Kai
New
This is a split off from another thread, where this concept was introduced, but which was probably a distraction or offshoot within the context of that thread.
The idea that the world is “literally real” is part of our psychological inheritance. Most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, subjectively take this for granted, just as we do eating or breathing, as it seems to be something about the world that “doesn’t need questioning.”
But I think it does need questioning, because it’s a concept, and like all concepts, it can be mistaken, or be a rude approximation to the truth only. There’s no doubt that this model of looking at the world has been very helpful, at the pragmatic level, in multiple ways. Indeed, so long as one is willing to “quarantine” the world into a (relatively) safe subset of itself, it’s been a thoroughly productive thing to do. When dealing with weeds in the yard, a blocked drain, or white blood cell count, this model of reality, or this abstraction of what reality is, functions at its best. The idea, in other words, that there is a truly, independent, “objective” non-awareness-bearing “substance” out there that is responsible for reality being what reality is.
But what if reality is not a “thing” that is “out there” but is more in the fashion of a “conversation” or a “behavior.” What would it mean, or what does it mean, to imply that reality is a function or a behavior or a “conversation” rather than a thing?
The problem with the literal reality model is that , while it functions well enough for that limited subset of (relatively primitive) world behaviors, it has proved itself next to no use at all for all of the world of human action, the imagination and creativity, the psychological and emotional, love, poetry, story, myth, experience normal or paranormal.
And that’s a serious problem, because in all of that is most of what life *actually is*. The truth of the matter is that chemical interactions, traditionally conceived, had very little to do with the main benefits or main problems I now experience in my life. I don’t say they have nothing *at all* to do with them, but I do say that it is scarcely sensible to talk about career choices, creative enterprises, relationship issues and other things as if we are talking about colliding chemicals. Indeed, I would argue that to do so is simply an error that leads to the greatest of absurdities.
But an explanation of the world in which most of the experienced world is left out can hardly be called an explanation at all. Even at the supposed primitive level of “atoms and molecules” when we press into that far enough it begins to evaporate into the bizarre narratives of the quantum realm. Whatever view one might take on the “reality” of that realm, it seems plain enough that it requires a narrative investment of interpretation and perception to understand, in an important sense even to “see” it at all, and that is no minor complication of the simple objectivized reality model.
If that can happen even with the primitives, then it is striking how much *more* so it is the case with more fluid, more liquid aspects of reality’s behavior. Take the reality of a story, for instance. Most of us would assume that such a thing does indeed exist in some sense, even if to the objectivized model the nature in which it is said to exist soon degenerates into absurdity and contradiction. In other words, assigning it to one or another rationalization of “unreal” despite the fact that they have real consequences in life ever bit as solid as “atoms and molecules.” But if stories are real, what is this saying about their reality, and perhaps about reality in general? A story that isn’t involved in any tellings would be a curious object. It wouldn’t really be a story at all. In fact, it would be meaningless to call it that. A story is something that is a telling. It’s essentially a feature of a kind of conversation that is irreducible in character. And that conversation is involved with consciousness.
Consciousness itself, its perceptions, emotions, beliefs, is in some respects like story. It doesn’t really make sense to talk about “consciousness” existing in a pure state, anymore than it makes sense to talk of story existing in a pure state. Consciousness is something that exists in the doing, in a circuit of experience and perception, just as a story is something that exists in the telling, in a circuit of speaking and listening (or reading and listening, etc).
But I don’t think that this is just mere talk. My suspicion is that these more ‘liquid” functions of our world and experience are actually the reality function, so to speak, disclosing itself more akin to *what it actually is* and the reason we haven’t been able to make sense of it, is that we have tried to map our primitives concept of atoms and molecules onto them, when it is more likely, I think, that those primitives are themselves impoverished versions of the same more liquid reality function. When even the nature of atoms and molecules becomes a story that we have to “buy into” this is as good a sign as any that stock is overdue for resale at the literal reality store.
I haven’t dwelled on paranormal phenomena here, though I think they are part of this picture. How they fit into it I’m not exactly sure, but they do raise a question of how far the reality function is elastic to our choices of experience and perception.
Like crack or cocaine, the literal reality assumption may serve its users well, but with all addiction comes a price, and that price is usually a blindness to other possibility beyond the world of that addiction.
