"If aliens exist, they should kill us."

Well, I was more about how gravity is different than on earth. If it was universial, wouldn't it be the same everywhere?
Alright, I maintain taht simple physical laws stop working just because we're not around to observe. Disproove me please with empiristic proof. (Observing via technique does not count, because it's still observing.)

No we don't. Take schizophrenic people. That's a different experience of reality. Which one is right?
Right, they are limited, my point exactly. Everything is limited to the boundries of our brains. Logic is limited to the potentials of our brains. Hint: Our brains are not omnipotent.


Dolphins might be equally speaking of "truly thinking" species but there's been extremely little research in that department. What sets the human apart from other animals most noteably is his ability to plan ahead actions not only for a few hours but even years. All other species act upon memorized patterns.

Do we exist in the same reality? Maybe in the same "objective reality", but even humans among themselves exist in so many different "subjective realites" that it's partially quite impossible to compare their morals and standarts against each other. Why don't we put children to jail when they commit crime? Because they live in other "subjective realities" that have barely anything to do with guilt and responsibility. Now, if even "human realities" among themselves are so different, how can be possible compare "human reality" to "alien reality" or "insect reality" (or whatever)?

It is universal. It's based on the mass of the objects it affects, I believe. Don't quote me on that.

I always wondered how quantum physics factors into that, i.e. the problem where the tiny subject of observation in question is everywhere at once, except in the scenario where the person is looking at a single spot at a given moment. Not having studied that, but only having heard about it off-handedly, I'm just curious how that works in terms of this discussion.

Sounds more like an individual biological quirk than an impediment to the scenario. Schizophrenics are a sub-group within the human biology, just as birds are a sub-group of ... well, life. Everything is in its own category. Schizophrenics have their own stuff going on due to their brain miswirings, and probably aren't a suitable subject for comparison to birds or humans for this discussion.


And hands. Fingers are awesome.

The law of gravity states that it is based on the proximity to the object exerting the gravitational force and the mass of that object. The law of gravity explains clearly why it is different on the surface of earth than floating in space, and even why gravity is slightly different between the top of a mountain and the bottom of a ravine.

When I say gravity I am talking about the theory in general, not the specific gravitational force of Earth.

I don't have to. You're making the claim, you have to demonstrate why your claim has more evidence than mine. Myself, I maintain that because we can trace events in our universe's history (at points when we were not around) to observable and knowable physical laws, we can conclude that our observation does not affect the occurrence of those laws. Therefore there is no reason for me to assume that they stop working in the case of a tree falling in the forest.

Quantum physics don't apply because... we're not at the quantum level.

The reality that we agree on. If a person claims "There is a chair right there!" and we bring in thousands of people who agree that there's no chair there, we can conclude that the person either has a problem deciphering objective reality or is lying. On the other hand if they claim that the chair exists and then we all see it, sit down in it, knock it over, etc. then we can conclude that our subjective experiences in this regard are consistent and represent a picture of an objective reality (i.e. that the chair indeed exists).

Children do live in the same reality, it is just that their brains are not developed to the point of understanding the consequences of their actions as well as a matured human being. The morals themselves are the same; it is equally wrong for a child to murder another person as it is for an adult to do the same thing. We choose to treat them differently; in actuality their actions have exactly the same effects as our own which is totally consistent with an idea of objective reality.

Just because non-schizophrenic is the norm doesn't say anthing about it's value upon a discussion about reality. Just because something is the norm doesn't make it right. It just makes it, well, the norm. What a great a world this would be if what was the norm was right, too.

Is that all stuff that Newton came up with? Just wondering. Because that was initial question about "universial gravitation". And I'm not taking about any other theory than the "universial gravitation" theory by Newton that was mentioned.

I don't have to beause I am being anti-logic. And you can't have a stronger argument than me being logic. Yours might sound more reasonable than mine, but that's worth nothing when it comes to truth or false. Possibilities are of no interest for a question such as true or false.

I don't agree on that reality. Again, because something is the norm does not make it any righter than something that isn't. What's the norm is pretty random most of the time.

