How to deal with non-realism?

loup-vaillant

From Being a Realist (even if you believe in God):

theists and untheists can and should meet half way and at least agree on the logical necessity of being a realist.

My mother, who doesn't call herself a theist (I think she's agnostic), doesn't even accept realism. She doesn't even agree with this:

There is something. All that there is, we generally call "reality". Note that by this definition, reality is unique. The corollary is, we all live in the same reality. We do not percieve it in the same way, but our perceptions and reality itself aren't the same thing.

Every description of reality that matches it is true. Every description of reality that doesn't match it is false. In this sense, truth is unique and universal.

(We can nuance the truth/falsehood dichotomy with probability distributions. Some probability distributions are closer to reality than others, and so on.)

That's little more than tautologies here. Yet it elicited an impression of being forced to believe. I know because she told me about the totalitarian dangers from such narrow thinking.

I'm happy to have finally found the root cause of our ongoing disagreement, but now, how can I deal with that? It looks pretty hopeless, but just in case, does someone have a suggestion, or should I just leave it at that? (My ego doesn't like it, but giving up is an option.)

Now I'm relieved to know that in near mode, she's a complete realist. This craziness only shows up in far mode.

From Being a Realist (even if you believe in God):

theists and untheists can and should meet half way and at least agree on the logical necessity of being a realist.

My mother, who doesn't call herself a theist (I think she's agnostic), doesn't even accept realism. She doesn't even agree with this:

There is something. All that there is, we generally call "reality". Note that by this definition, reality is unique. The corollary is, we all live in the same reality. We do not percieve it in the same way, but our perceptions and reality itself aren't the same thing.

Every description of reality that matches it is true. Every description of reality that doesn't match it is false. In this sense, truth is unique and universal.

(We can nuance the truth/falsehood dichotomy with probability distributions. Some probability distributions are closer to reality than others, and so on.)

That's little more than tautologies here. Yet it elicited an impression of being forced to believe. I know because she told me about the totalitarian dangers from such narrow thinking.

Now I'm relieved to know that in near mode, she's a complete realist. This craziness only shows up in far mode.

Dobzhansky said "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution", and I would borrow that expression and say, "Nothing anywhere makes sense except in the light of realism".

Yet it elicited an impression of being forced to believe.

An accurate one, except that the forcing is not being done by any agent, human or divine. The world ineluctably is, whether we like it or not: we have no freedom at all to choose what is true, only to choose what to do about it.

Now I'm relieved to know that in near mode, she's a complete realist. This craziness only shows up in far mode.

Stick to near mode, then. Point out in some concrete instance of what she does in everyday life, that she can choose only actions, not truths.

Dobzhansky said "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution", and I would borrow that expression and say, "Nothing anywhere makes sense except in the light of realism".

Yes, what a fool Leibniz must have been for thinking Newtonianism, arguably the most successful scientific theory in history, merely a good tool for predicting the motion of bodies, rather than being The Truth of Reality. Oh wait...

Actually, Putnam's "no miracles" argument (scientific realism "is the only philosophy that doesn't mak... (read more)

2buybuydandavis14y

You know, I found that quite nice. Then I had a laugh at my expense yet again for mistakenly projecting my outlook on others - most people find a lot of sense in unreal nonsense. And I just did for a bit too. The universe scores another hit on my vanity of sanity.

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How to deal with non-realism?

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How to deal with non-realism?

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