So reality is a exact perfect metaphor for a beetle. Hence metaphysics is dung.

Video is imperfect in that they in fact can’t talk meaningfully about a beetle FYI. More so; it’s interesting how this simple fact hasn’t made inroads into common knowledge... I can only imagine that it is the unsatisfying feeling received when someone says let’s just agree to disagree, because this statement is just the ultimate form of such... if philosophy embraced it pshhh they would be out of business...

Stated otherwise, does a blind man have a better grasp of reality without those pesky photons clouding his judgement?

Its about the interaction. Say you play a game of tennis in VR, it is all real in the context of the game/VR. You couldnt play VR, if there was no tool for VR. But because you have the tool, you can interact with the "dimension" VR. It is real, but also different than an actual game of tennis.

It really comes down to how one defines reality. Say I have an idea for a new tool that does not yet exist. What exists however is my idea, the idea is real. If I develop the tool, it also exists and therefore becomes real.

Reality exists in varying degrees.

Yes the 'definition' of 'real' would be key.

We can already stimulate the nerves and mind to make your senses tell you various things such as you just felt heat, etc.

When you actually touch something hot, it is your nerves sending a signal to the brain that you touched something hot.

If we can create that same stimulation and feeling with VR or direct nerve or area of the brain stimulation 'is it real'???


Some might say the distinction is that it is the 'actual burn from the fire (the damage or potential) that separates that out as 'real' as compared to just the feeling you are getting burned, when in fact no damage is occurring. They might call that instead an illusion you believe to be real.

If Reality doesn't exist, what does?

[Curtain up]

Philosophy Class Scene:


Kid: How do I know I exist?

Professor: Who wants to know?


[Curtain down]

I think though that what the scientists already have come up with is more real than our narrow experience.

In my opinion, "more real" is inaccurate. Something is either real or it isn't. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say something like, "Scientists have come up with a more detailed and precise account of reality."

For example, a sighted person's perception of the physical world isn't "more real" than the blind person's perception of the physical world. But the sighted person's perception of the physical world is certainly more detailed and precise.

I thought the thread was about there not being anything fundamental to reify at all...

Sort of "I think, therefore my thoughts are real" ?

We are always coming back to Descartes.

If "zero" is a concept, then some kind of world is real.

Not quite:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-e...lity-20160421/

I think this view is informed by the discussion we had on solipsism a few years ago, although in Hoffman's view it looks like he allows for more than just his own conscious experience as being real.

I've bumped the Solipsism thread for convenient viewing. Also, here is a link to it. It's a fine thread imo.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/4...ight=solipsism


PairTheBoard

Unfortunately so, in my opinion.

Mortimer Adler's excellent (also in my opinion) book, Ten Philosophical Mistakes, argues that it was Descartes who put into motion the degeneration (not sure that was the exact word he used) of philosophy that continues to this very day.

Maybe, maybe not. Ibid:

"the mathematical structure of that interaction also satisfies the definition of a conscious agent"
-Hoffman

What is this mathematical structure Hoffman has identified for defining "a conscious agent"?


PairTheBoard

Objects of consciousness Donald D. Hoffman and Chetan Prakash
You asked

Unfortunately for copy-paste, he uses the notation of bolded letters for the sigma algebras.
So in (X,X) the second X is bolded. I've changed the notation below to (X,X') where X' is the sigma algebra for X. Same for (G,G') and (W,W'). (W,W') is the World with it's sigma algebra, from which the agent receives perceptual input and to which the agent effects change via the agent's actions.

How does this model capture the "conscious" aspect of the agent? It looks to me like a primitive robot fits the model fine.


-------------------
Definition 1. A conscious agent, C, is a six-tuple
C = ((X, X'), (G, G'), P, D, A, N)), (1)
where:

(X, X') and (G, G') are measurable spaces;

P: W × X' → [0, 1], D: X × G' → [0, 1], A: G × W' → [0, 1] are Markovian kernels; and

N is an integer.

For convenience we will often write a conscious agent C as

C = (X, G, P, D, A, N), (2)
omitting the σ-algebras.
==============


PairTheBoard

It is real. But as you already pointed out, its not the same as an actual fire because you wont experience the burn.

It would also only be real to you who has the device (=sense) to interact with the "VR"-Dimension. It lacks every other interaction a fire would usually have with the environment such as heating the air, no fuel that gets burned...

Another good example would be radiowaves. Assuming there is no subconscious interaction. They are real but have no bearings to your existence. Unless you are a bat, use a transmitter or reciever.

The VR?

it is entirely possible and not even far fetched that a civilization with very advanced AI and other tech, facing inevitable destruction they cannot escape could set up an AI sim, that could simulate the types of lives with random, game theory, outcomes for each individual that could be our current lives.

That could be our reality now and we would never know. Your consciousness is an AI sim that does not know its an AI sim.

(yes the Matrix movie could certainly be real discounting the 'rebellion' aspects)


Well not to nitpick but I think society would need to agree to define that as 'real'.


Words have no meaning other than what we eventually give them thru some form of usage or consensus. That area may always be consider Virtual Reality and distinguished from reality in speech and understanding.

I think there is a difference between 'if a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it... does it make a sound'

And

'if you put on VR glasses and see and hear a tree fall in a simulation, is it real even though when you take off the glasses you realize the tree and sound was simulation'?


I would argue the first is 'real as it did happen and we can measure and verify it after the fact. The second is an illusion that is not 'real' but tricks your senses, at the time to think it is but as soon as you try to measure and verify you see there was no tree, and realize there was no real sound.

Suppose the laws of physics which we think cause things to happen as they do are not really causative at all. Suppose they merely conveniently correlate with proceedings while what's really behind the way existing physical substance moves along is some kind of magic, alien to anything with which we have any familiarity.

Maybe the concept "exists" should just be discarded and the ontology project disbanded. Reality is what's happening.


PairTheBoard

PairTheBoard

Maybe the use of "reality" and "exists" vary depending on the discipline in which the discussion is taking place. The physicists, when discussing philosophy of science, vary in their commitments. Most are unwilling to abandon causality while simultaneously professing Eternalism and the entire universe being time reversible.

I think chirality may eventually be proven to be time dependent on a cosmic scale, hopefully the "Cosmic Birefringence" which Sean Carroll theorized but found no evidence in the data can actually be confirmed with better data.

Yeah, I was thinking a p-zombie would fit as well. But as he noted he wanted to keep it simple and so if a billiard-ball toy model works for less complex systems as well, why not.