What is real?

Question

Lord Oddeye: "I THINK I am, therefore I am"... is a more apt statement than cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"), even in terms of Descartes' own approach to this question.
But does the fact that you THINK you exist actually prove that you exist (without resorting to circular reasoning)?

Answer 1

Thoughts are measurable things. They have a physical reality. Therefore, anything that goes on in my head is real. Things I imagine are real. The reality is constrained a bit by what I can think of and remember. But it is all real nonetheless.

Authors often experience a different kind of mental reality than most people. This is why so many of them write about worlds where their characters end up being real entities instead of imagined ones. And out in the real world, many authors will relate occasions where the characters they have made up act in ways they do not expect, or think of things they did not think of themselves. How can this be unless the characters, once created, are essentially real and separate from their creator?

This creates a plenitude of interesting wrinkles in reality. We can distinguish different levels by what it takes to annihilate them. Some things are only real in the minds of entities I imagine. Some are real only to me. There are many realities that are shared among groups of people through a variety of means, as well as some few that are pretty much common to all people. Should all of humanity die off, there still seems to be the external reality of the surrounding universe. And who knows? Perhaps our universe is just a fragment of a much larger reality taking place in the mind of a god, a complicated multi-verse, or something even more odd...!

Thus we can talk about the Apollo moon landing being BOTH fact and fiction - each of those versions of events are absolutely real to different subsets of humanity. Or we can discuss laws of nature in the reality of Pac-Man. Some realities are simpler than others. Some can even destroy others.

It's an interesting playground, when you look at things that way, I think. What surprises me most is how much most people seem to think that they actually know about the extra-human reality. It doesn't take much study at all to show that they can't ALL be right, and that therefore most of them are grossly, grossly wrong about virtually all of it. Sad, in a way.

Answer 2

The fact that I am aware of thoughts that include a concept of "i" "me" "mine" etc doesn't prove that "i" really exists.
The "i" may be a delusion or an illusion.
The "i" may be merely an intangible, like fairy floss, that is nothing more than hot air, temporarily coagulated, that will eventually dissipate. It may not really exist at all.
After all, we think that we have choices or free will. We ponder over whether to go to the mall or the movies, which movie to see, which shirt to buy. Yet there is nothing to prove we ever really had a choice except the idea that we think we have.

Answer 3

rene descartres argued that i can doubt therefore i exist. This doubt shows that there is a thought process and therefore existence in some shape or form. If you mean what is real in terms of what we can sense around us it is only electromagnetic singles sent to the brain which is the interpted as something by the brain. this means that the only thing that is provable is that you exist and then it can only be proved to yourself. real is whatever you decide is real as after all it is your brain that causes you to experience something if you dont know that a tree exists that tree does not exist too you in your world (the world that you experience).

Answer 4

My rationality is the only thing I can depend on. I cannot know that any subject outside of me exists because I can always doubt its existence. The one thing I cannot doubt is my own thought process.

For more information, you should research Rene Descartes.

Answer 5

Nothing the human eye can perceive without telescopic aid is real, this is all illusion we've created as stimulus to create energy.
Reality is energy and energy is Love. Pure love is all that matters. It is all that really exists.

Answer 6

According to the existentialist school: Freedom, if only we choose to bear the responsibility of it. As Sartre says, "Man is condemned to be free," and, as a consequence of this,"Human life begins on the far side of despair."

Answer 7

It has under no circumstances been established. People have attempted it, however ghosts handiest assault individuals they are intended to assault. Bloody Mary is anyone named Mary killed in entrance of the reflect. She would scratch your eyes out, or nonetheless she was once killed. Some ghosts handiest assault individuals that did specified matters. Just do not check out it. She could honestly assault you.

Answer 8

What is real.......mmmmmmm! You are real, I'm real, what ever happen right now is real, seconds later that's not real, that is history and you cannot go back again. So, when you decide to do something, think first before you act. Because real will become not real when times past.

Answer 9

I wrote an essay on exactly that. It's fascinating. Email me if you want me to emila it too you, it's to long to write here-

[e-mail]

Answer 10

The rhetorical question is definitely real.