jophil28 said:
No, REALITY is a measurable objective event which exists (or existed) in front of your eyes. Your PERCEPTION is what happens behind your eyes.
It seems that the old warm and fiuzzy left wing thinking that says that there is no truth only interpretations is still around . Is this shyte still dominant in academia?
IT was around when I was an undergrad in the late 70's. IT was promoted by third rate academics who walked the halls clutching the same dusty lecture notes for the entire 25 years of their tenure.
The great Winston Churchill said ," The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, IGNORANCE may deride it, but in the end ,there it is."
NIcely put, Winnie.
jophil28 said:
There is no such thing as personal reality . The notion is absurd. Perhaps the relativists are confused once again between reality and perception.
I agree and disagree with you, Jophil.
Interpretive truth is utter rubbish. That's a hazy new age cop-out that some people promote to make everything in their reality subjective and ambiguous.
If i drop a bowling ball from the top of a 100 ft. tall building, it will fall to the earth at approximately 9.8 m/s and collide with the pavement, likely doing damage to both the bowling ball and the pavement it collides with. It's an elastic collision.
That is a physical truth. Do it one million times, you'll get the same result.
If you smoke cigarettes for any considerable period of time, you will most likely get cancer, or be at a significantly greater risk of getting cancer. That is another physical truth. It has been proven ad nauseum.
If a man cheats on his wife there will almost certainly be negative consequences. For most men this is truth. Just because consequences dont occur right away or there is a possibility it may go unknown forever does not make it an 'un-truth'.
Ol' Winston was no slump in the cerebral department. Some things just are what they are. No amount of subjective interpretation, academic bush-dancing, or dodgery is going to change that.
Personal reality, on the other hand, does exist. Truth is not synonymous with reality, because by definition reality is subject to interpretation. Truth is what it is, whether you choose to accept it or not. Truth is no respecter of persons or beliefs.
You may not believe that Christ was the son of God. I do. Do either of our beliefs make it truth or un-truth? No. Can either of us prove the other wrong? No. Matters like this come down to faith and personal belief. I can say "i believe this to be true", but i cant prove it like the bowling ball analogy. It is not my job to try and prove or disprove a matter of faith. I can prove physical matters through repeated experimentation and cross-verification, and then i can call it truth and provide evidence that it is indeed true. I realize the difference between a proveable truth and a personal belief.
Another example:
In one man's reality, women could be evil, manipulative creatures who only bring him grief.
In another's, women could be people of varying character who generally bring him joy and sexual fulfillment.
Two different realities, but what IS still IS. Women, as a sex, arent fundamentally different for either of these men. Only the
individual women they interact with, the
basis of their interactions, and their
interpretation of said interactions differ. THAT is personal reality.