An extension of the On Religion thread. I plan on using this as a new introduction to the paper I've talked about for a while, hence the "this conjecture" references.

This draft is pretty rough and early in its stages, so any type of corrections or comments or criticisms or concerns are welcome.

On Reality

For starters, look around you.

That is your conscious experience.

You have an observation; you have a thought, or a theory; you have an emotional feeling, or a physical sensation; you have language and cultural laws and scientific laws.

From within this consciousness, emerging out of your unique collection of observations and knowledge, there is a world.

But human beings have long supposed, perhaps many even unknowingly, that beyond this subjective world is a world external to the one in our minds.

So we have both an objective and a subjective world. One of the questions that might be worth asking is "which one is reality?"

To tackle this question thoroughly we need to assume that the words "exist", "existence", "real", "reality", and "something" are all refering to the same thing. Anything that is something is real, it exists; reality is made up of everything in existence.

So back to the question. Is existence subjective or objective or both?

It is common to assume that existence should be objective. After all, the subjective experience is merely an individual's personal and inaccurate view of the objective world. How could reality be flawed by perception?

But if it is true that existence is objective this also means that our observations of the world are not real; our feelings and emotions are only real in the sense that they are chemical reactions, and the unique way that we experience them is not real.

Is that something I should agree with if my conscious experience seems pretty real to me?

Also, consider the consequences of this decision on the existence of other things, such as knowledge. If something is objective, then human beings know nothing. On the other hand, if something is subjective, then human beings do know something, but its not absolute, which leaves reality somewhat fragile.

Personally, I think that knowing something that is probably wrong is a more optimistic take than knowing nothing, if only because it allows something to evolve into something better.

Its important to realize that the word "real" is just a label. We invented it as a tool, and we should be using it in the way that it serves us best.

This conjecture applies the label real to our subjective worlds. What you see, what you feel; what seems real is real.

The objective world still serves a purpose in this conjecture, but its presence is understood to be hypothetical. Here is how the conecpts are refered to in this paper:

nature: the subjective, conscious existence; the relative reality of every observer

the universe: the hypothetical objective realm that acts as the superset of all the natures

Let me briefly explain a few things nature that science hasn't done a marvelous job at explaining. Newton didn't believe space and time were absolute. He believed that there was relative space and relative time in addition to absolute space and absolute time. From the Principia he makes it pretty clear.

And Einstein, from his philosophy, seemed to agree. He helped clarify a few things about space and time and made it clear that the relative versions are the only versions that science can effectively deal with. This is because the relative versions exist as our observations, which is what science is based on. In a conversation with Heisenberg (the speaker), Einstein reveals that our observations are shaped by our theories, indicating that relative time is what is observed, but absolute time still plays a role in his grand hypothesis:


"But you don't seriously believe," Einstein protested, "that none but
observable magnitudes must go into a physical theory?"

"Isn't that precisely what you have done with relativity?" I asked in
some surprise. "After all, you did stress the fact that it is
impermissible to speak of absolute time, simply because absolute time
cannot be observed; that only clock readings, be it in the moving
reference system or the system at rest, are relevant to the
determination of time."

"Possibly I did use this kind of reasoning," Einstein admitted, "but
it is nonsense all the same. Perhaps I could put it more
diplomatically by saying that it may be heuristically useful to keep
in mind what one has actually observed. But on principle, it is quite
wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudes alone. In
reality, the very opposite happens. It is the theory which decides
what we can observe."


If you haven't guessed by now this conjecture also encoporates both the relative and absolute concepts of space and time. The universe includes the absolute space and time, while the collection of observations and knowledge you call nature contain relative space and relative time, or, just space and time for brievity.

But unlike Newton and Einstein, this conjecture follows the lead of Leibniz, who thought that matter was both relative and absolute. In the (hypothetical) universe exists (hypothetical) absolute matter, whereas in nature there exists matter, which implies the relative variety.

Anybody left unsatisfied by the standard interpretations of quantum mechanics should definitely consider the interpretation used here: that the indeterminately changing systems of matter can be understood as the observations of a determinatly evolving system of absolute matter.

We'll leave it here for now.