Is truth objective.......

[Vraith]

A burning log releases heat.
This is a fact. It has been a fact forever. [[it was a fact-in-potential even before the state of the universe allowed the existence burning logs]]
It was understood as a fact by very early humans/near humans.
We have gone through numerous veils of illusion on why and how
it happens.
But the fact remains: burning logs release heat.

I'll repeat as well, that subjectivity and the attendant has some limitations we have to work with/around.
[[one of those ways is multiple people checking, another is multiple kinds of checks/tests]].
Nevertheless, if it weren't for our senses, model-making, subjective distance we would have no knowledge at all.
The "thing itself" is far less important and valuable and limiting than assumed.
The only way to "know" a rock-in-itself/rockness is to be a rock. But rocks are incapable of knowing anything whatsoever.
How much use is rock-in-itself perspective?
Rock-on-rock interactions matter more---as do rock-on-skull ones.
And, from "in there" a rock will always be merely a rock. From out here, that rock-we-can-know-not may be the keystone in the entry to some glorious feat of art/architecture.

[Zarathustra]

No one is saying the process of transcending subjectivity to the objective world is perfect. We all recognize that the senses can be fooled. But we'd never know this if we didn't have a way to verify our senses (which was what Wosbald was saying), some access to truth that shows where our perceptions are false. Similarly, if facts are all subjective, then there's no way to determine whether our statements of matters of fact are true or false. And hence, all our statements would be meaningless or at least ambiguous.

The term "fact" is simply not used in this way in the history of philosophy, as far as I know. Our statements of facts can be wrong, based on the limits of our senses and reason, but the facts themselves are separate from this. We assume that there is some way that the world is, and subsections of this situation are the facts, which we then go about trying to discover, correctly or incorrectly.

[wayfriend]

As regards the Herbert quote, it is meant to paradoxical — a formally incomprehensible statement meant to provoke wisdom.

I don't think it's a paradox. I think Herbert is saying: when we think we understand something, we become a bit close-minded about it, and everything we then perceive is skewed, by observational bias and by pride (the reluctance to admit that we don't understand after all). This is a barrier to learning something new about the thing we think we understand.

Herbert also said, "Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic." He knows all about "facts".

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

As regards the Herbert quote, it is meant to paradoxical — a formally incomprehensible statement meant to provoke wisdom.

I don't think it's a paradox. I think Herbert is saying: when we think we understand something, we become a bit close-minded about it, and everything we then perceive is skewed, by observational bias and by pride (the reluctance to admit that we don't understand after all). This is a barrier to learning something new about the thing we think we understand.

Herbert also said, "Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic." He knows all about "facts".

I'm feelin' ya.

We know that "We all possess knowledge." But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

No one is saying the process of transcending subjectivity to the objective world is perfect. We all recognize that the senses can be fooled. But we'd never know this if we didn't have a way to verify our senses (which was what Wosbald was saying), some access to truth that shows where our perceptions are false. Similarly, if facts are all subjective, then there's no way to determine whether our statements of matters of fact are true or false. And hence, all our statements would be meaningless or at least ambiguous.

The term "fact" is simply not used in this way in the history of philosophy, as far as I know. Our statements of facts can be wrong, based on the limits of our senses and reason, but the facts themselves are separate from this. We assume that there is some way that the world is, and subsections of this situation are the facts, which we then go about trying to discover, correctly or incorrectly.

There's much win here.

I think it would be accurate to say that my position cross-references your view that we do know the thing-in-itself (in participating in the essence of the Object) with WF's (seeming) point that the Object always exceeds our capacity to exhaust it of its mystery.

[wayfriend]

Are facts true then - yes, surely they must be.

If you define a fact to be a bit of reality itself, there's no point in this question, is there?

If you're asking this question, I am hearing a premise that "fact" and "truth" don't have the same definition.

Sometimes we discover that facts are wrong. We chalk it up to an error, or an improvement in understanding. It's not a fact any more.

But sometimes facts are wrong, or just distorted, because we're mortal and finite and physical, peering at reality through lenses we cannot discard or change. So long as the fact remains consistent with our perceptions, we will never discover that it is different than the underlying reality.

