[Off-topic] Requests author discusses MentalHealthError exception

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 1 Mar 2016 04:08 am, Rustom Mody wrote:

> And who is the last arbiter on that 'reality'?

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that this is a genuine question, and
not just an attempt to ask a rhetorical question to demonstrate your
profundity.

You should not assume that there is any such thing as "the last arbiter" of
reality. There is no arbiter at all, let alone a final one. But what we
have are various ways of managing and uncertainty and error. One of which
is consensus. For instance, there are seven billion people on earth who
think they are people, and one who thinks he may be a butterfly. Which is
more likely to be correct?

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zhuangzi

To quote Terry Pratchett:

      ‘The poet Hoha once dreamed he was a butterfly, and then he 
    awoke and said, “Am I a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or 
    am I a butterfly dreaming he is a man?”‘ said Lobsang, trying
    to join in.
      ‘Really?’ said Susan briskly.  ‘And which was he?’
      ‘What?  Well…who knows?’
      ‘How did he write his poems?’ said Susan.
      ‘With a brush, of course.’
      ‘He didn’t flap around making information-rich patterns in 
    the air or laying eggs on cabbage leaves?’
      ‘No one ever mentioned it.’
      ‘Then he was probably a man,’ said Susan.


Because there are limitations on how we observe reality, there are limits to
how objective we can be. We have an imperfect ability to observe the world
around us (including our own mental states) and are prone to errors. But,
over a wide range of conditions (although not *all* conditions) we can
eliminate many classes of error by comparing notes with our fellows, so to
speak. If I think I am a butterfly, and my wife thinks I'm a man, and my
co-workers think I'm a man, and my neighbours think I'm a man, chances are
good that it is me who is mistaken, not them.

Consequently reality is a shared construct -- or rather, our understanding
of reality is at least partly a shared construct.

In principle, at least, *everything* is subject to disproof. But in practice
some things are more certain than others. I wouldn't bet $100 on quarks
still being considered the fundamental building block of matter in 200
years, but I would bet a million dollars on the sun still seeming to rise
in the east every 24 hours.

As Isaac Asimov put it:

    When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. 
    When people thought the earth was spherical, they were 
    wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is 
    spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, 
    then your view is wronger than both of them put together.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong

http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

It's not that reality itself is subject to change (except in the trivial
sense that we can take actions that modify the state of the world: I can
pick this cup up and move it over there, you can eat that apple) but that
our understanding of reality is subject to change. Sometimes our
understanding is full of uncertainty and doubt, sometimes it is subject to
re-interpretation, and sometimes our understanding is almost certainly
correct: it is difficult to imagine any credible or believable
reinterpretation that would change the facts as we know them. A thousand
years from now, the sun will still appear to be rising in the east.



-- 
Steven