What is Reality? Using Cognitive Surgery

Q: How does everyone else around me know that this world is real? I don't have a clue, all I see is images. But everyone in the streets knows that this world is real. What makes them know more than me?

The existential angst demonstrated in this real question I answered in another forum is common and becoming more common every day. The belief that existence exists because our consciousness creates existence takes two forms:

• the primacy of consciousness, which is, "An argument as to why the ultimate nature of reality is mental not material; http://www.peterrussell.com/SP/PrimConsc.php;
• and the primacy of perception, which is the "problematic of human subjectivity in its relationship to the body and to its world." http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/PES-Yearbook/1998/albano.html
  
  

A:Those "images" you see are called "cognoscendi." Those are objects of cognition, according to multiple dictionaries of philosophy.

If you have objects of cognition, you have cognition. Why do you think they are merely images? If you mean "images" as visual sensations of things which may not be what they appear to be, you are not alone in your estimation of them. But whether they are what they appear to be, the fact that they are images of something means that something exists that is more than just the image you perceive.

Kant had this problem, and solved it by inventing what he named "noumena." Noumena (plural of noumenon), Kant thought, are the "real" reality behind the images. But why should there be something behind the curtain?

You can't have cognition of things that don't exist unless you are mentally ill, and Kant knew this, so we are not discussing mental illness. We are discussing how people evaluate the things they perceive.

You may wrongly identify them once in a while. Someone who hears voices or "sees things" is identifying the objects of his cognition wrongly. You might also mistake one thing for another. We've all done this.

Otherwise, if you have cognition, it is cognition of real objects, meaning the objects exist, that the "image" is an image of "something". As to whether or not the images are the "real reality," that is a matter of metaphysics, and you are quite free to believe the metaphysic of your choice. You can believe the metaphysics that leave you feeling insecure and fearful, and as if you know nothing, as you have suggested that you feel.

Or you can accept the metaphysics that allow you to feel that you do indeed have the faculty of knowledge, that knowledge is knowable, and that you are a person of capability who is walking through a real world.

Why should the "images" of your perception be something other than what you identify it to be? Why do you fear that there is something "behind" what you perceive? Science will break down the physics of every object in existence if man has enough time in the universe to do so. Every time physics reveals something previously unknown about any object, it is like peeling the layers of an onion.

Will you be satisfied that things are what you perceive them to be when physics finally gets to the inside layer? No, because there is no "inside layer." The more we know about anything, the more there is to discover. Every answer creates more questions. That is the nature of man's mind.

It is the nature of man's mind and not the nature of the universe, because it is man's nature to discover. There ought to be nothing to fear in the discovery that the wizard behind the curtain is merely a man. That is the purpose in the doctrine of naturalism---to prove that all things are natural, and not as Kant would have us believe, unknowable. Noumena are absolutely unknowable, and your fear is that you cannot know what "everyone in the streets" seems to know.

You already know what "everyone in the streets" knows, and that is the world is something to be known, not something that is unknowable. But you must accept that the "images" are merely man's means of dealing with the world, and that what science ultimately shows us about the inside layers of the onion do not change the fact that a table is a table, and that a rose by any other name is still a rose.

We all, everyone of us, is constantly doing "cognitive surgery" on reality; in other words, each of us is constantly re-evaluation the things we think we know--when it is appropriate to re-evaluate them. But you cannot re-evaluate what you fail to accept in the first place because you will never accept any re-evaluation. You will still consider your perceptions and your thoughts about them to be about "images" instead of about the reality of acceptance.

You can remain in existential angst, unaccepting of the metaphysics that says your mind is capable and reliable; or you breath a sigh of relief in the knowledge that the only difference between you and the average Joe is that Joe knows the world changes, that he can accept change, and that for now, the images he sees are the images that make the world go 'round.

The choice is yours.

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If A Tree Falls in The Forest--the Primacy of Existence

I originally published this blog Thursday, August 7, 2008. It has received popular reader support both here and at Scribd. I republish it today because of its popularity, but also because it answers a very common question with an unusual epitemological position: that the answer has nothing to do with the definition of either "sound" or of "noise."

If A Tree Falls In the Forest--the Primacy of Existence

We have all heard the question "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound or a noise?" We have heard it ten, hundreds, or thousands or more times.What does that question have to do with the description of Metaphysical Naturalism (MN) as "A belief concerning the supernatural, sacred, or divine, and the practices and institutions associated with such belief"? [See this blog dated 09.05.2008]

MN, concerned with defining such things, and with the denial of what is non-existent, and with replacing belief in the supernatural or the lack thereof with a certainty about the natural cosmology of the universe and existence itself, has an interest in addressing "The Tree in the Forest."

Every answer I have ever read misses the essential point, which is not about "sound or sound waves being heard or not heard," nor about whether sound is different from noise. Those are the excuses of metaphysicians who will not, or cannot, face the real question, or who have no idea that another question more real exists.

