Epistemic view: existence and reality are not one and the same

Metaphysics & Epistemology
1

Greetings,

Before I say anything, I wish to establish that I am not looking for validation, rather feedback and points of friction.

That being outlined, I am currently writing a philosophical, Socratic Dialogue style book starting with one main premise.

Reality is the quotient resulting from the division between causality (as the numerator which is unchanging, indifferent and eternally unfolding) and perception (as the denominator which is a value given by Biological Inheritance, environmental conditioning, context and present state of mind).

Under this premise, I derived what produces the value the denominator takes at any given time, and coined it the Principle of Proximity:

Certainty is relative to the subject according to the currently inhabited spatio-temporal coordinates and contextual factors relevant to biological inheritance, environmental conditioning, post-juvenile development and present state of mind. The more immediate the past is, the more potent certainty is, which produces more coalesced models of the future, collapsing the spectrum of possibility into a singular expectation, thus imposing a teleologic appearance of inevitability to be perceived.
It should be noted that the “Proximity Principle” found in social psychology (a behavioral observation regarding interpersonal affinity) is a distinct and surface-level concept. In the context of my treatise, the Principle of Proximity is defined as a fundamental perceptual mechanic. It describes the process by which certainty is scaled relative to the subject’s spatio-temporal coordinates, where the density of the immediate past determines the collapse of potential alternatives into a singular, perceived incoming.

Whatever feedback I receive, I will apreciate it appropriately.

Thank you for time.

2

You are talking about the feeling of Reality as certainty. A pebble is real and has no perception.

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3

Could you further elaborate and expand what that means? Giving out some real life examples for the point would be helpful, especially focusing on the part where it says, “the subject’s spatio-temporal coordinates”, and “determines the collapse of potential alternatives into a singular, perceived incoming.”

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4

I am arguing against the platonic view, the stance which represents facts, truth and objectivity as immanent, and we discover them.

To better illustrate my position, I have ruptured the synonymity between “existence” and “reality”, and had them stand antithetically in relation to each other.

Existence is ontological and causa sui. Its engine is causality, the cause-effect chain which moves energy from one state to another.

Reality is a segmentation of existence, through the capacity of processing input of life. Reality is finite, unlike existence, and it does not edge beyond awareness, not even through faith, for faith requires a direction dictated by possibility, and possibility must be perceived first, for it to exist.

My argument against “The view from Nowhere” stems from the physical impossibility of perception to detect all of existence, even gradually, because this would imply a stepping above and casting a shadow over the causal chain. As such, it becomes evident that platonicism is but a linguistic construct, plaguing our reasoning into building towards an objective ceiling, whereas it is more accurate to hold that objectivity is an intersubjective consensus, facilitated by languages allowing us to synchronise our unique perceptions, into a model of the world, reality.

A real-life example is provided below, a citation from my own text:

In Romanian, the vocative case is an inheritance passed down from Latin. It changed the nominative forms of nouns, when addressing directly to an interlocutor, especially names. “Salut Ioane” is the Romanian vocative case, which mutates “Ion” into “Ioane”. In Latin this was a form of respectful engagement, and it survived in Romanian to this day, but only as an optional behaviour, the result of familiarity, or as an emotional response. While it is still taught in schools, it is glossed over as being an archaic remnant, and it is maintained that the formal manner is by the use of the nominative form “Ion”. This marks a shift in worldview, in which the use of the vocative in Romanian in a formal setting is generally frowned upon. Conversely in Lithuanian, that same vocative, which transforms “Jonas” into “Jonai” as in “Labas Jonai” is treated as a sign of respect and it is enforced through the strict grammar and varied suffixal derivation. Lastly, in complete opposition of Romanian and Lithuanian, there is the absence of the vocative case in English as in “Hello John”. In English tongue, to a monolingual speaker this possibility, in which they can be seen as less modern (as in Romanian) or disrespectful (as in Lithuanian), by employing or not, the change of another’s name’s ending does not exist. Therefore, if reality would be an immutable solid, which we uncover gradually, then this difference in manifestation of the vocative case across three languages would be a mere semantic development in accordance to the history of the language, a simple redundancy fading in favour of efficiency, but as it is observed within the transition from a grammatical law to a complete absence, the difference is beyond lexical. Lithuanian emphasizes the nuance of direct address, by mutating the name itself, a form of personalization meant to provide a degree of intimacy within the dialogue. Within the Lithuanian context, maintaining this traditional value is preferred over the modernisation of language through efficiency as noted in the Romanian vocative case. Still being taught in school, but denied in formal settings demonstrates a shift towards the dropping of the vocative entirely. One interpretation of this trajectory, can be attributed to the category of languages in which Romanian resides. Being a romance language, perhaps a need of standardisation rises, an alignment with the rest of its peers, French, Spanish and Italian. While still being a living part of Romanian, the Romanian vocative is regarded as unrefined speech in urban settings especially for common nouns or family titles, or as expressive or aggressive tone, which again denotes lack of formality. Thus, by comparison we can infer a transformation of behaviour from a ‘state of affairs’ (which is standard behaviour in the Lithuanian community) and an optional linguistic quirk (which, in the Romanian community, is a choice between being labeled as friendly or intimate, or being labeled as a modern). Hence, now it is evident that a monolingual Lithuanian speaker lives in a reality in which addressing an interlocutor, must be done with consideration, by applying the correct suffixal derivation in order to offer the appropriate respect, and a monolingual Romanian speaker lives in a reality in which this same form of engaging an interlocutor is a choice, which draws the corresponding consequences. And at the other extreme there is English, the inflective vocative has been dropped in favour of intonation. In any regards, what need is there to complicate someone’s name to let them know of the ensuing conversation, when eye contact is established, and they already know the nominative form of their own name? This rejection is a prevailing efficiency over aesthetic and intimacy, but we must account for the loss of complexity which is held as a standard in Lithuanian. Through Romanian, we can observe that this is not just a disposing of a redundant grammatical rule, but also a conceptual social distancing between individuals too, which engenders a reality in which formal and colloquial settings become colder by the lack of distinction between second-person and third-person.

Thank you for your rigorous engagement.

5

Firstly, I am not talking about the “ism” of certainty.

Secondly, the existence of the pebble is a product of causality, thus an ontological existence. However, the noun you used to identify this object, the “pebble”, does not exist as ding-an-sich, a thing-in-itself.

You have perceived the effect (the pebble) of a cause (a history across centuries which shaped that pebble you became aware of), effectively segmenting causality, a snapshot of existence itself, which humanity has labeled it “pebble” post hoc, thus creating the identity which the noun “pebble” now incorporates.

However, while the object exists independently of perception, its identity does not.

I apreciate your thoughtful engagement.

7

You are drifting. But OK, you are not talking about Reality, not talking about the feeling of Reality, you are talking about “how is it possible we can use the word Reality”.

[censored by demand of the community of censors]

edit: I don’t critic your immense second post and thesis, I stopped at your first bad use of words: it’s the first crime in Philosophy: bad naming; what comes beyond a bad naming has very little chance to be good material.

edit2: there is no meta level of Thought (or language i.e. serial communication of Thought): Thought think things. If you try to think Thought, or think things through thinking Thought of things, you are creating a non-sense infinite loop exactly the way Einstein’s space-time loop on itself down to infinity in a black hole.

8

Great reply, thank you. Some questions.

  1. Does it mean existence causa sui is hidden from human perception? Does it reveal itself? Or human mind must perceive it in some ways?

  2. Is human mind ever be able to know existence in absolute detail?

  3. Wherein does God belong? Existence or reality?

9

Intresting questions, I wasn’t expecting them.

  1. There is a delay in advancement of almost two millennia, which if inexistent, Earth would look completely changed. Before Galileo Galilei and Copernicus brought about the institutionalisation of heliocentrism, there was Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310–230 BC) an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who first proposed a heliocentric model, placing the Sun at the center of the known universe with Earth revolving around it. His ideas were overlooked for nearly 1,800 years, but he was later recognized as a precursor to the Copernican Revolution. The consensus of his time could not hold the residency of a heliocentric theory, and due to his radical claims, he was accused of impiety by the stoic philosopher Cleanthes, similar to later charges against Galileo.

So, what changed inbetween Aristarchus and Copernicus? The Sun did not suddenly adjust its trajectory, in order to conform to our transition from geocentrism to heliocentrism. But mathematics, geometry, the telescope have made the distance shrink, and impelled language to advance in order to delineate the concept of Earth orbiting the Sun. Therefore, it is the case that causality did not reveal itself, but we built the scaffolding required to bridge the distance between an intuitive model and an accurate model.

