Reality is a social construction. A symbolic universe can be constructed by any individual but it is the effect of social influences that brings that universe to its full potential. A mutually acceptable construction is possible only because of the common foundation upon which the structure is based: DNA. DNA provides virtually identical symbolic objects for each subject and provides shared archetypes giving these objects fundamental meanings (Hunt, 1995, p.213). From there, the shared ability to manipulate symbols and use them for tools within a cooperative setting generates the reality, or realities, we all experience. As adults, we all forget we were not born with the reality we inhabit intact. We eventually reify that reality and use it as if it was absolute. Our success at the reification project, that takes much of our lives, is recognized socially as our competence.
Comments?
19 May MMXXI
Bertrand Russell, in a BBC TV interview that you can find on youtube.com, said that philosophers should be more concerned with mass psychology than with strict philosophical concepts and theories.
Ludwig Wittgenstein said: That of which we cannot speak, we must consign to silence."
Have you read Erich Fromm's THE ANATOMY OF HUMAN DESTRUCTIVENESS?
Per haps you might begin there?
Cordially...
ASJ
I consign nothing to silence. But I also agree with Russell that our personal experiences, and those of others, are more important than "theories".
Postmodernists are questioning everything: even the very existence of reality. It is truly important to recover the certainties that allow us to build a trully humane society.
We are WAY past postmodern. A humane society depends on our collectively agreeing on what the world is, and it is not just one reality. The constitution of reality must be negotiated if we are to agree. Few are willing to negotiate. Montserrat Gas-Aixendri
Reality is the things in life that are commonly observed and verified to exist, things that are consistent and not random. Something that is perceived as real and is physically experienced by the senses.
Reality – A Cosmology based on the Tao Teh King (Bahm)
Something existed before anything we can know, which has qualities outside of what we can experience. Yet it is the source of everything we can know, and everything we experience emerges from it. This ultimate realm of existence we can call Actuality.
Actuality is ultimately creation, evolution, and eventual return to the source. This is a single principle involving all aspects of Actuality and manifests its ultimate purpose. Every aspect of Actuality is directed toward this purpose.
Actuality can never be completely described. No name can fully express its existence. But the above words are adequate for our purpose. Since Actuality can never be described, any attempt to describe it must lead to misunderstanding, yet even a description of Actuality is a manifestation of it.
Consciousness accepts what is as it is, not as a result of sophisticated distinctions and complicated descriptions. Surrendering to Actuality means avoiding spurious interpretations. This particularly includes undue emphasis on opposites.
Actuality contains nothing but realities that reside in consciousness, but these realities combined still do not completely represent Actuality. In Actuality all realities, including all opposites, are one, as from a single source. Distinctions, especially opposites, appearing as reality in consciousnesses are simply different perspectives of the same thing, Actuality.
Opposites appear in reality as the source of movement, in creation, evolution, and demise. They are the forms in which the purpose of Actuality is manifest to consciousness. They are the motivation for rational action, which is created, evolves, is forgotten, and returns as instinctive behavior. Rational action is action in accordance with Actuality, which can only be experienced as many realities founded on instinct.
Reality reveals universal demise as entropy. Reality reveals universal creation as libido. Evolution expresses the movement of every form from creation to demise, fulfilling Actuality’s purpose. The purpose of demise is served by creation, and vice versa. The purpose of entropy is served by libido, and vice versa.
L Kurt Engelhart By reality you are referring to "my reality" or "our reality," which is the opposite of reality in the scientific sense, wherein lives the DNA you mention.
Particularly since you have used the word both ways, which opens opportunities for reasoning errors, I suggest a term such as "world view." Reality is based on objective truth that has no interest in people, whereas actual worldviews rely heavily on narratives and personal or group perceptions and feelings.
Karl Sipfle Please review recent ideas on objectivity in reality. I have found that the idea of objectivity has been gone for some time. Reality is subjective, except that "we" can agree on a version by comparing texts, speech and writing, until we share a subjective view(?). That is what you and I are doing at this moment! Whether we share or not depends on your finding an acceptable description of reality in what I say, and vice versa.