The question is: Does existence exist independently of consciousness? When seen in this context, it does not matter if "sound" or "noise" is used as the definition of what happens when the tree falls; it matters whether you think things happen whether or not a consciousness is there to perceive that it happens.

The belief that reality requires a consciousness is gaining in prevalence. It has been a staple of some eastern philosophies for thousands of years. Some western philosophers have advanced the idea. Many young students facing philosophy for the first time have serious existential questions about their own existence. That makes a shameful indictment of how far our "intellectual" standards have plunged since Renaissance scholars brought Jefferson and America's other Founders to an understanding of men's unalienable individual sovereignty. Those modern men and women who doubt their own existence have fallen backward in time 500 years, and can have no conception about their unalienable sovereignty, except what they are lucky enough to glean from between the lines of their teachers words, teachers who tell them their "rights" include all those things which must be provided by other men when they themselves fail to provide it--like health care.

(Deregulation of the health-care industry and extended patent lengths on pharmacuticals would considerably alter the high cost of care and drugs. But that is better left for another blog or two or three.)

To believe that consciousness gives reality to reality, e.g., that "perception is reality," is fallacious logic called the Primacy of Consciousness. (The Primacy of Perception is also a fallacy. ["...perception [as] the causal product of atomic sensations," again e.g., "perception is reality." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Merleau-Ponty

The Primacy of Existence states that existence exists. http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/primacyofexistence.html

http://www.geocities.com/katholon/poe.htm et al.

Existence exists. Period. There can be no requirement for the conscious perception of a "thing" to make that "thing" real. In this case the thing is whether or not a noise or a sound is generated.

If A Tree Falls, Does It Make a Sound?--the Primacy of Existence continued

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the ^sm of
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC.
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism ^tm,
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger ©,
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra ©, and

The Metaphysical Naturalist ©,

are the educational arms of the LLC and are:

© 2008-2009 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ^tm
mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

Existence Exists; W. E. Messamore; ACT For America

What “Exists” And Has "Existence"?

Note: Do NOT Click on the Footnote Reference Numbers--They will take you away from this page. Just use them to reference the footnotes.

“Existence” is often referred to as the "Universal Truth.” Sadly, not everyone who asks questions about universal truths knows that they are asking about existence, nor are they always aware of what a “universal” is, nor what “truth” (or “fact” or “reality”) means. It is not uncommon for people to ask, “What is truth?” or “What is reality?” It is not uncommon for them to ask, "Do I exist?"

Often when asking about the “universal truth” it is with the expectation that a secret and mystic explanation will be given, and that perhaps it will be years before they can “divine” what the wise man told them is “the answer to life.”

But more than likely they harbor the wish that they, too, will comprehend this secret, divine, or mystic explanation in one single lecture, in a moment of revelation. Cartoons depict people climbing to the top of a mountain to consult a “wise man.” The comic strip B.C.1 integrated the “wise man” right into the prehistoric era of man, where the “wise men of mysticism,” Socrates and Plato, belong, for those two men are the modern stereotype of the "wise man on the mountain" in Western culture, though both were better thinkers, than to offer the silliness for which they are portrayed.

People who ask about “reality” or “facts” don't always understand that they, too, are asking about existence. Existence is the universal preoccupation of our intellectual lives, because we want to know, “Where did it come from?”

When it is not phrased as "What is reality?" or "How do I know I exist?" or "Isn't the whole world subjective?", or “What exists and what does not?”--then it is provoked of us in the angry, defiant tone of the statement "Prove that I exist!" More often than not it is stated, “Prove God does not exist.”

Knowledge of what exists and what does not has become smudged and greyed, when “existence” has come to be seen merely as the reality of one's “perceptions”; the lines have been blurred, sometimes erased altogether. A person can be convinced that the ego is necessarily egotistical; that nothing one does in life can have any meaning because “in the end we all die”; and that being “dust in the wind” is more significant to the life one leads, than is a statement such as "I rise in the morning to the work of a Man," where "Man" has greater, not less, meaning.

What is the purpose of following a principled life if in the end you just wind up dead? We will get to the answer. more

And What Irony To Find This Blog

After Writing About "Existence"

"Before the scientific community came to a consensus on the Big Bang theory following the discovery of the cosmic radiation echo predicted by Big Bang theorists, many scientists believed in the Steady State theory. In short, they believed that the universe had no definite beginning and that hydrogen atoms were randomly popping into existence somewhere in the universe, supplying the material for all the physical phenomena like stars and planets. Atheists were generally rooting for this theory, understanding that a definite beginning for the physical universe implies its contingency- that it has a cause which is outside itself. As it turned out, the Big Bang has been confirmed in great measure by scientific findings...

