Non-locality.

frank wrote:

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Fact is...maybe REALITY is completely independent of anyone's (supposed) observation of it

Well, that is hard to know, but the article linked to the initial post seems to back that notion.

So does the ancient hindu statement that everything is illution.

What I find interesting is how we (humans) keep coming up with new ways to confirm our reality, and time and again it is the same reality we unmask.

Goes to show the subjectivity of our experience. Maybe when two humans experiences the same reality it's just because the two individuals experiencing are so similar...

My point is that I believe reality to be completely independent of anyone's observation of it.

But first it may be practical to mention that the term reality has some different meanings. There is the reality we can sense. Then there is the reality we can know only though abstract manipulation of sensoral input.

The entire reason for debates such as this, as I see it, is this duality in the very term reality.

It is what has caused us to doubt the truth of the world we sense.

Frank,

Re: my "playing golf with a football" applies equally to "fact" as "guess".
At the sub-atomic level in particular. "facts" are negotiable.

Non-locality( the collapse of seperation in space) is a direct consequence of saving Einsteins dictum that "nothing travels faster than light"...nobody wishes to give this up hence apparantly seperate particles are deemed to be "entangled" otherwise they would be "communicating instantly" in breach of special relativity.

Interesting guess about the REALITY...but I still don't see how it fits into what I was saying.

I guess it implies that causality refers to the inner workings of this "single entity", to imagined parts of the whole phenomena. It tells us that things are not neccesarily happening in the order we experience them. Since we judge our reality by measuring the effect of things, we cannot see anything but reflections. The world is painted for our senses, but also by our senses.

So we have a choice, in defining our own reality. We can decide how we will appear, and what aspects we lay emphasis on will determine what is real to us.

Reality is a sort of mutual agreement.

Also, I think it is in agreement with the ancient hindu wisdom that everything is illution, meaning that there is only this singularity wich we percieve in pieces.

frank wrote:

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Interesting guess about the REALITY...but I still don't see how it fits into what I was saying.

First, that I agree with you that these are all guesses.

I then wanted to bring attention to the fact that sometimes widely different methods of "guessing" can come up with surprisingly similar results.

Meditation, science, philosophy or religion. They all paint pretty much the same picture to my eyes, and whatever angle you chose to throw your weight in with is the one that lies closest to what you yourself is inclined to believe in.

So we have a choice, in defining our own reality. We can decide how we will appear, and what aspects we lay emphasis on will determine what is real to us.

Reality is a sort of mutual agreement.

I agree, and have stated so before, with Frank's vacuous notion of Reality as that which is the case, whatever it may be.

AND I agree with Frank that we have no INTELLECTUAL notion of reality enjoys the stature of CERTAINTY.

I suppose that's what Frank means by "guesswork."

My problem with Frank's insistence on the ubiquity of "guesswork" is that it demotes so much that it is more than mere guesswork--even if it is not certain--to the rank of a moral equivalence of junk food.

There is, of course, the wild guess, then the educated guess, then there are mystical and philosophical (aha!) intuitions, and theoretical speculations only some of which are (scientific) testable/falsifiable hypotheses. The latter are in a sense "guesses" deduced from extant theory or creatively conjured out of who knows what. But they are generally considered more like gourmet cooking as opposed to Frank's junk food guesses. I would give the same rank to many philosophical and mystical intuitions.

It is possible to argue that this REALITY is so abstract that it has no real referencepoint in our daily lives. To talk of it in the context of what actions we need to perform in our daily lives, REALITY seems a pretty irrelevant thing. Most of the time it is our subjective experience that matters, and even indications of this real REALITY comes through that very experience.

So maybe REALITY is a concept as lofty and fleeting as the concept of GOD. (?)

You can take that word "vacuous" and shove it where the sun doesn't shine!

Whatever the REALITY of existence IS...it IS...regardless of any human guesses about it.

We can guess there are gods involved; we can guess there are no gods; we can guess a dualistic or non-dualistic essence; we can guess solipsism; we can guess continued life; we can guess nothing after death; we can guess reincarnation; we can guess past-life retrieval...we can guess any damn thing we want to guess.

Each guesser seems eventually to formulate a belief system...and then talk about the belief system as though imparting knowledge of the truth.

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You can take that word "vacuous" and shove it where the sun doesn't shine!

Well, in light of information provided in this very thread, we cannot be sure exactly where that is...

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Whatever the REALITY of existence IS...it IS...regardless of any human guesses about it.

Maybe it's me, but I cannot understand this in any other way than agreement to the previous statement. I like to dress it up a bit is all...

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We can guess there are gods involved; we can guess there are no gods; we can guess a dualistic or non-dualistic essence; we can guess solipsism; we can guess continued life; we can guess nothing after death; we can guess reincarnation; we can guess past-life retrieval...we can guess any damn thing we want to guess.

Indeed. I thought that was the point of these discussions. Journeys into the abstract. Sometimes JL takes me places I've never been, and recently fresco has helped me open a whole new well of ideas for me to explore.

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Each guesser seems eventually to formulate a belief system...and then talk about the belief system as though imparting knowledge of the truth.

In general I find no real reason to distinguish the information conveyed to me by another human being from the info conveyed by any other force of nature.

From the viewpoint "we cannot truly know", to say that a rock; while acting for all the world as though it knows what it's about, to say that this rock is really just guessing is just as reasonable as stating the same about a human beings.
A human and a rock are equal in that they are both experiences conveyed by my senses. When it comes to the great difference in complexity in the two expreriences that is merely a matter of degree.