Is Reality a Social Construction ?

Can people construct a joint fantasy? Of course.

Can they reinforce each others' belief in it to the point that it becomes "reality" for them? Judging from religious cults, political parties, detailed folklore about vampires, angels and other mythical creatures, and the ability of the human mind to rationalize its beliefs even when they conflict with facts, yes.

Is there an objective reality that can be differentiated from fantasized ones? I believe that there is. We may not be able to detect every thing that exists, but I think that anything that can be consistently observed and verified by multiple reliable witnesses IS reality. Or a really good magic trick.

If reality is just a pantheistic multiperson solipsism, who started it, and why?

HofT

We may have crossed in the post !

May I repectfully refer you back to the many preceding pages in this thread where we discuss "reality" as INTERACTION, and being neither internal nor external. If you read these you may come to understand why I believe there is no such thing as "objectivity".
As for the reality of photons, demons, phlogiston, unicorns, gods, selves or anything else , such "realities" I maintain are entirely observer dependent, transient, and functionally defined. The alternative to this thesis is "naive realism" where the word "naive" is well considered.

Twyvel

Thanks - we concur !

TO ALL

Neither side of this argument can "prove" its case in the traditional sense.
What matters therefore is the utility of the thesis or otherwise. Such utility can perhaps only be seen by analogy. If we think for example of Einsteins relativity and how it highlighted the consequences of the "observer-observed relationship" in particle physics, we might begin to see how a macroscopic extension of this position might alter our world views.

There is a price to pay of course for such potential upset. Conventional views of "getting closer to the truth" go out of the window perhaps to be replaced by "greater control of our interactions", but by drawing attention our "control addiction" we at least can be vigilant to its more pernicious excesses which are too often rationalised in the name of "fundamental truth".

My dear Fresco (if I may so address you), our posts didn't "cross in the mail" as you courteously suggest; the problem here is much deeper. Quoting a classic from another context ("context"? - your affliction is contagious!):

"Our two nations are divided by a common language".
General George C. Patton

<G>

Patton! Now there's a guy who was a control freak ! LOL

The activity of the brain is not mystical. Perception, which is brain activity is a neurobiological process. These are real events that take place in the brain. These are not social interactive events. These events are made up of electrical charges (real electrical charges) of nerves, synapses, transmitters, receptors, (real ones) etc. I'm not sure twyvel what you mean when you say it's a purely "mental event" as if this event were not physical. If you're saying that a "mental event" is not a bodily function, with causes and effects, then I do not understand what you think perception is. An object/percept/idea is an image in your brain, all right, but that image in your brain is caused by the mechanisms in your brain, all of them physical. So this is where you lose me. Our perceptions are caused by the functioning of the brain. There is nothing mystical or mysterious about it. We may not fully understand how the brain functions, and we will never understand it completely, but it is clear that what we think and feel is a function of brain activity. There is no difference between the so called "mind" and the brain. The term the "mind" is a metaphor for brain functioning. It is how we experience our brain functioning. And in a way, using a noun form to indicate brain functioning is actually misleading and incorrect. "Minding" is a much more accurate term to describe our experience of brain function.

As far as social interaction goes, our brain functioning is subject to being influenced by the brain functioning of another. As I am trying to do right now, attempting to reason will all of you. I hope to influence you to try to understand my perspective on this issue. And with some of you, I may. But I suspect I will have very little influence on those who strongly wish for another explanation. We are all primarily influenced by our own specific chemistry, by our early experiences (which have influenced our brain chemistry and pathways), and the methods we learned to manage interpersonally dangerous situations which leads to anxiety. (These methods also influence our brain functioning.) Anxiety is brain activity and is actually a signal of interpersonal danger. So what certain concepts mean to me is not at all what they may mean to someone else. We all have fantasies to explain early primitive, anxiety provoking events specific to each of us. And the same event or similar event may have a completely different meaning and generate a differing affect (feeling). All of these social interactions are actually brain functioning.

Lola

What "is" the computer "event" that produces these words on your screen ? Would a descrption of the elecrical activity, circuit boards,
and screen phosphors be SUFFICIENT for a description of such an event? Of course not - they are merely necessary reductionist attributes. They cannot explain the object of the programming, words etc. They cannot define "the event window". Nor is an electrical device unique in providing the reductionist mechanisms for such a process. Optic fibres etc could do equally well.

So to equate the "brain" with the "mind" is to accept a reductionist position and and to equate necessity with sufficiency in a quest for "de-mystification". A major philosophical minefield !

Fresco,

A computer is not programed to generate feelings. A brain is far more complicated than a computer. This does not change the fact that we are our brains. And this is why we are our feelings. I do accept a reductionist position on this and I see no reason why I should not. It's your idea that this equates "necessity with sufficiency and that my quest is for 'de-mystification.'" And a minefield it is. You see, you have as many and varied personal reasons for wanting to mystify as I have for wanting to de-mystify. So our wish to convince one another does not an argument make.

