Language and Reality (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, April 25, 2011, 14:23 (4757 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: I apologize for the late reply, but I have been out of town since last Friday and nowhere near a computer.-Apology reciprocated, as I've just returned from a magnificent holiday in Cornwall (see dhw away, 15 April at 15.15...I wonder what's so special about 15?!).-TONY: Let me try once more to clarify my position, as I am apparently making little sense. The concept in my head is crystal clear, but I am having a hard time explaining it.-We all have a hard time explaining things, largely because we all use language so subjectively. This is perfectly illustrated by the following:
 
TONY: When you 'see' light, you are actually seeing light in the form of photons that are bouncing around and being detected by your eyes. When you 'see' darkness, you are not 'seeing' anything at all, but since we perceive that nothingness (i.e. our brain does not stop searching for light thus it remains conscious of the absence of light), we have labeled it with the term 'darkness', which has the unfortunate side-effect. This to me is my common sense approach to reality. I can not explain it any better, and if you are still confused by my rationalization then I apologize.-What is the "unfortunate side effect"? My objection to your argument all the way along has been your insistence that the absence of light is not something "real", so I presume this is what you're referring to. I'm not confused by your rationalization, but by your concept of reality, and that alone is what I'm trying to clarify. See below.
 
TONY: There are numerous unseen forces that we can measure by their affect on the world around us, i.e. Gravity, Magnetism, Centrifugal Force. We do not visually see them, we can not touch, taste, hear, or smell them. Yet, we know that they exist, even if our understanding of them is incomplete.-I agree absolutely that the effect of the imperceptible can be just as real as that of the perceptible, but I also argue that the effect of the absent can be just as real as that of the present. Darkness, nothingness, blackness, famine, drought, blindness, unconsciousness, grief are all striking examples of the effects of absence. The claim that words indicating the non-presence of light, substance, colour ... and by extension food, rain, vision, consciousness, a loved one ... do not describe a reality seems to me to be taking language to a philosophical extreme which goes against all common sense, but that is why I asked you for your definition of reality.
 
I have already offered my own: "Whatever is believed by each individual to exist (a) independently of humans or (b) because of humans." My argument here is that while the phenomena themselves may not/no longer exist, the state of their not/no longer-existing does exist (i.e. is real to us as individuals). So when we grieve for someone we loved, their non-presence is as real to us as the non-presence of light, which we call darkness. But I'm having just as hard a time as you, and I'm not insisting that my definition is right! It's tentative, and perhaps you or someone else can offer a better one.-TONY: I view God in much the same way. I see the inherent order in the universe, its physical laws, as the measurable proof of the existence of an intelligence. Much the way your bathroom scale will take into account the overall impact of gravity on your body mass, I look at the overall impact and organization throughout existence to be my scale that gauges my belief in a UI.-An atheist would of course argue that expressions like God and a Universal Intelligence attribute reality to something non-existent. I am not an atheist, however, and I would suggest that the above fits in neatly with my definition of reality as a matter of individual belief - in contrast to objective truth, which is unknowable.