What is Real?

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;112333 wrote:

Seems to me that if you tell a child the truth that he is inferior, he will be because he is. How could it be true he is inferior, and he not be inferior? Just as if you tell him he is five feet tall, and that is true, then he will be five feet tall.

What is real is what is not not-real.

I would ask what makes what you think is real real?

Can something be real without you seeing it with your eyes? Can you experience anything without physically 'being there'?

@Amperage,

Amperage;115925 wrote:

Can something be real without you seeing it with your eyes? Can you experience anything without physically 'being there'?

...................and here we go again!

@TickTockMan,

TickTockMan;115926 wrote:

...................and here we go again!

sorry

I confess to not reading the entire thread(probably pretty evident) my apologies if this is a re-hash(which I'm sure it is)

@Amperage,

Amperage;115925 wrote:

Can something be real without you seeing it with your eyes? Can you experience anything without physically 'being there'?

Yes. Yes. ...........

@richrf,

The big hitch in this argument is that there is no designable experiment to prove or disprove reality. It doesn't interact with objects, and even if it is real and, it is simply a characteristic of our universe. By not being able to prove the existence of reality, asking what real is is a unending pursuit. This is where I find that idealism is the simplest explanation. Since we can only experience and describe reality through our own firsthand observations, and there is no way to prove or disprove the existence of the world beyond that, it is probably all thought.

As to the separating of dreams from consciousness, I like looking at it in the way that, each side, both our reality and the dream world, are real; dreams seem ridiculous from reality, and reality seems ridiculous from dreams, so you can either regard them as equally false or equally true.

quote:
What seems or feels real need not be real. Mirages seem real to thirsty travelers in the desert, but they are not real. They are not oases. What occurs in dreams is not real since if you dream that you are in Africa, and hunting tigers you are not doing so. You are asleep in bed. As I said, dreams exist, and there are real dreams. But that does not mean that dreams are real. There really is no debate about this so far as I can tell. Even children, after they wake up, and Mommy tells them that what they dreamed is not real, understand that. That they feel real to the child (or adult) is neither here nor there.

I find kennethamy's view rather one-dimensional, simply critiquing dreams from reality in my mind isn't enough. Because dreams seem so vivid and valid, even from this side, we must consider both sides equal in validity.

any comments?

@cws910,

cws910;116235 wrote:

The big hitch in this argument is that there is no designable experiment to prove or disprove reality. It doesn't interact with objects, and even if it is real and, it is simply a characteristic of our universe. By not being able to prove the existence of reality, asking what real is is a unending pursuit. This is where I find that idealism is the simplest explanation. Since we can only experience and describe reality through our own firsthand observations, and there is no way to prove or disprove the existence of the world beyond that, it is probably all thought.

As to the separating of dreams from consciousness, I like looking at it in the way that, each side, both our reality and the dream world, are real; dreams seem ridiculous from reality, and reality seems ridiculous from dreams, so you can either regard them as equally false or equally true.

quote:
What seems or feels real need not be real. Mirages seem real to thirsty travelers in the desert, but they are not real. They are not oases. What occurs in dreams is not real since if you dream that you are in Africa, and hunting tigers you are not doing so. You are asleep in bed. As I said, dreams exist, and there are real dreams. But that does not mean that dreams are real. There really is no debate about this so far as I can tell. Even children, after they wake up, and Mommy tells them that what they dreamed is not real, understand that. That they feel real to the child (or adult) is neither here nor there.

I find kennethamy's view rather one-dimensional, simply critiquing dreams from reality in my mind isn't enough. Because dreams seem so vivid and valid, even from this side, we must consider both sides equal in validity.

any comments?

Vividness is subjective. what is real is objective. A nightmare may be frighteningly vivid. But it is still but a dream. It didn't happen. Dreams certainly exist. But not what happens in a dream (except by coincidence). Bertrand Russell tells how a peer dreamed he was speaking in the House of Lords, and when he woke up, he found that he was speaking in the House of Lords. "One-dimensional", whatever that means, or not, the content of dreams are not real no matter how vivid.

@kennethamy,

The vividness is not what I am using as proof for the reality of dreams. I am using the validity. If our world seems valid to us, why are we not to say on the other side that this reality is absurd? Imagine it as we have two bodies and one mind, and as we fall asleep on that side, we wake up on this side, and same vice versa. I don't believe this is true, but because we cannot express reality, we must explore all posibilities when comparing what we think is reality to other, seemingly real realities.

At this point in the arguement stating that reality is objective is a little ridiculous, because isn't that what this whole arguement is about? Arn't we questioning the validity and realness of reality? While I do believe that this is real, for the sake of the arguement we must imagine that all certainties have disapeared; by questioning reality, we are questioning everything we have observed through it. That leaves only abstract thought as proof.

@cws910,

cws910;116369 wrote:

The vividness is not what I am using as proof for the reality of dreams. I am using the validity. If our world seems valid to us, why are we not to say on the other side that this reality is absurd? Imagine it as we have two bodies and one mind, and as we fall asleep on that side, we wake up on this side, and same vice versa. I don't believe this is true, but because we cannot express reality, we must explore all posibilities when comparing what we think is reality to other, seemingly real realities.

I don't understand what "validity" means in this context. What does it mean to say that our world seems (or is) valid? And what is "our world" anyway? I suppose that I am just not following you, partly because you use terms whose meanings I do not understand.

