there is a fundamental reality

No, I told you that he managed to remove the media parameters (aether components) from the equations. He did not derive the equations, he transformed them.

Like I said, stick to history, but obviously not "history of science" !

I didn't say he had derived them, that's a straw man. You're as poor at rhetoric as you are at mathematics and science. I haven't seen you "showing your work," you're attempting to hold me to a standard you don't meet yourself. I'm not going to play that game any more than i'm going to play your word games. I see you continue to wallow in the slime of derogatory personal reflection, clown. However, when you have so little basis upon which to argue, it's not surprising that you default to insult. In the end, all you have are appeals to authority and personal reflections. You're a sad case, as i've already pointed out.

I assume you two are having ball!

I assume you two are having ball!

Would that be like The Assumption, as in, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary?

Exactly!

Exactly!

So Jesus rolls into town, and finds a crowd ready to stone this woman for adultery. So he quickly steps in front of the crowd, holds up his hands and says:

Let those among ye without sin cast the first stone!

So this big fuckin' rock comes from the side of the crowd and smacks the woman right in the side of the head. Jesus whips around . . .

Mom, knock it off!

I'm delighted you are not going to play any more !

It occurs to me that those interested in Einstein's role in the unseating of prevailing views about "reality" might look again at his celebrated "explanation of radio"



The contrast of those two emphasised phrases can be seen as epitomising a first step in a deconstruction of the " lay reality" concept, despite the fact that the quotation is usually cited for its humour. (The cat of course equates to "the aether" as discussed above).

IMO It is also worth considering that although Einstein took "a step" away from the lay concept of "reality", he refused to give up his quest for a deep fundamentalism as shown by his "God" references and his unsuccessful search for a "unification theory". He refused to accept the implications of Quantum Mechanics which introduced the concept of observer determined events, (albeit at a physical rather than an ontological level).

What happens in "debate" is that we tend to ignore the evolution of philosophical ideas with respect to changes in other fields like science. We take a word like "reality" to be worthy of analysis in its own right as though words did not depend on syntagmatic (local) and paradigmatic (global) context, or indeed on synchronic (now) versus diachronic (historical) considerations. Much of the "argy bargy" of debate can classified as futile from that point of view.

This says absolutely nothing on the subject of whether or not there is an absolute reality, other than that Einstein is definitely not in your camp. Every argument you present is founded on your assumptions about reality, which you never substantiate--you just appeal again and again to authority and leave it at that. Certainly you'd never make it in history, because one simply cannot just appeal to authority and walk away given the requirements of historiography.

I'm sure you would passionately like to see debate as futile, as it entails having your world view challenged. Although you play dress-up with scientific concepts, it's just a game because your goal is to confirm you ontological assumptions as opposed to genuinely examining evidence. Ontology is talking about reality, it is a discussion of descriptions of reality. Your entire view is warped by an unfounded belief (and it is only a belief) that ontology is an investigation of reality. It is not, it is a discussion of reality, it is an exchange of descriptions of reality. As such, it is only a talking shop which can never establish whether or not an absolute reality exists. You are either unable or unwilling to address that.

The problem is to determine it becomes problematic because we have no tool to use that exists independant of reality to confirm it.

It's like this. I never really liked the word "fate" and the reason why is because you can never step outside fate to actually confirm that fate exists. Because no matter what you try to do to "avoid" or "change" fate you would just proclaim that it was the result of fate to do so. Therefore the word is meaningless because it can not be determined.

I think the same goes for people who want to try and determine if there is an absolute reality. I think the very process deems the problem meaningless because you can't step outside reality to confirm it which is what is necessary.

Here is another way of seeing what I mean.

All I can really afirm is my own perception, but even my own perception is not reliable. However; if I were to gauge my perception with anothers perception, is it my own doing or is there something universal about it? In otherwords does my experience dictate others experience? If this were to happen then my own consciousness has to do a tremendous amount of work inventing all these very insignificant events to coincide with my experience so I wouldn't be alerted to it. What does that mean?

A few months ago I was in a situation where a horrible car accident occured and the people involved needed medical attention. Now was my consciousness inventing these peoples pain and suffering in this accident? What for? Why would my consciousness invent such an experience? I do not benefit from it what so ever. Even if you try to say that I was being benefitted from going through such an experience, it would suggest that my own consciousness is dictating everything and that I really don't even exist because why would my consciousness create me as an observer and then throw at me these events? It would suggest that my consciousness is more than me, yet systematically requires that I am present for it to unfold it's functioning.

