[This thread was somewhat inspired by the "Is hyperspace real?" thread, but is sufficiently tangential that I figured I'd make a new topic instead of derailing the old one. The other inspiration was my musing on solipsism... though it cannot (to the best of my knowledge) be disproved logically, it's clearly not a practical approach to reality. I didn't want to fall into the trend of refuting it through dismissive name-calling (i.e. "It's an ugly philosophy" ), so I explored the nature of my objection to it... and came out with an interesting mode of thinking about what we mean by "real".]
Alright, so let's start with the basics:
What is "real"? Real is anything which has the attribute of "reality". And what is reality? Reality, in everyday usage, means the state of things as they actually exist (according to the Oxford English Dictionary). Of course, "exist" is a slippery term. It refers to things that are "real" regardless of our senses... things that we perceive which continue to be after we stop perceiving them as well as things which we have never perceived (some of which we have indirect knowledge of, and some of which are as-yet totally unknown to us). But of course we've already done ourselves in a loop defining reality in terms of existence, and existence in terms of reality.
Alright, so the question "what is real?" is difficult to pin down semantically. No problem! No matter how carefully we try to pin it down, different people will come away with different understandings of the word anyway, which leads to different criteria for asserting a thing to be real, which leads to disagreement. At this point we'll part ways with any attempt to define the word... whatever intuitive understanding you have of "real" will be sufficient. Instead we'll take a more pragmatic approach that isn't susceptible to those semantic pitfalls. From this perspective, the question becomes: "In what circumstances is it functionally useful to denote a thing as real?"
Taking this pragmatic approach out for a spin, solipsism is as good a place as any to begin. Any question of reality eventually gets mired in the bog of solipsism, so let's just tackle it head-on. Solipsism is the idea that only one's own mind/thoughts can be certain to exist; to claim knowledge of anything external to our thoughts is unjustified. And hey, why don't we kill two birds with one stone and treat Kantian idealism here too. The difference between solipsism and Kant's philosophy of idealism is that Kant acknowledges stimuli coming from an external source, but says that we can never know anything about the nature of that source (the "noumenon", the "thing in itself"/"ding an sich" ), we can only know it through our own experience/mind/thoughts... essentially relegating any autonomous reality to the realm of the unknowable.
And of course taking a fully skeptical approach, you cannot really object to these claims. Our experience is inherently subjective. To know absolutely that "objective reality" or "consensus reality" is a thing with autonomous existence is not technically possible. But from a pragmatic standpoint, that isn't relevant. If I kill someone in front of a police officer, I will go to jail; if I drop a 5 kg sphere and 50 kg sphere from the same height at the same time, they will hit the ground at the same time. I can't simply change physical constant by willing them to change. If I examine the behavior of light and mirrors, it will behave in accordance with quantum electrodynamics (and did so even before I knew what quantum electrodynamics was!). So regardless of whether we can definitively establish there to be an objective reality outside of our subjective experience, it's still pragmatic to regard it as real, because it has predictive value that is valuable to informing our subjective experience.
This should illustrate what I mean by approaching the question pragmatically. Regardless of whether I can establish a thing to be real, there are cases where it is functionally useful to regard it as real, because the subjective consequences are consistent with the "reality" to a high degree of accuracy.
But what about things that we can't prove the reality of which aren't functionally useful. To explore this notion, let's take a look at string theory. String theory is a very elegant field of mathematics that could potentially be the explanation that underlies the behavior of everything. But even though string theory is tremendously elegant, and is consistent with everything we know about the behavior of the universe, it has no practical predictive value. At present, no experiments can be set up to confirm or deny string theory. For this reason, it is not functionally pragmatic to regard string theory as real at present.