L Kurt Engelhart How about the mass of an electron to 6 decimal places? Is that a negotiation?
Both ethics and the mass of an electron either were, or are still being, negotiated. That is just history! You mention DNA (also history). We believe that a large portion of reality is built from experience, but that did not seem to cover all of it. Some of it seems to exist at the time of birth. That is accounted for by what we call DNA.
The term reality refers to a circumstance external to human perception and independent of it. Reality represents all the phenomena of the universe whose laws are beyond man's will. Thus, it is up to man to know the laws and understand them in order to have some kind of influence in reality. It exists in some determined way and can be basic at some point, but it can also serve as a debate in the history of philosophy and science. In fact, it has always been necessary to establish a limit between the real and the perception of the senses for the purposes of science.
Marcelo Araujo da Nóbrega When we have adequately modeled reality we can take action that works! But you do not acknowledge all the time and experiment, and negotiation, it took to build that reality. And it is never final, someone can always find a more rational description of it. We are not the end of History!
A perspective of reality confluent with my own:
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/deepak-chopra-consciousness-10-questions-1-answer-120056275.html
Social constructs are not fundamental enough to be a fundamental description of reality. In the first instance, they require 'societies' or the ability to be 'social'. For this, we have humans, which are themselves complex organisms. Taken together this is a highly complex aspect of what we call reality, it cannot be the explanation for it. It is too high level.
If you say, 'reality is human perception' that is acceptable, because we could be perceiving and are perceiving ourselves as human, but if you say that our perceptions of complex interactions which are themselves the results of our perceptions of ourselves as humans is reality, then you have drifted wide of the mark. Never drift this wide of the mark.
Almost all arguments like 'x is a social construct' are bunk and are being used for genocidal purposes and the destruction of 2000 years of culture. To be clear, this is not one of them.
Anyone who says that the claims of another educated, informed person are "bunk" has an inordinately high opinion of their own analytic ability.
For those of you competent to understand this kind of narrative. I am not.
All. Thanks for the article, L Kurt Engelhart. In summary, the article holds to the notion that QM is very much observer-dependent, as the complex experiment they conducted seemed to prove. There are, however, serious questions regarding the seeming contradictions of QM and the Physical World, most notably pointed out by Physicist Carlo Rovelli who, like Einstein, believes in a much more deterministic reality than QM proffers. See New Scientist, March 2021. He states, simply, the objects don't exist by themselves, but as a result of their relationship to other objects. Existence is defined by objects in relationship to other objects. On another subject, modelling of reality, as suggested above, is like other modelling areas, subject to implicit bias in assigning dependent and independent variables. It's like an fiction writer who calls on real-time fact to provide the veneer of support for the fictional plot. It's too easy to get caught up in it!
