Why and how is it possible that we are able to think of things that aren't real?

Question

How can we dream of things that are fictional? How can we imagine things that don't exist? How IS this POSSIBLE?

For example where do we get fairies and Greek gods and unicorns from. How are these things a figment of our imagination? Does it seem logical at all to know things you've never heard of?

I asked this question before. I was just wondering if some of the same people who answered it before answer it again (copy and paste your answer or something) because I didn't get a chance to choose a best answer and I REALLY wanted to because they were great answers!

Choosing a best answer is going to be hard! I'm glad some people think this is a good question because most would have answered with stupidity. I am just curious a curious 13-year-old.
All of these answers are great.

What's conceptualizing?

Answer 1

i think we take something real like for a unicorn you take a horse and then you think what if you put a horn on it.you take a horn from another real animal.for a fairy you take a person and shrink them and then you say what if the person had wings and could fly like a bird.its probably when your brain gets bored and you just think of real things and put them together and you think about how cool it would be if there was something like that.its just your imagination and your brain putting together things.it like a daydream or a fantasy.

Answer 2

We dream of things fitional because we like believing things that goes outside the boundery of real and sometime it's better believing an untruth than facing truth ( if you have time please free to check out my port on writing.com at: http://writing.com/authors/jo2005
We also wish that life could be that way, so we imagine the good instead of the bad, and yes, we can imagine things that don't exist because we want them to be within our reach.

As far as fairies and Greek gods are concered, they are not a figment of our imagination, we learned about them in school for some and if you read "Reasoning from the Scriptures" by Jehovah Witnessess at their web site:http://www.watchtower.org and type in the name of this publishcation, you'll find some answers as to how some of these gods orginated.

We live in a cold world where "satan" is the god of it, and one in which some people are outright cold-blooded, so it's logical for us to sometimes believe what is fictitious for the sake of just feeling good and escaping the reality of harshness from others, but ask any good " psychologist," and he or she
will probably tell you that fititious thinking has something to with the "brain" and "childhood. " Finally, I think that if you go on the web and do a search on "fairies and Greek gods and unicorns from" and their orgins, this will probably answer your question too. The unicorn thing was wild, I also wonder how someone could imagine such a thing.

Love ya!

Spice1

Answer 3

there is a thing called imagination. this helps us to think what we have not seen or experienced. we always think that god is greater than us. if he is greater than human beings he must be having some thing other than what we have. there great epic writers like homer, vyasa , valmiki etc . let loose their imagination. they created one horned horse which can fly & called it unicorn. god's servants who obey god's orders,. if they r god's servants they must have some power isn't it ? so, they made fairies who look after the need of the people who believe in god. like this they have given some unnatural powers . shapes & organs to the natural beings made them unnatural & called them god's servants. but don't u think this great power of imagination of man made it possible to invent ships, aeroplanes , telephones,computers etc all these things were imagined long back by man. but now it has become reality. who knows in future we may come across unicorns also. if a scientist try to cross a cow & a horse we might get a horse with a horn. now robots are like fairies. it is a great quality & boon for a man to imagin things which he has not seen. it is because of this power of imagination he has invented so many things in this world. otherwise you would not have had the means to ask this question & i would not have had the opertunity to answer this question.

Answer 4

It's important to separate 'fiction' from 'myth'. Y'see, fiction is something deliberately made up out of someone's experience and store of information. For example, Tom Clancy's "Op Center" does not exist in our reality, but it takes experiences and knowledge that Mr. Clancy has acquired and builds on them in ways that do not or cannot happen in reality... but Mr. Clancy thinks that they might or should.
"Myth", on the other hand, might be construed as someone trying to explain or justify something that he doesn't understand. For example, why a lightning bolt strikes one particular place rather than another, or what happens when the sun is not where the questioner can see it. This gets accepted as fact because no one can argue with it.
And, of course, there are the far-out folk who suggest that the ancients experimented with psychoactive herbs and fungi, which led to altered states of consciousness, which in turn led to all manner of strange ideas.
Lacking access to a reliable time-machine, I can't answer for certain, but it seems like any number of things could account for our traditional strange legends. I mean, come on: how could the Japanese have come up with a category of demon (tengu) that is half-man and half-crow *without* some serious pharmaceutical assistance?

Answer 5

Human beings are endowed by their creator to think, reason and build upon knowledge; but even more enjoyable is our ability to imagine, and remember not all imaginations are fairy tales. Think of Thomas Edison, The Wright Brothers, Charles Babbage(invented the computer) Look at all the literature that has been written. We are not prevented by any external restraint, but as one can see our imaginations can run away with us. We are also introspective, which allows us to look inside of ourselves, something very unique the creation.

Answer 6

We have the blessing to have an imagination, now , all things comes from ones imagination, do you think that fairies just showed up , no..it was someone who had the vision , then named it and spread the word..if you think of it the things that we see everyday is from ones imagination..this computer we are on, the car we drive...almost every man made thing is from imagination

Answer 7

human nature directs us to attempt to create order out of "chaos"

every culture has a "mythology" that is born from a desire to explain the unexplainable. Some people call religion a mythology so use this as an example of people reaching to UNDERSTAND their purpose.

If it can be imagined it can be acheived- look at our technology in the 20th century, things that could ONLY be imagined by Jules Verne became reality.

Answer 8

i think star5 pretty much summed it up with his/her answer.

thinking a thought about something that's not real is essentially the same thing as thinking a false thought. (this is precisely what fallacy is actually., a thought that represents something that does not exist.) and all you have to do in order to think a false thought is to take a true thought and break it.

for example, you've seen elephants before and you've seen the colour pink before. if you combine them though, then you get something that doesn't actually exist.

Answer 9

In some schools of philosophical thought, its not possible to think of something that is not real, because by definition, reality is what is in your mind. Once you imagine it, the imagined thing is real, because its realized in your consciousness.

Answer 10

It is called conceptualizing