions with you.
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Re: Perception and reality

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Terrapin Station wrote:Those reasons, which we went over months ago, include qualitative phenomenal distinctions between, say, hallucinations and imaginings and other experiences and the fact that there are no good reasons to assume that some phenomena are mental at all, because there are no attendant notions of mentality with them.
When one is hallucinating, one does not necessarily know he is hallucinating.
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Re: Perception and reality

Post by Marvin_Edwards »

RJG wrote: April 15th, 2020, 9:23 pm
Marvin_Edwards wrote:The brain-in-a-vat and solipsism puzzles have the same solution: the reality you perceive is for all practical purposes objective reality. If you cannot know objective reality and cannot discover that you're having a dream or delusion, then that's your objective reality. Ironically, objective reality is a subjective experience. I don't think that math and logic can tell us what is real, because they must reference objective reality in order to return objectively real results.
Marvin, we can know with objective certainty, that we experience something (i.e. experiencing exists!) and that we are the experiencer of the experience (i.e. the experiencer named "me" exists!). ...right?

Now the 'content' of our experiences is another matter altogether. For the 'experiencing'-of-something is much more certain than the 'something' itself.


By the way Marvin, did we have conversations a few years ago on my WordPress postings (my name was Simple Logic)? Your name is very familiar. I remember good discussions with you.
Yes, I have a WordPress account also.
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Re: Perception and reality

Post by Steve3007 »

Marvin_Edwards wrote:...I don't think that math and logic can tell us what is real, because they must reference objective reality in order to return objectively real results.
I agree. But one of the problems with conversations here is that they often get bogged down with people (myself included) simply asserting what words mean and throwing dictionary definitions at each other. The only way to avoid that, and thereby get down to discussing the actual ideas that those words are supposed to convey, is to accept that some people simply decide, for reasons of their own, to use some words in idiosyncratic ways and to then, as it were, price that into the conversation.

Example: RJG, in a long established pattern over many posts, uses the word "objective" to mean something like "logically certain" or "true by definition" or "self-contradictory to deny". i.e. he doesn't use it in a standard sense. He uses it to refer only to tautologies. He then makes various assertions as to some things that are deemed logically certain/true by definition, and which are thereby proposed to be "objective".

If you don't price that in when parsing his words there'll probably be a pointless and unresolvable argument about semantics.
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