Thanks a lot for a well thought-out reply!
A little warning though, my answer will be long, and I hope that it will have some coherency.
The first concept is the question of actual reality -- what actually happened. Some philosophers have tried to game that idea with sophomoric exercises like "if a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?" But the more relevant philosophical question is "if a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, did it still fall?" Is reality independent of our perception, or not?
The bolded part is the heart of the discussion, I think, and it also seems to be the point where we disagree.
Did O.J. kill his ex and that dude, or not? People may not agree on whether or not he did, but their subjective belief does not change what really happened. He either did, or he didn't..
I think I can see where you are coming from and I tend to agree if you're saying something like the following: Reality is an
actual happening. It is me sitting in front of my computer. It is the tree that falls in the middle of the Amazon, which nobody sees, nobody hears, but which nevertheless most surly did fell. Or it is the poor guy from my previous example, who was in fact innocent, which was
the reality of the situation, and just because of our ignorance, doesn't change the fact about the reality itself, i.e. his innocence.
This I can agree with. I also think you are correct about a reality existing outside of subjective opinion. In my opinion, this is the Reality of the Now. It is everything that we can perceive in any unfolding moment. It is everything that happens in any given instant.
The problems do arise though, when we try to describe (and I mean this in a broad sense, including words, numbers, art etc) a particular happening in the Now, because it is impossible to say anything about it, without being out of it. It is like trying to write down a thought while it's being thought about.
BTW, I'm leaving out of this all the theoretical physics stuff, Heisenberg, Schreodinger's Cat, and all that stuff because it really has nothing to do with these kind of discussions we have here outside -- of the context of theoretical physics, of course. Philosophers have been discussing this stuff since long before anyone knew what quantum physics or even atoms were, and in a context that doesn't include theoretical physics.
That's fine, even though I completely disagree with it not being relevant to our discussion.
The second concept is how accurately each of us perceive what really happened, as when you have two eyewitnesses who disagree as to whether or not a receiver was in bounds. They may disagree, and it isn't until you go to the video to see the reality (if the angle is good enough), that we know that one eyewitness was right, and one was wrong. But the rightness or wrongness of those perceptions exists regardless of whether or not we can perceive it.
As I said above: We can't describe the Now and therefore not the Reality, without separating us from it. A video tape is also a form of separation. Even though photography (be it still or moving pictures) are one of the most accurate ways we have to describe Reality, it is by no means capable of capturing all of it, with the simple fact that the lens is not broad enough, which no angle, no matter how good, can make up for. The Reality can be copied up to a certain point, but it will never (at least with the technology available today) be fully replicated.
Or even (like what happens here) where a group of people read eyewitness accounts, deciding who to believe, and then reach their own conclusion about what "really" happened. And I think that may be what most people mean when they say "perception is reality", because who each person chooses to believe, and sometimes even what they see with their own eyes can be affected by different experiences. But the key point here is that their subjective perception is not reality, and we shouldn't automatically give equal weight to "each person's reality." OJ either killed them, or he didn't, regardless of our respective beliefs as to what happened.
Well, what I mean about "perception is reality", if I were to say that, is that the only thing you can be sure of in this world, is that you have a perceiving consciousness
. But what is this consciousness? What is it exactly that you perceive through it? And how can you know that what you perceive is true?
Imagine that you are a bark beetle, living a happy easygoing life on the green branch of a tree. This is where the beetle has spent all of its life, except of this one time when it got a bit adventurous and traveled on a day trip to the neighboring branch. The tree is the beetle's planet, its life, the whole of its reality, and the beetle is completely ignorant of the fact that the tree is just one out of several trees, which together make out an avenue in the middle of a big bustling city, with busy cafes and bistros and all their chatting customers sitting along the sidewalk.
It might be that the beetle can perceive what's happening down on the street level, it might not, but it is nevertheless in no way capable of understanding what it sees. It won't understand what the people are chatting about, it won't know about where their coffee is imported from, and it can't read a word about what the newspapers are saying of the OJ trial. And frankly, I don't think the beetle care that much either.
The point I'm trying to make, is that it is impossible to say that we, the human race, figuratively aren't sitting on a branch similar to the one belonging to the beetle, completely ignorant of our actual surroundings; of all the chatter we can't hear between the entities we can't see, of their exotic beverages we can't taste nor smell, as well as their high-tech newspapers that we're incapable of reading.
So then I ask you: Where's the reality?
I don't think we'll ever be able to see the big picture, because reality works on so many different levels, from infinite small to infinite big, and we have no idea where we are on this scale. This ever-present lack of knowledge makes us incapable of knowing what the reality really is.
Obviously, there may be times where there isn't enough information to actually come to an agreed upon understanding of what "really happened".
But factual understanding is something we can change, or at least improve upon.
This I agree with. More knowledge and information equals a more accurate picture of reality. This is why we can say the we, the human race, have a more accurate picture of reality than that of the bark beetle.
But be aware that knowledge and information
never will be complete. We will always miss out on something, we will always lack
some crucial fact of a given situation, which makes it impossible to get a completely accurate picture of reality.