Another perspective:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-a-thing-or-a-relationship-betweenthings-at-the-bottom-of-things/?fbclid=IwAR2ULDqIWFHHUosUp-jT4gEjL0okISWYQzzxhX8Rger9bRlVTyk0x2ZY-Bs
Kurt
L Kurt Engelhart - That's a fine paper, though a tiny bit populist in the sense that the old Russell question - do logical relationships deal with internal or external relationships between objects and things - is not covered. That's of some significance, since it's on this issue that the entire 'analytic'/'Continental' dispute in Western Philosophy rests - and not just in Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/ If one is simply convinced that logic deals only with external relations (which is the position of all 'copy theory of truth' advocates), then it's not possible to understand Einstein. That's not my argument - I'm a layman and beginner as far as Physics is concerned, but I can and do read Kant in the original, and this view, re Einstein, comes not from me but from Cassirer. A much-underestimated authority on this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Substance-Function-Einsteins-Theory-Relativity/dp/0486200507 There's a 'universal pragmatic' reading of post-Einsteinian Physics (I report this merely second-hand), which goes like this: 'truth', with regard to theories in Physics, is the descriptor of a methodology, concerning the decision which of two competing hypotheses are to be accepted, in order to control subjective-individual bias. Once this is eliminated as a source of distortion, what remains is what in 'transcendental' Philosophy through to K.O. Apel and others is called a 'category' or a 'discourse a priori': as human beings we have a common collective interest in 'objectifying' the things and processes we encounter in the external environment - under the 'quasi-transcendental interest' of their potential manipulability. (There are other 'quasi-transcendental interests' governing all human interaction - c.f. Habermas.) This argument is particularly influential and plausible in conjunction with material coming from evolutionary biology, starting with Konrad Lorenz. (He got the Nobel Prize for this https://www.google.com/search?channel=nrow5&client=firefox-b-d&q=Gestaltwahrnehmung+Als+Quelle+Wissenschaftlicher+Erkenntnis) The human eye does not 'reflect' light 'as it is' - just like the other sense organs, it preselects the 'information' coming in on the basis of the pragmatic interest of individual and collective survival. (Which is why we have no sense organ for radiation - it's never been necessary, speaking from an evolutionary standpoint. That's bad luck for people living in the Ukraine, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, elsewhere.) The reason for this 'contradiction' - to use the word from 'dialectical' philosophy - is that, in the history of science, the concepts space/time/causation were regarded as objective and eternal in the sense of Aristotle. It was this that made the marvels of e.g. modern medicine (through to epidemiology and vaccines) possible - the premiss that these concepts are objective rather than 'relational' with regard to the human race as a whole. Only in this latter sense, i.e. an 'evolutionary' or 'macro' sense, can they be regarded as 'social constructs' - not at all in the populist-voluntarist sense of Berger and Luckmann. (For the uninitiated: we can't really change our gender or race.)
George Cernigliaro –
The question, whether things are objects or relations, is possibly a language problem. Language puts us in front of the alternative: object or relation – which perhaps isn’t an alternative outside language. Is a fist an object or a relation (or a process)? Where will the object be left, when I open my hand?
In science we have to go up a second step of ‘verbalization’ of our perception: mathematics. The mathematical science of nature doesn’t describe what we perceive as objects but only those aspects of the perceptions which are comprehensible as relations.
We have, then, apart from the sensual barrier, a doubled language barrier which stands between us and reality.
Klaus Schuricht: I would argue that ALL communication is dependent on the idea of relationship. The fist can be all three. It depends on context. And there is no context without relationship. Mathematics can define the mechanism of making the fist, but not the context of the fist itself. All can agree to the logical progression of mathematics, which makes it the most "objective" of communication. Everything else concerning the fist is subjective.
In short, reality is the way things actually are, not the way you might want them to be.
Yes, but the question is How do we know? Subjective experience says what's real to any one of us may not be so real to others. Objective experience, as far as we know, is dependent on consensus of subjective experience, but mathematics and its methods are about as close to objective experience as we can get, but even mathematics depends on initial assumptions, which may be subjective. The physical sciences are replete with such examples, which is why science is never "settled".
How do we know? We measure! And that is what creates reality!
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/quantum-spookiness/?fbclid=IwAR09AobU00Z5rEbI7HOAXr0g0coLM0PhIHamdyQ8DE9ODj2KEmsmoY4xWhU
Something new on this every day!
Kurt
L. Kurt Engelhart: We measure ... but that, by itself, doesn't create reality, as we are measuring responses based on model interpretations. As I stated above, these measurements are based on initial assumptions, which may well be subjective, or at least not purely quantitative, based on hypothesis. For example, we're told by climate scientists that if atmospheric CO2 exceeds 450 ppm, (or thereabouts) then we are irreversibly locked into environmental oblivion. There is MUCH to be argued as to whether this assertion is true, based on climate models which some say are very questionable. Some of us say that this assertion, based on measurement, is reality. This is the present state of climate science. Others say it's a myth. Which is it? Measurements usually confirm the efficacy of physical models. But, no one would say that a model is reality. We would say that a model may represent reality. To this day, Relativity, for all its success, is still not considered reality, but a very successful representation of reality. That's a big difference, which defines what science is.