@richrf,

I apologise for this. I am trying to say that, because we are questioning reality (the question of the string is "what is real") we must assume that it is false. From there we should be able to use logic and abstract thought to reprove reality, But by raising the question of dreams, we must assume that dreams too are false, and apply the proof for reality to it. So I am trying to say that, if we use apperant validity to prove reality, then won't dreams fit into the category of reality too?

Please explain to me the assumptions you are making in this arguement. Are you assuming that what we experience is real?

@cws910,

cws910;116374 wrote:

I apologise for this. I am trying to say that, because we are questioning reality (the question of the string is "what is real") we must assume that it is false. From there we should be able to use logic and abstract thought to reprove reality, But by raising the question of dreams, we must assume that it is false, and apply the proof for reality to it. So I am trying to say that, if we use apperant validity to prove reality, then won't dreams fit into the category of reality too?

Please explain to me the assumptions you are making in this arguement. Are you assuming that what we experience is real?

What is false? Reality? What would that mean. Reality cannot be false (or true). But beliefs or statements about reality are either true or false. Reality is what statements are true or false of. Dreams are not true of reality. If I dream I am riding on an elephant in India, but if I am asleep in my bed in the United States, the statement that my dream is true is, itself, false. We have to distinguish between whether dreams exist (and the answer is, of course, yes) and whether what we are dreaming is true (and the answer of course is generally, no).

Our experiences are real, of course, But what we experience may be, or may not be, real. An hallucination is an experience, and hallucinations are real. But what is hallucinated is not real. Mirages are illusions, and these illusions exist, of course. But since mirages are illusions, what they are experiences of (oases) are not real.

@richrf,

lets use your idea of riding a elephant in india and being in bed in the united states. Now, if reality is the state of being real, is it required that if what we experience while awake is true that dreams must be false? Can't they both be equally true or false?

@cws910,

cws910;116381 wrote:

lets use your idea of riding a elephant in india and being in bed in the united states. Now, if reality is the state of being real, is it required that if what we experience while awake is true that dreams must be false? Can't they both be equally true or false?

No. Since what we dream is generally false. I dreamed I was in India. I was not in India. So, my belief when I dreamed I was in India that I was in India, was false. Isn't that clear?

@richrf,

You are assuming that dreams must be false and what we experience while awake must be concious must be true. I find this close minded. Give me a foundation for your beliefs, and if they are valid, I will weigh them. Until then, though, I find your arguements juvenile.

@cws910,

cws910;116385 wrote:

You are assuming that dreams must be false and what we experience while awake must be concious must be true. I find this close minded. Give me a foundation for your beliefs, and if they are valid, I will weigh them. Until then, though, I find your arguements juvenile.

You don't think I can have all kinds of evidence that was asleep in bed while I dreamed I was in India riding on an elephant, and that I cannot have all kinds of evidence that I have never been in India riding on an elephant? It would be boring to go through both kinds of evidence. So, the foundation of my belief that I was asleep in bed at the time I dreamed I was in India is lots of evidence. What is the foundation of your belief that I could have been in India when I have mountains of evidence that I have never in my life been in India? You find evidence juvenile? Hmm.

@richrf,

You are, yet again, assuming that the realness of either dreams or conciousness is mutually exclusive from the other, that for the dream to be real, it must exist in the same "realm" as the waking moments. Maybe you have not been to India in you concious life, but you are making the assumption that, "the world of dreams" isn't a reality in it's own respect. Its an alternate universe, if you will, that we occupy in our sleeping moments here.

@cws910,

cws910;116392 wrote:

You are, yet again, assuming that the realness of either dreams or conciousness is mutually exclusive from the other, that for the dream to be real, it must exist in the same "realm" as the waking moments. Maybe you have not been to India in you concious life, but you are making the assumption that, "the world of dreams" isn't a reality in it's own respect. Its an alternate universe, if you will, that we occupy in our sleeping moments here.

What does "a reality in it's own respect" So far as I can tell, it means that there are dreams. And I have already said that is true. People also talk about the "world of art", or "the poultry world" (there is a magazine produced by members of the poultry industry with that name) but that doesn't mean that the poultry world, or the art world, is a "reality in its own respect" does it?
In English, what is real is what is mind-independent. That is, it would exist even if there were no minds. Dreams would not exist unless there were minds. Therefore, dreams are not real.

@richrf,

If you use that arguement, how can you prove that our universe will exist without minds? That is the only way we have ever (and can ever) experience it.

@cws910,

cws910;116397 wrote:

If you use that arguement, how can you prove that our universe will exist without minds? That is the only way we have ever (and can ever) experience it.

But we know that is not true. We know that the universe predates the existence of people by many billions of years. We have all kinds of evidence that is true.

@richrf,

We can speculate so! But we can never know. The universe may have been created the second that I was born with the appearence of having existed for billions of years. So can you really conclude that it exists without minds? Moving back to the subject, who is to say that dreams don't exist without minds? Yes we can prove that brain activity occurs during dreams, but does that prove they are the cause of dreams? And if you do make the conclusion that brain signals cause dreams, then can't you make the conclusion that brain signals cause our universe to exist?

@cws910,

Reality is all we have, everything else is conjecture or speculative belief. It should not be devalued but used to imagine other realities and search for them with interest. Reality gives us this opportunity that dreams can never succeed in doing. We are conscious, not driven by a manic dream world, where we can only observe with horror.

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