What is reality?

mydadiscar

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Exactly as the title says. What is your concept of reality.
I have heard one definition as "what can be perceived". Think "if a tree falls in the middle of the woods and no one hears it, did it even exist?". But then, does that make the schizophrenic's hallucinations reality? They are being seen and noticed, perceived.
What is reality?
 
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NW_Cryptid

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I feel the most generic, but widely accepted answer is simply "whatever is observed, and agreed upon by the majority of humanity and intelligent life."

What I mean is, if a hallucination "existed" it would be something that the majority of humanity all see or all experience in some form at the same time. Even an ant will acknowledge a tree in it's path, thus this makes it reality.

I don't know if this is precisely what I personally believe myself, but I believe it to be the most widely accepted answer to such a question.
 
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TRXTR

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Reality will always be too complex and almost-impossible to describe for pretty much forever, as deep within or without we look. I think the notion that science is "close to figuring it all out" is a dangerous way to think.
 
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There are many ways to define this, but if I had to explain... I would compare this to analogue and digital signals. The analogue signal is densely packed with many information that wait for being interpreted. The interpreter is You, and you are able to do it through the consciousness you have in your body (supposing for now that you're not your consciousness itself, which might be an other topic), and you translate the analogue signal's bits you can recieve into digital signals that you can understand. You're percieved world therefore is based on your consciouusness' and vessel's evolution to the current state of capabilites to recieve, select and translate bits of analogue signal out of the whole in which's framework they exist.
 
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Exactly as the title says. What is your concept of reality.
I have heard one definition as "what can be perceived". Think "if a tree falls in the middle of the woods and no one hears it, did it even exist?". But then, does that make the schizophrenic's hallucinations reality? They are being seen and noticed, perceived.
What is reality?
Boy are these topics good. I'll try to describe my take on this without being overly messy or complicated.

Objective reality in a nutshell: we are surrounded by an atmosphere, which we call sky. We experience the laws of gravity. We breathe. We wake up every day. Those are parameters that cannot be changed. We are in a human body. Everyone can feel that and integrate this as "objective reality", because everyone experiences it and can attest to experience it.

Where the whole thing complicates is when we start speaking of subjective reality, because there are so many variables that may or may not overlap with objective reality.
Take your example of the tree that falls all alone in the woods. This tree did exist, but we did not perceive it. It fell and made a sound as it fell, but no one heard it. You have two types of people in this case: I'll use the expression of "those who see trees", vs "those who see a forest". The ones who only see trees will say "it did not make a sound, for we would have heard it", but the ones who see a forest will say "it did make a sound, but we didn't perceive it". Those who only see trees concentrate on the immediate aspects of reality and are attuned to the physical first and foremost: the ones who see the forest, however, are more attuned to the big picture and see beyond physical reality.

Take a person who is colourblind. Objective reality says: the sky is blue, the first light in the traffic lights is red, the second orange, the third green. But this person, let's say, is a deuteranope. Deuteranopia causes the affected person to be green-blind: our human will see the sky as blue, yes, but he will see the traffic lights as shades of yellow (if I'm not saying bullshit, I'm not a doc). Another may even be entirely colourblind and sees the world in shades of grey. Yet is their perception unreal? To them it's reality. The fact that they are colourblind does not mean they can't trust their perception: it's simply different.

Take a schizophrenic hallucinating. His hallucinations are very real to him, although they are not to others. Another parameter enters the picture: the unseen. For a world focused on the physical and only the physical, perceiving more is a sign of mental illness, but in societies where the spiritual and unseen is celebrated, such people are considered gods or shamans. His subjective reality has these hallucinations. That doesn't make them less real than objective reality, simply different.

And now the part where my post will probably end up messy as fuck: we feel a lot of things we cannot see, yet we know they are real. From the presence of somebody in a room where there is no one, to simply the air moving around us, those things are very real, yet intangible. That brings us back to the tree example: the sound was simply not perceived, but that doesn't mean it didn't sound. We all know that it sounded, but we cannot prove it, either. I think science may never be able to prove the existence of the intangible: it may just be something that is above human comprehension, or that we aren't supposed to understand until we die. When a relative's mother died and we went to church for her funeral, I could feel her standing in the aisle, yet she was already dead. It however felt just like she was still alive. Was she there? That's possible. In my subjective reality, despite not being seen, she was indeed there. I felt it so strongly I even turned, only to see that, well, obviously, she wasn't standing there. How do people believe in their God without having him in front of them? Subjective reality. This is also why creativity and "madness" are so close to each other and often overlap: the creative person is probably more sensitive to the unseen than others, who cannot share his experience, and thus deem him mad.

Dreams and imaginations are a way to access the unseen. Some dreams (and daydreams) are so vivid you can remember them like physical memories. When you come across someone in a dream, you cannot invent their vibe, especially if you physically never met them. It's especially apparent when you touch them or interact with them. It feels more "real" than the physical reality we live in. Anything that was invented sprung from imagination first: it crossed over into physical reality thanks to the person who decided to create it. It was made "real", but was already real in the first place... ok, I'm starting to get lost in my own reasoning. It's extremely complicated to explain, especially for me, as a very intuitive type of person. I've always known things without being able to put into words. I think this is something you have to experience yourself in order to understand.

