Shaping reality

Discussion in 'Pseudoscience' started by Buket, Jul 24, 2016.

  1. Buket Registered Member

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    What do you think about the claim that humans create and shape reality by their minds and reality is a choice?
     
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  3. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    I think it is half true. Being that reality is largely a construct of our brains, we do create it to an extent. But there are objective facts and objects outside of this construct onto which we project our conceptual schemata. The apple is real, but it is much more than we actually perceive of it. To experience the apple in itself would be a mystical experience--an encounter with a transcendent being.
     
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  5. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    "Reality"
    or
    Perceptions of reality.
    I suspect and suggest that these are 2 distinct entities.

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    perhaps "2" ain't enough?
    Perhaps 3
    perceived reality (purple)
    conceived reality (green)
    reality (blue)
    thusly:
    Where they overlap, hubris enters and statements of certainty abound.

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    The question obtains:
    Can we perceive that which we cannot conceive?
     
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  7. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Those who believe it are welcome to walk through walls or jump over the moon.

    I don't believe that human consciousness has anything to do with creating 99.999...% of reality out there. Excluding our own artifacts like cities, cellphones and cars, of course. (Which makes me wonder whether philosophical idealism is most prevalent in highly urban environments.)

    But obviously our minds have plenty to do with what we believe about the rest of reality out there.

    There's a widespread tendency to try to collapse the distinction between our own beliefs and the reality that our beliefs are ostensibly about. Everybody wants to be God, I guess. (Even at the cost of madness.)
     
  8. mtf Banned Banned

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    That this claim is incomplete; and that it is a political claim used typically by those who wish to eschew whatever responsibility they might have for others.
    Also, that the claim is not rarely used by the self-help movement as a basis for "personal improvement" -- all that from "seeing the glass as half-full" to "dropping limiting beliefs" and all that.
     
  9. mtf Banned Banned

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    Arguably, most people are not philosophers, have no philosophical education, and do not intend that what they say would be taken with philosophical precision. In my experience, most people are so used to speak and read between the lines that they are unable to even see the plain text anymore. Which is why I think that unless a claim is prefaced with a disclaimer like "The following claim was made with philosophical precision and is intended to be read with such," one shouldn't read it with philosophical precision.
     
  10. Buket Registered Member

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    Is this claim philosophical or scientific? What do u think?
     
  11. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Humans create reality? That means humans would have needed to exist before reality could exist. Sounds backwards to me.
     
  12. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    I've yet to encounter any mind-less origins for skyscrapers, cars, ships, computers, spacecraft, roads, bio-engineered plants, nuclear bombs, etc. When you hear about climate change, habitat destruction, and certain animal species going extinct, that is our brains being officially accused of having shaped the original reality we found ourselves in tens of thousands of years ago. I.e., mindless bodies aren't very adept at inventive imagination and planning, which even undesired consequences must sprout from.

    The assorted, altering civilizations we've indulged in over the ages were apparently choices since the will / effort required to persist at and accomplish such projects is surely a touch beyond the arbitrary actions of sleepwalking zombies. Even if a gun is held to one's head and the demand is "Do this or die", one still exhibits the determining power to select not having a pattern of brain splatter on the wall. Whereas the non-autonomous, wooden ventriloquist dummy remains disinterested in both options.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2016
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  13. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    “Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”
    Philip K. Dick
     
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