Sometimes, though, we find a new way to view the universe. When this happens, we may find that facts remain consistent with this new view. And sometimes we discover an inconsistency. Then the fact becomes suspicious. The new view is the key to everything.

[Fist and Faith]

I've yet to hear agreement on the definition of "truth".

Some facts we know. Some facts we don't know. Some facts we think we know we do not. Objects of different mass fall to the earth at the same rate. That's a fact. (Apparently, although gravity pulls the more massive object more strongly, it is more difficult to get the more massive object moving faster. So it balances out with the less massive object.) Time was, we thought it was a fact that the more massive object fell faster. Before we had any concept of gravity - indeed, before there were people to think about gravity, or anything else - it was a fact that objects fall at the same rate.

When we are wrong about a fact, our efforts to build on that knowledge fail. If we were wrong about various facts, we would not be communicating over the internet with the various gadgets we use. We know we are right about these facts.

[Zarathustra]

I think we all pretty much agree here, except that WF insists on using the word "fact" to mean "a statement of a fact." Statements of facts can be wrong--i.e. not in line with the actual facts--but facts themselves can't be wrong. We don't ever discover that the facts were wrong. We discover that we were wrong about the facts. That's not the same thing.

I agree wholeheartedly with Wosbald's acceptance of paradox and rejection of contradiction. I think that's an important distinction that reveals deep wisdom (if we were to agree on the nature of the paradox ... I suspect we wouldn't). I believe that making peace with paradox is one of the most important ways to connect with reality, because our connection is paradoxical.

Now, I'd like to perform a thought experiment to drive home a few points about subjectivity and truth:

Imagine putting your hands in a box to feel an object inside. Let's say the box has holes in the sides with gloves attached (like labs that deal with hazardous material), so that the object inside is impossible to see, and feeling it is indirect through the gloves. Your task is to identify the object. Your quandary is that your perceptions of this object are limited and incomplete (similar to the problem of subjectivity).

Could we do it? While we can all imagine being fooled--e.g. thinking that a plastic apple is a real apple, or simply being unable to identify the object--we could also imagine scenarios where it would be no problem to identify the hidden object. For instance, an Xbox controller. Anyone who has ever gotten familiar with the feel and operation of one would know instantly that this is what is in their hands. The limits of our perception wouldn't fundamentally prevent us from knowing a fact, knowing the reality of the situation. Knowing that it's an Xbox controller wouldn't be a symbol (as was the claim), it would be what's actually in the box. Holding the controller in our hands, we could use it to play a game (even in the box), interacting with other objects in the world (e.g. a TV) in an intelligent, consistent way ... right down to the photons emitted from the screen. All this without ever seeing or actually touching the object! Given the level of interaction possible here, it would be extremely difficult to fake with a phony controller.

I would argue that this is exactly like our quandary in transcending our subjectivity to the real world.

One could object that the success in this case isn't transferrable to success in the problem of transcending subjectivity, because the similarities here are merely analogous, not literal. Practical limits on perceptions (e.g. a box) aren't the same as ontological/existential limits on perceptions (e.g. perceptions are always subjective). In one case, the issue is an obstruction, while in the other case it's the nature of perception itself.

But that distinction would be misleading and simplistic, because if perceptions are fundamentally subjective and never reach reality (i.e. the "thing-in-itself"), then the task of the box necessarily involves these problems, too--problems which we apparently overcome. In fact, the ontological problems of perception amount to the same practical quandaries of the box: every object we perceive is always incomplete, limited, and in a fundamental sense inadequate. We can't see all sides of an object at once, no matter how clear our view is, because of our singular perspective as a perceiving subject. We can't see every wavelength of light bouncing off of it, nor all its features down to the atomic level. Every whole object is "inferred" from a series of experiences of it, concatenations of multiple views. Thus, the object-as-known might seem more like an idea than an immediate perception. The object at hand is always necessarily "larger" or more than our immediate experience of it.

But this doesn't mean that we do not or cannot reach the thing-in-itself, its very essence. It's a mistake to think that immediate perception is both necessary and sufficient (thus, fallibility of senses isn't entirely damning). Our connection with things-in-themselves is in our ability to transcend immediate perception with reason, or whatever you want to call the ordering function that links together all of these experiences in the understanding. For instance, when we use a hammer, we're using more than the tactile feel of its grip and the momentum of its weight as felt by the arm. We're using more than the one side of it that we can see (at a time). We're using the whole object, in its unity as an object, which makes it useful as a hammer. This includes the molecular bonds that hold it all together, all the scales and properties we don't directly perceive. Just because our experience of it is limited doesn't stop us from correctly identifying it as a hammer and using it appropriately in situations that require hammers ... in other words, in the objective world. You never need to nail anything down in your subjective thoughts.

So as with the controller example, interaction with the world, being-in-the-world, is connection with reality. Perhaps 'thing-in-itself' isn't accurate, but that's not because we don't reach them, but instead because once we reach them they are no longer in-themselves, but form a relationship with us. That relationship is real. That's transcendence.

I agree that there will always be levels of mystery involved in every object, but I disagree that this necessary mystery forms an insurmountable barrier. You don't really need to know objects in their full actuality to know them in reality. Imperfect/incomplete connections can be sufficient. The box quandary is not merely an analogy to our situation, not merely figurative, but literally the same quandary. We are in a relationship with reality in exactly the same way, so that the "thing-in-itself" is always hidden, and yet not. That's the paradox: our mind can connect with the hidden side of reality, crossing over.

[Fist and Faith]

I think too much is made of the thing-in-itself idea. Just because we cannot experience anything in totality doesn't mean we aren't experiencing it accurately. A blue plastic back is blue. That is, it reflects a certain frequency within a certain range of the electromagnetic spectrum. And it is plastic. That is, it's molecules are of a certain type, and they are arranged in a certain way. None of that is inaccurate just because I can't "be the ball". Nothing can be anything else. And yet, the universe goes 'round and 'round.

[wayfriend]

Just because we cannot experience anything in totality doesn't mean we aren't experiencing it accurately.

I agree. We experience things accurately. Our senses were built to be useful.

But do we experience all things accurately? If we experience them consistently inaccurately, would we notice the inaccuracy?

What we experience is different than what actually is, because we render attributes of reality into our own terms.

For example. we don't see light vibrating, count the oscillations per second, and conclude it is blue. Rather, we experience blueness. On the flip-side, this blueness exists only in our mind - in reality there is only light, oscillating.

So reality has vibrating EM waves. In our mind is "blueness". We say it is a fact that it is blue, but blue is only in our mind.

Certainly we experience blue consistently with certain frequencies of oscillation. Because it is consistent, we consider our perception of blue to be sound. We can then infer a second fact, that the light is oscillating at a certain frequency.

Perhaps now you're happy that you've made a fact about reality. However, the same process we did for blue we now have to repeat for what is light, what is oscillation, what is frequency. All of these are equally in our mind. All of these are equally not exactly reality yet. It's turtles all the way down.

Should you go down that path, you have to note that every step you take, you make an inference, based on the assumption that what you sense and what is real correspond perfectly. An inference which is based solely on consistency of personal experience. It's trust. Well founded trust, but trust nonetheless.

So how, then, can you claim that "the ball is blue" is reality? "blue" and "ball" are only models in our mind. The relationship between them is a relationship between the models. We trust that if the models correspond to something real, the relationship corresponds to something that is real as well. But it's not guaranteed. We just trust.

It is the singular greatest aspect of the human cognition that it is able to construct useful information from incomplete clues. It sees patterns and then finds order in them, from what is essentially a void filled with chaos. Reality is fluctuating energy levels spread through space - in this we spot a wave, and then we find periodicity, and then we see blue. It's incredible.

But the cost is that on a day to day basis we deal in inferences and trusted correspondences, not reality.

(If you haven't read it, Destination: Void is an incredible read.)

[Fist and Faith]

Because exactly what I need is another book on my stack!!!

I understand what you're saying, but I have a different outlook. (We see the same facts, but have different truths.) I don't see it as cost; I see it as gain. And I point to our accomplishments, greater than those of all other things we're aware of, things that don't deal in inferences and trusted correspondences. If I see a slat fence, and there is a ball on the other side of it, I can only see slices of the ball through the gaps between the slats. But, because of my mind's ability to recognize patterns, I know it's a ball. It's a fact. It's reality. The ball is there.

How often am I wrong? How often does my mind impose a pattern and identify something which it turns out is not actually there? Sure, it happens. But it would be worse if my mind did not recognize patterns, and did not tell me a ball is behind the fence. I would go through life never being able to find a ball that was not right in front of me. I would have fewer facts.

And I say it is a fact that the ball is blue. The ball reflects frequencies of the EM spectrum that my mind interprets as blue. That's fact, from beginning to end. There is something about the blue ball that makes it different from all the red balls around it. Something that I can perceive; something various other species cannot. Because, through interpretation, my mind shows me more facts. This type of fact requires both the perceived and the perceiver, but that does not make it less of a fact.

I do know what you mean, though. I just look at the whole thing as a two-part system. The perceiver is as much, as legitimate, a part of things as the perceived. In a very real sense, facts only exist, and they are certainly only known, because of the perceiver. And we have a great ability to find facts that are not handed to us on a platter.

[Zarathustra]

But the cost is that on a day to day basis we deal in inferences and trusted correspondences, not reality.

That's like saying that on a day to day basis, as we look out our cars' windshields, we deal in windshields, and not what is outside them. While it's true that our knowledge of the world is mediated through the senses and filtered through interpretations, I think it's incorrect to say that day to day we're dealing with our inferences and trusted correspondences, rather than reality. Most people hardly ever deal with their inferences, much less on a day to day basis. [Most of the time, people hardly notice their windshields, unless they become dirty or streaked (analogous to becoming aware of an illusion or perceptual fallibility).] What we're dealing with daily, mundanely, primarily, is our being-in-the-world. That being has a layer of inference and theory and belief, but it requires an effort to turn one's regard to it, and adopt a theoretical attitude/regard towards it. Usually, we peer through it to the world itself, just like most of the time we look through our windshield and not at it (except when it gets really dirty).

While one could say that this example is misleading, because clear glass doesn't fundamentally impede vision of the world external to the car, I'd respond that most of the time our perceptions are entirely "transparent" to the actual nature of the world. In the vast majority of cases, what we're looking at isn't an illusion, despite the subjective nature of blue. When I see blue, there's almost always light of that particular frequency hitting my eyes. When I'm crossing the street, you can be sure that my judgment of that fast moving object isn't a hologram or hallucination ... it's a car. And I don't want to get squished, so I wait--not based on an inference and trusted correspondence, but on the reality of the 2 ton vehicle hurtling my way.

We are faced with countless life-and-death decisions every day, just getting to work. If our experience of reality (i.e. the "facts," in your usage) were as illusory or symbolic as you're insisting upon, we wouldn't survive long past breakfast. Our senses may be fallible, but evolution has honed them to be good enough to keep us alive. That's real enough for me. That's reality: life and death.

[Zarathustra]

Most people hardly ever deal with their inferences, much less on a day to day basis. ... What we're dealing with daily, mundanely, primarily, is our being-in-the-world. That being has a layer of inference and theory and belief, but it requires an effort to turn one's regard to it, and adopt a theoretical attitude/regard towards it.

This is important enough to quote myself and elaborate in a separate post. I understand what WF is saying: our day to day experience is ALWAYS mediated through perception/interpretation/inference, so of course one might feel justified in saying that this is what we deal with primarily, because even as we deal with the world, we're always necessarily dealing with (or through) these. In my box example, it would be like saying we're always wearing gloves. In my car example, it would be like saying we're always peering through windshields.

But the fact that it takes an effort to turn our regard to windshields, gloves, and inferences reveals a deeper truth. If we were already "dealing with" the mediating circumstances of our experience, why would we ever have to turn our regard to them? If that's what we're actually focused upon--and not the world itself--why would this intellectual move ever be required in order to study them? If perceptions and interpretations were the sum total of all we ever interact with--and not the world itself--then why would it feel so counter-intuitive or secondary to analyze them, to reflect upon them, rather than just living our life in the world unreflectively? It's so much easier just to ignore our perceptions/interpretations and not think about them at all. Being-in-the-world (prior to reflection), is effortless. It's our default state.

But more importantly: when we do turn our regard toward perception/interpretation, what are we turning our regard away from? If all we ever have is our interpretations and perceptions, then what precisely is being "left behind" when we stop to analyze our perceptions and interpretations?

I would argue that it's the world itself we're "leaving behind" or "taking a step back from." In order to analyze and reflect upon our interpretations/perceptions, we must adopt an inauthentic relationship with the world, one that holds our primary mode of being-in-the-world in abeyance.

[wayfriend]

I do know what you mean, though. I just look at the whole thing as a two-part system. The perceiver is as much, as legitimate, a part of things as the perceived. In a very real sense, facts only exist, and they are certainly only known, because of the perceiver. And we have a great ability to find facts that are not handed to us on a platter.

That's amazing (that anyone would understand). I thought that last post was rather unfocused.

Here's a briefer one.

If we accept that humans do not directly perceive reality.

And if we postulate that facts are aspects of reality.

Then you would have to conclude that humans do not know facts.

What humans consider "facts" are based on our mental models of objects. They are, in a way, mental models of those reality-facts.

Hence, my original position.

Yes, these fact models work (almost always). Yes, these fact models lead to discoveries (almost always). Yes, they are awesome and great and useful and consistent (almost always). But they -never- touch reality. They are mental models ... built on models ... built on models ... with no bottom of models. There is no foundation which you can call reality. The reason that the fact-models are awesome and great and useful and consistent is -not- due to what they are founded on, but on how they continuously adapted by the learning mind.

That's important to know. The deeper we peer into the building blocks of reality, the more we have to understand the lens we peer through.

[Fist and Faith]

Maybe, just maybe, I see where we part ways.

If we accept that humans do not directly perceive reality.

I don't think I accept that. In what way could we perceive reality more directly than we do? What perception is more direct than those we possess? Nothing we've invented (microscope; Geiger Counter; infrared Google's...) seems more direct to me. Is there a theorized sense, or even one from a fantasy book, that is clearly more direct? If we don't perceive reality directly, I don't know what does.

[wayfriend]

Maybe, just maybe, I see where we part ways.

If we accept that humans do not directly perceive reality.

I don't think I accept that.

E.g. we don't see oscillations in electro-magnetic waves, we see blueness.
E.g. We don't feel arrangements of molecules, we feel a ball.

We don't experience reality; we experience the effects reality has on our senses, in the way our senses report it to our brain.

In what way could we perceive reality more directly than we do?

I think that is the purview of a god.

But seriously: We are physical beings. We cannot stand outside the physical universe to observe it. We are immersed in it. All we can do is feel what it does to us. Because our senses are physical objects. Our senses obtain information by partaking of reality, not from observing reality.

So this is the best that can be achieved. But I am not thinking we ended up poorly because of it. Like I said, our minds ability to use this is amazing.

[Fist and Faith]

Maybe, just maybe, I see where we part ways.

If we accept that humans do not directly perceive reality.

I don't think I accept that.

E.g. we don't see oscillations in electro-magnetic waves, we see blueness.
E.g. We don't feel arrangements of molecules, we feel a ball.

We don't experience reality; we experience the effects reality has on our senses, in the way our senses report it to our brain.

This is, indeed, where we part ways. I don't think reality is only in the realm of the atomic, subatomic quantum, or whatever your particular limits are. I believe the ball is real, and I believe we perceive it directly.

In what way could we perceive reality more directly than we do?

I think that is the purview of a god.

But seriously: We are physical beings. We cannot stand outside the physical universe to observe it. We are immersed in it. All we can do is feel what it does to us. Because our senses are physical objects. Our senses obtain information by partaking of reality, not from observing reality.

