What's Real?
 

"If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain" - Morpheus, The Matrix

I think we can distinguish three kind of realities.

The first one is the perceived reality, one we cannot control at all and from which we receive all kinds of information through our limited senses.

The second reality is the abstract reality, a reality we may control or not and we're conscious about: dreams, imagination, thinking processes... We build this reality all in our head, from the data received from the perceived reality mostly.

And a third reality called unperceived reality. This is the most difficult to define because we're not conscious about its existence. We do not have any kind of means to reach this reality or receive data from it; and it's even highly doubtable it may exist. However, we must consider it.

The first one, it's common sense to admit it does exist; the second and third ones may need some discussion.

However, I feel that those three are connected to each other. The linker between the first and the second one is observation and reception of the data; and the linker between the second and the third one may be, perhaps, some kind of astral projection (?).

I don't know really, all I can do is to presume on unknown land.

This topic made me think about a discussion in a book about lucid dreaming that I'm in the middle of. It talks about how dreams can be similar to hallucinations, with one study of a subject that was wired to a machine in a study and he had an auditory hallucination (he thought he heard someone shouting him outside of the room) so he undid all the wires and ran out into the corridor to find no one there. Hallucinations are when you perceive something when no stimulus is there... so are hallucinations real? If our senses are perceiving them, then why not. Though really what can seem real to one person, when seen from someone elses viewpoint it can not exist at all. What makes one persons viewpoint the correct one and the others false?

I wish I could swap some of these around so that I could have full manipulation over percieved reality. ;)

I would say there is only one reality, we just have different perceptions of this reality. Thus perception is subjective. However, given the highly subjective nature of perception, reality seems to be rather static. Objects either exist, or they do not. First level abstracts don't exist in a physical sense, but rather describe a group of physical objects with similar characteristics (ex - a flock is an abstract used to describe a group of animals). Then you have second level abstracts that have no ties with the physical world (concepts such as freedom or piety).


Hallucinations are real. What someone hallucinates about may not be real. One may hallucinate that someone is talking to them, but if no person exist that is talking to them, then the perception of the senses caused by the hallucination is not reality (I think the medical/psychological term is "psychotic break" for this example).