Edited by Sheik91, 22 August 2011 - 05:23 PM.

The force exerted between two masses, as set forth by Newton, is equal to the gravitational constant multiplied by the first mass multiplied by the second mass divided by the square of the distance between them:


If you are not using logic, how are you arriving at your conclusions, and why isn't this process at least as much a product of the human brain as logic?

Also, if one does not know the answer to a true/false question, the possibilities are of interest.
If I tell you that, by ceasing to eat for several months, you will gain knowledge of the workings of the universe and become immortal, will you decide upon it without weighing the possibility of my statement being false? Also, if the possibilities suggested by the evidence are of no concern, aren't both conclusions equally arbitrary? If this is the case, why not factor in the evidence?

How is the observational norm "random"? It is based on the subjective experiences of the majority, and, because the majority is by a vast margin in most, if not all, cases, the evidence would suggest that there is a nonrandom factor, such as the reality of the situation, influencing those experiences.

All social systems require the wellbeing of those within the group as a primary value, and from that alone we can judge different moral systems. Without that value the society would collapse and there would be no social system to speak of. Solitary animals lack morality. Morality is specifically related to cognitive, social creatures.

Cooperative groups don't necessarily have a moral system though. Hive insects like ants might display a kind of cooperation that looks like a social system and thus would have a kind of morality, but in reality they lack the cognitive prowess to have morality. All they do is follow chemical trails, and their instinct determines how they should act.

You've misunderstood what I was saying. Even in your scenario things are never what they aren't - either there is a falling tree making a sound or there is a falling tree not making a sound. There is never a falling tree both making a sound and not making a sound.

A tree cannot ever not be a tree. Now you might say "if I chop it into wood chips then it's no longer a tree", and you'd be absolutely correct, but now you can't call the wood chips a "tree" in order to say it's "not a tree". You can turn a tree that's a tree into wood chips that are wood chips, but you cannot turn it into a tree that is/are wood chips. That's the law of identity - things are always what they are and never what they're not.

Both are "right". Ebola Zaire has already explained this so I won't go into it, but my analogy holds perfectly well

How are your emotions "anti-logic"? I think you're confusing logic with reason.


I don't need to, because you don't maintain that If anyone actually believed that they wouldn't be able to function in reality. They would be utter perplexed that the sun set even though they weren't looking at it.

Whichever one is consistent with reality. The question then becomes how can we determine whether or not our experiences are consistent with reality? On some level you have to just go for utilitarianism - assume the model with the most utility. This may or may not make that model true, but you're wasting your life with a model that gives you no utility. This is the main objection to solipsism; yes solipsism may be true, but it's a dead end. Assuming we are a being within an objective reality gives us utility - it gives us something to do with our experiences.

So this is where and why mental illnesses like schizophrenia are identified as "illness", and some of the things they see/hear are "not real". The one thing about objective reality is that it's consistent. What happened yesterday will, under the same conditions, happen again today. This allows us to understand how things function and predict the future - it gives us utility. If there is no consistency with an experience (for example someone may be prone to delusions that are apparently random, inconsistent with their other observations, unpredictable, etc.) then there's no utility in acknowledging those things as "real". Their reality is inconsequential, where as a consistent observation like "hurty bullets come out of gun barrels" has utility - it lets us avoid getting hit by hurty bullets by not standing in front of gun barrels.

And hands, like ST said We have versatile hands with incredibly sensitive fine-touch receptors on our fingertips, and they enable us to alter our environment in far greater detail than arguably any other animal on the planet. There are other species, like dolphins, and even octopuses, that have demonstrated a high degree of intelligence. They simply lack hands (or an equivalent) to put that intelligence to technological use.

Not imprisoning a child isn't the same thing as not telling the child they did something wrong. Children don't do bad things because they've reasoned some alternate system of morality that tells them it's a good thing, they do it because they lack the foresight to critically assess the consequences of their actions. It's like a person giving to charity without knowing that "charity" was actually a scam, and the money raised went towards buying weapons to exterminate the homosexuals. Just because you were unaware of the full consequences of your actions doesn't mean you thought funding the extermination of homosexuals was a moral act.