Okay, I tried, but this became messier and messier as I went :CRYLAUGH:
 
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Boy are these topics good. I'll try to describe my take on this without being overly messy or complicated.

Objective reality in a nutshell: we are surrounded by an atmosphere, which we call sky. We experience the laws of gravity. We breathe. We wake up every day. Those are parameters that cannot be changed. We are in a human body. Everyone can feel that and integrate this as "objective reality", because everyone experiences it and can attest to experience it.

Where the whole thing complicates is when we start speaking of subjective reality, because there are so many variables that may or may not overlap with objective reality.
Take your example of the tree that falls all alone in the woods. This tree did exist, but we did not perceive it. It fell and made a sound as it fell, but no one heard it. You have two types of people in this case: I'll use the expression of "those who see trees", vs "those who see a forest". The ones who only see trees will say "it did not make a sound, for we would have heard it", but the ones who see a forest will say "it did make a sound, but we didn't perceive it". Those who only see trees concentrate on the immediate aspects of reality and are attuned to the physical first and foremost: the ones who see the forest, however, are more attuned to the big picture and see beyond physical reality.

Take a person who is colourblind. Objective reality says: the sky is blue, the first light in the traffic lights is red, the second orange, the third green. But this person, let's say, is a deuteranope. Deuteranopia causes the affected person to be green-blind: our human will see the sky as blue, yes, but he will see the traffic lights as shades of yellow (if I'm not saying bullshit, I'm not a doc). Another may even be entirely colourblind and sees the world in shades of grey. Yet is their perception unreal? To them it's reality. The fact that they are colourblind does not mean they can't trust their perception: it's simply different.

Take a schizophrenic hallucinating. His hallucinations are very real to him, although they are not to others. Another parameter enters the picture: the unseen. For a world focused on the physical and only the physical, perceiving more is a sign of mental illness, but in societies where the spiritual and unseen is celebrated, such people are considered gods or shamans. His subjective reality has these hallucinations. That doesn't make them less real than objective reality, simply different.

And now the part where my post will probably end up messy as fuck: we feel a lot of things we cannot see, yet we know they are real. From the presence of somebody in a room where there is no one, to simply the air moving around us, those things are very real, yet intangible. That brings us back to the tree example: the sound was simply not perceived, but that doesn't mean it didn't sound. We all know that it sounded, but we cannot prove it, either. I think science may never be able to prove the existence of the intangible: it may just be something that is above human comprehension, or that we aren't supposed to understand until we die. When a relative's mother died and we went to church for her funeral, I could feel her standing in the aisle, yet she was already dead. It however felt just like she was still alive. Was she there? That's possible. In my subjective reality, despite not being seen, she was indeed there. I felt it so strongly I even turned, only to see that, well, obviously, she wasn't standing there. How do people believe in their God without having him in front of them? Subjective reality. This is also why creativity and "madness" are so close to each other and often overlap: the creative person is probably more sensitive to the unseen than others, who cannot share his experience, and thus deem him mad.

Dreams and imaginations are a way to access the unseen. Some dreams (and daydreams) are so vivid you can remember them like physical memories. When you come across someone in a dream, you cannot invent their vibe, especially if you physically never met them. It's especially apparent when you touch them or interact with them. It feels more "real" than the physical reality we live in. Anything that was invented sprung from imagination first: it crossed over into physical reality thanks to the person who decided to create it. It was made "real", but was already real in the first place... ok, I'm starting to get lost in my own reasoning. It's extremely complicated to explain, especially for me, as a very intuitive type of person. I've always known things without being able to put into words. I think this is something you have to experience yourself in order to understand.

Okay, I tried, but this became messier and messier as I went :CRYLAUGH:
Thank You for making an effort to explain this. What you've just written down here makes a lot of sense to me.
 
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Exactly as the title says. What is your concept of reality.
I have heard one definition as "what can be perceived". Think "if a tree falls in the middle of the woods and no one hears it, did it even exist?". But then, does that make the schizophrenic's hallucinations reality? They are being seen and noticed, perceived.
What is reality?
After attempting to understand this question for many years by reading much on Wester Philosophy, the Judeo-Christian tradition, ancient mythologies, I've finally settled on the Buddhist explanation of non-dualism and the basic ground of existence.

Though my knowledge is very limited with it and I am still learning more and more, I understand maybe 0.1% of it, but even if I were to understand far more of it, even a seasoned practitioner would tell you true reality, the nature of mind, is inexpressible, it is something one can only experience through many long hours of practice despite how simple a proper realization may be.

As far as I understand it, reality, conceived by the mind, is a simple vast emptiness absent of qualities and graspability. It is the gap between thoughts which flits so fast ordinary people cannot perceive the lightning fast transition. There's are many good practitioners on the internet who are able to describe it far better than me which might be of interest to some.