George Cernigliaro - What bothers me about your above argumentation is the Va banque attitude that it implies with regard to climate change. ("sure, maybe it's right, maybe it's not, but it's unproven.") (Sounds a bit like the versions of vaccine denial doing the rounds that have made the current lockdown in Europe necessary.) The issue of any kind of 'ultimate' correspondence between a 'hypothesis' and 'reality' is one thing - that controversy is as old as the "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes" under Louis XIV, four centuries ago. That has nothing to do with the modern state's mandate to avert harm from its citizens, as codified in all democratic constitutions. Medicine altogether is the prime example of a field where the only absolute certainty is that we're all mortal. Everything else is pragmatics, of one kind or another. These issues have been intensely debated in the literature - what you're guilty of is what's called a 'category' mistake. It's quite irresponsible of you to imply that you personally - any single person - has the capacity to make that call: "Some of us say that this ... is reality. Others say it is a myth. Which is it?" You don't have that capacity, and you shouldn't suggest that you have ...
Frederik van Gelder - Climate change is but one example of a science built on questionable models. As is, indeed, the notion that lock-downs inhibit the spread of viruses. The va banque attitude is that of a neutral observer pointing out that models are themselves interpretations of what may or may not be reality. What these mandates interpret as harm to citizens do not take into account the harm that is done to citizens by locking them down, which includes depression, increases in suicide and the loss of livelihood. Previously untested vaccines have also done harm at a level which we will all find out later on. So, the modern states mandates? WHO is the "modern state"? WHO gave them the right to diktat rule?
As Franklin once said, and I paraphrase: 'anyone who gives up their rights to liberty for the sake of safety will likely lose both'. No, I don't have that capacity, but neither does the "modern state".
Reality is relative, for us humans it is the visible and invisible world discovered by science. For an animal, it is the world it interacts with on a daily basis. It depends on each living being. However, reality exists independently of the observer. If all life ended up on Earth, reality would exist by itself, independently of one's consciousness.
Lou Schmitt: Yes, the ultimate reality is self-reference, whether "true" or not.
Reality is precisely that which is NOT a social construction. Otherwise we are stuck in Plato’s cave minus any possibility of crawling out, playing with our own ideological constructions ad infinitum.
Why are so many people with a good technical/engineering background so irresponsible? The gent from Binghamton University - Plato's cave is far above his vuurmaakplek - has no problem with vaccine denial, with climate change denial. This RG is read and followed around the world - people are dying from these things. And all that comes from this direction is a scepticism/cynicism that is so popular precisely because it can and is tantamount to a shrug of the shoulders: "It doesn't concern me, I can't do anything, I won't do anything, I'll just ignore it." It's a childish attitude. It corresponds to the inanity of the question: "What is reality?", a pointer to something the media analysts have been warning against for a long time. Namely, that what is inane, what is merely 'entertainment', what is merely 'opinion' or doxa, that this is dangerous in itself. "What is reality?" is not a serious question.
The reason this ‘What-is-reality?’-question is so inane lies in Laurence Wright 's reference to Plato’s cave. Ever since the ‘pop’ philosophy of Berger and Luckmann hit the universities of the West, everyone and his/her favourite trainer/investment advisor is convinced that reality is a ‘social construct’. It gets repeated ad nauseam. They may not have heard of either Hegel or Husserl, but they’re convinced that that’s the ‘takeaway’ from what’s called ‘phenomenology’ in Philosophy. Somewhere during the sixties (the book came out in 1966) what’s now called ‘social constructivism’ started to congeal the various ingredients that went into it - the ‘pop’ phenomenology of Berger and Luckmann, positivist trends within Analytic Philosophy (including what is now called ‘cognitive science’), Darwinism, biological reductionism, and the rejection of all input from philosophy and epistemology by the academic psychologists. (Which turned them into adjuncts of the pharmaceutics industry.) The upshot of all this: millions who are convinced - and aggressively supported in this by the GOP - that what counts is their opinion, and nothing else. No specialists, ‘professors’, ‘elitists’, or anyone else has the right to try to tell them anything different. (Most especially not epidemiologists or climatologists.) (The GOP is now hard at it to ‘weaponise’ this attitude - to put an end to democracy in the US altogether.) That's the reality behind the triviality of this question.
