What Is Reality?
P-Khan
Join Date: 2003-05-27 Member: 16776Members
Join Date: 2003-05-27 Member: 16776Members
in Discussions
<div class="IPBDescription">NOT the Matrix way....</div> This is NOT something like the Matrix, as we are being ruled by machines and we don't know what is real. I got this idea from my TOK lesson (kinda like phylosophy), as we had to write an essay on this. Forgive me if I am kind of strange with my response to reality.
What is reality? Is reality what one feels, what one can touch? Or is reality simply electric impulses from your brain?
According to Plato, in his work <i>The Allegory of the Cave</i>, reality is what one believes in. Imagine a person living in an underground cave for all it's life, only being able to see a wall. Now suppose that all this person can see are shadows of certain wooden figures, such as animals, which are being manipulated by humans. It is natural that these humans would be talking, and that the prisoner who is seeing this shadows believes that these figures are actually talking. Now, suppose that he is released, and is told that what he believes in is not real, that it is immposible for these wooden figures to speak. That what was real for him is not. What would be his reaction? Denial. Saying that what he believed for all his life is not real, that his beliefs are fake, would cause him to deny that statement.
Now, in my opinion, reality comes from ones heart. If one believes in God, he just knows he is real, even without having any proofs. Reality is the emotion of one. Love is real, but it can't be seen or touched, which shows that reality isn't simply what one can see and touch.
What is reality? Is reality what one feels, what one can touch? Or is reality simply electric impulses from your brain?
According to Plato, in his work <i>The Allegory of the Cave</i>, reality is what one believes in. Imagine a person living in an underground cave for all it's life, only being able to see a wall. Now suppose that all this person can see are shadows of certain wooden figures, such as animals, which are being manipulated by humans. It is natural that these humans would be talking, and that the prisoner who is seeing this shadows believes that these figures are actually talking. Now, suppose that he is released, and is told that what he believes in is not real, that it is immposible for these wooden figures to speak. That what was real for him is not. What would be his reaction? Denial. Saying that what he believed for all his life is not real, that his beliefs are fake, would cause him to deny that statement.
Now, in my opinion, reality comes from ones heart. If one believes in God, he just knows he is real, even without having any proofs. Reality is the emotion of one. Love is real, but it can't be seen or touched, which shows that reality isn't simply what one can see and touch.
Comments
If we're looking at a situation where we assume everything to be real, and the only variable is the guy in a cave, well I say the guy in a cave is wrong. He believes in something, but what he believes in is wrong. It wasn't that the wooden figures talking were "real," they are not real. He thinks they are real but he is wrong. (I keep coming back to that <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->)
If it turns out that everybody on the world is "living in a cave" and everything we think reality is <b>isn't</b>, well, then I will venture to say that we have all been wrong.
Take for instance visible light that we see; thats a very small portion of the stuff that is out there. UV, IR, Microwave, X-ray, Gamma ray, radio waves...... all that is invisible to us yet it's still there. Most of them we can't feel or even percieve without special equipment. And thats just the KNOWN stuff. Perhaps even that is just a small portion of what is out there. If our sun was a little hotter, we might see in UV. Visible light may be invisible to us- if our sun was a little cooler, the black body spectrum would be shifted and we might see in Infared. It just happens that the rainbow of light we see now is the most abundant radiation emitted by the sun, and thats what our eyes have evolved to use. Not too long ago, none of that existed to us. In that particular case, we're out of the cave. Or are we? Certainly more to be discovered.
I think perhaps ghosts may be rationally explained; but how do you test theories with such limited knowledge? Maybe 100 years from it will be common knowledge...
As we uncover more mysteries, we're presented with even more after that. What if the vast expanse of our entire universe is but an atom in the left leg of some guy named Jerry?
practically, reality is the sum of the awareness/experience of every living human being this instant, beyond this reality is meaningless.
it sounds profound now, probably less so in the morning...
If you look away from something, does it cease to exist? No. It's still there, you just cannot percieve it. I cannot percieve the contents of my can of coke, does that mean that there is no coke in there until I take a drink? What if I want pepsi instead? Will the coke turn into pepsi?
Intelligence does not control the universe or reality, although ones view can be subjective, you can only change reality by participating in it, not by being unaware of it.
I sure hope that made some shred of sense =\
Reality is different from consciousness. Reality is the way things are, which pretty much is a bundle of atoms interacting and forming molecules, long carbon chains and complex states of chemical equilibrium. From a conscious perspective, we might call this state of chemical interations "life". As we can't see these individual atoms and molecules with our flawed senses, what becomes 'real' to us is that they are one entity, a human being.
What is 'real' to you is really just electrical signals interpreted by your brain. Don't ever try and think that you know what is real and what is unreal. Unfortunately I will have to refer back to The Matrix; the people inside accepted what they saw as real because their senses told them that they could see, smell, touch, hear and taste it. But real is far more than just what we can perceive.
In conclusion, take everything you see with a grain of salt. Everything. Reality is more than just what you can percieve. Of course if a tree fell in the forest with no one around it would make a sound. Just because no one was there to percieve it doesn't make it not real.
IF atoms did not exist until they were "Discovered" a lot of stuff just simply could not happen.
Ergo, they had to exist before they were discovered and we came to the realisation that atoms did exist.
Reality as far as anyone can tell is firm and inflexible. It is our perceptions and interpretations of it that are flexible and malleable.
It is egocentric to think that unless we are there to observe things happening, nothing will happen. If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it make a sound, it will naturally make a sound, it is simply that no one was there to hear the sound.
Intelligent life on this world has only existed for around 50,000 years or so. Did the world simply not exist before that? If so, how did we even come into being in the first place. Did we create this world with it's history and a complex set of rules to guide it's interactions? If so, why is there a nigh infinite universe filled virtually with nothing when in all truth the human brain is utterly incapable of percieving or even comprehending the abstract concept of infinity.
Consciousness does not define reality. Reality defines consciousness, but consciousness can change it's perception of reality in order to compensate.
For example, a man lives in his home all his life. To him, the entire universe is his home. He cannot comprehend of his brothers job at the company, nor of the floods that ravage nations in some far place of the earth. He cannot comprehend of the complexity of life outside his house, and cannot comprehend of the masses of people and empty space on this planet.
Saying that reality is dependent upon us is absurd. There has to be something to create intelligence, before intelligence, there is supposedly nothing, therefore intelligence cannot exist because reality cannot exist.
I should really tag a copyright on this stuff...
You say reality is what you percieve to be physically real in your mind, but what about emotions? They are real, but not physicaly. And what about ones beliefs? A person just knows God is real, but there is no physical evidence, you just know he real.
Concepts are part of every 'thing'.
We perceive every 'thing' though our senses.
Our senses are linked to our human mind/conciousness/yougetmypoint.
Therefore reality come from our minds
edit:: I see that you can argue around perceiving every 'thing' though our senses by argueing emotion etc. are not physical things. But they are still 'things' in the sense that our minds have attached a value/attibute to them. When i say thing, I mean every thing our mind could possibly come up with.