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Is Reality Just a Figment of Our Imagination?

“Everything we take for granted as reality is, in fact, an illusion of sorts. There may be an objective component to what we see, but much of that objectivity is limited. Further yet, a lot of it is clouded by our subjective judgments.”

[upliftconnect.com]

skado 9 May 23
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33 comments

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5

Wow... thats some research there. Sometimes i only see whats on front of me. Sometimes i can see right through it. Sometimes i never saw it coming. Sometimes i couldnt believe what i saw. Sometimes i saw it and it wasnt really there.
One thing i do see isThe beauty in people and i can say this .... i love all my beautiful friends on here.... all of you are beautiful to me.

5

Reality is an illusion caused primarily by lack of alcohol. ???

5

Your brain is just making this shit up! I think the McGurk effect demonstrate this very well.

JeffB Level 6 May 23, 2018
5

seems like the trickiest part is that our Consciousness is largely a figment of our imagination too.

4

Verificationism, also known as the verification idea or the verifiability criterion of meaning, is the philosophical doctrine that only statements that are empirically verifiable (i.e. verifiable through the senses) are cognitively meaningful, or else they are truths of logic.

Verificationism thus rejects as cognitively "meaningless" statements specific to entire fields such as metaphysics, spirituality, theology, ethics and aesthetics. Such statements may be meaningful in influencing emotions or behavior, but not in terms of truth value, information or factual content.

[en.wikipedia.org]

In other words, who the fuck cares?

3

How do you define reality? Who is qualified to do so, along with the math to back it up. Maybe these folks. This rings true on so many levels.

Klee Irwin is a pseudoscience proponent. [rationalwiki.org]

@MichaelBaribeau So Quantum Mechanics is "pseudoscience". I am no scientist but I have read any book I could find and understand about relativity, Quantum Whatever, Cosmology, Astrophysics etc. To keep it short I'll just say Emergence Theory enlightened me to the relevance of Schrodinger's Cat. After the 'Duel Slit" experiment it is the most referred to thing in every book on Quantum Whatever. Wikipedia is a "pseudoencyclopedia"

Quantum Mechanics is a science, attaching it to mysticism to say mysticism has scientific support is pseudoscience. "Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be both scientific and factual, but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; and absence of systematic practices when developing theories, and continued adherence long after they have been experimentally discredited. "

@MichaelBaribeau In the video the only thing attached to Quantum Whatever is geometry. You read something negative about Irwin and use that to inform your assumptions re this video., that's Bias of the confirmation sort. There is no mysticism on the video. If there was I would agree with you. .What claims are not verifiable? What practices are absent. Why not watch the video then pan it. . ..

"But here's the weird thing if a certain tetrahedron can be anyone of a few possible states in a given movement who or what chooses the state it should be in at any given moment. Well for such a choice to be made we need to scientifically, mathematically, and logically bring in a new element into physics and that element is consciousness." - What Is Reality 3:42 by Quantum Gravity Research

"The quantum mind or quantum consciousness group of hypotheses propose that classical mechanics cannot explain consciousness. It posits that quantum mechanical phenomena, such as quantum entanglement and superposition, may play an important part in the brain's function and could form the basis of an explanation of consciousness. Hypotheses have been proposed about ways for quantum effects to be involved in the process of consciousness, but even those who advocate them admit that the hypotheses remain unproven, and possibly unprovable. Some of the proponents propose experiments that could demonstrate quantum consciousness, but the experiments have not yet been possible to perform. Terms used in the theory of quantum mechanics can be misinterpreted by laymen in ways that are not valid but that sound mystical or religious, and therefore may seem to be related to consciousness. These misinterpretations of the terms are not justified in the theory of quantum mechanics. According to Sean Carroll, "No theory in the history of science has been more misused and abused by cranks and charlatans—and misunderstood by people struggling in good faith with difficult ideas—than quantum mechanics." Lawrence Krauss says, "No area of physics stimulates more nonsense in the public arena than quantum mechanics." Some proponents of pseudoscience use quantum mechanical terms in an effort to justify their statements, but this effort is misleading, and it is a false interpretation of the physical theory. Quantum mind theories of consciousness that are based on this kind of misinterpretations of terms are not valid by scientific methods or from empirical experiments."

[en.wikipedia.org]

Regarding the video their site refers visitors to their publications including such topics as spirals and the golden ratio, Fibonacci numbers and Phi aka sacred geometry.

Here's a great video about why the speed of light is what it is and is not arbitrary as What Is Reality video said...

3

Time is an illusion, lunch time, doubly so...

3

Maybe.

3

I imagine so! But so what? If that is what we perceive as reality, then it is our reality.

3

Maybe there are some ,yet to be discovered truths' that were staring us in the face all the time and we didnt know how to look- I have been watching a documentary about neanderthals who were 'with the benenfit of hindsight' and a lot of scientific/genetic hard work, actually far more capable than us in many areas

2

If it were, I think I'd have more money in my imagined reality. So, no. Reality is objective, we definitely don't live in the matrix. Now, maybe our perceptions of reality could be "imaginary" as our senses are known to be inaccurate in examining reality, but reality itself is by definition not imaginary.

