I don’t follow, whatever the guy without the dog is doing he’s consciously aware of and interacting with something that must exist for him, unless he’s pretending. — praxis

It seems like the implicit argument here would then conclude that we all have the same grip on reality. There are no differences. The man who thinks he can fly on an acid trip and who dies when jumping off a highway overpass, is just as connected to reality as the person who avoids falling or jumping off high places. Even if the first guy wouldn't have wanted to die. He was surprised to be falling towards the highway and the trucks.

Or that when I realize, for example, that I have been telling myself my girlfriend really loves me, despite her behavior, I have not come in closer contact with reality when I finally own up to the fact that she treats me poorly and does not really like or respect me. And realize I was afraid to notice this. No, when this happens I am not coming closer to an undertanding of what is going on. I am just having a different one. There is no way to come to a deeper knowledge of something or to realize a mistake one had in interpretation. There are not mistakes in perception or interpretation.

Even I wasn't wrong in my sense of reality, though oddly you disagreed with me. Was I wrong about the two guys with the dog and no-dog? Why didn't you allow my interpretation to also be real. But it seems like my perceptions are wrong. I feel unfairly treated.:razz:

If I see Amanda on the street and wave to her and wonder why she is looking oddly at me, I have not come any closer to reality when I realize she looks a tiny bit like Amanda, but isn't her at all.

No, in both those instances, I was being just as realistic. One can never gain deeper insight or get closer to a realistic understanding of something.

My first impressions of everyone are just are realistic appraisals of their personality than I would ever get if I spent time living with them.

The picture is a ridiculous example. It is precisely intended to be something that has two possible images in it. If I see a picture of myself and think the artist drew me, am I, perhaps, less connected to reality than those who see the old woman and the young woman and do not think that the image was made for them personally by the artist, just them, as a mirror?

If I see Amanda on the street and wave to her and wonder why she is looking oddly at me, I have not come any closer to reality when I realize she looks a tiny bit like Amanda, but isn't her at all.

No, in both those instances, I was being just as realistic. One can never gain deeper insight or get closer to a realistic understanding of something. — Coben

In both instances, you were consciously aware of and had a connection to someone that you believed to be real. It was a prediction error, simply.

Insight and understanding have value because they help us do 'realistic' or practical things. What I'm suggesting is that our reality is shaped by our intents and purposes. In the absence of all intents and purposes, can real or unreal still be distinguished? I guess that's a silly question because discernment requires purpose.

It seems like the implicit argument here would then conclude that we all have the same grip on reality. There are no differences. The man who thinks he can fly on an acid trip and who dies when jumping off a highway overpass, is just as connected to reality as the person who avoids falling or jumping off high places. Even if the first guy wouldn't have wanted to die. He was surprised to be falling towards the highway and the trucks. — Coben

At no point is anyone not connected to reality. To be mistaken is not to be unreal.

At no point is anyone not connected to reality. To be mistaken is not to be unreal. — neonspectraltoast

Yep. Moreover, it's not me here, reality over there. One is embedded.

There's this notion of false awakening where a person believes s/he has woken up but is actually asleep and dreaming; hence false awakening.

The idea has another, philosophical, meaning - describing a person who believes s/he has grasped true reality but actually hasn't; maybe s/he misunderstands, or s/he has only a partial understanding of, true reality.

If we bring these two meanings of false awakening together we get the picture of a person who thinks s/he's awake and understands true reality but is actually asleep, dreaming and still in the grips of an illusion, stuck, as it were, in false reality.

Consider now what we take to be true reality - the world in which we spend our "waking" lives in. We distinguish it from dreams we experience in sleep and declare, quite adamantly in my view, that the "waking" life we go through is true reality and the dream is an ilusion.

Bring to bear on the above notion we have of what true reality is, the idea of false awakening and suddenly we're no longer in a position to claim that our "waking" lives constitute an experience of true reality. To entertain this possibility is not to say anything new - Descartes' evil demon and the brain in a vat are old and well-known thought experiments. What bothers me at this point is whether any amount of "awakening" is sufficient to permit us to make the claim this, for sure, is true reality.?

