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Revision as of 02:38, 11 June 2002 by The Anome (talk | contribs) (added see-alsos)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)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 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.
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.
Reality and cultural relativism
All cultures admit of alternate realities, some quite esoteric. 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.
See also: