Language and Reality (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, April 04, 2011, 22:34 (4981 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: In my original post, I was using real in the commonsense context. A photon exists. It is real. It can be measured. The absence of a photon, is not real, it is the absence of something real. Darkness, which is the absence of photons, therefore is not real in the sense that 'Darkness' isn't a thing, it is the absence of a 'thing'.-I would not regard this as common sense. If you ask even highly intelligent people (I've just tried it out on my wife and daughter!) whether they have observed darkness/black, or if darkness/black really exists, they will say yes, even though they know that darkness/black = absence of light/colour. Your argument is correct, but I see it as a specialized view, not as common sense.-TONY: Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or may be thought to be.[1] In its widest definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible.-If your definition of reality is things "as they actually exist", as opposed to their appearance and to what we think them to be, how is it possible for us to know what is and isn't real? That is the philosophical level that takes us nowhere. Only on a commonsense level, where there is a general consensus, can things be regarded as "real", i.e. as we observe and comprehend them.
 
TONY: This is the sense that I generally regard the word reality. Notice that it would either have to be observable or comprehensible. That is important as it allows for the discussion of things not observed to be included into discussions of reality.-I and many others have no difficulty comprehending darkness, blackness, nothing and time on what I call the commonsense level, and I believe I have observed all of them on countless occasions, so they all fit in with your general view of reality.
 
TONY: If time is a reality (which was the one you said you disagreed with), then provide me with a measurable quanta of time that can exist outside of the frame of reference, or definition, of the observer.
 
On a philosophical level, nothing can be called real if it depends on observation, because no observer can guarantee the objectivity of his perception. The best we can offer, I repeat, is a consensus. My commonsense view that a rapid sequence of static states (your definition of time) exists independently of an observer is unprovable, but then so is your next point: "Real things, such as photons, we can assume exist independent of the observer because a single photon can be measured and observed." How can our measurement and observation of a photon prove that it exists independently of the measurer and observer? We measure time, we observe and comprehend the sequence of cause and effect, the changes that take place in the course of the movement from present to past. Common sense therefore enables me to "assume" (your word) that the sequence of states is real, and we call that sequence time. But on the philosophical level it is not real. NOTHING is real. Not even your photons.