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[LoneTophat]

Reality. What exists. Imaginary. What does not.
I disagree with such black and white terms as my perception of reality is exactly that.
My perception. Do you disagree? I have questioned reality since a very young age.
How do I know my senses are defining accurately the physical or 'real' world around me?
Couldn't I simply be locked up in a padded white room drooling on myself? Imagining all of this?
Or do my senses tell the 'truth' as it were?
What occurs within our mind doesn't exist. But doesn't everything occur within our mind?
Isn't thought how we perceive the world and make decisions?
Therefor imaginary worlds that are created and then transferred to say books or other media outputs, are also part of reality?
Aren't they? I suspect they exist within the electromagnetic pulses found within the brain when we think.
But that would mean fiction is always nonfiction. A paradox. D:
If we can consider quantum mechanics real, this means abstractual concepts are part of reality.
Couldn't their be multiple universes all interconnected through the time space continuum? So perhaps we are but germs under the microscope of a far larger being?
Or maybe all of these different realities (multiple realities, with no untruths?) are parallel and never meet.
But that doesn't niche with our current understanding of the time space continuum. Then again we have an ever limited comprehension of such things.
Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's mind exists for sure. This proves true considering everything is relayed per our senses that we perceive.
Therefor, are we all operating in different universes as it were within our own minds?
Do we simply bounce off others minds and interpret them the only way our primitive ape-like brain can?
So infact time and space are simply creations of our own?
What is and what will be, what was and what has been, are simply all part of the same concept formulated within our mind so we can keep track of things?

These are all purely thoughts and questions formulated so I can hear your opinions and viewpoints.
I love to learn how other's see things. <- This statement is probably untrue due to the fact that you are simply thoughts within my mind coalescing.

[Patchouli]

I am a simple dude that just sort of goes along with everything.

[Fniff]

I used to get really terrified at the size of the universe when I was a kid. Now I simply don't give a crap. It's good.

[Knight of Fools]

You're experiencing what is called Philosophical Skepticism, which questions everything we sense/think/anything. You may find comfort in Immanuel Kant's philosophy of reality, which acknowledges that stuff exists on some level, but is warped by our perceptions.

Trust me, you're not going through anything that hasn't been gone through before. I recommend reading up on Pragmatism, too, so that you have a wide range of modern philosophical metaphysics knowledge. Your mind may latch onto something it finds more comfort in.


I just took a philosophy class where I studied most of this stuff. It also helped me reach my own conclusions about the nature or reality. If you can, I'd recommend taking a class yourself, since you'll have to think about these things and learn more about different ideas that have been discussed before.

My philosophy is that everything exists. If there is a reality above this one, like in the Matrix, this would still be reality, but the other one would be a "higher" reality. Irregardless, because of our imperfect senses and judgement, we cannot have a perfect idea of reality, but as science improves and we, theoretically, reach a point of perfect judgement, we'll slowly get a better view of our reality.

Philosophy is fun!

Also, 42.

[LoneTophat]

You're experiencing what is called Philosophical Skepticism, which questions everything we sense/think/anything. You may find comfort in Immanuel Kant's philosophy of reality, which acknowledges that stuff exists on some level, but is warped by our perceptions.

Trust me, you're not going through anything that hasn't been gone through before. I recommend reading up on Pragmatism, too, so that you have a wide range of modern philosophical metaphysics knowledge. Your mind may latch onto something it finds more comfort in.


I just took a philosophy class where I studied most of this stuff. It also helped me reach my own conclusions about the nature or reality. If you can, I'd recommend taking a class yourself, since you'll have to think about these things and learn more about different ideas that have been discussed before.

My philosophy is that everything exists. If there is a reality above this one, like in the Matrix, this would still be reality, but the other one would be a "higher" reality. Irregardless, because of our imperfect senses and judgement, we cannot have a perfect idea of reality, but as science improves and we, theoretically, reach a point of perfect judgement, we'll slowly get a better view of our reality.

Philosophy is fun!

Also, 42.

I'm going to be mulling over these questions as I attend my Civics class tonight. Four hours. Yay...
I actually love politics. But metaphysics is so damn intriguing.
The reason why is because I'm a knowledge seeker. I'm also a problem solver. And if I don't know the answer, that is a problem.

