The Half-life of Facts.

Almost, but not quite.

You are claiming that there is a "component of REALITY that is outside what humans can know and describe".

I am saying that such a claim is logically unprovable and undemonstrable.

Then what are we arguing about?

I am claiming there MAY BE components of REALITY outside of what humans can know and describe.

You are the one claiming there cannot be any.

You are not being logical, Cyracuz...but you can at least be honest.

I am claiming that RALITY may be a species specific phenomenon only, in which case what you are saying would be illogical.
There is no proof or evidence that reality is anything more than a species specific phenomenon.

Right along you are making an unwarranted assumption that there is nothing of REALITY outside of what humans can understand. You have not been stating that as a hypothetical.

In any case, there is no proof that reality is anything more than a species specific phenomenon. There is no proof in either direction.

But if you finally realize that your unwarranted assumption is, in fact, unwarranted and finally see and agree with what the rest of us have been trying to get through your skull...fine.

Now we are in agreement.

REALITY...IS whatever IS...and human senses and understanding of it may play absolutely no part in limiting it whatsoever.

Whether one can possibly live without this assumption and remain mentally sane, fact-based and logical.

When you kill a fly, it's dead. In your reality and in its reality too... Nothing species specific here.

One can. A better question is whether it is possible to live with it and remain fact-based and logical.

Thank you.

Read that again...and assume, if you must, that there are quotes around the "that reality is anything more than a species specific phenomenon."

The quotes are really not necessary in the context...but you insist on playing games. I guess you must. Your belief system refuses you permission to acknowledge how wrong you have been throughout this discussion.

Only if you drop logic. You were forced to admit that there was a reality before mankind, weren't you? And you were forced to admit there may be aspects and parts of reality we know nothing about, weren't you? Therefore you have contradicted yourself in many occasions... Reality IS different from what we know of it, and therefore, it CAN exist independently from our knowledge of it. You've been forced to admit that if people exist, they must exist in some sort of CONTEXT, which is therefore as real as people are, by logical necessity.

It's important to realize that all this has proven to you logically, and that you chose to ignore logic. You prefer a pure belief ('there is no objective reality') and a contradiction ('people exist in a vacuum') to the logically and empirically well-established assumption that there is an objective reality, of which we are but a part.

You are therefore incapable of logic. No big deal, many people are.

It means that there is no proof that reality is anything but a species specific phenomenon of experience.

It means that there is no proof that "absolute reality" is a warranted concept. It might be that without some kind of observer to experience reality, there would be no kind of phenomenon that can rightly be called reality. We do not know!

The only basis on which you can argue against this is your intuitive belief in the persistence of hypothetical unexperienced reality.

You have **** for brains Olivier.

You keep ignoring the point on which your whole denial falls apart.

We experience reality.
You ignore the possibility that reality is an experience, and that outside of this experience there is no reality. This is not more or less likely than the alternative of "absolute reality", regardless of what you believe.
We do not know if the thing we experience, when removed from experience, is anything at all.

If you have a blank canvas, and by using a projector you put an image on the canvas... According to your logic, that image was there even before the projector was turned on. We just didn't see it, but it was there.

If reality is merely "what works," left unexplained is how anything can work in a constructivist world. Back on page 8, JLN explained that, while he and his ilk may think like constructivists, they live like naive realists. No doubt that's true. As much as a constructivist might think that a wall is simply a linguistic construct, you'd be hard-pressed to find many who will try to walk through it rather than around it.

The wall is "real," therefore, because everyone agrees that there's a wall.* The question, then, is how people arrive at any kind of agreement about the wall in the first place. If everyone constructs their own realities for themselves - i.e. if, like the idealists would argue, reality is all in one's head - then we should expect that there would never be an agreement about anything. I might see a wall, but someone else might see a flower or a unicorn or a lake. Getting any kind of agreement would be akin to expecting two people to have the same dream. It would, in short, mean that an ordinary agreement between two people would be nothing short of miraculous.

Either that, or there's something there that triggers the agreement. In other words, the reality of the wall precedes the agreement about the wall. If I understand fresco, however, he's saying that the agreement doesn't reflect reality, it is the reality. That, however, leaves open the question of how any two people can agree on anything if there's nothing to agree upon in the first place. And it's not enough to say that people are naive realists in practice. Constructivism can't rest on a foundation of realism if realism itself is baseless. Once again, it seems, constructivism is stuck in mid-air.


* For Cyracuz, I'll add that my cat doesn't try to walk through walls either. I'm not sure what linguistic episteme he's participating in.

Oh I have **** for brain now? That's the sum total of what you can possibly derive from this discussion?

Bye now. Enjoy the rest of your non-existing life in your non-existing world.

I think it is amazing that the rather simple consideration I am trying to present should be so difficult to grasp.

Via experience we know reality.
Reality is the world we experience, and only through experience can we know it. Do you disagree?

When we separate "reality" from "experience" and present "absolute reality" we are dealing with something hypothetical.

Let's use rainbows as an example. They are real. They exist in reality as pretty much everyone has experienced.
And yet we know that without eyes to perceive it, the rainbow doesn't exist.
A rainbow is a phenomenon that occurs when eyes detect light that is fractured in moisture in the air. Everyone who has eyes will perceive the rainbow, but any creature without eyes would not. Would the rainbow be real to those creatures??

It would seem that natural selection takes care of that. People will tend to have lower survival rates if walls they can walk through feature too prominently in their "realities"*. After enough generations of natural selection on people's "realities" *, then, these particular people will cease showing up in the discussions where philosophers determine the true nature of walls. They will have all gone extinct, their "realities"* having died with them.

Of course, this suggests there is something "out there" that systematically selects some "realities"* over others. Naive constructivists like fresco and Cyracuz won't be happy with it.
_______
* as Cyracuz uses the term

Yes, Olivier. You still haven't grasped what I am trying to say, as evidenced by your replies. I understand though, as your beliefs obviously won't permit you to consider alternatives.

They wouldn't perceive it, but it would still be real. Reality is one thing, its perception by creatures is another.

I have consistently claimed that there is but one reality; the reality we experience. All other "realities" are hypothetical.
And in the reality we experience, we cannot know for sure that the experiencing itself isn't a vital part of it. Do you disagree?