[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Daffy Duck

You have your reality, and I have my reality, but have you considered there might be something else called The Reality? Perhaps this is God's Reality?

Yes. And whatever you ever know, understand or sense The Reality to be, is whatever you know, understand or sense The Reality to be. In other words, it's still your perception.

The effect is the same, but only in his head,

There is nothing you know of your reality which is not "in your head". You see?

It doesn't matter whether you investigate a particular matter or question, by doing a science experiment; or reading a book; or observing with your five senses; or discussing with an expert; or asking your mother.

In the end, whatever the outcome of all those things (science experiment; book reading; sensory observation; discussion; mother talk), the outcome is as you perceive it to be.

If my perception is that ALG died yesterday, it would only be my perception. It wouldn't be "objective truth," unless you're posting from the dead, in which case don't you have something better to do?

There is a concept of relative truth. It is explained quite well in some Buddhist books. It is also connected with another Buddhist concept called "dependent arising". I'll elaborate a little.

A statement can be true (or false), relatively. However, the same statement may not be true (or false), absolutely. What does this mean? Well, to put it simply, every thing takes reference from something else (or many other things).

When you seek to ascertain the truth or falseness of a thing, you're really checking it against assorted criteria. The point here is that:

(a) your selection of those criteria is subjective;
(b) the criteria is non-permanent and also shifts and changes according to perception.

(Traced down in science to a very fundamental and basic form, what we get is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. But that perhaps is best left for a separate discussion).

Let's look at the statement "ALG died yesterday". Whether this statement is relatively true or not, depends on a number of things. It depends on what you mean by "ALG" - and in a earlier post, I had already discussed briefly the question "What is a person?". I think you would have seen that the answer is not that straightforward.

The validity of the statement also depends on what is meant by "death". AND it depends on what you mean by "yesterday".

All of this may sound crazy - is the statement "ALG died yesterday" really so controversial? But you may get some better idea of what I mean, when you read what Albert Einstein had to say in 1955, shortly after his friend Michele Besso died. (I'm sure you can see how this example corresponds very closely to the "ALG died yesterday" example.:

Einstein: The Formative Years, 1879-1909 - Google Book Search

"Now he has preceded me a bit even in departing from this strange world. This means nothing. For us believing physicists, the divide between past, present and future has only the significance of an illusion, albeit a persistent one"

So there you go. If the divide between past, present and future has only the significance of an illusion, then the "yesterday" element in the statement "ALG died YESTERDAY" is already quite controversial.

I do recommend that you click on the link, and read not just the quote, but the discussion in the paragraphs surrounding it. (Oh, by the way, that's not a LOA / New Age book).

I could agree with you that ALG did not die yesterday ... IF we had a common understanding of "ALG", "death" and "yesterday". This is heavily dependent on that consideration.

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Where does this leave us? Let's take a few steps back.

1. Your argument is that there's some kind of objective reality, not dependent on a person's perception or consciousness.

2. I'm showing you how tenuous that proposition is. Even the validity or invalidity of an apparently straightforward statement like "ALG died yesterday" really depends on various concepts.

3. And each concept is built on other concepts which are built on other concepts which are built on other concepts ....

4. And all concepts arise in the mind.