How do you know the Earth is round? You have been persuaded that it is round. And so have I. Have you been in orbit? And even if you had, could one not doubt one's sense-impressions? Is a stick not crooked in water?

And perhaps you are indeed a brain in a vat..... Can you prove that you are not? Or will you, lawyer-like, make a case against this unpleasant possibility.

The point is our lack of direct connection to things-in-themselves. -- and also that "things-in-themselves" is just a mental-model, an invented concept.

You have an idea of the Earth in your head. This idea was put there. Another person might be told the Earth is flat. Perhaps your notion of the world is better for the prediction of certain events. Perhaps your notion is a superior notion as far survival goes. But your notion is not a final notion.

The case is not closed. It's just a cold case. You are persuaded enough of the Earth's roundness to cease investigation of the matter. And I, too, am in that boat. But I don't pretend to anything beyond provisional knowledge concerning the shape of Earth.

If you woke up tomorrow morning in the body of an alien, and then were told that what you thought was your life was just a high-tech simulation, and that reality was 7 dimensional......You are told that there is no planet Earth.

Is the Earth still round? You would probably wonder at first if you were insane. But if the alien life persisted, you would have to abandon your belief that the Earth even existed as justified. Provisional means (roughly) good enough for the moment. We are never finished describing reality. All our so-called truths are related to this unfinished reality.

How does one know what is or is not the case? Tell me that, friend. Tell me that.

And what else do you mean by "is the case" than some sort of objective reality? Think on it.

Obviously by means of the use of evidence. I know that it is the case that Quito is the capital of Ecuador because I can look it up in the latest Atlas, read about it in Encyclopedias, and, if it was necessary, I could phone the Ecuadorean Embassy in Washington D.C. or even fly to Quito myself. How else would I know? It is not something that is innate. "It is the case" = "true".

And I bet you all of them agree that "Quito" is the capital. And this is what consensus is, and consensus is what you find persuasive enough to consider such a belief justified. Your "truth," in this case, is founded on consensus, my friend. Not "objective reality"(which is only a mental model!).

Main Entry:
Pronunciation: \kən-ˈsen(t)-səs\
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Latin, from consentire
Date: 1843
1 a : general agreement : unanimityb : the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned <the consensus was to go ahead>
2 : group solidarity in sentiment and belief

Actually it doesn't take much at all to know the earth is spherical.

You see the moon.
You see the sun.
You see Jupiter.
The most likely shape that an object with proportional gravitational forces is a sphere.
The geometry supports that the earth is spherical.

Someone trying to convince me that the earth was not a sphere would have a much harder time.

So provide for me some information that states the earth is not a sphere.

I know that Earth is round because I believe there is a mass of evidence for it, and I believe that it would be easy to refer to reliable sources that would confirm that Earth is round. I don't know what you mean by "provisional knowledge".

And I bet you all of them agree that "Quito" is the capital. And this is what consensus is, and consensus is what you find persuasive enough to consider such a belief justified. Your "truth," in this case, is founded on consensus, my friend. Not "objective reality"(which is only a mental model!).

I think an objective reality exists, yes. But I put it in quotes to emphasize that the concept itself is a mental-model. It's still "all in our head." It's still sense-data interpreted to large degree by mental-models/concepts/metaphors.

But what is this objectivity beyond the simple overlap of subjectivity? It's a mental model. And it's a great human invention. Western man's mental model of a law-governed universe. But it's only a creation. And I don't want Frankenstein abused by his monster.

Just as man created God, he also created Reality. I sympathize with Blake's notion of the Poetic Genius. The human imagination is God (the poetic genius). For man to bow to some creation and not to the creative within him is well described as idolatry.

What is it to exist? Is it just the primary predicate that can only be applied to something determinate? Is indeterminate being what Hegel calls it, nothingness?I thought about this and decided that being is equivalent to consciousness.
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I thought about this and decided that being is equivalent to consciousness. For humans, consciousness is the primary predicate. So in this sense the universe did not exist before man.

Consciousness perceives reality, it does not create it.



I think when most people say "being", they refer to a consciousness or awareness on some level, yes. We wouldn't say a rock is being X, we would say a rock is X. But reality encompasses everything, whether that thing is conscious or not. So, to say reality equals consciousness, I find to be incorrect. Perhaps this unique perception of the universe did not exist before man, but the universe surely existed before man. What do you think we were born into, if not reality?