• Question: What is reality?

    Asked by Ayrton to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 4 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 4 Nov 2017:

      Wow. That’s a huge question and I’m not sure I’ve got a good answer! I started off thinking we could define it as everything we can perceive (see, hear, feel etc), but I’m not sure that’s right – what about things like phantom limb syndrome (where people who’ve lost an arm or leg can feel it itching or hurting, even when it’s gone)? Maybe it could be everything that’s empirically (which means provably) real, but most of the world’s population is religious and it’s not really possible to scientifically prove God exists – so does that mean God isn’t real? Ultimately, I think that, while science is one way – a very good way – of looking at and thinking about the universe, to answer a question like this we could do with asking other people too, like psychologists and philosophers… What would your answer be?

    • Photo: Kerrianne Harrington

      Kerrianne Harrington answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      Good question. I would say it’s the common parts of our experiences large numbers of people agree on. The state of existence, instead of something imaginary. But this is a good philosophical question, so I’m sure there is more to it!

    • Photo: Ed Bracey

      Ed Bracey answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      Great, tough question!
      I’d say there’s the reality of the universe – which is where and when all the different molecules, atoms and subatomic particles are.
      Then there’s the reality that our brains create, which is a model of the reality of the universe.
      The brain uses sensors like our eyes and ears and noses to create that model, but it’s really a very simplified, low resolution model of reality!
      Each person’s reality model is also probably quite different from each other’s.
      We mostly tend to go through life assuming other people have the same experience of reality as us, but that’s really not true.
      So it’s good to try to listen to others to understand as many other realities as possible.
      That way we can improve the resolution of our own reality model a little bit!

Comments

  • Photo: Ayrton

    Ayrton commented on :

    Good point, I too think there are many answers to this. Personally, I believe that reality is what we perceive it to be too. However I do think that there is more to this, other senses that we use but don’t know it yet.

    • Photo: Oli

      Oli commented on :

      I wonder whether reality means different things to different people – like my reality may not be exactly the same as yours – but that there’s some common, universal reality that is present for everyone… And you make an interesting point about the senses too – there’s so much that exists that we don’t normally notice! Pigeons navigate by sensing Earth’s magnetic field, for example, and bees can see in ultraviolet (which some flowers use to attract them)… Even though we do have more than the classic five senses, there must be so much more in the universe than we’ve discovered yet!