The only refuge from entropy is fantasy. Just don't insist it is absolute.
Frederik van Gelder: You're talking from a strictly ideological/political standpoint and NOT the scientific. I am neutral on climate change because the FACTS don't support it, at least not yet. You say I'm a "vaccine-denier". NOT TRUE. I'm neutral on the Covid Vaccine because most of the operational FACTS aren't in yet, but what info is out there is NOT good. Not only are they not very effective after 3-6 months, there are also far more injuries from these vaccines than from any other vaccines ever developed, COMBINED. You say I'm ignoring these issues. NO, I have quantitative arguments for my views, to which, I would say, you are immune. I would call that ignorance. Are you a real scientist, or are you an ideologue? You come off as a hardened collectivist/statist. "No specialists, ‘professors’, ‘elitists’, or anyone else has the right to try to convince them of something different." YOU are the elitist, SIR. As you state that anyone else doesn't have the right to convince them of something different has no conception of debate in the real world. Again, your ideology gets in the way of your intelligence. If you want to take this offline, I'm fine with that, but let's not waste any more time in this venue. The question, as discussed thus far, is interesting and expansive.
The “reality” of life (aka “DNA”) is the product of the physical laws of nature, the physical matrix of the universe. Life is a way for the matrix to see and experience itself. The observable matrix, and its experience thereof, is a function of evolution within the tree of life, where the human branch is one of many. The tree of life follows the Constructal paradigm resulting in the evolution of dendritic configurations across all domains:
https://constructal.wordpress.com/
The Constructal paradigm relative to the social reality (Constructalism):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvD4DHMq1Y4
Companion article:
https://www.academia.edu/43512871/The_Science_of_Rights_an_Overview
It's the neutrality that's bogus. The reality is that the global toll of this pandemic has topped 5m and is heading for 6m deaths. The US deaths are heading for 800,000, and could top 1,000,000 before this is over. The stats are simply out there, undeniable, whatever the pop philosophy being peddled here is suggesting: https://www.statnews.com/feature/coronavirus/covid-19-tracker/ Claims of neutrality in the face of that is really a matter for the psychiatrists, not for a list supposedly set up to foster research and scholarship. Vaccine-'denialism' is not a fiction - people are dying because of this nonsense. It is a shame that some on this list take such views seriously - it detracts from the reputation of RG. They lead to real and measurable harm - the very opposite to what science is supposed to be all about ...
Karl: Thank you. I think this needed to be said, albeit maybe not here, as I think this is sidebar, and not germaine to the question.
Frederik van Gelder: No one would argue the statistics to which you refer. What is the pop philosophy you claim is being peddled here? I simply stated that the Climate Science data is very questionable, which makes me a climate denier in your view. "Climate Denier" is a term not worthy of RG. It is a blatently political term designed to shut down, rather than foster scientific discussion. This, I maintain, is an abuse of science, and yet more evidence that your argument is political, and not based on real science. Your statement that my remarks diminish the reputation of RG is real evidence that you don't know how to have emotionally detached discussion. Please think this over, as I truly want to understand why you think that questioning establishment belief is cause for calling someone a denier. Science is ALL about questioning and NOT about politics.
Every time we communicate, we have to meke a choice about a social construction system to use. The best choise would be the one, the most of the people we turn to, can regognice. OK?
