reality and truth

[Binkie]

But understanding on other levels, of let's say, spiritual matters, ...
... Exploring matters above the level of knowledge

Just what are these 'other levels'? I deny they actually exist - except as a flawed concept.

 

[fela fan]

Just what are these 'other levels'? I deny they actually exist - except as a flawed concept.

If you deny they exist, then exist they don't!

Leave them to those that know they exist binkie.

But, if you keep looking, then you will find...

 

[Blagsta]

 

[Structaural]

What is the difference between reality and truth?

I'm looking to get posters' ideas on the relationship between them, or even if you think there isn't one. I'll put up the results of my earnest/heated discussion with a mate last night later on. We left with some agreement and some disagreement, and for once, not too pissed.

Feel free to define what you think either are.

[can i ask contributors to post up their own ideas and understandings, rather than quoting this or that writer/thinker. cheers]

Well I would say there is an objective reality which no human will ever perceive wholly (not yet anyway). We could call this all_that_is or more simply Everything.

And there is the reality as experienced individually by each person. Subjective reality. Everything we speak of is this.

Truth, I would be split into Personal Truths, Cultural truths, World truths and Universal truths. You could say that Fela's use of the word Truth as a synonym for God is a personal truth for him.

Experiential differentation and all that...

 

[Binkie]

Fela, is there any evidence for these 'levels'?

You seem to believe that thinking something makes it 'true for you'. What a travesty! Man, in his ascent from the apes, has struggled to understand - the world and how it works, including himself. It has been, and is, sometimes difficult, with many mistakes and false trails. Man has used and developed his intellect in this pursuit of truth - i.e. the pursuit of understanding - accuracy. It's a copout to say - well I have my truth, you have yours - thus freeing yourself of the need to observe, think, and build informed theories - a copout from the need to back up your beliefs with evidence and reasoned argument. What distinguishes man from other animals - what makes us 'special' - is precisely these intellectual abilities. Subjective Idealism - 'things are what I think they are' - in all its forms - including the recently fashionable and discredited postmodernism - is a retreat from what is most commendable in the human species - reason.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

What is the difference between reality and truth?

I'm looking to get posters' ideas on the relationship between them, or even if you think there isn't one. I'll put up the results of my earnest/heated discussion with a mate last night later on. We left with some agreement and some disagreement, and for once, not too pissed.

Feel free to define what you think either are.

[can i ask contributors to post up their own ideas and understandings, rather than quoting this or that writer/thinker. cheers]

Truth is a subset of reality.

 

[meurig]

Ils sont la meme. Ne t'inquieter pas.

 

[Binkie]

La plus la change, la plus la meme chose. Not.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Ils sont la meme. Ne t'inquieter pas.

I thought it was 'ne t'inquiete pas'

 

[fela fan]

Fela, is there any evidence for these 'levels'?

You seem to believe that thinking something makes it 'true for you'. What a travesty! Man, in his ascent from the apes, has struggled to understand - the world and how it works, including himself. It has been, and is, sometimes difficult, with many mistakes and false trails.

So far as i'm aware there is no evidence at all. The only evidence available is on an individual basis. Either you find the evidence or you don't. But plenty of writers and thinkers down the times and years have written down their own experiences, so i'd say that if you collate and summarise the key similarities of what they say, you'd have a good chance of finding your own evidence to these higher levels.

As for your next sentence binkie, i have to correct you i'm afraid! The levels i'm talking about are not about thinking, thinking is not the vehicle to those levels. Secondly i'm not talking about something that can be believed, only something that is. Thinking and believing belong to the realms of knowledge and language.

The truth i'm talking about is nothing to do with me per se, it is just something that every individual can uncover. Not find, coz it's already within us, but completely covered up by society and ego and conditioning.

But no-one can do it for anyone else, each person must uncover this 'truth' for and by themselves.

If you wanna change the world, change yourself... and all that!

 

[Blagsta]

 

[meurig]

I thought it was 'ne t'inquiete pas'

You're probably right Johnny. My French goes to shit after a bottle of merlot and 1/2 a bottle of gin

 

[Jonti]

Each person has their own sensorium (that is, their "own reality"). This is their representation of the possibilities and constraints of their being. Other people's possibilities and constraints naturally affect one's own sensorium, as do inaminate objects in the shared or relative world. The absolute is the whole, and the individual realities or sensoria are relationships with the whole. So any one person's reality partakes of the absolute.

I'd like to be able to say consciousness is a relationship between relative time (the time of the shared relative world) and absolute time. It has a nice ring to it, and a surprising number of people like the thought. It's getting at much the same idea, the notion that an individual consciousness is a relationship bewteen the relative, shared, world and the unchanging absolute.

Here's Newton on the subject ...

Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration: relative, apparent, and common time, is some sensible and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by the means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time; such as an hour, a day, a month, a year.

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