Lola,

The reason "not" is exemplified by the attempt at a "simple" examination of a "neural network". On the one hand this could be viewd as a logic gate network, but at another it could be viewed as a pseudo finite state machine which models generative linguistic functions. The point is that the view taken is directed by the "needs" of the observer. Neither view has objective validity.
i.e. There is no such thing as "a neural event" unless we define the range of our observation, and this is a function of the specific observer (a la Heisenberg).

Fresco,

It's a function of a specific observer's brain functioning. No observer observes without neural events. Observing is a neural event. Have you ever tried to toast a peice of bread without the toaster being plugged in?

I'll be along later to straighten this all up.

What would we ever do without you, Blatham dear? Welcome.

so there is not ghost in the machine?

Just in the brain, dys. c.i.

Have you ever met a ghost?

Lola

"An object/percept/idea is an image in your brain"

Yes, and we were using the example of visual consciousness. But the whole material dualism of mind and matter doesn't add up. I know my explanations are simplistic but even if worked out in detail you still reach some point where the light or photons have to become thoughts.

The dualist perspective is based on the idea that we perceive a material/physical world which is represented in our brains and then mapped back onto the material world.

In the example of vision the light/photons reflect of an objects surface, enters the eyes, and upside-down image is formed on the back of the retina, at which point a signal is send to the brain.


So the brain never encounters "LIGHT"………( I would think the interior of the skull would be a dark place), but creates a mental image of it based on the information received from the eyes.

Now we become aware of the visual world as a mental image mapped onto the material world "out there". We examine this mental world (as if it were physical) and conclude that the way we "see" what we see is based on light entering the eyes and forming an image on the retina etc………..so it's circular. And the problem is the premise is wrong because we do not start out perceiving a material world.

We have never perceived anything physical or material. I am not denying the brain processes and its cause and effects; I'm saying we only ever encounter a mental reality, which we never leave. When we are examining the brain and its functions (in a subject) we are examining the mental contents of our own brain/mind, it's all mental.

Do you see the dilemma? If you could examine your own brain you would be examining a mental construction produced by the brain you're examining. If all we encounter is a mental brain then the brain is just another object in the mind and to awareness.

This isn't easy stuff. That light is an idea is difficult to grasp.

How we acquirer knowledge of the world, through perception, along with the mind/body/ consciousness problem is the biggest mystery there is, right up there alongside the god issue. I don't know how you could say otherwise.

mind
Fresco, I've been away for about a week. Upon returning and reading this thread, I find it a bit overwhelming, particularly the demonstration of the futility of inter-paradigmatic debate. Twyvel and I have already gone through some grueling moments with Lola on this subject. I admire Twyvel's (and Lola's) stamina; their capacity to continue the debate. We understand Lola's goal to understand "minding" in terms of objectivist, reductionist, functionalist terms. It's the orientation of positivist scientists throughout the world. Perfectly legitimate. What is sad, however, is their unwillingness to entertain philosophical attempts to go beyond that obviously utilitarian but philosophically infantile paradigm (naive realism). They seem content to reduce the "physical" universe to the size of their mechanisms and formulas.
I regret that noone has followed up on Seydlitz89's request for information on Max Weber (actually someone DID make a comment). If I remember Weber's contribution re: the development of universal religions out of tribal ones, the rise of capitalism out of puritanical values, and the notion of "social action" in sociological research and interpretation. I'll address the latter briefly. To him, as I recall, social action is the principal focus of sociological study. It is: social behavior based upon the social actor's calculations of how others are likely to respond to that behavior. It is self-conscious and consciously designed behavior. In other words, behavior is more socioloigcally than psychologically explicable. Weber's "technique" as some argued was that of "verstehen" analysis, the attempt to empathically enter into the minds of his subjects in order to reveal their calculations. Since we cannot read others' minds, this verstehen approach has been rejected as unscientific. But the criticism rests on a false understanding of verstehen. Weber argued that insight into the actor perspective was not the means for understanding but the goal of research. He felt that any and all means possible should be used in order to eventually understand the actions of people in terms of their point of view (what Cooley would later call their "definition of the situation"). Verstehen is the goal of research, not its method. This is overly simplistic, I know. But I hope it might satisfy, or at least honor, Seydlitz89's request.

Thanks Twyvel and JLN

Twyvel,

I (after Piaget) take a different stance to idealism by starting wth interaction as the focus and moving "inwards and outwards" for the complimentary correlates. I also reject "cause and effect" as "explanatory" at this transcendent level.

JLN

I made the brief comment on Weber but your exposition on "Social Action and verstehen" is very interesting. The question is whether we can extrapolate this modus to "the hard sciences", or whether as some believe there is some non-negotiable essence involved there. It would seem that particle physicists at least are aware of the problems of their own observer status whereas those in bounded fields still mistakenly cling to "objective truth" by failing to examine the origin of their supposed axioms.

fresco

Thanks, I appreciate your perspective.

Yes, at the transcendent level there are no cause and effects or relations. There's no such thing as social, or others. And there are no levels. The transcendent is right here right now. And there is no here. As Nisargadatta says nothing ever happens.

No one was ever born.


JLNobody

It looks for once that there are more ascenders then flatlanders.