Tiit Marrandi: That's a complicated question to ask, because everyone participating in the questions have their different points of view as to how to answer; the frictions eventually arise anyway. That said, I think one answer to the social construction question is to limit the use of examples not setting off emotional discussion. I may well have done that in my use of climate change. The discussion of that subject is not the question here. I will avoid that subject in the future.
Tiit Marrandi George Cernigliaro
Frictions arise because individuals do not agree even to the extent of how debate will be judged. In this venue the "mark as best" feature and "recommend" seem to fill this role, yet are ignored.
As you should see, this plays directly into the original question, "what is reality." everywhere people are trying to enforce a personal reality , rather than understanding that ALL realities must be negotiated. Unless of course one resorts to force or fraud, both of which are discouraged here.
Respectfully,
Kurt
Dear Dr L Kurt Engelhart . Reality means anything that exists. An event that has actually happened, or a thing which really exists is said to have "reality." Something close to reality is realistic. Reality is the state of things as they are, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. See the link: https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality
See also the following link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2175783.pdf
Also see the following link: https://now.northropgrumman.com/what-is-reality-your-quick-start-guide-to-the-nature-of-the-universe/
Kindly see also the following link: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pain-loss-and-suffering/202102/what-is-reality%3Famp
Aref Wazwaz
"Reality means anything that exists."
Dear Aref, I fear you miss the point of the question, in that the question is infinitely debatable, and for a group of people to settle on any reality requires negotiation. You will see that in the past this has always been the way any reality has been established.
Respectfully, Kurt
Reality is everything that exists regardless of our knowledge. The universe in its smallest scale to the great superclusters of galaxies. The unknown is also real as we think about this possibility. The multiverses, that is, everything we know and that we will one day know. Past, present and future. Even things that exist but we will never know because reality is infinite. When we die, reality continues, not for us, but for others.
I think that this is beyond of our imagination that the reality could completely positive operated and be superior. Sometimes, the virtual situations are shown better performance than positive reality.
Klaus Schuricht: Yes, agree ... out of my league, I think, as I don't think I can add any more to what has already been suggested here.
Yes, the question leads directly into metaphysics! Not that there is anything wrong with that!
Thanks to all who contribute to the discussion.
Kurt
It's more than interesting that the metaphysical, almost invariably, is invoked after a time. It's humbling, really, the "ultimate" secret ...
Reality is when I stop day dreaming and look at the clock and suddenly realise that I should be getting on with something!
Reality can be seen as practice (synonymous with reality). And practice is related to competence. Acquisition of new competencies leads to the transformation of personality. Thus, the reality is dynamic in relation to the development of personality. But the dynamics are not always positive in reality. After all, even inaction is dynamic. It leads to the opposite process - the degradation of personality.
Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, reality is the totality of a system, known and unknown.
Donald Hoffman | The Case Against Reality - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HFFr0-ybg0
Michael T Takac
Donald Hoffman | The Case Against Reality
Completely confirms my understanding of reality and consciousness. Thank you.
I would only add:
Consciousness is not real, it is actual. We can not see it, yet we know ABSOLUTELY that it is there. It is the ONLY thing we can know absolutely. And we can understand its existence as the CONTAINER for reality.
We can also understand that other things we can find in reality, where they are acting agents, even chemicals, must have a similar consciousness that makes their actions, for them, purposeful and rational.
L Kurt Engelhart - Re ‘consciousness’. You say: “we can not see it, yet we know ABSOLUTELY that it is there. It is the ONLY thing we can know absolutely”. The controversy between realism and nominalism goes all the way back to the 14th Century. Could you please provide a definition of solipsism? Or a commentary on any of the psychology papers on narcissism? Rather obviously, propaganda on social media and elsewhere is becoming a direct political threat to all of us - no doubt anyone in Ukraine will be able to tell you more. The obvious weakness in your sentence, above, is that it holds up, by the look of it, *sense certainty* as the only criterion of ‘consciousness’. (‘This is a cat, this is a mat’ sort of proof - to use to old Russell example, from the heyday of Analytic Philosophy.) The obvious refutation comes from psychoanalysis, provided by the term *projection*. (Perhaps you remember an old definition of propaganda: ‘inverse psychoanalysis’. Whereas the latter helps us to become *aware* of our projections, propaganda very deliberately *strengthens* them. [Projections, according to psychoanalysis, are always the result of fear and aggression.]) What do you say to the babuschka in Russia who says: “I *know* that there are Nazis in Ukraine - I’ve seen them on television.” She knows ABSOLUTELY that they are there ...
