General Semantics

Internal and external reality

Adopting a very strict view on the role of the mind would lead to the conclusion that every single man creates his very own, singular, world. The reason for this is that everything a human observes, and all of his thoughts about these observations, are strictly speaking things that happen in his own mind only. Even something direct like seeing is in fact a product of our mind: the left eye gives us a flat picture, and the right eye gives us a flat picture, and the mind calculates the flat pictures to a three-dimensional view of what happens outside our head. And for things less direct than seeing goes even more that they are “merely” constructs of the mind.

The philosophical term corresponding to this strict view is called solipsism: the belief that all everyone experiences is a product of his own imagination. Solipsism is refuted easily: one just kills every solipsist. It is useless to have any moral objections against this act, because in the eyes of the solipsists it is just imagination anyway, so no real murder.

There are not many true solipsists. The best known is the deity of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions. This deity creates both his own world and all the acts in it, that is: this world and all the acts in it are things in the mind of the deity. If he wishes things to be differently, they are differently. And if this deity is a solipsist, this also goes for all of his adherers, if only because none of his adherers can point to any direct statements of the deity, all statements of religion coming from these adherers.

The rational view of the world agrees with the solipsist view in that all observations of reality and the thoughts about it, take place in the mind. But here is where the agreement ends. The rational view is that all of these observations relate directly to a reality outside the mind, that is independent of the mind of the observer. In fact, the most important consequences of this statement are already contained in another supposition: that other human beings have an existence independent of the own mind. There is no real prove of that, but it is highly remarkable that almost everybody invents in his imagination, on his own free will, people that he thoroughly dislikes.

From the objective existence of other people there follow very concrete evidence of the existence of objective world. For example: there is the fact that one can join someone else in jumping into a river, and have a conversation about the great number of common experiences following from this jumping into the river. Apparently this river isn’t only in the mind of one of the other, but in something common. And there is almost infinite number of these common experiences. The pure number of them renders these experiences the value of a proof of the existence of an independent reality, something we call the world.

Besides the similarities in the views of reality, there are also differences. One of the couple that jumped into the river may experiences the temperature of the water as cold, disagreeable, while the other experiences it as warm, agreeable. This goes side by side with the fact that there is an objective, common, and therefore real temperature of the water. And just like the similarities, the differences are infinite in number and variety. The rational view is that these differences are a derivative of the similarities, that is: the similarities are primary and the differences secondary phenomena that are seen relative to the similarities, the world.

A third aspect of the relation between mind and reality is the fact that the mind is able to create images that are independent of anything in the real world. An obvious example is the one of emotions. Emotions, however real for us, have no counterparts in the real world, though they may be shared through things in the real world, like paintings or music. Besides in emotions, it is probable that human capacities occupy an area lager than reality in most aspects, at least in the aspects we know about. The argument for this assumption is that it would be highly remarkable if the human mind would be able to capture reality, if could contain this reality precisely: one has to have some slack to fit one thing into the other, if there is not someone guiding the process, and we here take there isn't. It is in this region of slack that it is where creativity houses, and that what is called genius. Of course, there may be abundance of reality that we don't know anything about, but this will always remain speculation.

This description of the state of affairs concerning the relation between mind and reality is generally excepted in the sense that most people in most daily circumstances act upon it: the killing of another person is considered as murder, that is: the killing of an individual existing independently of the own person. Neither does one doubt the reality of cars, roads, bridges and the like. Most of the times the problems with reality start at the moment reality seems to limit the freedom of the own person: many are convinced that traffic lights, speed limits, and so on, are only relevant in the world of others, or have some other form of relative existence.

The given examples of denial of reality from practical live cost many lives. Yet the more general examples like those in politics and or other forms of discussion on society or philosophy are much more dangerous, because they influence the future of humanity as a whole. The principal goal of this website and the rational vision is general is to point out these processes, and to improve upon the image of reality. The forces that oppose this effort are discussed with elsewhere.

So the basic effort of the rational vision is to enhance the correlation between the images in our mind and reality. Then there is a fundamental problem in that it is also not certain that what is stated in this place is in fact a true reflection of reality. Of course this is the supposition of the editors of the website, but certainty in this matter is impossible. The vision proposed here tackles this by giving the opportunity to anyone who notices a deviation from reality to influence the contents of the website, and thereby the ideas contained in it.

This new approach has been made possible by the possibilities of information technology. This serves as an example of the progress that the rational vision offers, in that contrary to the traditional printed media, the reader can influence the contents in any detail. It's an obvious preposition that the combined effort of an in principal unlimited group of individuals gets to a better approximation of reality than any individual can, no matter how brilliant this individual may be.

As stated before, most individuals in most of their daily activities live according to the rational vision. However, as soon as more or less conscious decisions are taken, the tendency towards rationality drops, and drops lower proportionally to how far reality is seen in conflict with the self interest. The different forms of psychological resistance against reality form the large part of the contents of this site. More on the specific principals of the subjects can be found in The opposition towards reality, see here.

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