Magniloquent

\mag-NIL-uh-kwent\, adjective:
Lofty or grandiose in speech or expression; using a high-flown style of discourse; bombastic.

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Discussed shortly after Constructing Reality ended last time (and in the purgatory between that class and subsequent Logic II), the objective reality is collected in the mind and subject (key word) to our interpretations. The important though minuscule gap between our indubitably subjective experience and the objective reality is often the keyhole for doubting said objective reality or the existence other subjective thinkers entirely. Certainly a test cannot be designed to prod reality and ferry us results without passing through the silty gates of our perceptions. Everything runs through them. Thus, if we doubt our perceptions can be valid (in the sense that they perceive objective circumstances), we are literally doubting everything except the existence of our own thoughts. Hey Descartes. Is it lonely up there?

And as much as I intuitively want to offer a concrete contradiction to this, it (like almost everything) is impossible to verify with complete certainty. Most conclusions are like this, and rightfully so; cheers for error bars and boo to comfortable intuition. However, there are several inductive arguments I find particularly convincing concerning an existing objective reality.

Largely these arguments concern the motives of a human-constructed reality (assuming it was constructed for comfort, and perplexed as to why it would not be): Why do we die? Why have we created a universe that works impersonal of our directives? Why have we created life that needs only to survive, and not necessarily to understand? Why do we subject ourselves to torment, anguish, emotional turmoil, or any discomfit whatsoever? Why is the reality we have constructed not more comfortable, if it is culled for intellectual comfort?

This is only a meager helping of the argument, I'm sure, but I cannot find good reason for why, should we have this intellectual power of influencing seemingly objective constructions, we haven't polished it up. Especially if we're aware of actively constructing reality, more people should be actively deconstructing it in order to better manipulate it--that way, when I want Rock Band 2, I will not have to wait a year, and will instead intellectually conjure it up.

Instead, the universe seems to exist in a certain way--a way that, in many cases, refutes life rather than supports it. A way that influences our perceptions not for any particular purpose, but merely because certain things exist, and we interact with them. A way in which we, too exist.

And this is what Hume and Glasersfeld (as mentioned post-class by Johnson) fail to admit: we are part of the objective reality, and so is everything that comes from us. It is not Universe v. Humans (which is possibly the most classic and enduring conceit in human history, perhaps because sapience can get lonely). It is Universe w/ Humans, humans capable of reflecting on the former category (as it includes the latter).

For us to construct reality, we must first construct ourselves, and without a higher entity (which, again, I say must be involved for the places Radical Constructivism and severe skepticism eventually lead), this seems impossible. There is something our minds refer to when having an experience, and while I fully agree it's wrapped up in our mode of sensory ingestion, our memories, impressions, intuitions, understandings, categories and inevitably, our constructions of what reality looks like, that which we refer to exists independent of us and is constantly unconcerned with us. There is no other way for new (or the original) input to reach us.

You can call that referent the noumenal realm, or God's constant brainfart, or even the grand stage for some spectacular alien deception, but isn't it easier and more sensible to welcome what our senses have always and likely will always suggest, that something other than, and also including us, exists objective to what our thoughts can posit?

Subjective experience in an objective reality. There is literally more sense in it.

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Feel very encouraged to level disagreements. I'm still too intuitively attached to this theory despite numerous evidential refinements. It needs to be more impersonal before I can trust it.