1. b. Reality; actuality.

[ahdictionary.com]

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@skado Whose reality/actuality?

@KateOahu
Nobody owns reality. Reality owns us.

I think what you’re referring to is “Whose perception of reality.” And none of those are reality.

@KateOahu
Nobody has expressed it more comprehensively and usefully and succinctly than the wordmaster, Godolemicist:
“Objective truth corresponds to reality.
Subjective truth is beauty and beauty is truth.
Soteriological truth is the way.”

❤️❤️❤️

Wins the thread!

I'm not talking about our knowledge of it. I'm talking about truth itself. As in... objective truth.

@skado i "feel" as if an absolute reality must exist, yet striving for knowledge of it in a complete sense is futile and it cannot be pounded into truth without a great deal of wishful thinking.

@skado truth is a word so confused with meanings that everything is the way it is in any reality that can be described, imagined, unseen, immeasurable, or carried in a bucket that it don't mean much. a philosophical phootball?

@hankster
I haven’t made any claims about our complete knowledge of it ever being obtainable. Only that it, as you say, must exist. And it can be useful to us to learn some tiny bits of it.

@skado you certainly don't. i apologize if i put that into what you were asking. i think perhaps I'm simply frustrated with the notion we can gain much benefit from those bits you mention when there are some bigger uncomfortable hunks we all ignore, excuse, and even justify. its nothing new, but we are too absorbed by money, the truer religion of America, and consumerism. some days i feel humanity is gonna be a shorter lived species than it might otherwise be because of greed for $ and power. makes me wanna smack somebody. not that it would help but it stands a better chance than turning the other cheek and chalking it up to human nature. some questions i wish didn't come to mind like, how many hungry children could be fed, or uneducated, educated with all the $ we spend on pro sports for example. just gets to me. humans like to believe they're smart. fools, all of us.

@hankster
Yep, the whole enterprise looks doomed - no question. Seems a shame.

The only choice we may have is how much suffering we, individually, choose to create for ourselves and others while we are here.

@skado I'm not sure we get to select a suffering setting but I'm picking up your color. one of the more impressive features of humanity is the speed of change. maybe our only hope is evolution. of course it may be a false hope, but better than nothing.

@skado sorry if i paint too dark. i don't mean to spread the suffering. not in your general direction anyhow.

@hankster
No apologies necessary. You’re not wrong.
No suffering suffered.

@FvckY0u

I think you're talking about knowledge of facts - not facts themselves. There was probably a time when every human alive thought the earth was flat, but the truth was different from anything anyone knew.

@FvckY0u
Yes, you understand me correctly. And yes, determining what’s fact, and what’s not, is a problem, and one that we might never completely solve, but I don’t think reality presents different appearances to different people. I think reality presents the same appearance to everyone, and every person perceives it through their own unique lenses, depending on their unique genetic inheritance, their own unique life experiences, and their own unique knowledge set.

If this were not the case, science would never work at all.

I understand the linguistic construction “different people live in different realities” and that’s fine for casual communication - we all understand what is meant - but it’s metaphorical language. Not to be taken literally.
At least that’s the reality I live in!

@FvckY0u Credible evidence, not something written in a book of fiction. Belief without evidence is called faith. It's nonsense.

@FvckY0u You're arguing theism on an atheist website. Fairy tales are for children. We don't believe in god because there is no Credible Evidence! Passages from the buybull are not credible evidence, except for by fools of faith.

Is this statement true?:

“Truth does not exist.”

Yes, it seems to be true. (It seems to be true that all truth is only the subjective truth of the beings that classify what they encounter to be true. Transcendental Truth does not exist as nothing is truly transcendental.

@racocn8
Are you saying there is no objective reality?

Objective reality may exist, but we can only perceive miniscule slices of it and those slices are extremely processed to be used. Objective reality is likely to be radically different from what we perceive.

"The Dragon. A beast of such power that if you were to see it whole and all complete in a single glance, it would burn you to cinders." Merlin/Excalibur

@racocn8 did you quote a fictional character?

@Tejas Yes Although sometimes tedious, I like the Excalibur movie, especially the Merlin character.

A reputable dictionary should suffice.

“Have” as in “know”?

I think we can know some truth, but not all.

@skado Yes I would agree with that. But then is " I think. " any guide to truth ?
But I deliberately chose "have" as something weaker than "know", because you may have truth without knowing that you have truth.

@Fernapple

Same reason I chose "I think". Possibly nothing we feel we know is known perfectly or completely, but neither is it completely unknown. So I think we can know to a degree.

@skado Our minds and cultures, can only ever exist in a world of partial and approximate truth, both because our minds and cultures are imperfect and limited, and also because some truth may not be ultimately discoverable.

Which is why, there are two foolish extremes to avoid. The absolutism of the fundamentalist. "There is perfect truth, and I/we have been gifted it." And the immaturity and avoidance of personal responsibility of relativism. "I can not have perfect final truth, therefore there is no truth, or reason to seek it."

Yet. Because we can not have perfect final truth, and falsely believing we have it is harmful, does not mean that there is no perfect final truth, nor any reason why there are no benefits in seeking it. We will always live with partial and approximate truth, but we can, almost certainly, achieve larger parts, and closer approximations. Not all partial and approximate truths are proved equal.

(Actually I suspect, though without certainty, that we may have just a few perfect truths, about very basic things, which would still be true in another universe. Such as the laws of maths and logic. But I hold that view with only slight conviction. )

Which is why I think that the philosophy of science, is the best middle ground that we have between those two extremes, and the best guide to how thinking should be done. With its acceptance that any theory or belief may need adjustment, or even overturning, its belief that better approximations to truth can only be achieved by greater rigor more evidence and harder work, that we need to bow to maths and logic, and most of all, that we will still have something imperfect. ( It suits my faith in hard work.)

Science therefore, is not merely a technology, nor even an alternate method of thinking, but the best guide that we have to how to think well, and do good thinking. And why it is important however, to be sceptical about all but the most rigorous and hard of science, and especially of drawing conclusions based on science, which go beyond the immediate experimental proofs and hard evidence.

@Fernapple
I couldn’t have said it better myself. I agree wholeheartedly with every word of this.

The challenge comes when, in this state of partial knowledge and rightful skepticism, we find ourselves in a situation in which a consequential decision must be made, and adequate knowledge to do so isn’t yet within the grasp of long-form science, or perhaps not currently within our personal knowledge base. Having a reason-based, science-informed, process-oriented protocol to follow is more useful than succumbing to chaos.

@skado Agreed. I have never accepted that science could answer all questions, and have therefore always respected and seen the need for philosophy. Or moderate reasoning beyond science, as you could also call it, whenever it bowed to science, as it should, as science does to maths and epistemology. Science in the end being only, what was once called, "natural philosophy" or philosophy refined with added tools for safety, to be used for extra verification, in areas where greater safety measures can be applied.

I have never however encountered a question which required more than those two, and which was not either trivial, or obviously unanswerable, the real failing of religions and cultural tradition, is that they often pretend to have answers to such questions. Thereby damaging truth, when the honest truthful answer is "unknown" or "unknowable" and also thereby, helping to promote human narcissism and hubris.

@Fernapple
Humans are a troublesome lot, aren’t they.
I, for example, have never felt a need to dance, and yet so many continue to do it, as if it is a necessary part of being human. I am only left to make my best philosophical guess as to why they do it.
Live long and prosper.