[Frumple]

The reason why is because I'm a knowledge seeker. I'm also a problem solver. And if I don't know the answer, that is a problem.

Ahahaheeheeheeeeeee.

Yeah, you're going to have serious problems, primarily because you used "the" in "the answer." I'll go ahead and just give you a heads up that there isn't a "the answer" when it comes to metaphysics. About the best you can do is coherence (/deductive strength) based on a set of axioms which are inherently arbitrary (and thus unjustifiable, though justifiability isn't the end-all of consideration... just one of the strongest and largest aspects). All things start with an axiom or axioms. An answer, in other words.

My best advice to you is to the find whichever answer best suits your needs and goals and then internalize that. Observe and investigate other answers for ones which better suit your needs, but realize that no matter your position, it can eventually be broken down to an unjustifiable axiom which you can only assert, not defend. If you're looking for something more solid than that, you're SoL

Metaphysics is absolutely delightful, though. The conceptual systems that have arose and continue to arise from it are simply beautiful.

[LoneTophat]

The reason why is because I'm a knowledge seeker. I'm also a problem solver. And if I don't know the answer, that is a problem.

Ahahaheeheeheeeeeee.

Yeah, you're going to have serious problems, primarily because you used "the" in "the answer." I'll go ahead and just give you a heads up that there isn't a "the answer" when it comes to metaphysics. About the best you can do is coherence (/deductive strength) based on a set of axioms which are inherently arbitrary (and thus unjustifiable, though justifiability isn't the end-all of consideration... just one of the strongest and largest aspects). All things start with an axiom or axioms. An answer, in other words.

My best advice to you is to the find whichever answer best suits your needs and goals and then internalize that. Observe and investigate other answers for ones which better suit your needs, but realize that no matter your position, it can eventually be broken down to an unjustifiable axiom which you can only assert, not defend. If you're looking for something more solid than that, you're SoL

Metaphysics is absolutely delightful, though. The conceptual systems that have arose and continue to arise from it are simply beautiful.

Well, luckily I'm an abstract thinker. Usually it's a bloody curse.

[Loud Whispers]

Meta detected. Love it.

Though I do adore the idea that I am in fact the figmental image of the ideal person conjured up by an insane madman, thinking about being insane in an endless domino effect of madmen thinking they're mad.

[cerapa]

There are no answers to be found in questioning the base nature of the world. Only possibilities. And its a helluva lot of possibilities, from the matrix, to a completely independant world. It could also all be the dream of a sentient goat. For practical reasons, its best to assume that our reality is real and we arent just gonna wake up in a holodeck when we die.

I do have a weird experience with the world being imaginary: I like to think about what I would do in situations and stuff, and I end them by telling my imaginary self "the truth" and carrying on with what I learned from the little thought experiment, but my imaginary self is generally at least half-aware that the world isnt real at all times, and I dont get detached from it. But a couple of times I have become completely detached from my actual self and "the truth". Its sorta a weird state of muddled perceptions and half-thoughts that are actually going into building the world around me, but I am not allowed to analyze them. When the thought experiment ends, I end up having memories of both creating the imaginary situation, and of being in it and unaware that its isnt real. Basically weird as all hell, but exceedingly rare too.

[Lord Dullard]

Yeah, I used to think about stuff like this. It gets even MORE confusing when you learn a little bit about, say, quantum physics. If we acknowledge that reality might really be just a big probability wave, and the ONLY time that the probability wave collapses into a reality is when it's observed (ex. the double slit experiment, Schroedinger's cat), it follows that reality is actually created by our mutual observation of it.

You can also get into fun stuff like P-zombies...

At the end of the day, trying to figure out questions like these will only ever raise more and more questions, which is why it's so maddening.

[ed boy]

I would reject the concept of there being a reality, or that one can say that something exists.

There are systems, and you can say that elements do or do not exist within systems, but there is no universal system. Some elements and rules may exist in multiple systems, and some systems may be subsets of other systems, and some systems can be combined, but not all.

