What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

[Papus79]

But maybe "civil society" is the aberration, a decadent, humanist pipe dream.

I think some of the social anxiety over technology is that we might be getting to the place where nuclear deterrents and mutually assured destruction might be climbing down from something superpowers worry about to something states, cities, and eventually individuals worry about. That's sort of where if we don't figure out how to tame the wild in ourselves we either don't make it or there's little choice for the powers that be, whether they hate the idea or whether it's the biggest relief ever, to eliminate democracy and give us an authoritarian system (probably some variant of the China model) instead.

Have you seen Scorsese's "The age of innocence"? He said it's his most violent film. To be sure, there are no gangsters in it and nobody gets killed, and no other graphic scenes either. No graphic depictions of poverty, disease, no foul language. It's a good example of how human brutality can take on many faces, looking perfectly civilized.

I'm not familiar but it sounds like something I'd want to watch so I'll have to keep it in mind.

My most recent job, the one I'm still at, reaquainted me with the reality that there a lot of people doing their level best to essentially 'rape and kill by legal means' and so they'll do as much social, psychological, and reputational damage as their social credibility will allow to get rid of anyone whose a threat to them. My estimation - they're a minority that's about the size of the amount of people who do their level best to do everything right, just that it seems like the majority of people are in the valley between the two where they're just trying to survive and seem like they'll generally roll over to power - good or bad - wherever they see it. People have been bringing up the Milgram experiment, the average 65% rate of people who'll shock a person even to the point of damaging their health, or even after the subject complains that they have heart problems and that this is getting risky for their survival. That sort of dutiful following of authority made sense in a different environment, ie. where tribes had to be cohesive units in order to survive and where you also had to exile members who either didn't or couldn't obey the chief - and exile normally meant death either in the hands of other tribes or in the claws of large predatory animals. It's a great example of a structure that made perfectly good sense at a given point in human evolution but then fail us as we get to a point where we're neither under such harsh Darwinian pressures, nor are we in a place where our leaders the best and brightest our tribe can cough up but rather they're the people selected for by winning the highest quantity of zero-sum games.

[Papus79]

^^
I'll add, I grew up in the 90's and we had the Scientology variant of secular humanism in school drilled into us that human beings are fundamentally good, that when people are mean to each other it's ignorance, misunderstanding, 'low self-esteem', etc.. I really like John Gray's rebuttal to that - ie. we seem awfully fond of ignorance.

[Papus79]

I'm not familiar but it sounds like something I'd want to watch so I'll have to keep it in mind.

I forgot to mention, in my early 20's the movie Training Day served this purpose. There was a bit of physical violence in it but for the most part it was heavy psychological vitriol.

[Pattern-chaser]

You're talking only about value judgments above--or at least about things that hinge on value judgments. But there are no value judgments in reality (that is, that occur external to persons and their dispositions).

This doesn't matter, as long as people believe that there is objective morality, ie. that they believe that things and people have an inherent nature that can be objectively, impartially judged and that there are objective, suprapersonal standards by which to judge.

Wow! Still, this topic is about not being able to access reality, so I suppose fantasies like this 'objective' example, are valid.

[baker]

I forgot to mention, in my early 20's the movie Training Day served this purpose. There was a bit of physical violence in it but for the most part it was heavy psychological vitriol.

I suggest Age of Innocence. Then we can compare which one is more brutal.

[Papus79]

I suggest Age of Innocence. Then we can compare which one is more brutal.

I'll take you up on that because I'd want to see where I'd put it in a constellation of other movies like No Country For Old Men, Harry Brown, Gangs of New York, Road to Perdition, Mystic River, etc.. They're all very different animals but I think they all sort of put a fine point on certain ways of thinking and acting in the world.

[Terrapin Station]

It's exactly what matters if we're talking about whether we're accessing reality and getting correct what it's like.


That's the argumentum ad populum fallacy.

You're ignoring the reality we live in.

The reality we live in (a) has no moral edicts that obtain outside of persons' minds, and (b) is such that nothing becomes person-independently the case solely because people believe it to be the case and talk about it as if it's the case.