I understand the idea that being outside of something can give a clearer view of it. You can't see the forest when you're in the middle of it. You can't see the obvious answer to the personal problem you're having when you're in emotional turmoil because of it.

But being outside means missing a lot of information. It's impossible to see as much detail about the trees when you're outside the forest. And you don't know why someone can't make the obvious decision if you don't feel their pain.

And viewing it from outside surely can't be considered perceiving it directly.

So this is the best that can be achieved. But I am not thinking we ended up poorly because of it. Like I said, our minds ability to use this is amazing.

Yeah, I know you're not seeing it as a negative. This is a fun discussion.

[Zarathustra]

If we accept that humans do not directly perceive reality.

I'm with FF on this one. Why do we not directly perceive reality? Our senses are real. Our sense organs are parts of reality. At which point in the sensory chain do these signals 'exit' reality? Is it the consciousness OF those signals? (Do they become unreal, or merely mental?) So then where is the crossover point between the sensory signals and the consciousness of them? Is there a gap there between reality and mind? Why?

I'll agree that our perception of the world external to our senses (or external to ourselves) is indirect, but I disagree that we don't directly perceive reality. We're part of reality. We directly perceive ourselves. And parts of ourselves "leak outward" to the world beyond us, as we form relationships with it.

Do we "directly perceive" light from other stars? No, not according to the belief that we don't "directly perceive" reality, because the light is external to us and not in our minds. But let's say we could directly perceive that light. Would we directly perceive the stars then? No, because they might be dead and lightless by now. So even if we postulated that our senses directly contacted the energy transfers that register in our senses (light, heat, momentum, etc.), one could still object that our knowledge of the world beyond those immediate energy transfers is indirect. But the point is that we wouldn't question whether or not we're directly perceiving reality, on this view, just how much of it and how accurately.

Now the important question: in what way are the two situations different? If our senses are part of reality, and what they sense (i.e. energy transfers) are part of reality, then for much of the "perceptual chain," we're directly contacting reality. At which point does the contact become indirect? Well, on the "far end" of the perceptual chain, that point could be the distant stars or a shadow of someone standing behind a corner. On the "near end," it must be somewhere in the consciousness. But if consciousness is itself produced by the physical brain (i.e. part of the universe), how are these two ends different? Are we merely talking about mundane indirectness after all? If so, there's no dividing line between reality and not-reality. The stars were real at some point, even if they're dead now. When we look at their light and measure their spectral lines to learn their chemical composition, we are indeed knowing facts, even if those facts are "smeared out" over space-time.

Yes, these fact models work (almost always). Yes, these fact models lead to discoveries (almost always).

But Wayfriend, how is that possible if they don't contact reality? If you won't respond to my posts, at least ask yourself this question. You can't explain it based on your position; there would be no possible explanation for two things that never make contact to become aligned in such a precise way. At some point, there has to be some contact, or the mental models would never discover anything about the world. The fact that we can learn undiscovered truths with nothing more than mental models means that these models have access to truth. They do reach reality. Otherwise, there would be absolutely no way to tell the difference between your dreams and your waking life. How do you tell the difference, if this is actually what you believe? How do you *know* our mental models almost always work? What are your criteria for them working? How would you know when those criteria are fulfilled if that fulfillment is just another mental model?

The following is from David Deutsch's book, THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY. It's part of a longer "Socratic" dialog between Socrates and Hermes where the god appears to the philosopher in a dream:

HERMES: [All knowledge] comes from within, from conjecture and criticism.
...
SOCRATES: [W]hat about objects that we just experience in the natural world? We reach out and touch an object, and hence experience it out there. Surely that is a different kind of knowledge, a kind which--fallible or not--really does come from without, at least in the sense that our own experience is out there, at the location of the object.

HERMES: Why is 'direct' sensory experience an exception? What if it just seems radically different?