Similarly, I reject the concept of 'truth'. It is possible to say that a statement is true in a certain system, and similarly possible to say that a statement is false in another system. You cannot objectively compare systems and say 'this system is truthful where this system is not', because you would be comparing them in another system, and it would be just as possible to compare them a different way and get the opposite conclusion. The best you can say is whether or not a system is internally consistent.

[alway]

, and the ONLY time that the probability wave collapses into a reality is when it's observed (ex. the double slit experiment, Schroedinger's cat), it follows that reality is actually created by our mutual observation of it.

That isn't how it works. It collapses whenever it interacts with something, and observation actually requires something to interact with it. A particle, detector, ect, actually physically interacts with the object. That is what causes the waveform to collapse. It collapses when it is "observed" because observation is, by necessity, an action in which it is made to interact with something else; be it photon or detector. Likewise, if you turn up the lights in the double slit experiment, the self-interference disappears back into a non-waveform pattern. This is because the photons from the lights in the room interfere with those used in the experiment, causing their wave forms to collapse. "Observation" itself has nothing to do with it; only the interference with the detectors is what causes it. To learn more about it, I highly suggest watching some of the Feynman Lectures you can find for free online. He describes it better than I could ever hope to.

Oh, and as for Schrodinger's Cat, that's a misnomer. It was a thought experiment posed by Schrodinger to show that quantum mechanics was silly, and therefore it was wrong. However, the thought experiment is flawed in that the cat is either alive or dead at all times. The detector in the setup meant that the waveform would interact with it and thus collapse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

However, one of the main scientists associated with the Copenhagen interpretation, Niels Bohr, never had in mind the observer-induced collapse of the wave function, so that Schrödinger's Cat did not pose any riddle to him. The cat would be either dead or alive long before the box is opened by a conscious observer.[6] Analysis of an actual experiment found that measurement alone (for example by a Geiger counter) is sufficient to collapse a quantum wave function before there is any conscious observation of the measurement.[7] The view that the "observation" is taken when a particle from the nucleus hits the detector can be developed into objective collapse theories. In contrast, the many worlds approach denies that collapse ever occurs.

The experiment referenced above: http://web.archive.org/web/20061130173850/http://www.ensmp.fr/aflb/AFLB-311/aflb311m387.pdf

[Lord Dullard]

, and the ONLY time that the probability wave collapses into a reality is when it's observed (ex. the double slit experiment, Schroedinger's cat), it follows that reality is actually created by our mutual observation of it.

That isn't how it works. It collapses whenever it interacts with something, and observation actually requires something to interact with it. A particle, detector, ect, actually physically interacts with the object. That is what causes the waveform to collapse. It collapses when it is "observed" because observation is, by necessity, an action in which it is made to interact with something else; be it photon or detector. Likewise, if you turn up the lights in the double slit experiment, the self-interference disappears back into a non-waveform pattern. This is because the photons from the lights in the room interfere with those used in the experiment, causing their wave forms to collapse. "Observation" itself has nothing to do with it; only the interference with the detectors is what causes it. To learn more about it, I highly suggest watching some of the Feynman Lectures you can find for free online. He describes it better than I could ever hope to.

Interesting, alway. Thanks for that!

I already knew about the cat originally being kind of a snarky counter-argument to quantum theory.

[Julius Clonkus]

I have come to accept that we're just not meant to know how what we consider reality works and thus, tautologies are propably best to explain it.

Simply because I do not believe that we will ever be able to say anything but "Reality is reality" with absolute certainty. I'd say it's even more exciting that way and it would be extremely boring to know the truth in any form other than 42.
Apart from that, it allows me to accept multiple possible mutally exclusive truths at once, at least in regards to how what we consider reality works.

I've even considered the chance that what we consider reality is just really complex theater. And we all are sock puppets. Ridiculously detailed sock puppets.

TL;DR: I consider myself to be a theatergoer. I don't really care all that much how what we consider reality works, as long as the story is decent and the special effects aren't awful.

*we = Used to simplify sentence construction and to shorten them. Addressing "possibly imaginary non-existant fragments of my possibly existing subconsciousness" is just too long for a sentence.