How do we know if everything is real and not illusions?

Question

How do we know if everything is real?
How do we know if we are only dreaming?
If anyone can help me please answer.
Thanks! :)

Answer 1

What a wonderful question. The answer, however, is not as wonderful as you would hope. The answer is: You don't. I'll give a brief explanation, but if you want to skip that and get to the good news, go to the last paragraph.

Your question is a philosophical one, in which answers have been argued for thousands of years. Many philosophers have come up with theories on existence, but most of these fall short. They do not cover all discrepancies.

Grondoon brought up Descarts "Cogeto Ergo Sum," or "I think, therefore I am." This is on the right track, but does not quite catch the essence of your question. Descartes asked the question, how do I know that I exist. He looked at all the ways that reality could be fooling us, posited that waking thought could just be a dream and that mathematical "fact" might all be a lie given by what he called "an evil genious." After deconstructing reality, he went on to try and prove existence from scratch. He decided that "I think, therefore I am." There is thought happening, so something must be thinking that thought. That something, I will identify as myself. From there, he went on to rebuild the world and prove the existence of God. I don't think he did as well in that forum. I'll leave that debate for another question, however.

So, Descartes figured out that he exists. What about everything else around you? Are you the only person in existence? Is everyone else just a figment of your imagination? Although philosophers have been studying these questions for millennia, modern day movies even take a stab at them every now and again. Total Recall throws the main character into a cycle that questions what is real and what is memory and dream. The Matrix made us all wonder if we were just a part of a computer program. Did you wonder at the end of the movie if Neo was actually out of the Matrix, or if he was just in a different program?

David Hume provides my favorite theory on existence and reality. Very briefly, he points out that sometimes I can see things that I know are not real. When I put a stick in a body of water, it appears to bend, but when I take it out again, it is still straight. He also realizes that sometimes he can have a very vivid dream in which he thinks he is awake, but will then wake up, and find he was just dreaming. Hume says that our belief in reality is not based on physics, but on habit. Every day, for our entire life, we see the sun rise in the west, so we assume the sun always rises in the west. We even create laws that prove that it will, and call these physics. However, we constantly need to revise these laws as we find new things... or when things do not act as we expect them to. There is no real reason why the sun must rise in the west. It could rise in the east. Or a giant Twinkie could rise in the morning instead of the sun. We believe the sun will rise, because it always has in the past. We can be 99.99999% sure the sun will rise. But there is no way we can be 100% sure that the sun will rise in the morning. How do you know that the color you see as green isn't perceived by someone else as blue? How do you really know that the someone else isn't just made up by you?

What does this mean for us? Well, technically, it means that there is no way that we can know what is going to happen. We expect things to happen because of habit. However, we cannot be sure they will. Furthermore, our knowledge of reality is based on a physics that may not even exist. Everything could just be your imagination. You may be raving mad, locked in a psycho ward but living your life out as if you were you. Or the world might not even exist. "I think therefore I am." However, my thought does not give existence to anything except a thinking being. I know that I exist, but there is no way to prove that everything else isn't a figment of my imagination. In it's truest form, there is no reality but the one you believe in.

So, why are you still sitting here reading through all of this if it might not exist? You have a reality that you live in. Whether you created it or it really exists, you must live by the rules that you perceive. If they change, you must adapt. You exist, and to continue to do so, you must assume the reality you know is reality, until such time when you are given new information and must revise your idea of reality.

To boil everything down, we can never really know that anything exists out of a consciousness -- the I (ourself) -- however, we must live by the rules of reality (the laws of physics) that we perceive, or suffer the consequences we believe will happen if we don't. It is your reality; make the best you can with it.

Answer 2

We don't know if everything we perceive is real. Certainly, the economic, social, cultural constructs that human kind has created are real since we are conscious of them, but as for what we perceive with our senses - it is difficult to nail down a definition for the real.

Quantum Physics sheds some light on this question (as does neurobiology). Human beings don't actually see, hear, touch, taste or smell anything. We perceive that we do, but our brains are just sorting through the raw data that the senses bring to it and then the brain arranges this data in a way that we can comprehend. When we look at something, what is happening is light waves from the particles that make up this thing enters our eyes. Our brain interprets these waves and the image of this particular thing pops up in our heads. When PET scans are done of people's brains they will ask the subject to look at a particular person. Then the subject will look at a picture of the person. Then the subject will be asked to think of the person. In each case, the same areas of the brain light up. What we sense is all in the mind. This doesn't mean that there isn't a real out there, it's just that we are unable to access it.

Answer 3

Immanuel Kant said everything is an illusion, but he did not mean you can't touch it. He meant that what you see is the phenomenon of the thing. Behind the phenomenon is something he invented called the "noumenon." It is supposed to be the essence of the thing. Plato put the essences in the heavens. That is where Greek society put them. The essences were represented by the Gods and Goddesses, which is why there were so many of them. The gods sent down a mirror likenesses of themselves, in the form of flowers, bees, rain, grain, etc. Aristotle, however, put the essences "in the things themselves." Like the essence of a rose is IN the rose, not in heaven. Ayn Rand put essences in concepts, which puts them in the mind. The difference between Kant, and Rand is that Rand says essences can be known: thus they are in the mind as something the mind has figured out, not as something that we came equipped knowing. (Socrates thought that.) Kant, on the other hand, said Man is so deeply flawed that he can never ever know by his senses what an essence is, that we can't touch them, see them, etc. and so therefore the phenomenon is not real. The thing we can never ever know is the real thing. That is evil, to say man if flawed in such a way that he is incompetent to know his world. Rand says Man is supremely competent to know everything, given enough time.

Answer 4

Are you in college, like taking a class in Philosophy or World Religions? Those classes can really mess you up.

Why would you think that this life isn't real? Are you doing drugs? Are just wondering about it all, or do you think you need to seek professional help? Talk to a trusted friend, and/or seek good, godly counsel. This life is real; it's not an illusion nor a dream, and it is good.

Answer 5

The whole universe is a dream, god's dream or ours, makes no difference. It's our cosmic playground. Read 'Illusions' or better yet 'Running from Safety', both by Richard Bach.

Answer 6

What doesn't disappear when you stop believing in it, that's what I perceive as reality. But if you want to know if we might be living a dream don't ask questions, seek answers.

Answer 7

If you build your house on a Rock, the winds and floods will not be able to shake it. If you're adrift then you haven't found real Truth to build your life on, and everything may feel like shifting sands, nothing solid, dreamlike. I've built my life on the Word of God and experience of Him. Its realness has been tested and shown to be solid many times. All I can do is tell you that God is REAL, His Truth is REAL, His Son is REAL. If you want Reality, then look and find. You'll be able to see for yourself if you call out to Him with your heart, and want to know.

Answer 8

it's whatever you want it to be, just remember there are consequences if you don't pay your bills. check out Allen Watts on the web......you might like what you hear, he talks in depth about reality and illusion

Answer 9

Nothing is real.
It is all an illusion.
It isn't even your dream...it is the dream of the Entity some call "God"....
When He wakes up, you and me and the computers and everything else you see, and everything else you don't see...
all
will
go








POOF







and we'll all be gone...just like that....







.........Sweet Dreams...........

Answer 10

According to those who have been enlightened, everything seen from the perspective of duality (self versus other) is illusory.