Philosopher Roy Bhaskar uses a concept of reality I find particularly interesting. It’s based on the idea that we can think of reality as being thought to exist. I am not talking about a subjective reality which has become the popular rhetoric of the day. I am speaking of a reality that could very well exist… a concept which we can call putative (speculated) existence. Some people who subscribe to this view call this a model of causal efficacy or in plain English… reality is thought to exist. Personally I think that reality is a concept that is meaningful to explore and philosophers, bloggers and everyone else has a definitive opinion on what reality is said to be. What I felt I should talk about today is the speculated version of reality which I think is a much better way of understanding life.
Objective versus Subjective
Overall I have found that two versions dominate (broadly speaking) the area of discussions on reality. The first is the idea that the world is solid and everything can be explained down to a known set of rules or principles. We can call this objective reality because it means that reality is fixed and immovable because it’s sustained by laws, principles, guidelines and so forth. Reality in this view is all about understanding how things work so we can explain them through a simplistic version of things. This is by far and away the most dominate thinking pattern of this age. Just ask anyone a question about something and you will see simplistic cause and effect come out. I think that people are in search of answers and in looking for truth stumble at a simple form of what is really happening to them or worse what they have been educated to believe. In the natural world we can see patterns emerge from nature, study them and form objective theories about the nature of things. In the social world doing so has proven to be quite difficult.
Subjective versus Objective
The subjective view of reality is really about understanding it through a particular conceptual frame or way of seeing. The subjective view of reality deems concepts to exist that are found useful to help in understanding things or ideas that are meaningful to help structure the ultimately complex and mysterious social world we find ourselves in. It’s really not about saying that nature is subjective… most discussions I have read are speaking about how we use concepts to map causality onto the world. Overall, I would say that someone who subscribes to this view would look at reality and say, “there is no set of laws and principles that govern things only better or worse ways of seeing and explaining things.” This is a view that a lot of my academic colleague subscribe to and has become the foundation of a lot of popular thinking around the way things operate (i.e. the secret). The subjective view encompasses the idea that all we have to see things is a lens or conceptual structure that helps in explaining how things work.
Problems with the subjective view
While I think the subjective view of social reality is interesting and more than likely the best explanation of things so far as I can tell, there is a troubling aspect of the subjective view of reality that I think is often overlooked. Everything that we can see and understand started from somewhere. I do not wish to enter into a first cause argument here so put down your rocks, what I mean is: everything which we know and have come to understand had it’s beginning in something. In a social sense, that which we have come to accept is built on the foundation of something else. Our western education processes have been built on the backbone of logical thinking that is severely limiting. The logical way of seeing things is but one of many “thinking hats” that we can use to understand things. This logical way of thinking that has given birth to the most harsh form of rationalism subverts any other kind of thinking that disagrees with it. Often it does not acknowledge that there are different points of view that people have which leads to different conceptualisations of the truth. The subjective view forces us to accept a version of reality that is open to interpretation which is good but on the other hand excludes other possibilities as well.
By saying I accept the subjective view of reality, you’re actually saying that this is what I think things to be. When you take the objective view of reality (i.e. based on a scientific view) you are actually saying this is what I think reality is. In your mind, objective thinking is nothing more than a thought process and subjective thinking is exactly the same. Either way you are saying that reality exists be it as a set of laws (objective) or as something to be interpreted differently by individuals (subjective). On the extreme we have scientists who will not except something they cannot explain apart from causal laws and on the other hand we have people who will admit reality is totally constructed through language and thinking. The problem I have with the subjective view is that I have to ignore the objective elements of the world. I have to commit to a concept driven view of reality in which ‘frames’, language processes and thinking patterns are the only way of understanding the way things are. By accepting it, I exclude that there might be something ‘actual’ that is underpinning things. For many reasons I simply cannot accept this point of view, though for reasons I explain later I am highly sympathetic to it.
A problem with both views
So what makes us believe? If there is nothing ‘real’ as such why do we find it useful to make sense of things? Our minds are wired up in away that we look for causal structures in what we do and map them onto to what we see around us. Yet the causality we find is not in the concepts, it comes from us. That is, we think there is a reality whether we subscribe to a subjective one or an objective one. If I were to say that reality does not exist or that it’s merely a simulation I still have to account for what it’s simulation of. There is still something intangible that makes me think there is a need to explain what I think reality is. Returning again to Bhaskar, his idea of reality is that it’s thought to exist. That is reality is said or conjectured to exist but it’s subjective in it’s perception (we all see it differently) but objective in it’s effects. Here is an example in my life.
I really want to buy a house. As an academic I earn peanuts compared to the hotshots in business so I don’t really have a hope. So I have this model of reality in my mind that says, ‘forget buying a house it’s impossible.’ Yet, I still desire to own a house. Here we see the subjective dream for me: ‘I want to buy a house,’ mixed with the objective reality of unfortunate financial circumstances that make it impossible. Now I believe (subjective) that I will get a house but I am forbidden by the current financial status of my household (objective). When I first starting playing with these concepts I drew this concept map:
Therefore, reality is thought to exist. I think it’s there. It may be that my interpretation of it is faulty but there are certain things that bear down on me that I cannot perceive out of existence. As well, there are causal forces of the economy that no amount of perception can change. That said, I can change my attitude and believe things will improve and undoubtedly they will. But I cannot change the operation of the economy to suit my needs, neither can I control the effects it has on me.