Gravity is the same everywhere. The law of Gravity simply states that all matter attracts to itself. Yes, the Earth's gravitational pull is different from another planet's (that's due to how much mass [matter] is in the object), but gravity is the same everywhere. Large amounts of matter bring small amounts of matter towards it because all matter is attracted to itself due to the insides of atoms. That's just the way it is. Everywhere we know of.

Edit: I was reading the posts in order and posted this before seeing that a few other people had already answered Sheik using similar thought. Now like six people have said basically the same thing. Crap. I'm sad I didn't see this debate sooner; I'll definitely be participating in it now.

Double Edit:

But you don't understand, our conclusions are based on how we perceive things. Just because multiple people perceive the same thing (such as seeing the chair, knocking the chair over), does not mean that it is reality. Like Sheik said, a schizophrenic person could perceive that he sees a chair, perceive that he's knocked it over, but does that mean that it actually happened? Yes, yes it does. Point is, reality is subjective. If someone sees a chair and sees it get knocked over, it happened to them. You will never be able to convince a schizophrenic that they didn't see something just because you didn't see it. Even if multiple people see the same thing, or claim they see the same thing, it doesn't mean that that is what actually occurred. Even reality for humans can be constantly changing.

For example, let's say that I saw a car coming right at me while I was driving, and I wipe my eyes and notice that there was nothing actually there. Just in that one moment, my view of reality changed twice. One moment there was a car coming at me, the next moment there was none. Now let's say that happens again, only this time I wipe my eyes just in time for the car to hit me. Reality can be ever changing, because our brain and how we perceive things is constantly changing.

Another example: It's true that when we are first born, certain colors cannot be seen by us. No matter how you look at this chair, it always looks blue. However, everyone else perceives the chair as a dark green. In your reality, the chair is blue. As you grow older and your eyes mature, the chair slowly changes colors in your vision to a dark green. Does this mean that you were wrong to say that the chair was blue when you were a young boy? No, no it doesn't. Why not? Because it was blue then.

Alright, I hope at least one of those examples make sense.

tl;dr version: Reality is subjective

Edited by William, 23 August 2011 - 12:08 AM.

I think what you meant to say was our perceptions of reality are subjective. Seeing a car, blinking, then not seeing a car doesn't mean the car vanished from reality, it means your perception of reality changed.

I don't subscribe to this "real for me" idea. Reality is objective - our perceptions are subjective. A person that sees a chair where no one else does doesn't make the chair "real for them", it's just a part of their perception of reality that isn't shared by others. From there we can test to see who is correct. If the person that sees the chair can go and stand on it, and the people that don't see the chair observe that phenomenon as someone apparently standing on nothing, then we're one step closer to determining whether the chair exists in reality (you'd then follow up with further blind tests to determine the nature of such a chair). If, on the other hand, there was a ledge that was just out of reach, and the person found that they weren't any closer to reaching that ledge even after standing on this chair they thought was there, that should trigger something to make them doubt their perception of the chair. They're seeing a chair that doesn't act like they'd expect the chair to act (e.g. allow them to reach things higher than they normally could). Because the chair doesn't conform to the observed consistency of reality they have good reason to believe the chair isn't a part of reality.

I am using logic. And anti-logic. I am using both. Because my world isn't only black and white and choosing one thing does not deny me the other thing. I can have everything.


Example: Homosexuality. It's not following "laws" of (evolutionary) logic, yet it is. It makes no sense whatsoever, it's even wasted potential for reproduction. Yet it is and rightfully so. It's beyond logic, but it's still "true".

I might or might nor comment the other points you guys brought up, I'm just a bit i a hurry.

Logic... you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

It's not "beyond logic" at all, it's just not well understood. There's only one kind of logic, so saying "evolutionary logic" doesn't make much sense, unless you're just talking about logic applied to evolutionary theory. Again, there's nothing illogical about homosexuality, it's just not well understood.