SOCRATES: But surely you are now asking me to believe in a sort of all-encompassing conjuring trick, resembling the fanciful notion that the whole of life is really a dream. For it would mean that the sensation of touching an object does not happen where we experience it happening, namely in the hand that touches, but in the mind--which I believe is located somewhere in the brain. So all my sensations of touch are located inside my skull, where in reality nothing can touch while I still live. And whenever I think I am seeing a vast, brilliantly illuminated landscape, all that I am really experiencing is likewise located entirely inside my skull, where in reality it is constantly dark!

HERMES: Is that so absurd? Where do you think all the sights and sounds of this dream are located?

SOCRATES: I accept that they are indeed in my mind. But that is my point: most dreams portray things that are simply not there in external reality. To portray things that are there is surely impossible without some input that does not come from the mind but from those things themselves.

HERMES: Well reasoned, Socrates. But is that input needed in the source of your dream, or only in your ongoing criticism of it?

SOCRATES: You mean that we first guess what is there, and then--what?--we test our guesses against the input from our senses?

HERMES: Yes.

SOCRATES: I see. And then we hone our guesses, and then fashion the best one into a sort of waking dream of reality.

HERMES: Yes. A waking dream that corresponds to reality. But there is more. It is a dream of which you then gain control. You do that by controlling the corresponding aspects of the external reality.

SOCRATES: [Gasps.] Am I really to accept that I myself--the thinking being that I call 'I'--has no direct knowledge of the physical world at all, but can only receive arcane hints of it through flickers and shadows that happen to impinge on my eyes and other senses? And that what I experience as reality is never more than a waking dream, composed of conjectures originating from within myself? ... If this epistemology is true, then we are infinitely more marvelous creatures. Here we sit, for ever imprisoned in the dark, almost-sealed cave of our skulls, guessing. We weave stories of an outside world--worlds, actually: a physical world, a moral world, a world of abstract geometrical shapes, and so on--but we are not satisfied with merely weaving, nor with mere stories. We want true explanations. So we seek explanations that remain robust when we test them against those flickers and shadows, and against each other, and against criteria of logic and reasonableness and everything else we can think of. And when we can change them no more, we have understood some objective truth. And , as if that were not enough, what we understand we then control. It is like magic, only real. We are like gods!


HERMES: Well, sometimes you discover some objective truth, and exert some control as a result. But often, when you think you have achieved any of that, you haven't.

SOCRATES: Yes, yes. But having discovered some truths, can we not make better guesses and further criticisms and tests, and so understand more and control more?

HERMES: Yes.

SOCRATES: So we are like gods!

Hermes has opened Socrates's eyes a bit more than he might have wanted, here. Socrates realizes that--despite being sealed off in the "cave" of our skulls--we do reach objective truth, and that knowledge allows us to alter the external reality, despite living in a sort of waking dream. That paradoxical reach and control is truly godlike.

In what way could we perceive reality more directly than we do?

I think that is the purview of a god.

Exactly.

[Fist and Faith]

*sigh* I wish I was an author. Certain aspects of writing seem to be beyond me. At the very least, they make me procrastinate like nobody's business. But the fact is I've figured ALL this stuff out, and, if I ever manage to get it all down, you can all be enlightened. Think of the joy you will experience!!!

[wayfriend]

But the fact is I've figured ALL this stuff out, and, if I ever manage to get it all down, you can all be enlightened. Think of the joy you will experience!!!

Indubitably.

I believe the ball is real, and I believe we perceive it directly.

I believe the ball as real, but I don't understand how anyone can claim that we perceive it directly.

Do the light waves from the ball shine on your brain? No.

The light waves shine on the back of your eyeballs. Rods and cones get excited. Nerve signals flow, telling the brain "got some excited rods and cones over here!". The brain runs a mass of complicated computation on the signals, which includes consulting memories for similar patterns, the output of which is 'look, a ball!'.

That's what I mean when I say we don't experience reality directly. Our mind never interacts with the actual reality - it reacts to nerve signals generated by sensory organs stimulated by reality. What the brain gets is reports of nerve bundles being stimulated. It infers (quite unconsciously) the reality from those reports.

Sensing overkill now. Possibly to murmurs of "finally!".