Objective Reality

Rick Knight (rknight@platinum.com)
13 Sep 97 21:26:17 CST

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
Your very use of phrases like "YOUR reality" pegs the issue precisely:
there is only one reality. Period.

Rick Knight:
Well that's absolutist enough to whet my appetite to engage. Is this
something proveable or disproveable with empirical evidence or is it
something you have *decided* you believe?

Lee Daniel Crocker (new):
It would be very easy to disprove empirically: if I threw a baseball
at you, and you didn't duck and weren't bruised, I might be willing
to believe that your reality didn't include my baseball; if you and
I set up cameras with timers to record an eclipse, and we get
different photos, then I might believe our moons were different. But
experiments like this have been performed every day for thousands of
years, and I have yet to see personally or see a credible report of
one failing.

Rick Knight responds:

This is likely going to tick you off but I can't help but quote Rafiki
to Simba as he gazed into a reflective pool, "Look harder."

And also, I won't be playing contact sports with you ANY time soon
<G>.

I am of the mind we live in a world of tacit agreement as far as
objective reality and that represents the majority of thinking in
humanity. (This came back as a very solid meme after a psychedelic
experience and I have not been inclined to reformulate it). I believe
(in the absence of first hand experience) there are people who have
defied what most of us take for granted as physically possible.
However, I believe quite assuredly that solid moving objects can hurt
me. The laws of physics would clearly forecast personal injury in
your baseball scenario. Now, does the baseball hurt me because I
"believe" it will or because it just...will, absolutely...without a
doubt...100%? "Highly likely" is all a reasonable scientific mind
should say and I fully embrace that.

Rick