Dear L Kurt Engelhart and Frederik van Gelder,
The way I see it, those “acting agents”, or observable “icons” [Hoffman], are shadows in Plato’s cave analogy. Reality is outside the cave, the matrix, a reality we seek but lack the tools to exit the cave.
According to Hoffman’s work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HFFr0-ybg0
Round timestamp 00:21:30 Hoffman argued that any scientific theory we know is wrong “including general relativity and quantum field theory and so forth.”
Round timestamp 00:25:00 Hoffman stated, “… natural selection [evolution] will drive any true perceptions to complete extinction.”
We could only study the shadow of those icons and ethically apply their behavior in the evolution towards our objectives. Evolution is the driving force (the Constructal paradigm), and perhaps, one day we may find those tools to exit the cave or create our own cave (aka virtual reality).
The Constructal paradigm:
https://constructal.wordpress.com/
Relative to those “Nazis in Ukraine” and future “Nazis”, the world should review the Constructal paradigm in social systems helping to advance the evolution of global civility:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356475384_THE_SCIENCE_OF_RIGHTS
If one is going to be serious about a topic in the methodology and philosophy of science - this forum is after all supposed to be for professionals - one has to give some indication that one is aware of how this controversy has been handled over, say, the last several centuries. Nominalism and realism stand for opposing positions regarding what here is now called 'consciousness'. What I've seen so far is exclusively the argument from sense certainty: since I can see the cat or the mat, for that reason they are 'real'. That's the position usually called either 'realist' or 'empiricist'. As recently as Russell this was defended systematically in epistemology (through to Popper) - since then, this has been strongly contested by the various 'critical' directions. (Also called 'constructivist'.)
But instead of any of this - it's a huge literature, as anyone knows who's studied it - what we have instead is simply a dogmatic 'consciousness is real'. If one scrolls a bit through the previous commentator's work, it's clear he's never got beyond Descartes and Spinoza. He really believes the 'existence' of natural rights can be subjected to scientific testing. That's really as old as philosophy altogether: Truth, Beauty, Justice can't be proved. The best we can do is try to run our affairs in such as way as to minimise demagogy, ugliness, and injustice.
Bertrand Russell --
"None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error. The methods of increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs are well known; they consist in hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate. These methods are practised in science, and have built up the body of scientific knowledge. Every man of science whose outlook is truly scientific is ready to admit that what passes for scientific knowledge at the moment is sure to require correction with the progress of discovery; nevertheless, it is near enough to the truth to serve for most practical purposes, though not for all. In science, where alone something approximating to genuine knowledge is to be found, men's attitude is tentative and full of doubt."
Bertrand Russell says that although it's logically possible that solipsism is true, solipsism should be rejected as less simple than the hypothesis that an external world exists.
In other words, we're always working with what we've got, and watching for something better.
Dear doctor
REALITY+ VIRTUAL WORLDS AND THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY David J. Chalmers Illustrations by Tim Peacock
"The central thesis of this book is: Virtual reality is genuine reality. Or at least, virtual realities are genuine realities. Virtual worlds need not be second-class realities. They can be first-class realities. We can break down this thesis into three parts:
■ Virtual worlds are not illusions or fictions, or at least they need not be. What happens in VR really happens. The objects we interact with in VR are real.
■ Life in virtual worlds can be as good, in principle, as life outside virtual worlds. You can lead a fully meaningful life in a virtual world.
■ The world we’re living in could be a virtual world. I’m not saying it is. But it’s a possibility we can’t rule out."
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