  1. To answer this question I need to point out that “perception” is a noun which posits a process. A mind is an emergent entity, engendered by biological inheritance (as in the parental genes passed down), environmental conditioning (upbringing, country, city, financial status, social status, workplace, and a million other factors) and present context (present state of mind). When you perceive a tree, you don’t perceive just an object, labeled by the English speaking community “tree”, but also what value the noun “tree” had in your mind. For me the same tree might look bleak, and weak, but for you it might look interesting and rare. Perception is unique, thus what is perceived is never what actually exists absolutely objectively.

  2. Certainty is the killer of faith. The more potent certainty is, the less space faith has in the mind. Moreover, faith is also an act of perception, perception of possibility or probability. One cannot place faith in something one is not already aware of. If God exists, but no one is aware of His existence, what is then the difference between absence and God? Conversely, if one knows God exists, then faith does not exist. Hence God is a thorough part of reality.

I do apreciate your continued engagement.

10

Let’s think about the points one by one. We still don’t know a lot about the Sun. No one knows when the Sun appeared or started existing, and who put it there, or why it is there, and why it is where it is.

But every morning you wake up, the Sun reveals itself with the light, and revealing the world around you. You didn’t ask the Sun to be shining. No one did, but it does every morning. It is only the amount it reveals, no more. Maybe the Scientists would know more about it - the temperature, the sunspot cycles, and the radiation it throws out etc. But normal folks wouldn’t be interested in that detail.

So, there is certain aspect of existence that we find ourselves, but there are also certain amount of information, knowledge, effect, shapes .. the qualities, existences reveal to us.

And there are definitely a lot more truths about the Sun, which no one knows.

11

Are we ever going to know what is hidden in existences? If not, then is it because our perception has limits on what it can perceive? Or is it because existence are hiding the truths with them, not revealing?

Would it be possible for our perception to extend its capacities? If yes, then how? If not, why not?

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That might not be the complete or only possible answer, but it is at least a fact about perception.

13

I think part of the issue is how the word “certainty” is being used.

You seem to be using certainty to mean something like subjective conviction, i.e., the felt force with which a future appears closed, likely, or inevitable from the subject’s present standpoint. In that sense, I think your point has force. The immediate past can intensify expectation. Recent experience, bodily state, fear, habit, trauma, desire, and context can all make one future seem more settled than others.

But that is only one use of certainty. There is also certainty in the epistemic sense, where the issue is not how strongly the subject feels the expectation, but how well supported or justified the expectation is. These can come apart. A person can be psychologically certain and poorly justified, or less subjectively certain and better justified.

That distinction matters because proximity may explain why certainty increases as conviction. It doesn’t automatically explain why certainty increases as knowledge (i.e., JTB). Recency, vividness, and emotional force often strengthen the feeling that something is inevitable, but they don’t necessarily strengthen the evidence.

So, I’d say your Principle of Proximity works best as an account of subjective certainty, not certainty as epistemic support. It explains why the future may appear narrowed to the subject. It doesn’t yet show that the future is narrowed, or that the subject’s expectation is better justified.

Put simply, proximity may help explain why something feels certain. It doesn’t by itself show that it is certain in the sense of being known.

14

It could also be said that reason always asks more than what perception can perceive.

If you only asked what can be known, then your perception would have no limits.

15

There might be no in principle limit to what can be known, but what can be known at any time surely has its limits.

16

Where your perception ends, if you want go beyond the boundary of perception, you could start using your inference for your knowledge.

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To go beyond the boundary of perception, would be a form of bypassing the limitations of biology. Somehow you have have to become aware of your surroundings without the input received from sensory organs. I am quite certain this is not possible, at least yet.

As for expanding Knowledge through inference, I am not sure it follows from your beyond perception claim. Knowledge is a collection of facts, and facts have had to have already been established.

Inference can only be done from what you are already aware of, or already have perceived.

18

Inferring is not bypassing your perception. It is using the data gathered from your perception and observation on the objects or events in the world.

Based on the information, you make inference on the unknown part of the existence or operation to come to the inductive knowledge.

19

But faith without reasonable knowledge or certainty is just pure guessing, and could be branded as blind faith, which can lead to dogma and fanaticism?