This shows by going through these steps that there has to be a fundamental reality that is shared by multiple observers. There is a reality that exists independant to our experience. Now I can't point at something or use a tool to say, look, here is the proof that a fundamental reality exists seperate to our experience. To do so would require something outside reality, which is impossible.

In otherwords it is meaningless to talk about a fundamental reality.

Then your work here is done.

Yeah it is no different than trying to explain a color to a blind person who has been blind since birth. You can't do it despite the fact that you think you can. You can't describe color. You can try to use nouns or adjectives to do it but they don't even come close to the experience. This is no different.

Although my remarks were obviously over your head and therefore not addressed to you, I am pleased that you believe I would never "make it" in story telling....sorry ....."history".

I think you are on the right track except perhaps for an analysis of the word "fundamental".

A case can certainly be made for species specific agreement which we can call "reality" but this word is rarely used in circumstances where such agreement is tacitly understood. In that sense it is like me passing you a "red" pencil without query which a colour-blind subject could not do. Only If I passed you what you considered to be an "orange" pencil, would you question my segmentation of "reality".

However, the addition of the adjective "fundamental" to "reality of colour" implies that there is some observer-independent parameter, say wavelength of light" which can act as an authoritative base for "color classification". But contrary to expectation this has found to be NOT the case (Rosch et al, for example) and that colour classification is found to be a function of several parameters including cultural transmission (in humans), surface and background variables, and species specific dimensionality of physiological colour receptors.

I therefore agree that the term "fundamental" as applied to "reality" is meaningless, but not because it is ineffable.....because it is vacuous, and has no functional value.

You're not making it in science, either, but that's no surprise, clown. It is funny, though, that you believe that you've said anything over my head.

I agree with you but at the same time I think the problem is determining weather or not there is one consciousness or multiple consciousnesses. This is where the philosophy comes in.

When we discuss colors and you can agree with me about a color choice, is it my own mind creating your answer or are we two seperate minds coming to a common agreement on the color choice?

This is the difficulty but it is a necessary first step. We have to answer that question before we can move on. If there is only one mind and that single mind is creating all of reality then it is doing a huge amount of work almost insigificant amount of work. The details are so unambiguous that it would almost be absurd. It doesn't take long to then consider that there are multiple consciousness at work and not just a single mind creating everything.

Since I believe there are multiple consciousness and if you also agree with that, then we can ask is there a reality that is shared between these multiple consciousnesses? I say yes because it can be demonstrated to a point. It doesn't have to be 100% because certain factors like you pointed out, such as culture or physical defects could skew the results.

Well, as I have reasoned extensively here, the pragmatists' solution of "reality is what works", is as far as we can get and is a matter of common contextual goals shared by observers.. The question of why things work is always subject to an infinite regress of successive levels of "depth", each embedded in its own "confidence paradigm".

Once we start evoking "holistic consciousness" we are teetering on the brink of "theism" even if that be the impersonal pantheistic "God" of Einstein or Spinoza.
I am not averse to such a theoretical move, but it seems to me from what I have learned from meditational experience, that the ensuing mental state is indeed ineffable and transcendent of the usage of all words including "reality", and transcendent too of the time dimension in which incidents of "agreement about what works" are ordered.

I agree but there is still some residue to this problem. I am reminded by a buddhist saying, according to a bodhisattva when a being becomes enlightened no being is enlightened. If a bodhisattva were to give rise to the idea of an ego entity then the bodhisattva would infact not be enlightened.

I say this is a paradox because why would the monk even speak then if it did not give rise to an ego idenity? It would be like a person sitting in an empty auditorium talking for absolutely no reason. Why talk if there is no one to talk to? So the monk would have to be motivated for some purpose to start talking which can only be one reason, because there is an ego identity that needs to be addressed.

Not sure you understand all that but to get back to what you said, if we can not even agree on a single reliable consciousness because in fact there is no such thing as a single reliable consciousness then what is it that we are even discussing? This is the paradox. The fact that we can agree on just one thing, thats all that is necessary to posit a shared experience between two conscious entities. We don't have to be in full agreement with every experience before we can consider reality fundamental.

However; I could be absolutely wrong about that, but in my current state, I don't see how it could be otherwise.