"How the atheists managed to adopt the Big Bang theory as evidence for their position confounds me. If there is any interesting history behind this, I’d be curious to know it.

"To elaborate further on why this is a philosophical defeat for atheism: The contemporary atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen is frequently quoted by Christian apologists as saying about causation: “Suppose you suddenly hear a loud bang and you ask me, ‘What made that bang?’ and I reply ‘Nothing, it just happened.’ You would not accept that - in fact you would find my reply quite unintelligible.” Nielsen is quite right on this account. Bangs must have causes because they are finite, contingent events that have a definite beginning."

W. E. Messamore[blog @] http://www.slaying-dragons.com/

A Reply

My reply is taken partially from the top article, and partially from If A Tree Falls In the Forest--the Primacy of Existence and The Loss of Secularism in Naturalism, Part 2: Unjustified True Beliefs:

"If one thing exists in existence, it becomes the proof of the existence of existence," I wrote, above.

This refutes Messamore on his contention that "hydrogen atoms were randomly popping into existence." The theory of "ex nihilo" has long since been abandoned by Christian theologians; things in existence do not just spontaneously appear. If hydrogen atoms actually were randomly popping into existence, they were caused by something else already in existence. What that is may remain unknown for a long time, if in fact "popping hydrogen atoms" turns out to be a justified theory sometime in the future.

Saying that it was God who caused the popping of hydrogen atoms begs two questions: 1) for what purpose God would cause such a thing, or admitting that no human could ever know that answer; and 2) how can this discussion continue between us if God is the automatic answer to everything? more

CAIR Files FEC Complaint

from "Act for America"

The commentary below, from Jihad Watch, discusses the Federal Election Commission complaint that has been filed by CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations). CAIR has filed the complaint alleging that the national distribution this month of the film “Obsession” is an Israeli plot to help get John McCain elected president. In other words, CAIR is using a government agency to try to punish the free speech rights of those who would distribute this must-see film. As far as we can gather, there is no “vote for McCain” messages, either explicitly or implicitly, attached or connected to the distribution. Given the timing of the distribution, it would appear that it was intended to coincide with the 7th anniversary of 9/11. This is not the first action CAIR has taken in its ongoing efforts to suppress our cherished right to free speech. What is most telling is CAIR’s “obsession” with shutting down any speech that would let the American people see the truth about radical Islam. from Act for America" more

actforamerica@donationnet.net

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If A Tree Falls In the Forest--the Primacy of Existence

We have all heard the question "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound or a noise?" We have heard it ten, hundreds, or thousands or more times.

What does that question have to do with the description of Metaphysical Naturalism (MN) as "A belief concerning the supernatural, sacred, or divine, and the practices and institutions associated with such belief"? [See this blog dated 09.05.2008] MN, concerned with defining such things, and with the denial of what is non-existent, and with replacing belief in the supernatural or the lack thereof with a certainty about the natural cosmology of the universe and existence itself, has an interest in addressing "The Tree in the Forest."

Every answer I have ever read misses the essential point, which is not about "sound or sound waves being heard or not heard," nor about whether sound is different from noise. Those are the excuses of metaphysicians who will not, or cannot, face the real question, or who have no idea that another question more real exists.

The question is: Does existence exist independently of consciousness? When seen in this context, it does not matter if "sound" or "noise" is used as the definition of what happens when the tree falls; it matters whether you think things happen whether or not a consciousness is there to perceive that it happens.

The belief that reality requires a consciousness is gaining in prevalence. It has been a staple of some eastern philosophies for thousands of years. Some western philosophers have advanced the idea. Many young students facing philosophy for the first time have serious existential questions about their own existence. That makes a shameful indictment of how far our "intellectual" standards have plunged since Renaissance scholars brought Jefferson and America's other Founders to an understanding of men's unalienable individual sovereignty.

Those modern men and women who doubt their own existence have fallen backward in time 500 years, and can have no conception about their unalienable sovereignty, except what they are lucky enough to glean from between the lines of their teachers words, teachers who tell them their "rights" include all those things which must be provided by other men when they themselves fail to provide it--like health care.

(Deregulation of the health-care industry and extended patent lengths on pharmacuticals would considerably alter the high cost of care and drugs. But that is better left for another blog or two or three.)

To believe that consciousness gives reality to reality, e.g., that "perception is reality," is fallacious logic called the Primacy of Consciousness. (The Primacy of Perception is also a fallacy. ["...perception [as] the causal product of atomic sensations," again e.g., "perception is reality." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Merleau-Ponty ]

The Primacy of Existence states that existence exists. http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/primacyofexistence.html
http://www.geocities.com/katholon/poe.htm et al.

Existence exists. Period. There can be no requirement for the conscious perception of a "thing" to make that "thing" real. In this case the thing is whether or not a noise or a sound is generated.

If A Tree Falls, Does It Make a Sound?--the Primacy of Existence continued

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®