Of course, there are physicists who believe in string theory. This can have two primary valuable consequences as far as I can see. The first value is that they may seek to find testable consequences that would give the theory predictive value. This is a functional benefit to the extent that if predictive value can be established, it becomes functionally pragmatic to regard string theory as real... but it is not necessary to regard string theory as real in order to seek testable hypotheses from it; one can just as well be neutral, or even anti-string theory, to seek to establish its predictive value. So it's not useful to regard this as a valuable consequence of believing in string theory per se. The other valuable consequence is aesthetic. Considering the sheer elegance of the universe in light of string theory can engender the sort of awe and wonder which most of us are familiar with through the psychedelic experience. This sort of aesthetic consequence can have great subjective value to the individual... but it is not necessary to regard string theory as true to appreciate these aesthetic ramifications. Therefore I'd argue that it is not functionally pragmatic to regard string theory as "real" at the present time. Certainly we can regard things as "aesthetically real", but that's equivalent to simply saying that the thing is beautiful. The value of a thing being "aesthetically real" is not predicated on the notion of regarding the thing as explicitly true.
It is in this light that I would consider the "reality" of hyperspace from a pragmatic approach. Is there any functional value in regarding hyperspace as "real"? Is there any benefit from it that is predicated on the notion that it has a true autonomous existence? Certainly it has aesthetic value; regarding it as "aesthetically real" (aka beautiful) can inspire awe and wonder. It has the value of allowing for creative thought and self-examination... but the functional benefits of this (what is frequently regarded as the "healing benefits" of psychedelics) are not necessarily predicated on the notion that there is an autonomous reality to the experience... the functional value comes only through reconciling the thoughts/ideas/reflections with our thoughts, behaviors, and interactions. Put another way, the functional value is the same whether you regard the hyperspace realm as literally real having an existence autonomous of your mind, or whether you regard it as a chemically-induced distortion of perception in your neural circuitry. From a pragmatic perspective, there is no functional benefit to regarding hyperspace as "functionally real" instead of "aesthetically real".
Of course, if hyperspace could be established to have its own autonomous existence, there could be functional benefits... but it isn't necessary to start out regarding hyperspace as functionally real to investigate that hypothesis. So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't feel the need to regard hyperspace as either being functionally real or not being functionally real. It's simply not a useful question to my mind; the answer to the question currently has no practical consequences, therefore it's more useful to regard it in aesthetic terms.
But I do think that if people insist on arguing about whether or not it's real, the conversation/debate really cannot progress beyond a very shallow level unless the meaning of the question is defined.
Just some stray thoughts that have been bouncing around my head.
Alright, so let's start with the basics:
What is "real"? Real is anything which has the attribute of "reality". And what is reality? Reality, in everyday usage, means the state of things as they actually exist (according to the Oxford English Dictionary). Of course, "exist" is a slippery term. It refers to things that are "real" regardless of our senses... things that we perceive which continue to be after we stop perceiving them as well as things which we have never perceived (some of which we have indirect knowledge of, and some of which are as-yet totally unknown to us). But of course we've already done ourselves in a loop defining reality in terms of existence, and existence in terms of reality.
Alright, so the question "what is real?" is difficult to pin down semantically. No problem! No matter how carefully we try to pin it down, different people will come away with different understandings of the word anyway, which leads to different criteria for asserting a thing to be real, which leads to disagreement. At this point we'll part ways with any attempt to define the word... whatever intuitive understanding you have of "real" will be sufficient. Instead we'll take a more pragmatic approach that isn't susceptible to those semantic pitfalls. From this perspective, the question becomes: "In what circumstances is it functionally useful to denote a thing as real?"
Taking this pragmatic approach out for a spin, solipsism is as good a place as any to begin. Any question of reality eventually gets mired in the bog of solipsism, so let's just tackle it head-on. Solipsism is the idea that only one's own mind/thoughts can be certain to exist; to claim knowledge of anything external to our thoughts is unjustified. And hey, why don't we kill two birds with one stone and treat Kantian idealism here too. The difference between solipsism and Kant's philosophy of idealism is that Kant acknowledges stimuli coming from an external source, but says that we can never know anything about the nature of that source (the "noumenon", the "thing in itself"/"ding an sich" ), we can only know it through our own experience/mind/thoughts... essentially relegating any autonomous reality to the realm of the unknowable.
