What is Real?

[James S]

[damian]

Whatever exists. The Earth exists beyond a doubt; Second Life doesn't. Our brains fill in gaps to make it easier to process stuff, but that doesn't mean that it's particularly difficult to verify reality.

[Kzinti]

Everyone has a different reality.

[James S]

[sandmann]

There are two types of reality. The first -- things in themselves -- is almost completely inaccessible to us. The second -- our perceptive reality -- is, as Moose said, highly subjective.

The first kind of reality is something we cannot possibly experience. For example, everything we see doesn't actually look like that. It doesn't even look like anything. The act of seeing is just a series of (inaccurate) renditions of information; the light wave bounces off the object and hits our eyes, our eyes translate the light wave into an electrical signal which they then pass to our brain, our brain interprets this signal as it flashes across the neurons, makes a number of modifications, and then displays the image to our consciousness. There is very little real relation between the object in itself and our image of it.

Now, as for the second reality, we make that reality. Reality is what you make of what happens to you. You make reality, you construct it. Let’s say you get lost on a cross-country drive. You are either pissed off that you got lost, frustrated by your lack of direction, cursing your wrong turn, or you celebrate your lack of direction, you savor the mystery. It depends on which way you look at it. You can hate your life, or you can love your life – you can do either, even with the same life. Reality is a function of perspective, of attitude. You can’t change what happens to you – at least not directly – but you can change your perception of it, and thus your reality.

Even more than that, we construct our reality in a very literal way. I already described the construction of the images we see. We construct that. We impose certain structures on the world around us -- causality, time, space, individuation, etc. We structure our lives, we edit. When someone asks us what we did this morning, we don't say "Well, I woke up, I stretched my hands, then I stretched my legs, then I yawned, then I swung my legs around, then I stepped down on the ground, etc..." We edit out details we believe to be irrelevant, and we include what we believe to be significant. Is our narration in accord with "reality?" Not in the sense that we didn't convey literally every rotation of every electron around every nucleus that morning -- but it represents the germane details.

That's what reality is.

[James S]

In fact, those 1s and 0s themselves don't exist except for our interpretation of the electromagnetic forces that we use to represent them. So in fact, it CANNOT exist without us. But I venture to say that the real world's fundamental forces can interact and are dynamic without us. Just like a glass of water on the table. The water molecules are constantly moving, even without someone there to shake the glass.

[James S]

I was eating dinner by myself tonight, chicken tacos with rice and refried beans, and experienced a catatonic episode. I now know existential doubt, at least as much as anyone can know anything.

But now it's even worse. Now I realize that I exist, along with the rest of reality, but don't have the strength to acknowledge existence. Like the Little Engine that Couldn't. In order to acknowledge my existence I must affirm myself, that is to say love myself, which is to say participate in existence through the eternal ground of being. But how can I do that when I am such an awful person? How can I love myself when I cannot verify whether the Universe and the Ground of Being and God love me? How can I discover if God acknowledges my existence? ... I suppose he, as the ground of existence, has to love me, because I exist. If I was not acknowledge or constently in his mind, I COULD NOT exist. So simply because I exist I know that I can acknowledge my existence and love myself, which is to say, participate in the eternal ground of existence ... I suppose.

[Maf54]

What is real? Me. That's all I can vouch for.

[sandmann]

[James S]

LOL! Thanks, Philosophy major.

[sandmann]

[James S]

You're a good person, Sandy.

I just shouldn't eat dinner alone. That was the problem.

[Brig]

[Miracle]

[Kzinti]