Causal Efficacy (usefulness)
The way I see things is that it’s useful for me to think that certain things exist. Whereas, it’s also useful for me to see some things as being subjective. What somebody thinks about the economy is often subjective because they do not have complete (and who really knows how it all works) understanding. My understanding of most things is primarily related to how I conceive them and build causal maps to make sense of things. There would be no reality for me if I didn’t do this. When I feel hopelessness as the state of economy I am recoginising something about in it that troubles me and causes me to have bad feelings. Yet I can do nothing about the economy (so-called) because it’s there. I can’t wish it away… the broader objectively effecting subjectively created economy is going to REALLY impact me. If I stop working then real effects will be noticed. I can’t not work unless I have some kind of economical nest egg that will support me in this endeavour. It’s simply not the case that it’s all subjective.
Subjectivity as Passive Reality
I submit to you two forms of reality that I think explains the case I am making here. Subjectivity can be thought of as a form of reality that is passive yet can translate into the active form (objective). Bhaskar has a helpful schema in which he explains the objective reality as being generated by something (perceptions for example) which is turn reflects the deep underlying ideas that society is pinned on (subjective). Once these ideas are generated into the observable, the effects they have on people are multidimensional yet objective or put another way objective through many ways. Another example: when I am going for promotion I won’t get it unless I meet certain criteria yet these criteria are a subjectively derived standard. To say that the promotion scheme is merely my interpretation of things is partially the case because I am viewing through my own cognitive biases. That said, these laws are imposed on me as a member of Griffith University and there is little I can do to fix it. If I believe that it has no impact on me then I would be stupid because it does though they are just a model made by people, subjectively speaking.
Active Reality
It we think of this version of reality as being the one which we observe to be the case, then I think that makes more sense. What is active and imposing causality on me is the rules and regulations of society in general. These are laws. I run a policy course in one of the classes the students were discussing the laws that youtube uses to impose conditions on people in terms of their intellectual property. Ultimately, that intellectual property is something you made… yet they own it. You can do what you like but they own it. That’s real. Try changing your beliefs around that. It’s actively the case. It’s real enough that it can impact you so much that it may even derive you of your income. Facebook had a similar arrangement where you signed over everything you owned as intellectual property to them… just as evil! These active things that impact on us are supported by law and will impact you. We need to recognise them and find ways to navigate past them.
Potential Reality
Here is where it gets interesting. There is a transcending concept of ‘potential reality’ which I have the holographic paradigm people to thank for. Reality that we see generated before us stemmed from some place. It’s supported by people and they are the ones that make it work or not. Each major paradigm shift and revolution is preceded by the dreamers. The potential reality of what might happen one day. Our imagination is incredibly powerful and I think it’s understated terribly in most modern circles. In theological circles Catholics have advocated prayer through imagination, Dr. Mark Virkler talks about it and of course the new age movement have used it in various ways. The imagination allows me to see a potential reality that I may wish to enjoy and I can from this personal vision go about changing my life. Reality is not in the imagination, imagination is in reality.
Look at the majority of concepts and inventions that pervade our modern atmosphere. I am thinking of lights. The light bulb first existed in the imagination of the heart before it was a concept that was in active reality. The inventors of it (Edison and Swan) had something of a concept in their mind. Yet it wasn’t their mind that made it so… it was work, money and so on. The potential reality made it possible for the active to follow. I like the term potential because in physics circles it talks about a energy that has yet to be realised in tangible form. Did you get that? A form of energy that is not yet in a tangible form. Yet it’s a form of energy isn’t it? It’s something real.
The other day I was reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. As a Christian I may not agree with everything he has to say but towards the end of the book I found something very interesting. He spoke about how he used his imagination to build a mastermind group that he could converse backwards and forwards with. Interestingly enough he created something so special that he began to generate spontaneous ideas from it and it really helped him in his life and work. Others I have mentioned already have received insight by allowing their imagination to take centre place in their life. I would urge you strongly not to ignore this because it’s the building blocks of making change happen in your life. I know of at least person who rebuilt his entire life through using his imagination. It’s so powerful that I am going to write (when I get the time) a post on that topic alone. I won’t mince words here: without understanding the role the imaginative thinking and visualing plays in our lives… you will never be able to understand the concepts of potential reality.
So what do I think about reality? I think reality is a useful concept for understanding things and it should not be used to box things down to a certain way of seeing. There is a passive reality: the realm of subjectivity where ideas are mapped onto the world. There is a putative objective reality said to have causes on me that I have no control over. Then there is potential reality. The reality of energy, spiritual energy (negative and positive), being transformed from me into the world around me. On the one hand if reality was 100% subjective then we could all do whatever we wanted with no impact on each other. If it was 100% objective then we could simply follow the laws and it would work for us. I believe in objectivity, I believe in subjectivity and I believe potentiality. This however, is a really superficial treatise and you will have to hang around to understand how I have come to these conclusions! Thanks for reading.
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