[Sy Borg]

Here we see the problem. Matters that refer to nature keep being reduced to matters concerning humans, with science reduced to mere sociology - because we struggle to appreciate how our societies are such a tiny subset of broader reality.

[baker]

The reality we live in (a) has no moral edicts that obtain outside of persons' minds, and (b) is such that nothing becomes person-independently the case solely because people believe it to be the case and talk about it as if it's the case.

Sure. Still, we live interdependently with other people, and not rarely, we are at their mercy.


Perhaps you live off a rich trust fund or something like that, so that you can afford to mostly ignore other people. And you're not that young anymore and live in NYC, so that explains it too.

[Terrapin Station]

Sure. Still, we live interdependently with other people, and not rarely, we are at their mercy.

Sure. What would you say this has to do with the topic or my comment about the topic as presented by the person who started the thread?

[baker]

Sure. What would you say this has to do with the topic or my comment about the topic as presented by the person who started the thread?

That conceiving of reality in apersonal terms like you do sets us up for problems with other people.

Remember, they sentenced Socrates to death.

[Terrapin Station]

Sure. What would you say this has to do with the topic or my comment about the topic as presented by the person who started the thread?

That conceiving of reality in apersonal terms like you do sets us up for problems with other people.

Remember, they sentenced Socrates to death.

Sure, it can cause problems, but how one interacts with other people is a separate issue.

In any event, noting that ethics/morality is subjective on a message board isn't going to cause anyone any social problems.

[-0+]

If you're ready to accept that a procedure will yield indisputable evidence of what's real, you have already made a commitment to believe that there is a reality to deal with. That's because even if the results showed to be a dream, that would not be a "non-reality", but still a reality. There can't be an intelligible commitment to "non-reality". Cogito, ergo sum.

A dream may be experienced like any other experience, but it is generally considered to be a subconscious experience - not a conscious experience - and it is commonly differentiated from physical reality.

John could experience "cogito, ergo sum" in a dream, and feel that he is conscious and that what he is experiencing is real, only to wake up and realise it was "just a dream" - not real - he had been sleeping, not conscious in the normal sense of the word.

After waking out of a dream, he may feel that he is now fully conscious and experiencing reality, but how can he be so sure (especially if he has experienced dreaming within a dream before)?

How can he test how conscious he is? If he is experiencing something, he can know that he exists, at least as an experiencer, but what can he know about the reality of what he is experiencing?

If 'reality' is defined so that any experience (including dream) qualifies as reality, and no experience can qualify as non-reality, then reality becomes insignificant. There needs to be some differentiation between reality and non-reality for either to have significance.

Alternatively, if assert that all experience qualifies as reality, then differentiation within this 'reality' can be considered - differentiation between different types or scopes of reality?

Each individual may construct their own model of reality from their experiences, and have some access to this. After communicating with others, it may appear that 'reality' can be divided into: private internal reality (dreams, thoughts, etc) which no one else seems to have direct access to; and public external reality which others seem to be able to access (although others may process this differently).

External reality may be processed into internal reality with varying degrees of accuracy.

What are the ramifications of not being to directly access someone else's model of reality?

[baker]

Sure, it can cause problems, but how one interacts with other people is a separate issue.

How on earth is it a separate issue??!
What is the dividing line?

[baker]

I think some of the social anxiety over technology is that we might be getting to the place where nuclear deterrents and mutually assured destruction might be climbing down from something superpowers worry about to something states, cities, and eventually individuals worry about.

Which seems to have been the default in the Old West, for example.

The idea of a war of all against all has been around for some time. Here from Hobbes:

In chapter XIII of Leviathan,[14] Hobbes explains the concept with these words:

Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called War; and such a war as is of every man against every man.[15] [...] In such condition there is no place for Industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual Fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.[16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellum_om ... ntra_omnes

Nowadays, it seems that such a condition will be brought about the other way around: by diminishing work ethic, by dumbing down science, culture and arts, by mindless consumerism and pursuit of profit, a state is brought about in which people live in continual fear, and in danger of violent death; "and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."