The Perspicuity of Reality

[Tree of Life]

Justify your answer.

edit: Sorry, option 2 should read: "things aren't usually as they seem."

 

[Davian]

Option 3: Even on closer inspection, one can be deceived.

 

[Chesterton]

Things aren't usually as they seem. Who would've guessed we were made of 99.99% empty space?

 

[Davian]

Things aren't usually as they seem. Who would've guessed we were made of 99.99% empty space?

Indeed.

Another: prove that the Earth rotates, and orbits the Sun, rather than the cosmos rotating around us:

 

[Davian]

I built a house for me and the family, and I did not make any concessions for this alleged "roundness" of the Earth.

Flat Earth Researcher on Astronomy and a Physicist on Iraqi Television:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFU3Txo-j_Q

 

[GrowingSmaller]

It depends on the level of analysis. Fundamentally things areas they seem, because if A (experience) then A is true (its true there is experience). Now how "veridical" that experience is, is another matter. But I believe that it is at least functional from an evolutionary perspective, and as such it is useful. So we have A, and therefore A, and A is useful.

Now how could it function as a "guide" if it were not "mapping" reality somehow? Thats my take.

Of course, evolutionary theory is not obvious, not part of perception.

 

[quatona]

Justify your answer.

Things are as they are. "See something as it is" is an oxymoron if there ever was one.

What we see is filtered by our senses, to begin with.

On top of that, in order for the incoming perceptions to become in any way meaningful to us, we necessarily filter them by our feelings, cognition, interpretation, needs, concepts etc.

Thus, I have no idea, what the philosophical obsession with "things as they are" is about. "Reality as it is" is not only inaccessible, it would also be totally useless and meaningless to us.

 

[Tree of Life]

Thus, I have no idea, what the philosophical obsession with "things as they are" is about. "Reality as it is" is not only inaccessible, it would also be totally useless and meaningless to us.

I also think that the noumenal/phenomenal distinction is a bit absurd. As you've said, many say "we can know nothing about the noumenal world". But apparently this isn't true. For one, we know that the noumenal world exists. And secondly we know that we can know nothing about it. How can we know these things if we have no access to it?

 

[Usus Vox Tractus]

Indeed.

Another: prove that the Earth rotates, and orbits the Sun, rather than the cosmos rotating around us:

Neither is true. They orbit around a common center of mass called the barycenter. Sometime, due to the gravity of the other planets, that center of orbit is outside the surface of the sun.

 

[Davian]

Neither is true. They orbit around a common center of mass called the barycenter. Sometime, due to the gravity of the other planets, that center of orbit is outside the surface of the sun.

Are you agreeing that one can be deceived about reality, or are you off to get some textbooks changed?

 

[Davian]

Justify your answer.

Is there going to be a big reveal at the end of this poll? I want to be sure not to miss it.

 

[Usus Vox Tractus]

Are you agreeing that one can be deceived about reality, or are you off to get some textbooks changed?

Of course one can be deceived about reality. And barycenters are textbook.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Solar_system_barycenter.svg

 

[Usus Vox Tractus]

I didn't choose either option.

Things are not at all as they appear. What we see is only the reflection off a surface membrane. We do not see the actual thing in, we see the light reflected/emitted by the object.

We actually walk around in a photon bath that converges at every single point. Thus you can walk around and see everything from any spatial point.

What appears to us as clear space is a sea of photons traveling in all directions. You cannot see them when they are traveling tangent to you, only when they enter your retina. Some of them billions of years old, traveling across intergalactic space, only to end their journey inside your eyeball.

 

[Davian]

I didn't choose either option.

Things are not at all as they appear. What we see is only the reflection off a surface membrane. We do not see the actual thing in, we see the light reflected/emitted by the object.

We actually walk around in a photon bath that converges at every single point. Thus you can walk around and see everything from any spatial point.

What appears to us as clear space is a sea of photons traveling in all directions. You cannot see them when they are traveling tangent to you, only when they enter your retina. Some of them billions of years old, traveling across intergalactic space, only to end their journey inside your eyeball.

I found my sense of awe heightened recently when I stuck my eyeball at the end of a 1/2 metre telescope, and looked at some stars a few hundred thousand light years away. Neat.

 

[Usus Vox Tractus]

I found my sense of awe heightened recently when I stuck my eyeball at the end of a 1/2 metre telescope, and looked at some stars a few hundred thousand light years away. Neat.

I love astronomy and cosmology. I lost and found my self at "the end of greatness."

 

[quatona]

I also think that the noumenal/phenomenal distinction is a bit absurd. As you've said, many say "we can know nothing about the noumenal world". But apparently this isn't true. For one, we know that the noumenal world exists. And secondly we know that we can know nothing about it. How can we know these things if we have no access to it?

Sure, if you wish to go the whole nine yards you can also include the proposition that we can´t even know that anything exists at all.
Personally, I find the proposition that something exists axiomatic in gthag the proposition that nothing exists is impossible to handle.

The bolded part of your post doesn´t make sense to me: Knowing that we can´t know anything about X is not a knowledge about X. Equating the two appears to be a category error.