• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

What is Reality?

Savage Idealist

Permabanned
Joined
Aug 17, 2010
Messages
2,841
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
6w7
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
Thought experiment: suppose that you wake up from a dream, which initially you thought was a reality; how could you be certain that the now current "reality" that you are perceiving is really a reality, or just another dream?

How can we ever be truly certain that what we are perceiving right now is reality? Or perhaps, is reality itself what we perceive to be?
 

Craft

Probably Most Brilliant
Joined
Jan 8, 2010
Messages
1,221
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
5w7
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
There is "sense reality." Sense reality can be distinguished from dream reality by the fact that nothing you try can ever wake you up.
 

Shimmy

New member
Joined
Jun 9, 2009
Messages
1,867
MBTI Type
SEXY
Yeah, it's easy to distinguish waking life from dream. The movie 'waking life' is about this subject.

[YOUTUBE="XO1UJXS2o34"]Horizon - What is Reality[/YOUTUBE]
 

Polaris

AKA Nunki
Joined
Apr 7, 2009
Messages
2,529
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
451
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
The foundation for reality lies in the act of asserting something as real, by means of some sort of statement. The assertion of a reality makes a sort of hypothesis, promise, or command about what can be made present but is currently absent. Reality begins as the possibility of something being real, which is to say, the object of an assertion. Should an assertion about reality fulfill itself, the result is not necessarily that you're filled with a sense of conviction that what you see is specifically real, but that you're presented with a raw fact, which is to say an object that you have to do something with; the mere fact that it exists means that you are obligated to respond to it in some way, even if it's only to bear witness to it and etch it away on the tablet of your memory. In fact, you are already responding to it, as soon as it manifests; perception of any sort means experiencing a certain attitude, which is another word for intention, toward something. To have an intention means to assert something as a possibility of some sort, by means of some object toward that possibility, which brings us full circle, right back to the beginning of the cycle, at the same moment the cycle begins.

One might say that reality is a dialogue, and not just a dialogue but a dialogue about this or that dialogue.
 

rav3n

.
Joined
Aug 6, 2010
Messages
11,655
*Inception theme song plays in the background of this thread*

There's only perception of reality.
 

Lark

Active member
Joined
Jun 21, 2009
Messages
29,569
I sort of think whether its a dream or real life is unimportant, its a bit like all of the philosophising from Bishop Berkley right up until the BBC documentary already mentioned, whether or not the world is a hologram or illusionary isnt really important, it will be experienced as real so it is therefore real.
 

Aquarelle

Starcrossed Seafarer
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
Messages
3,144
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4w5
Instinctual Variant
so/sp
According to Ben Goertzel, Reality = minds + shared belief systems
 

Vie

Giggity
Joined
Jun 9, 2010
Messages
792
MBTI Type
ENTJ
Enneagram
8
I sort of think whether its a dream or real life is unimportant, its a bit like all of the philosophising from Bishop Berkley right up until the BBC documentary already mentioned, whether or not the world is a hologram or illusionary isnt really important, it will be experienced as real so it is therefore real.

this.
 

ThatsWhatHeSaid

Well-known member
Joined
May 11, 2007
Messages
7,263
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w4
Reality is a fun topic. It's fun to wonder what reality really is. This universe and all the operations behind it. It's really, really, really weird, and it's a fun thought to try and wrap your head around (and fail miserably at). I don't know what it is, and I like not knowing. I'd like to know what it is, but I'm not even sure how to begin to take that apart. Understanding how reality operates is much different from asking what it is, how it got here, -- yeah.
 

Synapse

New member
Joined
Dec 29, 2007
Messages
3,359
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
4
The more important question to ask is what is spirit consciousness to reality?

By consciousness we mean our level of perception about ourselves and the world around us. The higher the perception, the greater the consciousness.
 

IntrovertedThinker

New member
Joined
Jun 21, 2010
Messages
96
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w4
Thought experiment: suppose that you wake up from a dream, which initially you thought was a reality; how could you be certain that the now current "reality" that you are perceiving is really a reality, or just another dream?

How can we ever be truly certain that what we are perceiving right now is reality? Or perhaps, is reality itself what we perceive to be?

You can't. To at all validate whether or not you are dreaming or in actuality experiencing some actual reality would require a bird's eye, objective viewpoint which I doubt humans can even manage to attain in the near future. This is because such an awareness of one's own sense of reality depends entirely on one's own ability to perceive such things. In other words, there's a self-referential loop. If you cannot escape your own subjective perception of things, how can you ever truly know anything about the nature of that which you are sensing? I would think that instead of certainty, we humans are best off accepting the notion that we may only have degrees of probable confidence concerning reality, so that utilizing reason to distinguish from dream and reality can give us some reference of things. But I think that's all we can hope for, rationally speaking: simple reference—certainty is asking a bit too much.
 

Randomnity

insert random title here
Joined
May 8, 2007
Messages
9,485
MBTI Type
ISTP
Enneagram
6w5
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
You can't. So why bother Ns will argue about it endlessly. :cheese:

Sorry, I'll go away.
 

Snuggletron

Reptilian
Joined
Sep 25, 2009
Messages
2,224
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
10
everything I know is part of reality, I think. That doesn't make a particular thing true or possess evidence, though. I guess
 

Mephistopheles

New member
Joined
Sep 29, 2010
Messages
160
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
6w5
I never got why people are always so focused on the actual "reality". I always found the endless possibilities of theory waaaay more interesting. I mean, it's not even really defined what reality is - it's just a porous idea. So, why bother whether this is reality or not, if you don't even know what reality is anyway?
 

gromit

likes this
Joined
Mar 3, 2010
Messages
6,508
I sort of think whether its a dream or real life is unimportant, its a bit like all of the philosophising from Bishop Berkley right up until the BBC documentary already mentioned, whether or not the world is a hologram or illusionary isnt really important, it will be experienced as real so it is therefore real.


Yeah I have to agree...
 

guesswho

Active member
Joined
Jul 9, 2010
Messages
1,977
MBTI Type
ENTP
Do all animals on Earth have a reality of their own? Or are only us, humans, entitled to have a reality?
 

xisnotx

Permabanned
Joined
Sep 24, 2010
Messages
2,144
I sort of think whether its a dream or real life is unimportant, its a bit like all of the philosophising from Bishop Berkley right up until the BBC documentary already mentioned, whether or not the world is a hologram or illusionary isnt really important, it will be experienced as real so it is therefore real.

I agree. However I think it's important to replace "is therefor real" with "can therefor be treated as real until further information is made available".

I never got why people are always so focused on the actual "reality". I always found the endless possibilities of theory waaaay more interesting. I mean, it's not even really defined what reality is - it's just a porous idea. So, why bother whether this is reality or not, if you don't even know what reality is anyway?
Then what is the point of it all?

Reality is a fun topic.
Ha..no.

At the end of the day whether all this is real or not is inconsequential. We perceive this as real so for all intents and purposes it can be treated as real.
 
Top