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From: sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode)
Newsgroups: sci.misc,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: The nature of reality.
Message-ID: <379@thirdi.UUCP>
Date: 30 Mar 88 06:43:41 GMT
References: <2868@gryphon.CTS.COM> <343@thirdi.UUCP> <732@actnyc.UUCP> <356@thirdi.UUCP> <741@actnyc.UUCP> <368@thirdi.UUCP> <751@actnyc.UUCP>
Reply-To: sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode)
Organization: Institute for Research in Metapsychology
Lines: 93
Keywords: reality credibility validity
Summary: My external reality may not be the same as yours.

In article <751@actnyc.UUCP> jsb@actnyc.UUCP (The Invisible Man) writes:
>In article <368@thirdi.UUCP> sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode) writes:

>)I would say when we say that someone else is out of touch
>)with reality, we do in fact disagree with that other person.

>I disagree with your "mapping" of reality but I don't think you are out of
>touch with reality.

If you were in substantial disagreement with a large part of my reality
mapping, for instance, if I thought that worldly events were influenced by
invisible men from the dark side of the moon, wouldn't you think I was out of
touch with reality?  At points this side of such an extreme, how far you think
I am out of touch with reality would, I submit, depend on the degree and scope
of our disagreement.  I bet you think I'm at least a *little* out of reality as
things stand.  Otherwise, why do you keep invoking that horrible Zen Master
with his big stick to knock reality into my head?

>)Sure: *anyone's* reality is perceived as being "out there", in that it is
>)perceived, conceived, and known to be outside the person.

>It looks like you are making a stronger statement here than the one you wish to
>avoid.  You say that the question of whether there is an external reality is
>"meaningless" regardless of how we perceive it to be, yet you don't hesitate to
>speculate on what goes on in the perceptions of others which we cannot directly
>perceive.

I obviously did not make myself clear.  Sorry.  What I said was that the
concept of a *valid* reality was meaningless; that the correct term was
"credible".  And it may indeed be meaningless to speak of a "valid" reality, as
though only one reality were valid.  But I did not mean to say that reality is
not experienced as external to a person.  Of course it is.  There is another
confusion in the word "external", which could mean "independent of any
particular viewpoint" or, simply, "outside".  I mean it in the latter sense.

I have my own views on what others perceive, based on what they have told me
and what I have observed in their behavior.  However, I do not claim any direct
access to their experience.  It *is* part of my reality that others experience
things in a certain way.  Others may disagree with this reality; my own views
lead me to the conclusion that, upon sober reflection and full undrstanding of
terms, they will not.  I could be wrong about this, but I don't think I am.

>And what meta-map can tell me how to choose between the ordinary and new map of
>reality?  As for myself, I kinda like the old "out-there" reality since it is
>more intuitive. What's more, I'm willing to bet that you act in the world as if
>there were an objective reality despite your claim of meaninglessness.

As I said, I also have an "out-there" reality.  But I don't expect that what
is "out there" for others will be just the same as what is "out there" for
me.  What others believe with certainty is what is real for them.  For some
(perhaps you), that is an external reality that exists independent of
individual viewpoints.  I respect that reality as one that exists for them.
It is just as real for them as my reality is for me.  However, it is not my
reality.

>)                                            ...  It has something to do with
>)having a viewpoint and having intention.  If a machine had a viewpoint and had
>)intention, the same way I have a viewpoint and have intention, I would say it's
>)intelligent (or, rather, conscious).  I don't happen to think a machine *could*
>)have these qualities, but if it did, it would be conscious.

>Does a chess playing program have the intention of winning?  Somehow I think
>your "requisites" for conciousness are harder to pin down than conciousness
>itself.

I don't think my requisites for consciousness are complex or hard to pin
down.  They are easily definable by ostension.  If you have an idea of what it
is to intend something and what it is to be aware, then you will know what I
mean.  In other words, you know when *you* intend something and when you are
aware of something.  Knowledge of these things is very direct and very
primitive for a conscious being.  If you *don't know what it is to intend and
to be aware, then I will begin to suspect you of being a very clever program
of some kind.

So, in a way I am being selectively skeptical.  What I chose to be least
skeptical about are things like:

1.  My own existence.
2.  As a center of consciousness and intention.
3.  The existence of an apparent world around me.
4.  This world being composed of facts, phenomena, and concepts.
5.  The specific experience of the world that I have, as an experience.

I am much more skeptical about things inferred from the above, such as
complex, unprovable neurological theories about where consciousness comes from
and reductionist assumptions about the physicality of everything.
-- 
"The map may not be the territory, but it's all we've got."

Sarge Gerbode
Institute for Research in Metapsychology
950 Guinda St.
Palo Alto, CA 94301
UUCP:  pyramid!thirdi!sarge