What is reality?

Answer 1

have you seen the matrix

Answer 2

Reality in everyday usage means "everything that exists". The term reality, in its widest sense, includes everything that is, whether it is observable, accessible or understandable by science, philosophy, or any other system of analysis. Reality in this sense may include both being and nothingness, whereas existence is often restricted to being (compare with nature).

In the strict sense of Western philosophy, there are levels or gradation to the nature and conception of reality. These levels include, from the most subjective to the most rigorous: phenomenological reality, truth, fact, and axiom.

Other philosophies, particularly those founded in eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism have different explications of reality. Conceptions of reality in Buddhism include: dharma, paramattha dhamma, samsara and maya (illusion in Sanskrit).

Answer 3

Reality is what occurs if you stop paying your rent/morgage/utility bills. Don't let anyone tell you it is an illusion, the coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan would like reality to be an illusion, they would not die and/or get wounded then would they? If any one tells you it is an illusion, punch them hard on the nose, they will soon stop all this philosphical claptrap then.

Answer 4

RA WIlson provides an intersting answer to this question

"Reality" is a word in the English language which happens to be (a) a noun and (b) singular. Thinking in the English language (and in cognate Indo-European languages) therefore subliminally programs us to conceptualize "reality" as one block-like entity, sort of like a huge New York skyscraper, in which every part is just another "room" within the same building. This linguistic program is so pervasive that most people cannot "think" outside it at all, and when one tries to offer a different perspective they imagine one is talking gibberish.

The notion that "reality" is a noun, a solid thing like a brick or a baseball bat, derives from the evolutionary fact that our nervous systems normally organize the dance of energy into such block-like "things," probably as instant bio-survival cues. Such "things," however, dissolve back into energy dances -- processes or verbs -- when the nervous system is synergized with certain drugs or transmuted by yogic or shamanic exercises or aided by scientific instruments. In both mysticism and physics, there is general agreement that "things" are constructed by our nervous systems and that "realities" (plural) are better described as systems or bundles of energy functions.

So much for "reality" as a noun. The notion that "reality" is singular, like a hermetically sealed jar, does not jibe with current scientific findings which, in this century, suggest that "reality" may better be considered as flowing and meandering, like a river, or interacting, like a dance or evolving, like life itself.

Most philsophers have known, at least since around 500 B.C., that the world perceived by our senses is not "the real world" but a construct we create -- our own private work of art. Modern science began with Galileo's demonstration that color is not "in" objects but "in" the interaction of our senses with objects. Despite this philosophic and scientific knowledge of neurological relativity, which has been more clearly demonstrated with each major advance in instrumentation, we still, due to language, think that behind the flowing, meandering, inter-acting, evolving universe created by perception is one solid monolithic "reality" hard and crisply outlined as an iron bar.


Quantum physics has undermined that Platonic iron-bar "reality" by showing that it makes more sense scientifically to talk only of the inter-actions we actually experience (our operations in the laboratory) ; and perception psychology has undermined the Platonic "reality" by showing that assuming it exists leads to hopeless contradictions in explaining how we actually perceive that a hippopotamus is not a symphony orchestra.

The only "realities" (plural) that we actually experience and can talk meaningfully about are perceived realities, experienced realities, existential realities -- realities involving ourselves as editors -- and they are all relative to the observer, fluctuating, evolving, capable of being magnified and enriched, moving from low resolution to hi-fi, and do not fit together like the pieces of a jig-saw into one single Reality with a capital R. Rather, they cast illumination upon one another by contrast, like the paintings in a large museum, or the different symphonic styles of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Mahler.

Answer 5

Reality is an illusion caused by lack of alchohol.

Answer 6

...we don't know. we only know what we percieve to be reality, which is only a construct of our consiousness. In all reality, as I sit hear typing, thinking I'm responding to your question, this elaborate world I have built up around me might only be a construct of my consciousness and I am actually only a brain in a jar somewhere.

Answer 7

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
Albert Einstein, (attributed)
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

Reality is just our agreement for how we interpret the illusion we are each experiencing.

Answer 8

Reality is whatever you think it is,your perception, according to your own thoughts , and influenced by culture, and nowadays, to some people, unfortunately the media

Answer 9

read up on platos's analogy of the cave that explains reality from a philosophers point of view, and its the basis for the film the matrix, many of platos ideas were used. but read this analogy

Answer 10

“The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth”
—An Inheritance You Can Count On!
http://www.watchtower.org/library/w/2004/10/1/article_01.htm
Jehovah's Witnesses Official Web Site;
"Ye are my witnesses", saith Jehovah, "and my servant whom I have chosen; ... ye are my witnesses", saith Jehovah, "and I am God". Isaiah 43:10-12 (ASV)

Answer 11

that what is not temporary and illusory happiness is reality. It is attained when one gets on the spiritual platform.

Chant Hare Krishna and be happy.