Relating to absolute reality.

A thread asking about absolute reality was closed. Considering a post about telepathy & some other strange notions, there was reason to close the thread, but I would not have done so if I were a moderator.

I consider the following to be a very cogent argement in favor of an absolute reality.

Think about the POV of a very large number of people generally considered to be sane & intelligent. There are many different opinions relating to religion, politics, emotions, & even modern physics. However, on many issues relating to the enviroment, there is a large amount of agreement.

Gravity is an accepted phenomenom.

The cycles of day & night are perceived similarly by almost everyone.

Except for color blind people, almost all agree relating to many colors: Red, green, blue, yellow. The disagreements relate to some subtle shades.

I am sure that there are many more facts about the environment on which an overwhelming majority agree.


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The agreement of many people relating to facts about our environment strongly supports the notion of an absolute realtiy.

 

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bleh

 

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Dinosaur,

Let me begin by apologizing for a mistake I made some time ago, lambasting you after I clearly misinterpreted what you said.

I do think this is an interesting question from the scientific perspective, since we are immersed in repeatable observations, and we tend to consider this question in a more practical vein than folks who haven't found a way to be similarly grounded.

Of the things you listed, I favor the way we distinguish night from day. I think this reaches us at all levels, from forebrain to hindbrain, a vestige of the many ways our ancestors brains were configured. And all in the presence of daylight and sunlight. (Except for cave dwellers, etc.)

To me, the phrase As sure as the sun will shine conveys certainly beyond a SHADOW

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of doubt.

 

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Aqueous Id: Since I do not remember the Thread or the Post, what ever remarks you made could not have upset me much.

 

First this should be in Philosophy if nothing else, however there appears to be no room in Sciforums for believing Primacy of Consciousness as it has been claimed this is demonstrably false. This is because consciousness identifies existence, there can be no consciousness without something existing to perceive. Nothing can have an identity (to be identified) without existing. The fact that something is identified necessarily implies its existence which necessarily implies existence in general. Thus there is no consciousness without existence.

So naturally, Reality is Absolute. The statement Reality is Absolute is the explicit recognition of the primacy of existence. This means that reality is not subject to wishes, whims, prayers, or miracles. If you want to change the world, you must act according to reality. Nothing else will affect reality. If you evade this fact, your actions will most likely not have their desired effects.

This is the textbook standards to which we are supposed to buy into.

There is however different views on this subject.

The consensus here (Sciforums) seems to be that we only follow what is seen as the more solid Philosophical, phenomenological "reasoning" based more on examining our surroundings and noticing it seems solid than actually exploring scientific possibilities. I understand its popularity and can see where many could not comprehend or entertain a view of mystical experiences or miracles.

"I Think, Therefore I am" seems to be the accepted tone.

I see this as an open ended argument however.

One philosophical argument is, "The one thing all of our experiences have in common is awareness (Consciousness), with the content constantly changing".

I would suggest that despite perceived observation there is other ways to exist with commonly observed "reality".

The views of Descartes were plausible in the 17th century, but today we must also refine philosophy to take into account quantum mechanics.

Example A: If the many worlds interpretation of the Double slit experiment proved true (and it is still highly regarded although I dislike it), then that would mean we are living out every decision we have ever made in some alternate reality. This interpretation would mean that absolute reality would need to be absolute realities (plural) despite our relative viewpoints.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_vw-FrSyWY&feature=related

I find the Many Worlds theory personally distasteful, however it is controversial in more than what is conveyed in the above video.

Many argue that it is too extreme and not really what was meant. Many people seem to argue with the meaning of the premise and its reception was very mixed.

Wikipedia on Many Worlds Interpretation,

Showing the reception is important because it shows that some people believe there are really alternate realities in existence somewhere, and some believe it is simply a way of achieving mathematical probabilities.

I would argue that as long as such arguments exist in the world then this Philosophical argument should be allowed in Sciforums.

The Many Worlds Interpretation removes decoherence problems from quantum mechanics.

I myself believe that decoherence in math equals decoherence in reality. I would argue that Schrodingers cat does exist in thousands/millions of superpositions (miniature Many Worlds) until the box is opened, and further expand that to include Wigners friend, and even wigners town, and Wigners country. I would argue that time is not a constant, and history is subject to change.

These are properties of decoherence in math and I and others, maintain this is a possibility that would explain the type of statements that back absolute reality. Such as, "The one thing all of our experiences have in common is awareness (Consciousness), with the content constantly changing".

17th century philosophy is outdated.

Some say decoherence is a device used to calculate probabilities, some say decoherence is reality. It is the only argument against absolute reality, and has a place in thought if not in discussion, unless you buy into the "Brain in a Vat" ideology.

Carl Jung derived a word called "synchronicity". Many intelligent people (to be contested here) believe the world contains Intelligent design, synchronicity, miracles, PSI, etc., and physical decoherence could explain it. There are "absolute reality" explanations for some PSI, but it would not allow for miracles.

If a drowning sailor prayed to be saved, then decoherence could allow that history is altered within schrodingers ocean and a sailor altered course a day before that was near enough to rescue him.

