Someone asked me to come up with a satisfactory definition of reality that is not a redundant tautology. But it is difficult to do that because science has not achieved much success at telling us what reality is exactly. At best science has explained certain laws and rules of reality but it has not told us exactly what reality is. Some people have at best said that all we know reality is that it is real. I would like to present another definition. Reality is That.
Reality is That
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What about that which is not objective? Can it too be considered as reality? What is objectivity?
Reality is the universe as is. However, reality is perceived by humans, through the filters of the mind.
Picture looking at a wall with various objects on it. As you look, there is a movie being projected onto the wall. Reality would be analogous to the wall without the movie projection. The filters of the mind is the projection on the wall. This composite is defined as the temporal view of reality.
This composite view of reality, is very persuading to the gut, because it contains elements of the wall. But it also contains the bias of projection. The result is science is a work in progress. The goal of science is to make the projector increasingly subtle and transparent until only the wall of reality can be seen. But for now, we have the projector plus wall and call that our perception of reality.
Picture looking at a wall with various objects on it. As you look, there is a movie being projected onto the wall. Reality would be analogous to the wall without the movie projection. The filters of the mind is the projection on the wall. This composite is defined as the temporal view of reality.
This composite view of reality, is very persuading to the gut, because it contains elements of the wall. But it also contains the bias of projection. The result is science is a work in progress. The goal of science is to make the projector increasingly subtle and transparent until only the wall of reality can be seen. But for now, we have the projector plus wall and call that our perception of reality.
As I understand it, there can be no outside to reality. Reality is all there is. Everything, including qualia of information and the mind which is the qualia of the brain, occurs within the confines of reality. They too are reality. No less. So where did we get this rich inner world from?
Magical Realist
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You've nailed down one the fundamental questions of philosophy, and while answers may not be immediately forthcoming, alot of insight can come out of thinking about it. I think reality is indefinable because the moment you define it and say what it is, you are then referring to a concept in your head made up of words and images. And THAT's not IT. Using the ostensive articles "this" and "that" though may serve to get us out of our own heads in as much as we redirect our awareness AWAY from any concept or definition we might have and refer back to the real thing itself. One question though, if you were on shrooms and hallucinating a snake on your couch, would saying "Reality is THAT." be true? Perhaps real in the phenomenal sense. But not so much in the objective physical sense.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I guess it comes down to whether we are capable of perceiving reality directly. Does perception allow us an accurate picture of reality? I think that all we can ever know is appearances in accordance with Kant's view of Transcendental Idealism. Quantum Physics would have it that it is the true reality while Newtonian Physics pertains to our perceptions. We all have qualia so qualia must have a realistic aspect to it, but some would say it doesn't, I would disagree with those who say it doesn't.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Philip K. Dick, in "How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978)
Philip K. Dick, in "How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978)
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
If you can do that, you might be the first person who ever has. 'Reality' (and related words like 'existence') might be about as close to an existential given as there is.
(One of the things that I absolutely love about philosophy is how we can take no end of concepts that we use every day, ask the simplest questions about them (like you have just done) and immediately arrive at the frontiers of human knowledge.)
Right. I don't look to science to give us the final answer to the fundamental problem of being itself. Science just explains and accounts for parts of being in terms of other parts. So probably the best that we can expect from science is some kind of reduction to simplest terms, a reduction of the complexity of observed reality to the underlying activity of as small a set of fundamental principles and entities as possible. (Physics is trying to do that with its 'theories of everything'.)
But I don't see how science could advance beyond that point and explain why reality's simplest components exist in the first place. (What could science explain them in terms of?) We seem to arrive at either accepting some kind of reality existing simply as a given, or else an infinite regress. The first alternative is tantamount to simply giving up our attempts to answer the question of being, the latter to deferring the question indefinitely without ever answering it. Frankly, I don't even know what an answer to the question of being would look like, or what would constitute such an answer.
The Hindus have a Sanskrit expression whose English translation sounds like that. (It's from the Upanishads or someplace.)
But yeah, maybe the best way to define 'reality' is ostensively: by pointing to examples of it. It's like defining 'apple' by pointing to examples of apples while saying 'these are apples'. (There are theories of language that try to reduce all word meaning ultimately to ostension.) That doesn't explain what reality is though, or why it's there in the first place.
This is what I'm hoping to achieve in regards to this thread. I consider myself a visionary in every sense of the word. I have come up with deep thoughts and visions whenever I ponder Philosophical problems.
Science stays strictly within the realm of what can be observed in nature. This may be the cause of its inherent limitations. The scientific enterprise consists of many parts and can stand on its own as an explanation for the "how" but never the "why" of reality. This is the reason why it is not a unified field but exists in parts each of which is in concordance to what can be observed within nature.
Yes. The Hindus have gotten it correct when they established in scriptures about "being" as "That".
Parse that sentence better. It is the agreement which is objective, as you cannot have a purely subjective agreement between people. And subjective experience can also demonstrate an independent consistency, through said objective agreement.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
The two main schools on perception are representational, which says that we only perceive representations of reality, and direct perception, which says we directly perceive reality. I take the former view based on the fact that we can, under the right conditions, perceive things that aren't even really there. If very lifelike perceptions are possible, as in the case of Charles Bonnet syndrome and drugs like DMT, that argues strongly for the case that the reality we think we are directly perceiving is really largely just a representation of such constructed inside our own heads. But then that raises the question as to what if anything are we actually perceiving? And if mere representations, what of reality is being represented in the perception? Every property and qualia would be the mere projection of our inner subjective experience. What then would be left to characterize the reality other than as pure quantitative information--a gray probablistic fog of interpenetrating waves and fields?
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
You misunderstand. I'm saying that Parameter isn't here for serious discussion. He's playing games. If I had to guess, I'd say that he's yet another Cortex_Colossum sockpuppet, albeit a little more verbose, but I can't be certain.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
He or she has only posted here 10 times. That's not a whole lot to judge a person by much less if they are a sockpuppet. But even if they ARE a sockpuppet maybe this Cortex_Colossum wants to be serious for a change. Must everyone have a permanent agenda they never vary from? So far the conversation seems quite ingenuous to me. What fruity pov do you suppose Parameter is trying to sneak in here?
If you can't see it, fine. Whatever. I just threw out the caution as a service to others. His inevitable banning will be my vindication.