The type of
reality we like to believe exists. The hard substance of the chair
you stubbed your toe on. The reality of rain falling on the fields.
Science works
towards building more and more accurate models of this objective
reality. Various things about the practice of science get in the
way, of course, but the general progress is in the right direction.
Observe - Model -
Predict - Observe - ...
ad
infinitum. Or until you get a model which you are satisfied with.
Of course, the Observe part of that
is entirely dependant on the subjective experience of the observer.
And the Modelling
is either within the subjective reality of the modeller, or the
consensual reality of the modelling team.
But apart from
those small problems, the scientific method, which is the process of
refining models based on experience and making predictions based on them
in order to gain more
experience, is great - it lets us build on our existing knowledge a piece
at a time, and if we are lucky it seldom pulls the rug from our feet by
changing the theory on which we have based our most recent extensions to
the overall body of knowledge.
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Subjective reality
The way we work means we have a set
of filters in our minds which are responsible for making practical sense
of the mess of signals which are firing in our brains. These
filters are built up through experience of the world around us, which
includes not just the physical objective
reality but the social consensual
reality.
Everything we experience, whether it is from an outside stimulus
or from an internal 'imagination circuit' is subject to this sort of
filtering, and we cannot
therefore experience anything other than a subjective reality.
Subjective reality is the central link between objective and
consensual realities, therefore, and we cannot actually directly
experience either of them. But the objective reality is of practical use
to us (in general, I suspect, the crowd deciding that gravity works away
from the ground is unlikely to directly influence whether we fall off the
world or not) and consensual
reality is essential if we wish to be able to utilise our internal models
of reality in the context of society.
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Consensual Reality
The emergent reality which
is formed by groups of agents (people, in our case) communicating about
their subjective realities. In fact, of course, it is a little more
complex than this. In order to be able to communicate about it they
already have to have some form of common language, and a shared context
on which to base their discussion. They are also actually
communicating about their internal models of objective reality through
the input and output filters which determine whether something fits into
the social reality which they need to maintain in order to be able to
continue their participation in society.
Having said that, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that
some of the great visionaries have actually been affected by
psychosis, and
ould fall into the category of an 'unreasonable man', a la George Bernard
Shaws wonderful quotation "The
reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The
unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress
depends on the unreasonable man."
Progress is easiest in terms of the consensual reality -
opinion of others providing the resisting force. Objective reality
we change by manipulating the physical things around us (note I am not
claiming we change the rules
just the instantiations of objective reality). Subjective reality changes
through training - cognitive behavioural therapy, for instance - but also
through day to day experience. Can it also change simply through an
act of will?
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