Maybe we never really collapse into reality and are always in superposition perceiving things merely as individuals. The arguments could be endless, but they are philosophically valid.

Maybe there is only you in existence and we are just products of your imaginings and you are the "Brain in a Vat". This is also an argument against absolute reality, but if there was no outward existence then where would information come from. We could not learn without some input and that medium would be the reality.

"I think, therefore I must at least be in superposition" - kwhilborn

@ Dinosaur,

Your views on absolute reality are why people believe what they see. The reason why this thread will be likely closed and moved to cesspool if not philosophy is because of the arguments I have put forth. They are not my own, but I support them. I would take it a step further though and say expectation comes into play when schrodingers box is opened. I think that is an original viewpoint of my own, but decoherence as a reality is not just me.

 

I wonder if those who advocate/believe the Many Worlds Interpretation consider the logical consequences.

Every second there are billions (or more) quantum events in the universe. Each event with two outcomes results in an additional universe.

The above implies billions of universes created each second. Each universe has billions (or more) quantum events per second spawning billions of billions (or more) of universes.


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One wonders where all the matter/energy in the universe came from when the Big Bang occurred (assuming it did). That is trivial compared to the what is required for Many Worlds.

I accept Copenhagen over Many Worlds. Quantum reality is weird so any interpretation will seem weird, but Many Worlds is too far out to accept.

 

This quantum, describe this to me. Teleportation?

I may be of help.

 

I would call that a distinction between subjective reality and objective reality. A god might be very real to one person/subject while a different god is real to a different person/subject. On the other hand, people can set aside their subjective differences and agree objectively on colours, night and day, etc.

But I would shy away from saying that objective reality "is" reality in any absolute way.

 

What does this agreement represent, though?
Is it really an indication of an absolute or objective reality, or is it primarily a manifestation of the will to cooperate?

 

I’ll put my two cents in before the thread is closed or moved. A case could be made for it staying here but that is not what my two cents is about. Absolute reality in terms of science brings to mind the concepts of absolute space and absolute time vs. relativity of space and time. Historically it has been an issue in science where theory accepted them as absolute. The aether was based on the concept that it was fixed and objects and light moved through it, and so it was easy to supersede that with a new consensus because of the failure of experiments that would have detected it. The timing was right for an alternative and spacetime filled the void, so to speak. In current theory space and time are not absolute, and the scientific community has moved on, leaving the discussion to philosophy and pseudoscience.

We live in this day with the scientific notion of relativity at the macro level and quantum mechanics at the micro level as opposed to absolutes, and this is why I think the topic belongs in philosophy, but I don’t care where it is if we just want to discuss it. Without “absolute reality” in science we come to “objective reality” where our best scientific investigations and thinking are applied to the world that we observe and we, the scientific community and us laymen, put into place the latest and best findings that can come out the scientific method; objective reality replaces absolute realty and gives us our best quantum views and our best versions of cosmology based on relativity. That is where science is working to find the reconciling physics.

I do like the concept of “apparent reality”. It goes beyond objective reality and closes the gap between the science of objective reality and the philosophy of absolute reality.

What it means is that science advances via the scientific method and so science does not yet answer all of the questions, even when our best theories are taken into account. There are incompatibilities or at least unresolved inconsistencies between major consensus theories. Apparent reality is that frowned on branch of thought, pseudoscience is another name for it, that hypothesizes about reconciliations of the inconsistencies and models the answer with “as yet unknown” natural laws. If those laws corresponded with reality they would support a model of the universe that was internally consistent and not inconsistent with scientific observations and data. The problem is that apparent reality is not science because no matter how internally consistent it is, the scientific community has no path to falsification except for the unfolding of the physics, and so apparent reality is profoundly not science and is soundly in the philosophical and pseudoscience realms.

 

Well, I make a distinction between objective and absolute. To me the agreement, the will to cooperate, is objectivity. But our objectivity could also be a kind of mass subjectivity. If there is such a thing as "absolute reality", we have no way of knowing for sure what it is.

 

Gravity is absolute reality. I can absolutely prove that gravity exists and it works every time.

 

Let's see you prove it in a reference frame with no large masses nearby.

 

OK I will! But you have to get me there first.

You probably didn't get the joke. If you had a real spaceship that could take us very far from any gravity fields, I would be deliriously happy and wouldn't really care about this topic thread.

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Well I thought my comment was funny.

 

On the imagination and omniscience.

Is all that is imagined real?

If you are familiar with the mighty imagination.

 

How can you tell?

 

The claim is yours. The onus is on you to devise the experiment.

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OK, go find a rock. Take off your shoe. Hold the rock over your foot. Drop the rock. That proves that gravity is the absolute reality.

 

We know gravity exists, but no mainstream science can explain what it is.

What effect does our gravity have on earth to our perceptions, i reckon its the reason we all view the world in the same way. Its the common bond that shapes our reality, and we share the same perception more or less because of the force of gravity on earth is what it is.
What would happen if the gravity was weaker or stronger than earths? What effect on our perception will that have?

That opens up the question, what is really real.

 

On the contrary, it proves that gravity is relative to location. If I did the same experiment on the Intenational Space Station, I'd get a very different result.