In class today, I asked about how we were going to define 'fact'. The ensuing discussion/explanation starting me thinking, what is reality?
How do we know what is real if both history and memory are constructs? Every memory and each piece of history changes a little everytime we look at it, examine it. While pursuing this train of thought, I was reminded of something I have a memory of a friend telling me, or rather, asking me. What if what we think is reality, is all a dream? What if none of it is real? How do we know? I believe some people suffer from existential crises upon contemplating these question. This leads me to believe that I am out of the ordinary in being unbothered by the question of reality. (a.k.a. I am weird.)
Mr. O'Conner, if I understood him correctly, said that fact is what is strongly corroborated and/or agreed upon as fact by the majority of people. I believe that a similar definition can be used for reality. However, if that argument/definition does not work, I return to my standby explanation to myself whenever I wonder baout reality. "What does it matter? If everything is perception, then that is my reality, per definition and for the sake of my sanity"
My question: how do you define reality?
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ReplyDelete/Yet another edit because I disagree with myself. Sorry about this :O tough questions.
ReplyDeleteI think reality is a more individual (either individual groups or individual people, depending on the scale) perception sort of thing. For example, I got in an argument with my sister last night, and when I actually thought about the argument and how it happened, I realized we were both angry at each other for doing the same exact things to each other. Neither of us wanted to think we were the same as the other person, because something about our method of communication totally clashed (tone, specifically), and we were both arguing for our own self-interest, thinking the other was antagonizing us. But one of the things we accused each other of was trying to be a jerk and moralize the other person to death. Really, that was the nature of our argument to begin with on both sides, we were both defending some sort of principle, so it’s surprising we both denied that intention within ourselves.
On a larger scale, a similar thing could apply to something like a war, I guess, because there’s a certain truth a group would have to tell itself about itself in relation to its enemy’s offense. It’s all about perspective.
I do not think facts and reality are similar, although “truths” and reality I do believe are similar (whether truths are actually factual or not). There’s a difference between a fact like “George Washington was the first president” and an interpretation like “Mr. Bolos probably is learning greek because we found a greek book in this tiny box that’s supposed to describe his whole life.” Because of this, I think reality and fact are very different. Facts and truths can both be strongly corroborated by evidence, but truths are interpretations, not just building blocks for interpretations like facts are.
What if reality of history is all a dream because history’s a reconstruction? I think we have some things that are facts that we basically have pinned down as being real. And we have physical copies of interpretations of those facts. Although memory may be changing and reconstructed with every recall, history doesn’t necessarily do that always. I could go back to the same book and look at the same page many times. However, it is reconstructed with every new opinion written because we have to look at our evidence and conclude what could make sense, rather than what definitely happened. I guess you could say in some ways it could be dreamlike, because there are countless amounts of viewpoints on something. However, in order for anything to make sense you need to have a method of making judgments based on facts, and although our perceptions of an event may be totally different, we still will probably have some backbone of our viewpoints in common.
In response to the above comment, I would like to clarify my opinion. I agree with all but one thing written above, actually. But what I ment by;reality just being a 'dream' was every perception, every sensory input, being a construct of our minds, that nothing around us fits our usual definition of 'real'.
ReplyDeleteMy disagreement is on the definition of fact which, despite our discussion in class, I still have failed to pinpoint in my own mind. However, it is true that most peoples' realities and interpretations of the world around them will be based off the same basic backbone.
Ah, I see what you mean by dream more clearly now, although I have to admit I was avoiding answering it in such a way because of the way it's phrased. Is there any way to answer that what if question? There are people who would agree with the idea of our perceptions being completely untrustworthy and incapable of bringing us truth, but the question is sort of infinite and without answer, because you can keep asking what if, and because it's a what if you could argue it has no basis in reality to begin with, or it is without use. All I can really say is that people are limited. If your goal is to enter the more everyday human plane of reality and live your life making judgments based off of the senses we have, you sort of just accept the fact that absolute truth is unattainable, and is sort of unimportant because we base our existence off of stories instead. From there you could argue that only those who ignore their senses and only use logic know the truth, and this may be exercised by simply using your brain to reach conclusions or by adopting a religious view that gives you instruction on how to see the truth (like Hinduism and its goal of seeing everything in a non-judgmental way because everything is the believed to be same in essence). The first way makes life unlivable, and the second way could be seen as basing thoughts on something not necessarily true because there is no way of proving such beliefs true or false.
ReplyDeleteIn conclusion, I just think the question isn't useful. While I think it's useful to reflect on humans' capacity to understand the world around them, the concept of everything being a dream constructed by the mind is so abstract that, even if it were true, would have no bearing on the fact that history moves. It's too paradoxical and abstract to even process fully. I don't know if what I said made sense.
Woah, sorry about the textwall there. Needs more paragraph breaks.
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