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?

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

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.