2

Since we have mostly isolated ourselves totally from the natural world all of our experiences and perceptions are based in a human construct. We live in an illusory world of our own making.

2

I wonder if whoever came up with such idea would be ok if I kick him in the nuts... Will that be a figment of his imagination?

2

Yes. What we think we are sensing is largely influenced by our beliefs and the means in which we process information, which varies heavily from person to person because there is no single general brain and nervous system, there is just the individual type.

We can only increase the likelihood that our notions are correct, we cannot actually have anything near an absolutely certain conclusion on something, unless we use highly intricate processes for arriving at conclusions, which cannot suffer the dissonance that the human mind tends to go through.

That being said, reality is left to intelligent people with sound methods for proving existence, and the same kinds of methods of arriving at actual perceptions of what is going on.

2

No. Because there is consensus reality.

2

Reality is what we define it to be. If I see it red, I call it red; if someone else sees it orange, they also call it red. As long as we agree...

godef Level 7 May 23, 2018
2

Everything and all reality is created by/in the brain.

2

I found this article to be one of the most interesting things I've read in quiet a while.

We do create our own reality, the mind is a creative force and much about how it works is still unknown.

Also makes me think what a horribly damaged upbring trump and many members of the house and senate must have endured to be so cruel.

@Paragon69 lol

1

Reality is independent of qualia (the subjective or qualitative properties of experiences).

1

A splinter of the mind's eye...

1

The more quantum physicists learn, the more this is closer to being proven.

1

I think the everyday physical world perceived by our senses is illusory. It is symbolic though of a higher reality that we can not detect. Space, time, and matter are only parameters, useful by our minds in organizing data for survival.

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman theorizes “Conscious Realism”, a fascinating subject.

[cogsci.uci.edu]

If understand Donald Hoffman correctly, he is saying that we misperceive reality due to evolutionary pressures, but there is an underlying material reality for us to misperceive. This seems entirely distinct from theories that consciousness causes reality.
While his example of confused Australian beetles is entertaining, human mating behaviors are complex, and I don't comprehend that Hoffman's theory has much if any explanatory power for our lives.

@doug6352 I don’t pretend to understand Dr. Hoffman completely, but I think you are right. He says there is a true reality, and it’s not just a dream or whatever. It’s not that we misperceive so much as that things we perceive are only icons or symbols of the real thing. He thinks that rather than space, time, and matter, reality is made out of “conscious agents”.

It’s an idea that seems to resonate with me for some reason but I doubt it’s a complete and true picture. Nobody knows what reality is IMO.

@WilliamFleming I think I missed the other part of Hoffman's ideas, that consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality. He left that out of his TED talk, perhaps so it wouldn't get him banned like Rupert Sheldrake

. There's lots of interesting ideas out there.

@doug6352 Thanks for that link. I just watched it all. Also I previously read Sheldrake’s book on the same subject. I didn’t know he had been banned from TED though.

Did you read “Biocentrism”. I was taken with it but the follow-up book was disappointing.

@WilliamFleming Thanks for the info. I will request a copy of "Beyond Biocentrism" from my public library and give it a look.
Rupert Sheldrake is a genuine scientist who proposes and carries out experiments that no one else does; not just untestable theories, but real science. I wonder how much longer the world can ignore him; probably not more than another century or two. LOL Look how long they've ignore Dr Frederick Klenner.

@doug6352 You make some excellent points. The true spirit of science requires a mind open to new ideas. Debunking anything that goes against the science establishment—that is what pseudoscience is IMO. It’s just an opinion but I think Andrea Rossi is poised to change the world very soon, but when I say that aloud I get skewered.

I’ll check out Dr. Klenner.

@WilliamFleming To help you to verify Klenner's work google "Alan Smith flu" and audit the strange goings on in New Zealand in 2010.

1

No, our reality is not a figment of our imagination in the way you insinuate. Our reality is constructed through our interactions with our environment.
We develop cognitive schema which we used to interpret and analyze data from our interactions. We then build cognitive structures or patterns of meaning which inform and guide us.

1

The human mind is a lot less precise and a lot more sloppy than we generally like to think.

That doesn't mean it isn't "good enough" for many purposes.

Also nothing is 100% objective but that doesn't mean it's not objective enough. For example I can't objectively prove that you exist as a discrete person rather than a creation of my own mind, but by comparing my observations with others I can intersubjectively determine that it's most likely you are a discrete person (or for that matter, that I am). Also a lot of this mental masturbation doesn't matter for practical purposes. If I'm a physical body or a brain in a vat, the experience is the same.

1

Maybe our "Reality"is someones dream or nightmare? What really is reality? Perceptions? Feedback from actions done,like physical labor,building a brick wall,or wooden fence? Hasn't it be theorized we only use a small percentage of our Brain? Something less than 20%(Probably wrong).

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