h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How's this for a start:

About reality we can take any of three possible positions--
1 Nothing is real
2 Everything is real
3 Some things are real, some are not

Let us first get shut of the troublesome word "thing", by rephrasing the above--
1 Reality is hidden
2 Reality is everywhere
3 Reality and unreality are both to be found

3 is the standard "man in the street" position: we can accept that dinosaurs are real, but unicorns are not. Unicorns are fictional, or fantastical, or mythical.

Unfortunately for the man in the street, examples can easily be adduced that stretch the categories "real" and "unreal" to breaking point. Are numbers real? If so what about irrational nimbers? Imaginary numbers, like the square root of minus one? Or if no numbers are real, does that mean we limit reality to "physical things"? Unfortunately there are extremely fuzzy edges to that concept too.

The position of fictional entities is relevant: the character of Hamlet is very real to many people. But the character of anybody in the world is on a similar footing to the character of Hamlet, and the fact that there is a physical body attached to the folks we know does not add to the reality of their personalities. All characters are fictional, including mine and yours (see Dan Dennett, "Consciousness Explained"; or if you disagree with Dennett, see the same lesson eloquently demonstrated in Proust).

Position 3 therefore does not state a tenable truth, but rather a short-hand for practical use, with different applications in different cases. For an all-purpose attitude we must choose either 1 (as Chaiwallah does) or 2 (as I do). What we should avoid doing is painting ourselves into a corner where the word "reality" is starved of its many and convenient uses.

I like it.

Noggin

RMan. I would be tempted to start as follows.

First, we have to deal with the metaproblem we might be getting ourselves into by asking "Is reality real?". Clearly that is too self-referential to deal with. So let's try to say what it really (just kidding!) is.

For Kant, it would be the noumenal, and unknowable. For Wittgenstein, it would be the phenomenal intersubjective experience of all humans and, for me, maybe other species. This could lead us to the insoluble problem of whether our experiences are identical. I don't think this need concern us, since reality is what is experienced and not the subjective experience of experience itself.

Time for caveats here though, as not all experiences are veridical and some real things have never been observed by anyone. Eg; the far side of the Moon until the 20th century.

But here I stray into tests for reality instead of concentrating on its actual nature. Clearly we have much work to do here! Perhaps a useful approach would be to specify that with which we would choose to contrast reality. Illusion, unreality, delusion, confusion? "Unreality" has a certain logical purity in this context. Again, one is tempted by the fact that reality will pass certain tests that unreality will fail. However, since we are seeking to analyse the concept rather than find tests, this has to be put slightly differently.

A test can give us a sufficient condition for reality. Those are ten a penny, so we need at least one necessary condition too; otherwise other stuff will be able to sneak in! ..................

"Don't think. look!" -- Wittgenstein

Ok, Toxxin, so what your trying to say here (and I'm only doing this for my own understanding) is that what can be considered real is that which is experienced by humans as a group, rather than the individual? I leave out other species because I cannot even guess as to what they may experience, other than in terms of my own, which may not apply (does Schroedinger's cat believe it is alive or dead? And is life a requirement for belief?). This arguement, if I understand it right, would allow for that which others have percieved as real, without your percieving it directly, ie: electrons, the far side of the moon, which would not be real using my definition.

So, how do we know which perception(s) is(are) the correct one(s)? For instance, many people claim to see a 'man in the moon', or a face depicted by the craters on the surface, and many say that there is not, that there are only craters there, in no particular relationship to each other. Both say that there are craters in the moons surface, they only differ on the perception, so, which is correct, which is 'real'? Or is this a case where subjective reality can take precidence? Or is it just a case of illusion, making it a mass delusion, and would a mass delusion still be considered 'unreality'? Or could reality be considered a mass delusion?

Please forgive my spelling, and my being difficult. Neither are intentional.

That's only the beginning of the introduction, Sneaky. I suggest that we can set out some sufficient conditions for reality in the form of tests that rule in certain things. However, in order to get a firm grasp of the concept of reality we must also specify necessary conditions without which something is not real. I stopped at that point, because nothing occured to me except 'existence' which is also a sufficient condition and therefore a near synonym. Not very helpful!

I think, for now, I shall have to fall back on "to be the value of a variable" which does seem to be a necessary condition for anything to be real. I only wish I could think of some clearer way of making that point by explaining what a variable is in this context. I shall have to study Quine some more. Attempting this topic has given me enhanced regard for him.

toxxin

In normal use (RMan's [3]), reality has something of the character of Wittgenstein's games, and is not defined by any one thing. But one could regard it as a complex "software" package that runs on, or in, the "hardware" of things that exist (ie have causal powers).

Noggin

Noggin. I've been tieing myself in knots on this thread (nice unmixed metaphor!) and your comments make me feel more comfortable, but not enough to feel that either of us has really done the job! I guess I've been trying to include your 'hardware' in the category of reality too.

To put the thing in Lockean terms: I'm trying to include the unknown substrate (hardware?) in which properties inhere as a part of reality. Am I going too far in attempting to include the 'hardware' as part of reality? Does it exist (is it real?) in any other sense than conceptually. If the answer to that is 'no', I'd have done much of the job, if only by borrowing. Is the substrate, or hardware, the variable of which the reality/software is a range of values? Is the variable real as well as its values, and if so, what exactly is it?