To give you a glimpse of the problem we're faced with imagine me as asleep, dreaming and I "wake up" and realize that I was dreaming. I sit up in my bed and then the thought that I could be a brain in vat crosses my mind. I'm now no longer certain that the bed I'm sitting on, the watch whose alarm woke me up, the toothbrush I'll use, etc. are real. Imagine now that I am a brain in a vat and "wake up" to that fact - I see myself, the brain, connected to a supercomputer simulating the world I thought was real and so on. What about this reality, myself as a brain in a vat, can assuredly prevent me from thinking this too might be an illusion? "Nothing" is the right word I suspect.

It seems that to whatever level of reality one "awakens" to, the same problem exists - it could be a false awakening and the specter of an illusory reality constantly looms over us. Bottomline, every awakening could be a false awakening and although true reality maybe within reach, we can never really know it is that.

Comments... — TheMadFool

The problem i have with this is it points to that we should accept post-modernism. I would argue if some one's awakening doesnt fully embrace practicality or close to practicality its not helping themselves nor others.

Noah Harrari (the book: Sapiens) addresses the human species practical need to believe false things such as money, legal fictions and also fictions such as Religion.

Oh, it's you. Well first off, I did not mean that the organism of the person is disconnected from reality, I meant that their ideas about reality are less accurate or even utterly inaccurate when it comes to what their ideas are about. Pardon my use of metaphor, since it threw you, but I am going to use another one. It's as if they are trying to navigate London with a map of Paris and they don't know it. That's what I meant by diconnected. Their map is poorer than a more competent tourist's map is. The map is not connected to the territory. Still a metaphor there, if you're still having trouble. Of course if they are in London then the Paris map in their hands is in London and London air is connected to the map. And they are in physical contact with London also, of course. But they still have a problem, as my post was pointing out. I did not mean physical disconnection. The person I was responding to seemed to think that all maps have the same value. Or didn't and perhaps by responding I could clarify this. I don't think 'it's all realistic' means very much. It certainly is all real. Real and realistic not being the same thing.

As far as anyone being unreal, I never said anything remotely like that. Then my map would be seriously diconnected from reality - though physically present as a part of it. I am trying to be careful by repeating things so you'll keep up and stop being a nag, as you put it.

Shouldn't reality mean 'the realness of experience'?

To me the Sun is real, it is an established object.

With all objects in local array, it produces a 'realness'; a consistency, an establishment.

I don't think what we're questioning is reality, but rather a new word, a neutral, between real and unreal.

We're discussing 'is it a part of existence', when existence I think is based on interest.

For some people, others universes DON'T exist... But, they do existentially.

We're asking if things are existent, and thus if so they are real. It should be more about harmony than existence. As I said establishment of some sort.

I'm bound to observe the star, what's going on around me is real on account of consistency and establishment.

I have been thinking about this concept recently and as you said, there is no way to determine if we are in 'reality' or a waking life now. I would suggest that death is the only way to discover a more legitimate reality. But the the question is raised, how many times would one have to die to be in the life that is true and what would be different or more worthwhile about being in a real reality? You have articulated my train of thought over the last few weeks perfectly, thank you.

The person I was responding to seemed to think that all maps have the same value. — Coben

Oddly, you're the one who seems to come closest to making this assumption. A map has the potential to have value in a variety of uses. It doesn't only have value, or depending on the circumstances and how it's used, even the best value used as a map. If someone were using a map of Paris to navigate London, wouldn't we need to assume that the map was providing some sort of value, even if we couldn't determine what their purpose was? They'd be aware of and consciously connected to whatever they were experiencing, regardless if they were what others would consider delusional.

Maybe a little more practical example will sell the point. Imagine someone from an alien culture who has no concept of money. If they were to witness you exchanging items that they considered highly valuable for a piece of paper money, they might think you were delusional, at least initially, before they came to understand the social construct. Does believing in the value of paper money make you less connected to reality? No.

I have been thinking about this concept recently and as you said, there is no way to determine if we are in 'reality' or a waking life now. I would suggest that death is the only way to discover a more legitimate reality. But the the question is raised, how many times would one have to die to be in the life that is true and what would be different or more worthwhile about being in a real reality? You have articulated my train of thought over the last few weeks perfectly, thank you. — TheDarkElf

Glad to know my views resonate with yours. As for death, you're absolutely right in that giving it the requisite attention plays a major role in constructing a worldview that's more attuned to reality and in that sense aids and nurtures what we all seem to identify as "awakening".