That is why, as I've said earlier, we can only make more or less educated guesses about reality. Therefore, when we crawl into the Amazon and see the fallen tree lying there in front of us, we can make an educated guess, based on logic, knowledge and previous experience (mind you, that none of these are a guarantee of truth), that the tree in fact did fall. But as
@gourimoko pointed out, "it might have fallen over 100 years centimeter by centimeter", we can never be
sure unless we ourselves perceived the tree's actual downfall.
That's the logic for body cameras on cops, right? So that we each can see what really happened, and so give us a more accurate view of reality.
More accurate view, yes, what
really happened, no.
The big problem we have now, though, is too many people don't want to believe, and so won't admit to believing, facts that aren't consistent with their pre-conceived worldview. And so people who may have witnessed something that isn't consistent with a preferred narrative may be intimidated into silence, etc.. But that at least tells us what we should start doing -- get all the facts out, whether they are consistent with popular opinion or not. And each of us try to remain open minded until the facts are clear.
And here you dip into some really fascinating stuff: The human fantasy.
The human fantasy is almost limitless. Just try to imagine a piece of art that
isn't created by a human being. How absurdly alien that must be.
The human fantasy is also extremely powerful in its capabilities of creating reality.
Imagine yourself being alone in the dark woods at night. Pretty chilly eh, in the way your mind can make the silent trees and bushes look like trolls for instance? As in these two painting by Theodor Kittelsen:
Let's say that you have a strong fantasy and an equally strong belief in the metaphysical realms of the spirits. Would you then, being alone at night in the woods, be able to perceive these supernatural creatures in some way or another, being it through seeing, hearing, or only as the sensation of the hair standing erect in your neck?
I would definitely say yes. We could of course start a discussion of
how real this perception is. Is it just a product of the human fantasy, i.e. it is not
really there, but rather a construction of the mind, a simple apophenia? Well, to me,
everything in our daily lives are a construction of the mind. Everything we perceive is filtered through our sensory apparatus and then reconstructed in our consciousness.
Therefore, when you are alone in the woods (i.e. you are alone with your own fantasy) and you then perceive something that really shouldn't be there according to your logic, but surly it was there, and you have to believe that what you saw was real, right? Because if you didn't, wouldn't that make you into some kind of madman?
But say you've brought a friend with you, a friend who has absolutely no beliefs in the supernatural. In his view the world around him is simply materialistic. In this situation we are dealing with two sets of human fantasies, which in this case don't correlate with each other. It will therefore be a conflict between two sets of perception, two sets of fantasies, and the interpretations of them, and there will probably be a disagreement about what was the reality of the situation.
Then say that you are with a second friend who, opposed to your first friend, is a strong believer in the supernatural. Walking through the dark woods, you and your friend both see a shadow moving between the silhouettes of the trees, you both hear some sort of a cracking sound, and you both feel the touch by
something in the back of your neck, which makes it run cold down your spine.
You are both unsure of what you saw, heard and felt, and now that The Thing is gone, you and your friend are discussing what you perceived. So you both agree that it definitely was a shadow. But contrary to what you remember seeing, your friend clearly saw a blitzing eye in what would be the shadow's head. You're friend describes the eye with certainty and clearity. You yourself are growing more unsure by the minute. In fact, the more you think about it, you might actually have seen the eye as well.
Then let's say that you have a whole tribe of people living in the woods, and that they all share a strong common belief in spirits and supernatural beings. We are here talking about a collective fantasy, which follows what Carl Jung called the collective unconsciousness. This fantasy has an immense potential power. Just look at the power religion, big or small, has on the human mind: For how come that the ancient greeks, with all their attention to logic, mathematics, and empiricism, were petrified of the wrath of the gods? How come the Vikings, with all their toughness, brutality and macho-hood, were scared to death, the same death they in combat welcomed, when a thunder storm rolled by?
To me, it's all about belief and it's all about the human fantasy from where it springs, and the amazing powers that lie herein and make it possible to create a reality more real than reality itself.
The third concept is that we can sometimes disagree on what conclusions should be drawn even when we agree on the underlying facts. So, you could put two groups of people watching Michael Brown coming at that officer (assuming that's what happened), and everyone is in agreement as to what is happening. Yet, we still may disagree on whether or not the officer was justified in shooting the way he did. But that's not a matter of fact or "reality" at all. It's simply an opinion, based in part on morality, as to what should or should not be done in a given factual situation.
I disagree with the bolded, while I think our opinions and beliefs are very much a part of reality. Our opinions have their roots in our thoughts, the same thoughts which decide how we act, which decide how we perceive the world, how we perceive ourselves. Our thoughts color everything we see. They shape the reality of things. As do our opinions.
Have you ever experienced having an opinion about a certain person, and then a common friend of yours shares with you the exact same opinion, and then you say something like: "Wow, and I thought it was just me!" and after this you both feel that your opinion is kinda more real than what it was before you shared it?
If enough people
think the same thing,
believe the same thing, and not only that, they also explicitly
agree to same thing, then this thing suddenly becomes true. It becomes a reality. And it would be meaningless to try to explain to this group of people
why they are wrong and exactly
how their reality isn't true. This because you are moving in two different belief system, which gives you a different way of perceiving and interpreting the world, which makes out two different realities. Why exactly should they listen to you, you non-believer, when it is you who are being ignorant, when it is you who haven't seen what they have seen, you who haven't felt what they have felt.
