The most common test of reality for the last thousand years is I'll believe it when I see it.

Here are some basic facts that we know:

1. Humans have 5 senses - sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. 6 if you like to include mind.

2. Our senses are unreliable. We hear things that aren't there and we can't remember where we put our keys.

3. Our 6 senses are insufficent to 'see' reality so we build equipment like x-ray telescopes to see things outside our natural capabilities.

4. We are inventing new methods & equipment all the time, to 'see' more and more things we never knew existed before.

5. There is no way to tell how many more attractions we haven't seen in the universe because we haven't invented the technology to see everything yet.

That last point also means tha quite possibly, our current & limited view of 'reality' is nothing like true reality. We only think we've seen everything and we brush aside anything that we doesn't match with our present knowledge.

Why this is important?

Because we base our truths on verifiable information, that we'll believe it when we see it. Some scientists in Copernicus time were sentenced to death because they could 'see' things others can't, things that are obvious to a 16 year old student nowadays.

Yet, as of this century, we may have only seen very little of what is out there. Last time, there was no dark matter. Recently, got. Last time, there were no invisible particles called neutrinos. Now, got. Who knows what we'll discover next year and so on. Our truth changes everytime we invent a new sensing instrument and every so often, we discover something new and force ourselves to revise the definition of 'truth.' Truth that would have turned us into a laughing stock a few years ago.

So given all that, can we be so confident about what is true and what is not, what exist and what doesn't exist, or that our view of truth is any more valid than another person's view of truth?

Can i use this as explanation when my gf caught me sleeping with other girls?

i like beastboy's thought provoking threads

perception through our senses is real enough for us to survive.

science dont work on finding out the absolute truth, since absolute truth will require absolute evidence, no one can claim that their experiment and finding are the absolute evidence.

even gravity are not absolute truth, there is possibility that tomorrow there will be no more gravity, but the possibility is so small it is not worth considering it, infact with so much evidence for gravity you could bet you life on that gravity will still be there tomorrow. no having to believe in the absolute truth is a strength for science since every thing can be disproven when new evidence come out against the establish theory. there is not dogmatic believe to uphold.

truth about what is real and what is not? what is this...?

True, and it may also enough for us to be hanged by the neck.

There are still beliefs today that will cause us to commit an offence of heresy, some punishable by death just for believing (or not believing) in them. What if a few years from now, someone invents an instrument and reveals a scientific finding that will prove that we were right and they were wrong? A simple telescope created havoc to social order in Galileo's days. So could other new instruments that may be invented in our lifetime. (My favorite fantasy is still actual photos from the Huygens spacecraft showing that 'something' is out there. )

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Added on May 5, 2010, 10:07 pmYes, the openness to skepticism is what keeps it credible compared to the blind faith approach.



This post has been edited by Beastboy: May 5 2010, 10:07 PM

Found the main title and the content abit diff
First thing, base on the thing u point out:

1. Humans have 5 senses - sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. 6 if you like to include mind.
Scientifically, 5 sense is 5 sense, never be a 6 no matter how much u like it

2. Our senses are unreliable. We hear things that aren't there and we can't remember where we put our keys.
What to do with sense? Remembering only require memory. While hearing something couldn't be explain using one issue but base on many possibilities in diff situationd. (Example, hearing random voices after minor brain injury)

3. Our 6 senses are insufficent to 'see' reality so we build equipment like x-ray telescopes to see things outside our natural capabilities.
Those are technologies that is incaparable with our capability.
I would say both come with good or bad. For instance, technologies require medium and resource to make it work, thus it is limited especially when lack of resource; we human need resource too but our resource is more natural and last much longer, plus more reliable, at least it will not come out an unexpected error.

4. We are inventing new methods & equipment all the time, to 'see' more and more things we never knew existed before.
Same answer as above

5. There is no way to tell how many more attractions we haven't seen in the universe because we haven't invented the technology to see everything yet.
That last point also means tha quite possibly, our current & limited view of 'reality' is nothing like true reality. We only think we've seen everything and we brush aside anything that we doesn't match with our present knowledge.
This up to individual own perception of thing's value.
Since u able to point out this, it is clear that many people in this world think that there are too many things in this world has not been revealed or found out. U could say that is also the incapability of human sense but theres nothing wrong or improper with it

For the rest, i dont have much comment
While in reality, personal knowledge are divided into 3 types: truth, believes, and assumptions.
Assumptions are based on not so reliable points or knowledge an individual has to create certain statement that is not suitable to use to do much thing, in which not a main thing i wan to talk about.
There are many things in this world can fall into the category of believes, such as god, ghost, alien, *many things u can see in PhD section*, in which we can say there are points to believe that it is true however, since theres no absolute evidence to say that it is the true fact and there are ways to say that it is false (example, denying existence of ghost), so we can say such a thing is a thing to believe.
Many things fall into the category of truth as well but usually theres not much to debate about it,
because what truth is truth, it is meant to accept and not deny anything about it.
For example, an apple is red color, we can say that it is the truth, same goes to the sky is blue when it is daytime,
if u say those are not truth, then u need tons of reasons to debate about it
Of course, u can say something like the thing that cover up the apple is actually something else or theres an invisible layer before we actually see the sky's colors, but usually those point that u trying to use to debate in a true fact are call believes.

Sorry if this make u feel very complicated but basically using this three points is enough to let us know what to accept as true information and whats not

Maybe I should have stuck to my original post title "Heresy laws and the indeterminability of reality."

Heresy laws, the one that punishes people for believing in something other than the "official" and often unscientific version of reality, is not only old. It is still very much alive today.

Everytime we discover a new way to 'see' the universe and to explain ourselves, our reality changes by that much. In other words, the definition of reality is a work in progress, and will probably stay that way for a very long time. Despite our sheer confidence that this is real and that is not, do we actually know. I think we can agree that humans haven't discovered everything and therefore we are hardly in a position to claim what is real and what is not. This PhD section discusses a lot about sorcery lah, aliens lah, things that will one day be proven true or false scientifically. We just don't know when that will be but until we've scientifically eliminated all possibility, it is our emotion making our conclusions.

So what I was trying to ask was, what standard should we use to determine what is real and what is not if we still don't know everything there is to know? Our perception of reality has been limited by our few senses and the augmenting technologies. Even dogs can hear things we cannot so how sure are we that our version of reality is more accurate than its version, or any other creatures version that happens to see/hear/feel things we can't for that matter?

Good that you mention the 3 types of knowledge: truth, beliefs and assumptions (which to me is a kind of belief).

Heresy laws, even today, are based on assumptions and beliefs. In Galileo's time, "reality" was perceived to be the universe spinning around earth. Galileo said no, the reality is that our system revolves around the sun. He had a telescope to prove it. The authorities said no, our reality is the right one becoz yours is against our scripture. And Galileo got into trouble for presenting his version of reality.

So with the conclusions we make today, are we Galileo or are we the authorities that would persecute him?

On the mind as the 6th sense. I don't mean 6th sense as in ESP, clairvoyance and all that. This is what I meant.

Our senses presents us our reality. This is yellow, that is loud, this taste sweet. You'll notice that some truths cannot be picked up by our 5 senses. For example, how do we know light travels that fast when we cannot chase it. How do we know there are black holes in space when we cannot see it.

We know becoz we use calculations. We make inferences. These are done by the mind. Our eyes cannot tell us how big is a black hole but our mind can. That's why some people call the mind as sense no. 6.