Prove reality exists.

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Prove reality exists ... I can only be sure of my own experiences with 100% certainty. What would you accept as "proof of reality?"

I live in reality. Isn't that enough?

You can not prove something if ther is only by evidence and concepts restricted under the thing you are trying to prove.

Darn, ya got me.

It's amusing you use the "fact" that the Sun rises and sets. It does not. Of course you see it rise and set because your point of view assumes the Earth is steady - which it is not. It spins. Our senses tell us many "facts" because we are built in a certain way and perceive in a certain way. Thus the way we are built determines the "reality" that many can agree on because we are built more or less the same way. The reality we see is very different from that of a bumble bee or a frog. They are built differently and live in a different reality.

That's it, you can only be sure about the fact that you exist. I can only be sure of the fact that I exist. But you can never be sure about someone else's exisitence.

It surprises me that noone has yet mentioned René Decartes. Dubito, cogito, ergo sum.

Last edited by Transcendence on 10 Aug 2008, 9:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's best not to dwell on the task of proving reality. It's not a useful area of consideration.

There is no reality, you and your postings are are all part of my imagination.

Unfortunately many people twist Descartes famous observation to say " I am, therefore I think" and a good many people don't.

Figured someone else took it.

Even if indeed we can prove reality exists, it doesn't say anything about the nature of who we really are.

My proof of reality is simple and, I fear, somewhat incomplete, but here it goes:

If external reality is false, either I make it up or someone else feeds it into my mind.

If someone else feeds it into my mind, he exists outside me. Ergo, some external reality does exist (but I don't see it).

If it is I who invents external reality, I do it either consciously or unconsciously.

I can be pretty sure I'm not consciously inventing reality, so if I'm making this up, this must be an unconscious process.

If reality is a product of my unconscious mind, I guess I should recognize my own craftmanship in the result. But I don't; actually, I get surprised many times.

Surprise is an encounter with the unknown, the unexpected, that which I had never considered.

I am able to be surprised. I am able to find new things all the time. I don't think my mind alone is able to invent so many new things all the time.

I am able to be surprised. I encounter things I have never met or known. If reality were a product of my mind, I should recognize or remember some things. But I don't.

That's (roughly) why I trust reality is real and not a product of my imagination.

I just finished reading this interesting essay about the subject:
http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html

Something should be said about what human minds know. They can know only what reached their minds through their senses. I don't doubt that something out there is feeding stimulation into our minds but we must then take that raw data and shape it into some sort of coherent pattern which is our reality. The continuous torrent of stimulation is different for each one of us and there is far more possible out there than we can either sense or make sense of. Evidently our patterns bear enough relationship to each other that we can manage to agree on most things but obviously not every individual agrees with every other individual. Our realities are not the same.

I can agree with all of that - as in our neurological build, our biological purposes, neurological structure, hereditary factors in personality, all add their own skew. I think we can agree though that it is the same physical world that works by the same mechanics no matter who or what is feeling their way through it - though its the interaction of human organisms that really takes on the almost mystically incalculable aspects just because its so difficult to wade through all the BS that's out there as well as the BS put off by our own senses and ability to draw information. I think where my difference in thought lies is that I don't think reality occurs when it hits our senses (unless you just mean our perceptual reality), its literally outside of and independent of us; the only things we really change are our realities between each other - unless we horridly pollute the water, torch the forests, or entirely blow up the planet - that is a very real impact on the world as broader than ourselves.

Every day we technologically extend our senses with devices that catch data invisible to our naked physiology. These extensions frequently change reality or rather what we know of reality) in major ways and sometimes, as with much subatomic data, it takes decades before we can puzzle out what we think we perceive. Dark matter recently changed the whole universe. There are still people who believe in a flat Earth but most of us do not.

Right. I think we're in complete agreement, just a bit of semantic mix-up; ie. the universe's laws are unchanging and unflinching, however its our knowledge constantly changing, constantly removing false hypotheses (hopefully it will continue like that), the change is really in reference to how correct or complete our knowledge really is.

Actually I'm pretty sure we do all create our own realities, in other words under normal circumstances there is nothing I could do in my world that would have the least effect on yours. A good example of this is our inner worlds, anything you do in your head has no effect on anything anyone else is doing in their head, until we start projecting those inner worlds into a common reality.

Now ALL realities are in someone's head, yours in your head, mine in my head and the common reality here that we're all projecting into also has to be held in one person's head. What this means like it or not is that there is always one who walks among us that "contains" the entire common reality within their own imagination. This is what Bob Marley was referring to in the song "Get Up, Stand Up".

"Most people think,
Great God will come from the skies,
Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.
But if you know what life is worth,
You will look for yours on earth:
And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!

(chorus)

We sick an tired of-a your ism-skism game -
Dyin n goin to heaven in-a jesus name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty God is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you cant fool all the people all the time.
So now we see the light (what you gonna do? ),
We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah!)"

The Egyptians called them pharaohs, in all religions they were Sons of God or Sun Gods because they were able to contain the world that contains all our worlds. In ancient times all of this was common knowledge, now it is perhaps the world's best kept secret. It was the reason the CIA was at odds with Bob Marley and his message. Bob thought it was it was people's right to know this, the CIA knew that knowledge would be disastrous to the fabric of reality itself, let alone what the human race is trying to accomplish. The CIA, it being their sole purpose to protect this person (without even themselves knowing who it is) maintained that if the world didn't even know this person exists, they would never look for him. But, like Bob so eloquently pointed out, you can't fool all the people all the time.