I would like to suggest that actual Reality [as well as one's personal reality] is not accessible to the human intellect.
Actual Reality is what is really taking place [regardless of our ability to perceive/understand]. Our personal reality is that which we perceive and is subject to our intellectual discrimination.
Come on folks! I'll throw some chum out there... One of the reasons we humans cannot access reality is because we do not exist in the present. There is a time-lag between an event and the perception of an event. Therefore, by the time you have perceived the event, it's already in the past. That's hardly tapping into Reality.
Reality is you stepped in dog doodoo while on the way to your wedding. And it went totally downhill from there.
Here's my chum... If I fell off roof and was killed, did I not experience reality? Is reality any less real because of the millisecond time lapse?
Let's say you were crossing the street and engaging in a heated discussion with a friend and you were blindsided by a ten ton Mack truck going 60mph. That's about as close to Reality as you can get. In your example, you would have had plenty of time to intellectualize the experience of succumbing to gravity.
Not sure about plenty of time, but probably enough to know pain would be part of a future reality. I have a book about the philosophy of time, but never got through it.
What happens before the intellect kicks in is most important. It's why first impressions are so often correct.
"Human intellect" is completely subjective and unique to the individual, as is the perception we have of reality. "Reality" however is NOT a subjective situation and does not bend to our senses. The things we experience and feel are reality in action but the way we interpret these things will always be a personal aspect of life. The time tangent throws the discussion into a murky philosophical quagmire and all but eliminates any chance of useful debate as it sidelines the topic and drifts with the tides.
The human intellect is remarkably similar from person to person based on the observation that we all learn to interpret reality from the same primers. After all, how different can your observations be from your neighbors'? And time is only one factor taken into consideration when plotting the differences between actual Reality and our appreciation of the same. How about the notion that we all observe a different pseudo-reality simply because our observation location [in space] varies not only from person to person, but much more important, from moment to moment for the same individual. There are many other examples one can cite along the same lines.
I would imagine that most here are not really all that interested in your agreeing/disagreeing with anything in particular, only your reasoning behind it. Do you happen to have a reason why you disagree with my assertion?
Because human beings as well as any organism would not survive if it were incapable of the proper perception of reality. In real time. Asserting that humans cannot perceive reality is an attack on cognition. So if you’re attacking cognition then you invalidate your own assertion. Essentially you are disproving your own belief by discarding your ability to believe it.
I get the paradox, but we are limited by both our ability to perceive and communicate. In an absolute sense, your conclusion is right on the money. What we communicate to each other is utter non-sense. But we do the best we can. The key is tapping into the non-intellectual which we all do to some extent. This is where the truth resides. It is not that reality do not appear to us, instead, it is that we change it into our personal realities by intellectualizing it. Even still, the difference between actual Reality and reality as it appears to us is the distortion created by our perception. This perception is then further contaminated by our intellect and renders it unrecognizable. Now you can come back and suggest that everything I am saying is more non-sense and you would be correct [it's just the best we have]. Recognizing one's limitations is key.
Sorry impermanence, no offence and all that, but it just seems you're trying to spout intellectual gibberish.
Sorry impermanence, no offence and all that, but it just seems you're trying to spout intellectual gibberish. I've no idea what you're talking about.