Is Reality Objective?
 

Is reality objective or subjective?

More specifically, is there one objective reality that we are all subjected too, or are we each the objects of our own subjective reality?

What are your thoughts?

No if it was subjective id spend my days fighting WW1 steam-powered imperial german soldiers,and flying Mitchell bombers like those chicks from Sucker Punch (but in a more manly outfit obviously!!)

Maybe they are- and this Toyark-posting existance is merely the dream caused by some bad K-Rations you ate after another victory on the battlefield.

This post may be your subconsious trying to wake you from REM sleep as yet another steam-powered platoon nears your location...



WAKE UP NOW!

You know what,i fecking love Sucker Punch!! Its no Inception or Citizen Kane, but its packed full of action,has great set pieces,and looks awesome,whats not to like??

I'd like to think that there is one objective reality that we are all subjected to but understand that functionally we are all the objects of our own individual subjective realities.

Does anyone else have their own take on the subject?

Nope. I dont think so man.

Stop treating me like an object! I'm no piece of meat, pally!

Ahem.....I apologize for subjecting you to that outburst.............


I tend to think along these lines.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own." - Adam Savage.

I personally believe that there is an objective reality that we all comprise, but at our core we are subjective beings. So the reality we perceive is subjective within that framework.

A friend of mine and I took a philosophy class in college. On the first day, our instructor sat an empty chair at the front of the room. Then he said we had to write an essay in response to the question: "Is the chair really there?" We were given most of class to write it. My friend turned his in after only a few minutes, while I took up almost 20.

When time was up, the instructor gathered and graded the papers right there. He then said that most of us got B's and C's, while one student got an A. That student was my friend (btw, I got a B).

After class, I asked my friend what he had written so fast that earned him an A. He said he only wrote two words:

"What chair?"

but in all honesty you all knew the chair was there,to say its not would be denying logic and reality,no?

It depends on the individual's perceptions.

Treble's friend might have a different definition of what constitutes a chair.

Say the prof. set an empty stool in front of the classroom and asked the same question.

Many may take the position that when the prof asked his question the chair he was reffering to was the stool while Treble's friend saw only the stool and no chair.

You should have walked up and taken the chair out from under his butt- after all, he cant get upset of the chair was not really there, Right?
So you would have proven that, at least to you and the professor, the chair was indeed there.
Everyobe else's laughter would have covered their viewpoints.

The chair was empty.

You could have taken a magic marker and written on the chair- then turned it in.

Of cours, he could have been a smartass and given you a zero- saying you did not turn anything in, which woud have made you go back to proving the chair was real....and possiblr assualt charges when you throttle the professor...

I don't think the purpose of the assignment was to prove the chair was really there.

The purpose of philosophy in general is to examine life and not take things for granted; like that an empty chair is really in a classroom.

see what I dont understand is why people have to play head games,if you are sitting in a room and someone places a chair in front of you then the chair is in front of you,to deny that is to deny common sense and to me you are arguing non logic,to say its a gloomy day and then someone else argue no its a nice day is one thing for they are both examples of ones own perception,but to argue that a physical object is not there when it is is just being an ass imo.

They aren't neccessarily arguing over whether or not a physical object is there, they are arguing over whether a chair is there.

Yup, and how you define a 'chair' if no one is using it as one.

A chair is a chair, that's just how it is. You can sit on the floor, does it make the floor a chair? Nope, just a good place to sit. Why are we talking about chairs?

Well, at a sub-atomic level, it's very little except electromagnitism- mostly empty space with electons spinning around a proton, with huge (comparitive) distances between them.
The only reason we percieve the char as solid is because our own EM fields push against it's (combined) field and photons bounce off it, so we cant see through it...

But yeah, on a functional basis, a chair is a chair....unless it's some trickery of liht as can be done with mirrors or projectors- they you have a bunch of students writing about a projected image and thinking what a stupid assignment it is- as it's obviously there...

Stage magicians make objects on a stage appear and vanish all the time- and the audience has no clear idea as to what's real and what is deception or mis-perception.

At a distance, is the chair any more certainly "there" without touching it than images in a IMAX 3D movie? If you never saw 3D before, it'd be pretty shocking.

Thus, it's somewhat subjective- perception altering belief based on stimuli.

Yeah, but is a stool a chair? How about a recliner?

Is a milk crate a chair? It can be used as one if you turn it upside down and sit on it.

Different people perceive the same stimmuli in different ways hence the idea that reality is subjective rather than objective.

Take the various posts in this thread (or on this board by extension) for instance. Some see the posts in this thread as an iquiry into personal perspective while others contend that "yes" the chair was really there and to suggest anything else denies reality.

Conflicting interpetations of the same stimmuli. Who is right and who is wrong? Is reality objective or subjective?

What thread?

Purpose and use yields the name. The floor is always the floor because people always stand on it while another can sit on it.
To the person the floor below though, your floor is their ceiling. So are you sitting on the floor, or a ceiling?

Excerpt from Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara, by James Gurney:

I'm a Liner.

Are you a liner because that is how you see yourself, or are you a liner because that is how others see you?