ANSWERS: 2
  • As a position? No. As a line of inquiry? I think it's something everyone must consider -- nobody has any experience of reality beyond their own experience. What we call "objective reality" is a concept: an extrapolation from many individual experiences, strung together by memory. I set my cup down, I turn away. I turn back, something resembling my cup is there. I conclude: "it's the same cup, and it exists independently of me". That's conceptual extrapolation. All that REALLY happened was two successive experiences of a cuplike object. This is important, because we often forget that our concepts are mental constructs, and we get all high-and-mighty about our beliefs when that happens. But there's a difference between recognizing that our ideas about reality are doubt-worthy, and taking the POSITION that there's no reality independent of our personal experience. To do the latter is to make the mistake of reifying THAT concept: to grant it a truth value which is greater than is justified by the evidence. Objective reality exists, or it doesn't. That's as much as we can say... and we have no access to any way to more firmly ground either position. To become attached to either position makes no sense, therefore.
  • It is a very interesting concept, and one I go back to here a lot! Reality is a very individual experience. What I see/feel/think/infer is not necessarily what you see/feel/think/infer. Our experience of each and everything is very, very different. It doesn't make anyone right, or anyone wrong. Just because my experience is different than yours doesn't make either of us wrong in the conclusions we reach about it. So I 'preach' tolerance. Until we find a way around these individual little prisons (bodies), we will have to deal with this, and knowing that disagreement is logical in our current state, tolerating different points of view is the only sensible action. Certainly, fighting about it is not going to solve anything.

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