I agree.

I see it as two different levels or two different perspectives.

Perspective #1.
I accept what "we" have decided what reality is. (Space, time, objects, the five senses, science, the experience of it etc.)

We agree that this is "reality." This agreement is convenient for everyone in the operation of our normal day to day lives.

But in order to proceed further other things should be considered.
That is, we should not lay down hard and fast laws and insist that we can or do know what reality is. We only think or believe we know.

We can't be 'certain', but we can be reasonably confident.



Thats cool.




People can agree all they want until their agreement conflicts with the material reality. Then the fun begins!



You are right, it is not merely so, but it is also so. Especially for those who wish to deny reality. This line of reasoning is often invoked as the philosophical equivalent of sticking one's fingers in one's ears and going lalalala. I've seen it happen many, many times.




I agree that it is important to 'keep in mind', but its not a sufficient basis for an honest worldview.



I've never seen this exact thing happen, ever. I have seen people who act as if our inability to directly perceive reality, with absolute correctness and certainty, somehow implied that alternative views might be of equal value, or equal plausibility - and those people are told that they are denying reality. As they should be.

A person alone on an island doesn't need anyone to 'agree' that the stream will quench her thirst. Nor does she need anyone to 'agree' that starvation will kill her. She will die of starvation whether she agrees to or not. Two people on an island can't 'agree' themselves into sprouting wings and flying away.

Agreement has nothing to do with the physical reality. The philosophy of 'truth is only an agreement' is another trick people play to deny reality.

Whether alternative views are of "equal value" or "equal plausibility" would depend on whether or not they are true.

If they are true but they do not appear to be true they may be deemed "not of equal value." So here we are still talking about perspective, appearances, belief and agreement.

If the goal is to perpetuate the current view of objective reality, exploration into any alternatives would not really serve that purpose, and would probably not be given equal plausibility or attention.

But if the goal was to accomplish something extraordinary, (like time travel, or hopping in and out of different parallel worlds,) or even creating entire virtual realities for the mind to play in, one might want to expand ones view of plausibility and possibilities.

Your statement is true only according to your current perception (and agreement) of objective reality.

As a species, we are still learning, and it is essential that we allow our models to continue to develop, flexibly, to accommodate new evidence or new perspectives which are consistent with the evidence.

But we don't 'only think or believe we know'. People who build their views of reality carefully, with solid reasoning and good evidence, have extremely good cause for their beliefs. There is more to their worldview than 'just belief'.

I have met people who believed fairies lived in their house, homeopathy is powerful medicine, and similar; for those people, they only have their belief.

This smells of conspiracy theory style thinking.



Ummm.... well, if you want to accomplish time travel or travel to parallel dimensions, I think you are going to need to consult with people who understand physics. Real physicist (not necessarily the ones who get a phd then publish a popular book on parallel realities) are usually immersed in a reality based worldview.

Also, this smells of false dichotomy. Having a reality based worldview doesn't necessarily prevent someone from exploring the possibility of time travel and parallel universes. You've suggested this kind of thing in the past. As if somehow reality-oriented people are closed minded, or limited in their ability to conjecture. In my experience, reality oriented people are the most open minded, and the most capable of exploring conjectures.

Consider the episode of Star Trec the Next Generation where a character in a holodeck program (Professor James Moriarty) somehow became conscious and discovered that his 'reality' was not real and was a holodeck program.

He, Moriarty, managed to take control of the ship and held the Enterprise hostage in order to secure his freedom. He wanted out of the program to join the 'real world.'

But they managed to trick him into another holodeck program that convinced him that he and his wife had escaped the program and were now free to travel the universe in a small ship. Off they went to explore fake planets with fake people on them.

He was now completely convinced his reality was "real."

But Was it?

No. It was not.

In order to answer that question about our own reality,(is it real) we have to look at our reality and ask the question. "what makes our reality any more real than the fake one created for that single conscious holodeck character?"

What in the fake holodeck reality might give away its secret that it is not real? What is different in that reality? Why is our reality real?

Here is my opinion.

Conscious sentient self aware people is what makes our reality "real."

People are real.

In the fake holodeck world of the Moriarty character, no other so-called people were real, not even his wife, who was just an advanced program that appeared to be conscious. How long would it take him to discover the shallow nature of the other people he encounters in his fake world. They would be like characters in your dreams who are all figments of your imagination.

Yes, this is "reality." I won't deny that.

But the real thing is consciousness. Real conscious sentient self aware beings. That is the heart of reality.

The conscious observers.

Where time travel and parallel universes are concerned, yes they better know a lot about physics but they better know a lot more than that or a lot more than they already know.

I don't know what "homeopathy" entails, but I do know that belief and what people think can have a powerful effect on your health, positive and negative.

What grounds the claim that we cannot directly access reality?

What does "somewhat true" mean?

Some truths are incremental.

"She's fat!"
"That's somewhat true but have you seen her sister?"

As in the cosmos, all things are relative.

Can she be both, fat and not fat?

Of course. In Ruben's day, women were beautiful with a robust figure. The day's motto of "Twiggy" were "you can never be too thin!". Individual tastes vary and one man's "chub" was another man's Marilyn Monroe.

In this case the "truth" changes with time, culture, personal preference, and medical body mass index.


Which, again, brings up set theory. In chart form the set of "All things true" overlaps the chart of "All things false". A fact can be absolutely true and absolutely false at the same time.

Everything is an opinion.

Not. A lot of things are not merely opinion.



Reality
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Reality (disambiguation).
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In Philosophy, Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or may be thought to be.[1] In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. A still more broad definition includes everything that has existed, exists, or will exist, not just in the mind, or even more broadly also including what is only in the mind.

Historically, philosophers have sometimes considered reality to include nonexistent things such as "gold mountains" in a sense referred to as a subsistence, as well. By contrast existence is often restricted solely to being (compare with nature).

Reality is often contrasted with what is imaginary, delusional, in the mind, dreams, what is abstract, what is false, or what is fictional. To reify is to make more real, and to abstract is the opposite. The truth refers to what is real, while falsity refers to what is not. Fictions are not considered real.

It is always contrasted with what is not so included, as being not real, so the term is somewhat ambiguous in its contradictory usages.
Contents
[hide]

1 Phenomenological reality
2 Truth vs. Fact
3 Reality, world views, and theories of reality
4 Philosophical views of reality
5 Platonic realism
6 Relation to time and space
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality

Anyone can submit their opinions to wikipedia.

Its still just an opinion.

Submit your opinions to Wikipedia then and see where it goes!





and/or...read the article and the references and learn more about
reality.

I have submitted stuff to them and it is still there.

Now explain to me what the difference between a fact and an opinion is.

Go ahead and see if you can.