The one religion I'm familiar with that actively encourages contemplation of death on a daily basis is Buddhism - the doctrine of impermanence being its basic premise. When we think of death and how utterly complete and final it is in erasing all traces of you from existence, all other problems look like a picnic. The Buddha was known as The Awakened One and for a good reason it seems.

Ah how interesting, I’ll have to do more reading up about Buddhism then.

Descartes acknowledges this in "Meditations on First Philosophy". He takes a step back and essentially states that he knows nothing (later the origination of "Cogito ergo sum"), that these scenes around him could simply be "(the) bedeviling hoaxes of my dreams". Nevertheless, he emerges after some extended isolation and tumultuous spurts of thinking that this can not be a dream. Highly recommend reading the discourse. As with everything, it can be argued against, and with your insight, I think you would enjoy trying to either support or deconstruct his argument.

Right!

"true reality " is the elution.

Everyone experiences a world unique to them and so because we all are experiencing a slightly different world and there is absolutely no way to experience reality exactly the same way as someone else then this means that objective reality is an elution and what we call the world of elution is infact the only world .

So then if a person "wakes up and sees the elution " and says to everyone "I know the objective reality " you can confidently assume that they have only accomplished tricking themselves and are now living in an even more complex elution then before.

"Reality" as we believe we know it, is dynamic, in constant fluctuation, and is therefore unknowable. Circumstance is what we often mistake it for. And in doing so, open ourselves to manipulation, bewilderment, and ridicule when changed.

People have always wondered whether there's something hidden beneath what they experience as reality, as if to say that which we experience everyday is just a superficial veneer that conceals the actual, more awesome, truth beneath.

True but that doesn't add or take away from my previous post so I'm not sure what your point is?

True but that doesn't add or take away from my previous post so I'm not sure what your point is? — MAYAEL

There was nothing new, nothing that wasn't already known, in your post. However, I may have missed something; do feel free to point out what you think I missed.

So you replied to me with a neutral statement because I had said something that you already knew?

So you replied to me with a neutral statement because I had said something that you already knew? — MAYAEL

Not really. I was just putting my thoughts across to you.

Ahh .. so much is lost over the internet that is instantly understood in person. Obviously I can hold a much better conversation in person lol

Ahh .. so much is lost over the internet that is instantly understood in person. Obviously I can hold a much better conversation in person lol — MAYAEL

So then if a person "wakes up and sees the elution " and says to everyone "I know the objective reality " you can confidently assume that they have only accomplished tricking themselves and are now living in an even more complex elution then before. — MAYAEL

How can you be sure of this and, more importantly, how can anyone ever know they've finally figured it all out. It's not that there's a university handing out degrees to seekers of truth certifying that those who get the degree have grasped true reality.

What is there to figure out really? What is is. Until it changes. Then it's not. Then that is. Lol. Not too complicated really.

What is there to figure out really? What is is. Until it changes. Then it's not. Then that is. Lol. Not too complicated really. — Outlander

You maybe right you know. It could be as plain as the nose on my face even though I never am able to see my nose.

On the other hand, things could be far more complicated than we assume it to be. I'm not sure.

The statement is proven accurate in a subjective way at least. In the 1600s "space travel is not possible" was a fact- subjectively. When it's dark where you're at saying "it's night" is true. Until it's not. There is more to it of course. Space travel was not objectively "impossible" at that time (someone could have in theory built a functional rocket ship if they knew how and had the materials) nor was it night halfway around the world.

Depends what aspect we're going for. Duality vs. non-duality comes to mind. There's reason never to become too accustomed or comfortable with things to the point of passivity. Complacency kills- and is the single greatest destroyer of not just lives and civilizations but worlds. Why is it so insidious? Because you intrinsically don't perceive it as a threat. It's what everyone works to gain. And no one fears to lose.

Duality vs. non-duality — Outlander

Go on. What do you have to say about duality? I'm deeply interested in that concept but doubt its ability to serve as a foundational paradigm in a world that's supposedly fuzzy.

I'm sure of it because I have lived through it
I have been the sleeping person and the awakening person then the enlightened person then the person escaping the matrix/ tech

And then I was liberated from all of those masks and was free. And it's not anything I can verbally convey and there is no method to tell so that you can achieve it too
And I have no means of proving it to anyone nor would anyone understand it if they haven't achieved it them self's

So it's just my opinion nothing more nothing less.