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Revision as of 12:56, 11 June 2002
Reality is
- The ultimate nature of things considered as a philosophical question. The universe consists of the whole spacetime continuum in which we find ourselves, together with all the matter and energy within it. Science is said to be the study of the universe. See knowledge.
- The more or less naive world view of a person which is internalized from one's parents and peers. One's reality includes one's culture, social status and sense of what is right and wrong. Reality is socially constructed. Every individual does not sui generis internalize the external world but absorbs from others the social constructs which make up a culture. One's sense of what is "real" may at times differ from what acually is which is sure to make life interesting. In some mental states such as psychosis or delirium, the subject's perception of the world may be strikingly at odds with the social consensus.
The physiological creation of reality
It is arguable that none of us directly perceives reality (even if a single physical reality can be demonstrated to exist). The following account represents the current beliefs of cognitive scientists.
The brain recieves information from a variety of channels, all of which are more limited that they appear, as is demonstrated by the existence of optical and other sensory illusions. Standard models of humand perception estimate our information-processing capacity for the external world at a few hundred bits per second of conscious information.
Vision: an example of the creation of reality
In spite of this, we live with an illusion of a hi-fi 360-degree full-colour full-motion sharp-focus external visual reality (that would take several gigabits per second to represent) that is assembled from a series of gazes and fixations of a very limited foveal visual field, combined with blurry low-resolution surrounding vision and peripheral motion-detection.
The rest, as many experiments in human vision have shown, is supplied by the imagination. Indeed, it is reasonable to describe the whole human visual field as a hallucination -- albeit an active hallucination that is kept up-to-date and consistent with reality wherever information is available. When this checking mechanism fails, the phenomenon of unreal hallucinations is generated by the same mechanism that generates the "real" ones as optical illusions.
Illusionists manipulate these mechanisms to generate their illusions, by generating misleading and distracting stimuli designed to spoof the visual and perceptual systems into generating the impression of unreal events.
The social construction of reality
All cultures admit of alternate realities, some quite esoteric. Listening to the disputes of groups with widely separated points of view, it is clear that they actually have different points of view about what is self-evident -- that is, "real". Often, they reveal their biases by describing their viewpoint as the "real world" or their views as those of "real people" or "ordinary people", showing that they consider the beliefs of their opponents to be disordered and unreal.
Some commonplace examples are Israeli reality versus Palestinian reality; Democratic Party reality versus Republican Party reality; and male reality versus female reality. The reality of the small community of surrealist artists is an example of an esoteric reality. There are also semi-real virtual realities such as within a MUD.
- more is needed on this topic, including the social dimensions of acceptable behavior and manifestations of mental illness
Platonic forms and the philosophy of reality
- we need a bit here about Plato, Platonic realism / Platonism, Platonic forms and mathematical realism
Reality and quantum physics
- stuff to be written on the Copenhagen interpretation and Everett many-worlds interpretations of quantum physics
Reality in fiction
- stuff to be written on Philip K. Dick, Jorge Luis Borges and other authors whose work involves themes of reality and perception
Further reading
- add book list here
See also:
External references: