How do you make the difference between real and imaginary?

Question

It's common to think this is something that makes the difference between health and insanity. Take some time and figure out how are you personally making this difference.

Answer 1

Good question, especially the additional comments clarifying the question.
I would say we do it mainly by three channels:

1) Sensory Perceptions: That's why if the sensory perceptions are impaired (say under drug influence), hallucinations start.

2) Beliefs: If I believe in A and I get some input B which contradicts A, I am likely to discard B as imaginary. So if I am believer of ghosts, if I see something resembling image of ghost in my mind, I would say I have SEEN ghost; i would thus override my actual sensory perception.

3) Opinion of others: That's how the fictional King came to believe that he was indeed wearing an invisible robe, before the child cried out "the king is naked."

Answer 2

This is almost impossible, unless you do not play the philosophers game. Hence the reality problem is that we can make errors in judgement due to the following systems for gathering information:
:

1) Sensation / Perception: sensations arrive in the brain after tavelling through an extremelly complex, often problematic neural network and a long change of signal translation an d transduction, so that input is perceived. Yet any difficulty in the network or brain, even in the type of signal limits our clear perception and then perception is not equal to sensation.

2) Beliefs: knowledge that we learn from others, culture and past. Look at what happens everywhere between believers and their antagonists meet, it is not very philosophic struggle. Since most often belief systems are imcopatible

3) Laws of physics: According to the laws of physics there are certain things which even though they exist, we cannot perceive such as infrared light, UV light, neutrines etc...Also we can see in the same space window (the sky e.g.) planets and stars etc that probably stopped existing years or centuries ago but as we only receive the light (because of distance) now, we perceive them as existing simultaneously with e.g. the moon, while due to space-time continuum they do not exist simultaneously.

4)Language: everything we know is interpreted through language and processed in language. It is a perceptional filter. Hence there are no tables per se, since table is a geberal laniztion that includes any type of table, eating, bvedroom, square round, small, etc evn discussavble objects could be a table. The written sign, the phonetic sign, sound for table, and the object is perceived through sign transmition systems, like sense detectors, transmissors receptor etc all influenced by language.

Thanks to this question philosophers play a game. Since there work is based on opinions and belief, and they know it, they try to put out riddles that supposedly no one can guess so they can feel superior with the perplexity of others. E.g the present question, or the turtle and the hare, or the turtle and arrow, or the tree falling in siberia etc. You name it! If it is impossibly stupid some philosophers will be playing with it.

The only way to know for certain if something proximate is real or not, is by aproximation, e.g. kikking it on the balls... If you here a reaction shout , something was real about the kick!!!!

So next time some philosopher posses you these or similar questions, kick them in the balls, and you`ll be closer to the truth.

SF

Answer 3

The Real is nothing but an extension of the imaginary. Everything concrete starts as a an idea, an imagination of how the thing ought to be. The physical world manifests things as per the imaginary outline and content information providedby the designer.This holds equally good for concepts and percepts.

Answer 4

i imagine the question comes all the way down to if he's imaginary, why ought to we spend a million-2 hour of Sunday worshiping him + interpreting a e book about him. If he's not authentic, then Jesus's declare of being son of God is likewise ludicrous so that you spot, it makes a huge difference even if he's authentic or no longer

Answer 5

The only distinction I bother to make between the two is whether something is my emotional/personal perception or it is verifiable through external means. I do this because anxiety is frequently triggered by inaccurate perceptions of a situation or event, and I'm not fond of anxiety. I check to see if I can verify it because I find lying abhorrent.

Answer 6

If you want to take the required level of certainty up to David Hume's, there's no way to be absolutely, utterly, beyond any possible doubt certain that anything in particular isn't an illusion of some kind.

Generally, though, it's enough to make the pragmatic assumption that if one's senses and the senses of independent observers (whose existence one can only verify with one's own senses, of course) verify the existence of something, it's real.

"Reality is that which remains when you stop believing in it." I think that quote is attributed to Philip K. Dick.

Answer 7

Anything that can be detected by any of our senses is real (Empiricism). Anything that is not, or is a result of wishful thinking /philosophising /speculating /fantasizing /dreaming /altered state of consciousness is imaginary.

Answer 8

Wow, what a great question.

The world is full of soooo much pretence. We have swallow so much garbage in order to conform to the norm.

I write poetry. Its very hard to deceive yourself with poetry. I find it is a great release, and it teaches me tolerance and acceptance of many things.

Answer 9

real and imaginary can be differentiated by reasoning & co-relating it with our knowledge, It must be noted that all that the senses perceive may not lead us to the correct conclusion

Answer 10

There is no difference, all is illusion...