Chris wrote :
> > To play devils's advocate for a moment. You assert, " it is/was one
> > reality
> > of which we can have differing interpretations ".
> > How could you _prove_that ?
> > I guess you infer it from the body of knowledge which you have
> > accumulated
> > since you were born, which, I imagine is, by and large, US cultural
> > inheritance
> > and a scientific bent.
Bob replied :
> I cannot prove anything--how can I even prove my own existence (Cogito,
> ergo sum?) But, you are correct, I make inferences. The more
> independent lines of evidence I have that agree, the more confident I am
> in those inferences. Actually, I inherit my body of knowledge from a
> wider universe than simply US cultural inheritance (e.g., you and others
> on this list; literature; travel).
> >That's the 'bubble' of 'reality' you occupy from
> > birth to death. You don't accept there can be any other realities ?
> I do not accept that there are other realities, only other experiences
> of reality. The nice thing about culture is that it provides a way for
> us to get beyond our own 'bubble' by experiencing new things or learning
> from others who have experiences that we don't (or do you believe that
> one's bubble only 'stretches' when we learn new things)? We may have
> different experiences of reality, but given the will and a little time,
> you and I can reconcile those experiences into a commonly shared
> one--albeit we may have different interpretations on some matters. But
> the common human experience (of which Hodder and even Tilley and Shenks
> accept) integrates us into one reality.
Okay, Bob, so you claim that there is just one reality, ( the 'Real Reality', as it
were ) and then a multitude of differing experiences of that one reality ?
Let's try and define the word. Do you accept ' Reality, defined as the aggregate
of real things or existences; that which underlies and is the truth of appearances
or phenomena' ? ( this from OED, which is really two rather different meanings )
If there is the one Reality, but nobody ever experiences it, isn't it just an
imaginary concept, on a par with Heaven or Hell or Paradise, or some similar
mythical arena ? Seems to me, for all practical purposes, we focus upon our
own individual reality, with a small 'r', and seems to me that no two of those
are identical.
You wish to call that individual reality 'experience'. Fair enough. Totality of
experiences = reality. But we can only ever have our own experiences. We cannot
experience another person's experience. So we are still left with multi-realities.
Sure, you and I could sit down for a few weeks and attempt to reconcile our
experiences, our realities, and find much common ground. But in actuality,
there are six billion or so individuals alive, and a whole lot who have lived over
the past few thousand years, and there will never be any reconciliations.
I am very doubtful about "the common human experience" which you speak of
as "integrating us into one reality".
> Let me ask this question: If I have a memory of an event, but just
> recently discovered I was wrong (e.g., I found an old photograph that
> shows me in a coat and tie when I believed I was in a tshirt and jeans),
> does that mean reality changed?
> I suggest that it simply means that I was wrong.
Of course. Your memory played a trick on you. You were mistaken. A small
part of the information in your mind / brain did not correspond accurately
with the factual evidence of the photo. (How did the info degrade ?)
So, you update and adjust the model, the internal mental concept, which you hold
and which you believe to represent 'reality', and henceforth it will read 'coat and
tie' not 't-shirt and jeans'. Fair enough. But that is _your_ model of 'reality', and
nobody else's. And it is just a model, not the raw Reality, which, whatever it is, is
something else.
Chris.
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~chrislees/tao.index.html
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