How Can We Be Sure Reality Is Not A Figment of Imagination?

Question

I think therefore I am doesn't really cut it because thought might solely be fantasy and an alternative reality may be the actual one instead of the one we possess.

Faith or belief does not make reality real. It is as nonsensical as dipping your private parts in bleach or not paying the mortgage to assess the outcome to differentiate reality from another experince doesn't prove a thing. Thought is subjective along with all experience. We cannot sense our environment outside of our own personal reality. There is nothing to say that every thing we experience is just part of our own reality and no other. This includes suffering, faith, religious experiences and so on. Others may agree with our viewpoint but that does not make it the ultimate reality. Just because we feel or witness pain or anguish does not mean that it may not just be part of an illusion. Imagination is real but it too is subject to our perception and may be just another illusion. You may be the only thing in existence and everything else just part of your imagination. Even the butterfly thinking it is man is a function of perception and cannot be validated by ultimate truth.

Answer 1

how can we be sure that our imagination isnt what is real and all our experiences of reality just a vivid dream interspersed with the memory of our imagination

do you remember your dreams? do you dream you remember your awake?

Answer 2

There is no proof that either we are a figment or that we are the ultimate reality.
I think therefore I am covers the PERSONAL view only.
I think therefore I know I am BUT you may not be!
Are you figments of my imagination or vice versa?

It cannot be proved either way unfortunately.

The nature of reality is a malleable thing.
You dont get much more real than a black hole yet IT affects the local area in extreme ways so that reality around it is distorted.

Perhaps if we develop the technology to enter a Black Hole's Event Horizon, we will find that the philosophers words on whether he is a butterfly dreaming his is a man, or a man dreaming he is a butterfly will turn out to be true!

We may well be gathering nectar from flowers as we speak!




:~}

Answer 3

Dear Knobbie

I f uck therefore I ain't is no longer a truly universal expression of self imagination like it used to be in the near past.

Now people need more from life but luckily there is still a couple of ways to make reality appear universal. Firstly eat a mutton vindaloo and place the contents of your next movement in a tupperware box. The next day call gillian ( channel 4 ) to investigate your pooh for flavour and smell. If this doesn't bring you down to earth nothin will.

Alternatively pullback your 4 skin and plunge your penal helmit into a cup of bleach and leave for 20 minutes.

If either of these methods don't inspire you to believe you are actually alive then u are probably stoned or actually an afterlife reincarnation of some form. If so please tell all on what happens to are soles on the next ride.

Answer 4

Imagination is also reality, don't you think? Just our atoms in our neurons moving and causing electric reactions, exactly what the rest of reality is.
Your question sounds like solipsism. Have you seen the film Vanilla Sky? Just an example.
Also, already Descartes posed the same question 5 centuries ago and he found out that: Cogito, ergo sum (I think, so I exist) But nobody nowadays takes this so seriously, since what;s in thinking that makes you think that you exist, if while you are dreaming you are not living exactly what you dream? However, dreaming is another type of existence, as well.
So, yes, reality is everything, including your imagination, but there are different forms of reality, some of them allow you to have a bigger impact in your environment than others, that's all.

Answer 5

Quite right. And the answer is, we can't.

All experience starts as sensory information. But then memory and 'feelings' start to come into it. We 'think' what we think is unadulterated 'reality' but we subconsciously sift information and 'interpret' it all the time through the filter of our cognitive bias.

And that's the thin end of the wedge! As the Matrix shows, since all we perceive comes to us via our senses, there's no way of knowing whether we are plugged into some machine somewhere or not!

We could be asleep for all we know. Perhaps Poe was right when he wrote "All that we see or seem, Is but a dream within a dream".

Gosh! Thank goodness I never think about things like this. It could make a person crazy!

.

Answer 6

We can't. However, if philosophy is to be at all functional, it really doesn't do much to sit around in crystal towers wondering if we might be brains in vats somewhere. Until and unless we get some sort of "false reality" detector that could break through any false realities, which would end the question anyway, I think there are far more pressing questions to think about. Especially where science, philosophy, and ethics coincide. RIght now they exist very uneasily with each other, and we have to find some way to reconcile them, and to figure out what scientific inquiries are ethical and which are not and why.

Besides, I am Christian, and I suppose you could say that we are all Gods "dream" If I am stuck in a false reality like Neo, I really hope that a nice Morpheus will come and release me! *s*

Answer 7

Your brain is the boss. It determines what you experience tactilely, emotionally and intellectually. Tests have shown that a person's perception of reality can be altered not only by drugs but by manipulating the electrical impulses between synapses. Philosophers have known for centuries that reality is consensual, we all agree what it looks, feels, hears, tastes and smells like. But, since all of that is interpreted through the brain, there is no way to verify that it all isn't a dream. That, my friend, is what "The Matrix" was all about.

Answer 8

Sure, is 'being' authentic? You might not even be certain that imagination isn't an abstract of something else.

If you haven't already, waste some time with Russel, or Edmund Hussels phenomenology or even Heidegger; then enjoy the whole existentialism movement (Satre et al).

Post more questions after you emerge from the other side, if indeed there is another side to emerge from...

:)

Answer 9

i woke up this morning and wished cartoons were on but i was late for work so i pictured funny things around me on my way to work. I like my imagination but when i was backing out the parking lot i almost hit a car that "really" scared me into being more serious about driving i guess it drove my imagination from me. HA HA. I know we are a bit stuck in our imaginations but thats how we escape reality cause it wont change.

Answer 10

Exactly! Why does everyone give me funny looks when I say stuff like this?

I went through a phase a while ago of having thoughts that it would be entirely possible for me to actually be having a dream and making this whole world up. But I don't think my imagination is that good.

Answer 11

I think that a person can know the difference when they start to get real with the true self. After that, knowledge, notions, actions and words are clearly orchestrated. THEN, the individual has alligned themself to their true path. They learn to listen to themself. Thereafter, it is inevitable that one will always seek the truth. In EVERTHING. It will be the only thing that atracts. Everything else will fall away by it'self...