And of course taking a fully skeptical approach, you cannot really object to these claims. Our experience is inherently subjective. To know absolutely that "objective reality" or "consensus reality" is a thing with autonomous existence is not technically possible. But from a pragmatic standpoint, that isn't relevant. If I kill someone in front of a police officer, I will go to jail; if I drop a 5 kg sphere and 50 kg sphere from the same height at the same time, they will hit the ground at the same time. I can't simply change physical constant by willing them to change. If I examine the behavior of light and mirrors, it will behave in accordance with quantum electrodynamics (and did so even before I knew what quantum electrodynamics was!). So regardless of whether we can definitively establish there to be an objective reality outside of our subjective experience, it's still pragmatic to regard it as real, because it has predictive value that is valuable to informing our subjective experience.
This should illustrate what I mean by approaching the question pragmatically. Regardless of whether I can establish a thing to be real, there are cases where it is functionally useful to regard it as real, because the subjective consequences are consistent with the "reality" to a high degree of accuracy.
But what about things that we can't prove the reality of which aren't functionally useful. To explore this notion, let's take a look at string theory. String theory is a very elegant field of mathematics that could potentially be the explanation that underlies the behavior of everything. But even though string theory is tremendously elegant, and is consistent with everything we know about the behavior of the universe, it has no practical predictive value. At present, no experiments can be set up to confirm or deny string theory. For this reason, it is not functionally pragmatic to regard string theory as real at present.
Of course, there are physicists who believe in string theory. This can have two primary valuable consequences as far as I can see. The first value is that they may seek to find testable consequences that would give the theory predictive value. This is a functional benefit to the extent that if predictive value can be established, it becomes functionally pragmatic to regard string theory as real... but it is not necessary to regard string theory as real in order to seek testable hypotheses from it; one can just as well be neutral, or even anti-string theory, to seek to establish its predictive value. So it's not useful to regard this as a valuable consequence of believing in string theory per se. The other valuable consequence is aesthetic. Considering the sheer elegance of the universe in light of string theory can engender the sort of awe and wonder which most of us are familiar with through the psychedelic experience. This sort of aesthetic consequence can have great subjective value to the individual... but it is not necessary to regard string theory as true to appreciate these aesthetic ramifications. Therefore I'd argue that it is not functionally pragmatic to regard string theory as "real" at the present time. Certainly we can regard things as "aesthetically real", but that's equivalent to simply saying that the thing is beautiful. The value of a thing being "aesthetically real" is not predicated on the notion of regarding the thing as explicitly true.
It is in this light that I would consider the "reality" of hyperspace from a pragmatic approach. Is there any functional value in regarding hyperspace as "real"? Is there any benefit from it that is predicated on the notion that it has a true autonomous existence? Certainly it has aesthetic value; regarding it as "aesthetically real" (aka beautiful) can inspire awe and wonder. It has the value of allowing for creative thought and self-examination... but the functional benefits of this (what is frequently regarded as the "healing benefits" of psychedelics) are not necessarily predicated on the notion that there is an autonomous reality to the experience... the functional value comes only through reconciling the thoughts/ideas/reflections with our thoughts, behaviors, and interactions. Put another way, the functional value is the same whether you regard the hyperspace realm as literally real having an existence autonomous of your mind, or whether you regard it as a chemically-induced distortion of perception in your neural circuitry. From a pragmatic perspective, there is no functional benefit to regarding hyperspace as "functionally real" instead of "aesthetically real".
Of course, if hyperspace could be established to have its own autonomous existence, there could be functional benefits... but it isn't necessary to start out regarding hyperspace as functionally real to investigate that hypothesis. So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't feel the need to regard hyperspace as either being functionally real or not being functionally real. It's simply not a useful question to my mind; the answer to the question currently has no practical consequences, therefore it's more useful to regard it in aesthetic terms.
But I do think that if people insist on arguing about whether or not it's real, the conversation/debate really cannot progress beyond a very shallow level unless the meaning of the question is defined.
Just some stray thoughts that have been bouncing around my head.