I guess I'm just trying to go too far and getting myself confused á la Hume or Wittgenstein. Good company, at least.

toxx

Just a thought.

I have begun to see the question of 'what is real' in two lights, that of the subjective (that which I percieve), and that of the objective (that which We percieve). I'm not sure that they can be defined in the same definition. I have attempted to define 'real' by using the subjective, which was shortly dismantled using the objective. It might just be that they would be two wholly seperate definitions of this concept that would have to compliment each other to succede. In other words, there may need to be two distinct tests (three, counting unreality as a test) to define 'real', each of which is valid. Anyway, that's my thought, which might just be coffee overload.

Sneaky

I think we could actually add to that. Change "that which We perceive" to intersubjective, and add Objective (that which is really there.) The problem is that the Objective (that's the "hardware" that toxx and I are talking about) isn't truly knowable as it is - it's always translated by our perceptual and conceptual apparatus ( A1029340 may be useful.) Whether it "really" exists can be argued, but I can't see a working definition of reality that avoids solipsism without it.

To add to that, subjectively and intersubjectively we have both things that are "given" as real, and rules for deciding what counts as real, and the two aren't necessarily consistent. And it does seem that consistency is one necessary test of reality.

Noggin

Noggin. That's a fascinating remark at the end of your message. Must reality be consistent? How dare we assume that? Can we assume, a priori, that there cannot be inconsistent realities? If we do, we certainly won't find any, but how could we even begin to test this?

On the other hand, is there really a substrate or objective level in which apparent qualities inhere? Is there really something left over if you take away the colour, hardness and shape etc? If so, does it even have to be in the same location as the apparent 'thing' or might all such appearances be properties of the universe as a whole, of ourselves, or God? This question is a real challenge.

I find it somewhat absurd that there should even be two such levels. Why not just things that, depending on their material makeup, have properties that can't be physically or, more surprisingly, conceptually separated without removing the material itself? My knickers really do get into a twist over this one!

toxx

We can't precisely because consistency is part of the test. Get rid of "not both A and not A" and we can't apply reason to reality.

This takes us back to the problem of consciousness and qualia. Properties like colour, hardness and shape are properties generated by the "software" in some way, but they therefore also have to be present in the "hardware" and *its* processes. The hardware can have any form (eg God) that can run the software.

And finally, there *is* no material itself, just a set of abstract structural relationships that give rise to a reality that contains material things.

Noggin

Yeah, I know. "there is no material itself" is a funny thing for a materialist to be saying, but I do describe myself as a materialist, after all.

<>

So that isn't exactly a 'funny' thing to say, is it? though it is contradictory.

Being a materialist means you are not spiritual? And if you are a materialist that doesn't believe in matter, then where does this leave you?

Noggin? . . . Nog, are you there . . .?

az

Funny as in strange, az. It may be an English usage.

Zen Buddhism - a school of Buddhism that believes enlightenment can be achieved by meditation, contemplation and intuition, often by the method of asking apparently senseless questions ("What is the sound of one hand clapping") in order to break up conventional categories of thought.

I use the term Zen Materialist of myself precisely because it crosses conceptual boundaries in an appropriately zen fashion.

At one level the boundary between material and spiritual should be dissolved as having no reality, though at other levels these words do, of course, have use as ethical/psychological categories.

Here endeth the lesson

Noggin

Sorry about that. Lecturing again.

*sigh*

Yes, I do know that you meant funny/strange. Not a specific 'English' usage, rather a normal English usage.

<>

Why?

az

Because it doesn't?

Sorry. I just wondered because <"There is no material in itself" is a *strange* thing for a materialist to be saying> seemed fairly clear, and I couldn't see why you found it inappropriate.

I suspect I'm being frustratingly gnomic, but it's hard to avoid. I often have the same problem with things that other people say - there's something lurking behind the words that doesn't quite come across in that medium.

Noggin

Hi, Noggin. Do, please, continue to lecture whenever the fancy takes you. I enjoy it and it helps us to understand our respective positions.



Isn't that a tad self-referential when we're discussing 'reality' itself. So what doesn't the boundary have ............ erm????

toxx

It doesn't have a function, toxx. Not on the "hardware" level anyway.

Unfortunately, like all analogies, this particular one can only be pushed so far before it falls down.

Reality is often too complicated for comfort. The idea of reality doubly so.

Perhaps (like Sneaky almost said) there's a different definition of reality for every layer in the cake?

Noggin

Yep, I follow that Noggin. The tricky part is that most things can be subsumed under some superordinate concept. 'Reality' and 'God' both seem to be at the top of the relevant hierarchy. In terms of physics, mathematical specification seems to be a way out, although perhaps more descriptive than explanatory. We need some equivalent that's at least better than hand waving.

toxx

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Problem is, toxx, that we use the same word for both the superordinate concept and for many of its subordinate manifestations, and, generally speaking, we only go as far up the heirarchy as is necessary to establish what we mean by a particular usage.

Interestingly, at the top of the heirarchy it might well be argued that, in Rman's terms Reality is both hidden *and* everywhere. And you can't encounter unreality.

Noggin