discussion to ask WHY the world might not be real

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by discernmentisthekey, Apr 29, 2012.

  1. discernmentisthekey Registered Member

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    I don't think we need computers per say for the argument that "this reality might not be genuine" is a worthwhile argument. I don't think this is a computer simulation but there might be a possibility that this world is not real (by real I mean outside the senses and outside one perspective). Perhaps there is a world in which we are all a unified consciousness in which there is no negation (I am using a Sartrean philosophy). I have studied various philosophers who have sought out this answer (the most famous being Descartes). To those who claim that "the idea that this world is a dream is ridiculous and that we could never have a consistent dream like this", I reply "how can you assume you are autonomously dreaming?". Perhaps we are being given the dream and what we perceive is how we are able to process this dream. We cannot help but to follow the breadcrumbs given to us. One problem that humans have that makes this such a hard question is that we can't get into another person's perspective. If we were able to perceive outside of ourselves and through someone else that might solve a few problems. More info on why we have such a hard time absolutely validating the authenticity of our reality?
     
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  3. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    From a physicalism standpoint, a dream is caused by the brain. But surely few of us would regard a dream as either a poor or good copy of the brain. That is, we don't consider a dream's external world to be the brain representing itself in the virtual avatar's extrospective POV, but instead it is just the brain concocting a phenomenal story. Yet when it comes to the waking world, we often assume from the start that any transcendent "outside" - outside in respect to the empirical world exhibited in our perceptions and further reflected upon in thought / understanding - is not only yet another world, but that it should also be treated as more "real" than this one which actually has positive evidence for itself (and which was the original source for the idea of world!).

    The second situation isn't quite comparable to the first, because when one wakes up from a dream (the virtual avatar dies, so to speak) the transcendent circumstance for the dream turns out to be just another empirical world with better regularities. Not one where everything becomes absent (after death or before life) - devoid of evidence for itself as it exists in itself, yet somehow still regarded as a "world" and more real to boot by those of us conscious agents yet alive. Asserting that a transcendent circumstance produces the phenomenal world exhibited in the public or external part of experience is one thing; but assuming that such an invisible "nothing" qualifies as a "world", and one that the content of perception and understanding are just inferior representations of, is a large or reflexive leap we make that seems to care little about any alternatives it may have jumped over.
     
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  5. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    we're a toy in a box
     
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  7. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    René Descartes pretty much summed it up,
    "I think therefore I am". It's not that world isn't "real", it's purely our perception of real that is false. Real is as real is and that is all relative to the observer. What you could query is however "who is the observer?" is it one single entity or a collective of all our consciousness? If it's the latter then the world can be anything we all want to observe, however there are always people out there who take great pride in trying to control others, so do we see what we are suppose to or are we groomed into seeing what those particular elitists want?
     

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