This place sure goes in "spurts"

[Peter Garrett]

On Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:18:12 -0500
"Cybe R. Wizard" <cybe_r_wizard at earthlink.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 22 Jul 2009 05:55:07 +1000
> Peter Garrett <peter.garrett at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> 
> > What is "real"? Do you see the problem here? Is there a nice
> > comforting equation of the form
> > 
> > reality=something_knowable
> 
> Yes there is, since any other 'reality' would be, by definition,
> unknowable, what we can know is all that can be said to exist.  How
> can it possibly be otherwise?

It can be otherwise without our knowledge. In fact there may be many things
that we do not know, that are real. 

We just wouldn't know - but the fact that we would not know would not make
them unreal, just beyond our limits. 

This is not provable of course. If our human limitations make something
unknowable, on the other hand, that does not prove that $unknowable_thing
does not exist, either.

If you are of the school of thought that insists on proof of everything,
then of course you will disagree, which is your prerogative.

Imagination allows us to conceive of the existence of the unknowable. If
you define existence purely in terms of 'that which can be known by
scientific method and our senses'  then your definition would invalidate
what I have said above.

This would be one of the splits between scientific philosophy and other
branches of philosophy that allow for the imaginative element as above.

Peter