Yeah, that's true. Homosexuality isn't illogical; in fact, there are plenty of animals that have sex with both genders. Take monkeys, for instance. Homosexuality isn't beyond logic, because we can use logic to see what causes it.


Here's what I'm getting at: We all perceive things differently, and therefore our perceptions define reality. If how we perceive things defines reality, than that means that reality is subjective based on our perceptions.

Edited by William, 23 August 2011 - 08:16 AM.

I disagree that our perceptions define reality. Our perceptions are how we come to know reality, but they don't define what that reality is. Something isn't "real" just because we perceive it - our perceptions of reality can be and are unreliable, hence the need for stringent, independent testing. If you're making the argument that even after all that testing reality is still subjective, and everything we agree on is just coincidence or something, I think your argument is pretty weak (and useless).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think you're doing is starting from solipsism and saying your perception of reality IS reality - that they are equivalent. I reject that claim.


EDIT: So far off topic...

Edited by NoeL, 23 August 2011 - 09:02 AM.

Anti-logic is not a reasoning process. Technically speaking, it's not even a word.

Could you clarify what you mean by anti-logic, please? Also, if anti-logic is a reasoning process, when you reason through it using both processes, how to you reconcile the differing conclusions you arrive at?

NoeL already addressed the example, so I'll leave it at that.

Okay, take the following hypothetical:
You set up a room that's totally empty save for a chair in the middle. You line up 100 people and ask them to one by one go into the room and sit on whatever seating apparatus they find. You don't allow any person who's done the experiment to talk to the others. What do you think is going to happen?

Rather obviously, each one is going to walk into the room, immediately spot the chair, sit in it, then leave. None of them were told that the chair would be in the center of the room (or even that it was a chair at all- it could've been a couch or a recliner or what have you), but they all independently came to the conclusion that there was indeed a chair in the middle of the room. This rather clearly implies that there is something beyond subjective reality that influences people; if it was only subjective, then we'd expect people to find all sorts of different seats in totally different locations in the room. That's what I'm calling "objective reality:" the chair does exist and it is the same for everybody with a non-flawed frame of reference. It is consistent, and unless something happens to the chair it will always be there for anyone with a non-flawed frame of reference; it's not arbitrary or random.

Repeat the experiment with a hundred people on LSD or who have schizophrenia; some people may come to the conclusion that there's a single chair in the center of the room, but you're also going to have people that try to sit on something else or see things that aren't even related to the experiment at all. The ones that don't see the chair as the sole seating apparatus are wrong, and not just because they disagree with the majority. Their subjective realities are not consistent with anyone else's, and in many cases aren't even self-consistent (you could ask a person on LSD to run through the same room twice and they'd see totally different things). Meanwhile, even if they didn't see the chair at all, they'd be able to trip over it and otherwise interact with it, while we can't feel or touch or see the couch they're relaxing on.

When you talk about subjective realities, I can agree with some things, but your subjective reality does not determine what things are correct in an objective reality; it's the other way around, and you are either flawed or correct in your interpretation.

This analogy really has nothing to say about reality because "blue" doesn't exist; at least, not in the sense that other things exist. The chair reflects light at a certain wavelength in given conditions. In your analogy, let's say that it's of a 450nm wavelength. Now you can say that's green, you can say it's orange, you can say it's colorless, but in the end those are just classifications that are subject to many different variables (the quality of the lens apparatuses in you eyes, the amount of photopigment you have, etc.). The objective reality is that the light is of wavelength 450nm, commonly accepted to be blue or violet under scientific definitions of the color spectrum.

Color is an interesting topic, but when it comes right down to it our differences in color interpretation don't say much about reality because we can all agree that color is a property of light (a form of energy) that is based on quantitative, measurable traits. These are consistent both internally and externally (you will always see 450nm wavelength light as the same color as long as nothing changes in your eyes, and 450nm wavelength light will always interact in the same way with other light under the same conditions).

EDIT: I really should split most of this off into a debate forum topic.

How 'bout we just smack the crap out of each other with chairs? That should settle the question.