what is reality?

Answer 1

The opposite of delusion.

Answer 2

'Reality' is a myth which we use to convince ourselves that things such as 'causality' and 'free will' actually exist.

At the macroscopic level (the one we are able to perceive with our basic senses) 'reality' consists of a majority set (or statistical average) of all possible quantum states. It's an open question as to whether or not we are capable of 'altering' that reality. But the thought experiment of 'Schrodengers Cat' certainly demonstrates that we cause reality to happen (in some sense) merely by the act of observing it.

In the 'classical' (or Copenhagen) interpretation of quantum mechanics, the cat is said to exist as a 'wave function' consisting of the superposition of all of it's possible quantum states and, when the observation is made, the wave function collapses to one state. Exactly which state cannot be determined 'a priori' since all states are possible and controlled only by a probability function.

The more modern interpretation (called the 'Everett' interpretation) contends that the cat is both dead *and* alive even after the observation is made, but that your consciousness 'bifurcates' into two copies of 'you' in two parallel universes. In one, the cat is dead and in the other, the cat is alive.

For a good laymans description of this, find a copy of Dave Deutch's excellent book, 'the Fabric of Reality'.

There's also the fact that 'reality' gets 'filtered' through our consciousness. We tend to perceive what we want to, what we've been trained to, what we're familiar with, etc.

Magicians have been making a living off of that truth for ages


Doug

Answer 3

No one really knows.

What we do in science is come up with models that by testable hypotheses and experimentation derive theories, which are models of how reality behaves. What we have to be careful about is to not confuse our models of reality with reality. To confuse them is to commit an error called reification and can be a very serious error at times.

Religions and quack sciences try to pretend they know what reality is but they don't either. Waving "God" at reality doesn't make reality go away.

Answer 4

This is really a question for Humanities/ Philosophy, rather than Science and math, but here goes: reality is that which, to a sane mind, appears real.

Answer 5

reality is mathematics, even mathematics is stronger than observation to explain the reality. a theory, which is found by observation, may be true or may be not, but any theory proved by math is 100% true. mathematics is the strongest thing to explain the universe and any thing inside it.

u may see some thing which is not real, or u does not see some thing which is real, but math is able to recognize what is real and what is not. so far nothing is found which is contrary to the rules in mathematics

Answer 6

"Reality" is the clever abstract metaphor created by man to personify the possible and the known.