@Frank Apisa,
Quote:I am arguing that an “absolute or ultimate REALITY” is a must. There is no way it can logically be avoided. Whatever IS…IS. That is the REALITY. There is absolutely no way to avoid it…because whatever the actual REALITY IS…that is what it IS.
This doesn't mean much, Frank. Even if it was conclusively proven that REALITY is merely a perception known only to those who have experience, you would just say that THAT is "absolute or ultimate REALITY".
Quote:In that hypothetical…our understanding of gravity would simply be wrong. Whatever is discovered new would be the REALITY.
Ok. So what is reality
now then, if the hypothetical future understanding will would be REALITY?
Are you suggesting that we are living in a fantasy world of our making, and that the world we are misunderstanding is more real than the reality we do know?
Quote:That kind of stuff does happen in science. We think the world is pancake flat and at the center of the universe…and it is proven wrong. The REALITY was NEVER that the world was pancake flat and at the center of the universe…
So, again, the reality of those people who lived during the period of history when those beliefs were accepted as true was just a fantasy world?
I am talking about what they knew and experienced... that reality (as if there is any other kind...).
Quote:Look at that sentence, Cyracuz, and see how close that comes to doing the kind of thing a theists does when cornered on some bizarre necessity of his/her belief system.
I could say the same about this:
Quote:I am arguing that an “absolute or ultimate REALITY” is a must. There is no way it can logically be avoided. Whatever IS…IS. That is the REALITY. There is absolutely no way to avoid it…because whatever the actual REALITY IS…that is what it IS.
You name it "absolute or ultimate REALITY", and theists name it GOD. Their agenda is to establish the reality of GOD, to justify their entire way of thinking. Quite similar to what you are doing actually.
Your way of thinking isn't alien to me. I grew out of it, and know it intimately. What I am doing here is exploring alternatives.
But I don't need alternative perspectives to see that assigning the status of REALITY to the hypothetical "actual" rather than the concrete phenomenon we actually experience is backwards. It implies that the reality we experience is a fantasy world of our own making, based on our capacity to experience the "actual".
The conceptual meaning of idea is clear to me and entirely sensible. My only objection is that I would call what we experience REALITY, and the hypothetical ACTUAL the fantasy world.
Because that is the way it is. REALITY is what actually is, as determined by the immediate experience of
being here. Even proof of what actually is in some far corner of space we can never experience directly cannot pass into our knowledge via anything but the immediate experience of reading the data on paper or pixels.
Even the concept "absolute reality" is only available to us through the immediate experience of thinking about it.
Even if it is there, just as you say, it does not merit the label REALITY. Even if it constitutes 90% of the whole phenomenon we know as REALITY, we cannot say that it
is REALITY any more than we can say that air is BREATHING.