The idea that the world is “literally real” is part of our psychological inheritance. Most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, subjectively take this for granted, just as we do eating or breathing, as it seems to be something about the world that “doesn’t need questioning.”
But I think it does need questioning, because it’s a concept, and like all concepts, it can be mistaken, or be a rude approximation to the truth only. There’s no doubt that this model of looking at the world has been very helpful, at the pragmatic level, in multiple ways. Indeed, so long as one is willing to “quarantine” the world into a (relatively) safe subset of itself, it’s been a thoroughly productive thing to do. When dealing with weeds in the yard, a blocked drain, or white blood cell count, this model of reality, or this abstraction of what reality is, functions at its best. The idea, in other words, that there is a truly, independent, “objective” non-awareness-bearing “substance” out there that is responsible for reality being what reality is.
But what if reality is not a “thing” that is “out there” but is more in the fashion of a “conversation” or a “behavior.” What would it mean, or what does it mean, to imply that reality is a function or a behavior or a “conversation” rather than a thing?
The problem with the literal reality model is that , while it functions well enough for that limited subset of (relatively primitive) world behaviors, it has proved itself next to no use at all for all of the world of human action, the imagination and creativity, the psychological and emotional, love, poetry, story, myth, experience normal or paranormal.
And that’s a serious problem, because in all of that is most of what life *actually is*. The truth of the matter is that chemical interactions, traditionally conceived, had very little to do with the main benefits or main problems I now experience in my life. I don’t say they have nothing *at all* to do with them, but I do say that it is scarcely sensible to talk about career choices, creative enterprises, relationship issues and other things as if we are talking about colliding chemicals. Indeed, I would argue that to do so is simply an error that leads to the greatest of absurdities.
But an explanation of the world in which most of the experienced world is left out can hardly be called an explanation at all. Even at the supposed primitive level of “atoms and molecules” when we press into that far enough it begins to evaporate into the bizarre narratives of the quantum realm. Whatever view one might take on the “reality” of that realm, it seems plain enough that it requires a narrative investment of interpretation and perception to understand, in an important sense even to “see” it at all, and that is no minor complication of the simple objectivized reality model.
If that can happen even with the primitives, then it is striking how much *more* so it is the case with more fluid, more liquid aspects of reality’s behavior. Take the reality of a story, for instance. Most of us would assume that such a thing does indeed exist in some sense, even if to the objectivized model the nature in which it is said to exist soon degenerates into absurdity and contradiction. In other words, assigning it to one or another rationalization of “unreal” despite the fact that they have real consequences in life ever bit as solid as “atoms and molecules.” But if stories are real, what is this saying about their reality, and perhaps about reality in general? A story that isn’t involved in any tellings would be a curious object. It wouldn’t really be a story at all. In fact, it would be meaningless to call it that. A story is something that is a telling. It’s essentially a feature of a kind of conversation that is irreducible in character. And that conversation is involved with consciousness.
Consciousness itself, its perceptions, emotions, beliefs, is in some respects like story. It doesn’t really make sense to talk about “consciousness” existing in a pure state, anymore than it makes sense to talk of story existing in a pure state. Consciousness is something that exists in the doing, in a circuit of experience and perception, just as a story is something that exists in the telling, in a circuit of speaking and listening (or reading and listening, etc).
But I don’t think that this is just mere talk. My suspicion is that these more ‘liquid” functions of our world and experience are actually the reality function, so to speak, disclosing itself more akin to *what it actually is* and the reason we haven’t been able to make sense of it, is that we have tried to map our primitives concept of atoms and molecules onto them, when it is more likely, I think, that those primitives are themselves impoverished versions of the same more liquid reality function. When even the nature of atoms and molecules becomes a story that we have to “buy into” this is as good a sign as any that stock is overdue for resale at the literal reality store.
I haven’t dwelled on paranormal phenomena here, though I think they are part of this picture. How they fit into it I’m not exactly sure, but they do raise a question of how far the reality function is elastic to our choices of experience and perception.
Like crack or cocaine, the literal reality assumption may serve its users well, but with all addiction comes a price, and that price is usually a blindness to other possibility beyond the world of that addiction.