The alternative is to recognize what the real world is like and why things are the way they are.
There are some mental constructs that we do operate in society - it is often ingrained that private property is inalienable, that money and not resources run the economy, that laws are the rules for the functioning of the world and not a set of reasons for triggering state-sanctioned violence, that the state itself is something more than a bunch of people building an incentivised system for everyone to behave in a certain way.
Those are important to dismantle - but we still live in a world that actually follows a lot of natural laws, and it won’t change simply because you decide to ignore them.
From gravity to laws of supply and demand, those are all very real, and you cannot ignore them - I mean, you can, but they won’t stop working.
The political spectrum is relative, there are no objective points on it. As a realist communist, you’re progressive compared to most people, but you’re conservative compared to a soulist.
And the argument that reality is real by definition holds about as much water as the argument that the Christian god exists by definition. You see, theologically Deus is defined as the personification of the quality of existence in the universe. What property does your argument for reality have that a Christian argument for Deus doesn’t have?
It is the fact that the very word “reality” expresses the combination of what is real, the totality of everything that is actually existent.
We may be wrong in our understanding of reality, but whatever the truth is, it is a reality.
If God actually exists, it is a reality. If He doesn’t exist, it is a reality, too. The actual absolute truth about the world is a reality. If you want to go beyond that, you land in the category of fiction, which, by its very definition, describes what is made up and doesn’t exist.
If you want fiction to be real, you face a clear issue with your semantics.
Oh, I see what the problem is. At the beginning of the thread, we were all using the colloquial definition of reality. You came into the thread using a highly formal definition of reality and thought we were all using that term. No, we weren’t. There’s no such thing as what, for clarity’s sake, we’ll call objective reality. It’s as nonexistent as Santa Claus.
Objective reality is the only thing that’s real, and we explore parts of it, and sometimes are wrong.
Now, our perception of reality (what I suspect you mean by “colloquial definition”) might in fact be wrong, which is why we should base our worldview on the confirmed evidence that almost certainly reflects the way world is (and not say “screw it, everything is real to me now”).
Yes, but evidence suggests it is. There’s a large gap between confirmed evidence and a random guess or a fantasy, and ignoring it would be same as equating a soup with its picture.
Confirmed evidence is verifiable, meaning it can be reproduced again and again under the same conditions - and if we constantly get the same output under the same conditions, we may assume this is how the reality works. That’s the backbone of science, a thing that brought us from the wild and to the current point.
It would be weird to expect the sun not to rise tomorrow, or for water not to heat up inside the working kettle, or anything else. This just works every time, and as such, we can see our observations as practically objective.
The alternative is to recognize what the real world is like and why things are the way they are.
There are some mental constructs that we do operate in society - it is often ingrained that private property is inalienable, that money and not resources run the economy, that laws are the rules for the functioning of the world and not a set of reasons for triggering state-sanctioned violence, that the state itself is something more than a bunch of people building an incentivised system for everyone to behave in a certain way.
Those are important to dismantle - but we still live in a world that actually follows a lot of natural laws, and it won’t change simply because you decide to ignore them.
From gravity to laws of supply and demand, those are all very real, and you cannot ignore them - I mean, you can, but they won’t stop working.
Doesn’t matter how loud you conservatives say it, you won’t make it true. Reality isn’t real.
You are quick to label me a conservative. I’m a progressivist, communist, and scientist.
And reality is real by definition.
The political spectrum is relative, there are no objective points on it. As a realist communist, you’re progressive compared to most people, but you’re conservative compared to a soulist.
And the argument that reality is real by definition holds about as much water as the argument that the Christian god exists by definition. You see, theologically Deus is defined as the personification of the quality of existence in the universe. What property does your argument for reality have that a Christian argument for Deus doesn’t have?
It is the fact that the very word “reality” expresses the combination of what is real, the totality of everything that is actually existent.
We may be wrong in our understanding of reality, but whatever the truth is, it is a reality.
If God actually exists, it is a reality. If He doesn’t exist, it is a reality, too. The actual absolute truth about the world is a reality. If you want to go beyond that, you land in the category of fiction, which, by its very definition, describes what is made up and doesn’t exist.
If you want fiction to be real, you face a clear issue with your semantics.
Oh, I see what the problem is. At the beginning of the thread, we were all using the colloquial definition of reality. You came into the thread using a highly formal definition of reality and thought we were all using that term. No, we weren’t. There’s no such thing as what, for clarity’s sake, we’ll call objective reality. It’s as nonexistent as Santa Claus.
Objective reality is the only thing that’s real, and we explore parts of it, and sometimes are wrong.
Now, our perception of reality (what I suspect you mean by “colloquial definition”) might in fact be wrong, which is why we should base our worldview on the confirmed evidence that almost certainly reflects the way world is (and not say “screw it, everything is real to me now”).
We don’t have any of that stuff. Nothing has ever been proven objectively real, and nothing probably ever will.
Yes, but evidence suggests it is. There’s a large gap between confirmed evidence and a random guess or a fantasy, and ignoring it would be same as equating a soup with its picture.
Confirmed evidence is verifiable, meaning it can be reproduced again and again under the same conditions - and if we constantly get the same output under the same conditions, we may assume this is how the reality works. That’s the backbone of science, a thing that brought us from the wild and to the current point.
It would be weird to expect the sun not to rise tomorrow, or for water not to heat up inside the working kettle, or anything else. This just works every time, and as such, we can see our observations as practically objective.