What is so called "Reality"
 

A simple question , or is it ?

After watching movies like Waking Life , reading books about the topic Im not quite even sure if something like reality exists , or at least on different levels , maybe even several "realities" or "truths" can exist at a time .

Thinking about all that , and Ive been thinking about it alot , maybe too much , has really made me tired , maybe its my naturegiven lust for knowledge of things that fascinate people , I think the last borders are not somewhere outer space for humanity, they are within our minds and they are endless .

I feel I lack people to discuss this with though , people are way too busy with posting albums on facebook , watch TV , buy **** they dont need and just basically eat what they are fed , I grow tired of not having the ability to discuss important topics with people about things that matter as far as anything does matter .

So what is your oppinion , definition about reality ?

Reality is what you make of it. When we are awake (are we right now? Hmmm), this world is reality, when we are dreaming, that is reality, and reality is further defined by how we use logic to interpret the ambient environment. In reality (for lack of a better word :P), we are always living in a simulated construct of a world, which our mind reconstructs through sensory input or it's own thoughts. We never have direct contact with the actual world, so how do we know it is really real? How do we know our sensory input is not artificially created by beings we do not know about?

Really, the only truly real thing is our own minds...

I'm real. I don't know about the rest of you. :P

Reality is what happens physically as perceived by senses, as opposed to things that are written or created in artificial images. Simple enough :)

When nothing is real, everything is Real.

- Mikko

I've pondered on this so much. But as simple as HNM put it, there has to be more. Dreams... sometimes I wonder in dreams, "is this real?" and in some situations, does it matter?

For example, one dream I was walking alone on some remote place (Earth, or elsewhere?) and i wondered if it was real or not. I could feel her hand, i could feel her true love for me. In that dream I could feel her, i could see us and where we were. So was my dream reality? I'm sure there are others who could feel (emotionally), smell, touch something in their dreams, lucid or not. SO according to the definition of reality, that felt pretty physical to me, and my senses in the dream (life? or subconscious senses?) seemed to work, unless I'm missing something... thoughts? expansions? stanley you're an idiot?

Why there has to be more?

If you can't experience anything more than you currently can, what difference would it be to you if there is something more, but no way for you to experience it in any way?

Dreams are subjective reality and something that rarely persists as objective reality does. While dreams can be as real to us as anything else, since they are a product of our brain as much the things we sense in the real world. In summation, we experience reality as our brains translate it to us, and same goes for dreams. The difference is that we can agree mostly on what the objective reality is to us all.

Thinking this a bit further, one might say that reality is a product of communication about and agreement on our perceptions. The ground we walk on is only real, since a number of individuals perceived it and agreed on it being real by communicating their perceptions. This process of communication and agreement is part of the theory of social systems by Niklas Luhmann.

This is the sort of crazy stuff I used to study (sociology seminars) back at college.
:xD:

Wiggling bare toes (which are real),

~*Txim Asawl*~

first off, Stanley, you're not an idiot :)

Second, I like the matrix one. Reality is simply how our brain interprets electrical pulses sent from outside stimuli.

Your dream is as real as a no dream is it not? If you experience the same responses (ie: touch, taste, scent, emotional impulse, etc) it is the same as a non dream. We perceive reality through the 5 senses, emotional, and spiritual feelings.

Ex: if we feel something, we are inclined to say it exists. If something can give us emotional response, we are inclined to say it exists. If something gives us spiritual feeling, we are inclined to say it exists.

To what Tim is saying, reality is also commonly defined as what is collectively agreed upon. If we agree on each others existence, and everyone agrees on a tree being there, except one person, that person would probably be either lying,
in a different reality, or lacking one of the senses to sense the tree.

Collective reality is difficult though, because what we perceive is not always perceivable by other people. Our sense may tell us something is there, but other people may tell us something is not there, and thus it creates a problem of 1. My senses are messed up, 2 their senses are messed up, or 3 we are both right, because given the way we can perceive existence, we both correctly perceive it to be/not be there.

Collective reality is difficult though, and best used for basic things, like trees, dirt etc.

I like to think of myself as a box with holes in it. You can put things partway in those holes, but not all the way through. In other words, I can perceive things of reality through my senses (holes, physical, emotional, spiritual) and then inside my box, (mind/existence of myself) my reality (what I truly believe to be real) exists.

^

I like these questions but usually hate discussions of them.

ok, my above post was riddled with errors, I fixed most I think. I sent it on my phone, and I couldn't see what I was texting, nor could I go back and edit it, so there were quite a few.

And I sort of agree with ICU. I love these questions. Love thinking about them. But, I find that when me and someone else have different perceptions on reality, it can be a problem, because two people may look at their existence entirely differently, and it can cause problems.

I always imagine experiencing reality as being like the Assassin's in Masyaf in AC. They can see through the void that Templars (Corporations/ media in the modern world) and Governments spell over the whole populace. Sorry to use a video game analogy but I think it fits well. The Assassins fight for the right of the population to determine their own life and choices. Think of nowadays..Amongst all the media, Government control and peer pressure. How free are we to experience our own reality?
No wonder people turn to "luxuries" and video games, computers ect. We've lost touch with our own environment, with our soul. People now don't want to live with their own created reality.
If you were to sit in a forest or on a mountain and meditate for a day you might realise a part of you that you never knew existed. Plus you have a definite idea of what you need to do next.

I'm not trying to revive this thread but I will still give my opinion.

Reality is perhaps the most subjective thing we will ever encounter. Metaphysics has various different schools of thought on the nature of reality, the arguments are good but none are perfect. I believe that there are some things the mind will never stretch to, some things that we'll never know and an objective 'reality' may be one of those.

What we experience with our senses is really as close as we can get to reality at the moment but even this might be one big illusion. Also, does it matter?