What is reality?

I have been talking to this aquaintince of mine, and he is really hung up on this whole idea about reality, and wheather it is real or if it is just a myth, and he has these therories about reality being all an illusion and that our own bodies are only illusion, and well I do have my own preceptions of reality, but I know that the whole question or reality is one that is common particuarly in philosphical debate and there have been seveal theroies and ideas about the illusion of reality, so I have given the matter some thought, and there are a couple problems with the idea that I have, which to me seem to disprove the reality as myth or illusion idea, though I am sure there are those that could try and dispell and debate my arguements, one of them I can even come up for a counter argument for myself, though it is a bit shakey I think and take some streaching, such is what philosphers do.

The first problem I have with accepting reality as a myth idea is this. If realiy was a myth or illusion then the "laws" of reality would be only illusion as well and would not really exsist. Now by laws I do not mean legal or moral laws, you will see in a moment what I am getting at. But if there is no reality and if there is one who has the precetpion to see beyond the veil of reality and knows it to only be a myth, then they should be free and unbound by reality, which means. There is no reason why a person could not jump off the end of the cliff spread thier arms and fly. The only thing the prevents a person from doing so now is the law of gravity, but that is a law that is a part of what we understand to be reality, so if there is no reality, and if a person sees that there is no reality, then there would be no gravity, and it would only be the preception of gravity in each indiviudals mind which keeps them bound to it. But if a person so past that and knew the truth, they would not have a preception of graveity so they should be perfectly capable of doing this. Though I have a feeling that if I were to ask me aqueantice who holds this beleif in the myth of reality if he could jump off a cliff and take off flying he would say no. Nor do I think he would acutally atempt to do any such thing or the obvious reasons, but that alone I think acts as a disproof to his theory.

Now there is the more complex issue that we could get into here about that, based on what we see as being reality, for instance suppose the earth itself is accepted as being an aboslute, it is understood as being real, and so that all the laws of physics would still hold in place. And it is only how we precive our lives on earth and ourselves to be that is the illusion. So gravity would still be in place, or would it? The problem there is, that the reason we know about the law of graveity or the earth even is through scientific study, but who are these scintensts? If they are part of the illusion of reality then how can thier worl be trusted to be real if they themselves are only illusion?

Another porblem is that if it is all just an illusion then how is it that everyone precived it in the same way? If reality was a myth then instead of just being one reality that we all have of the world there would be several seperate realities, which does exist to a certain extent but not as much as it would if in truth it was all just illusion. For example only a precentage of the world would have gravity becasue it is not something that everyone would precive if it was all purely a matter of precetpion. There would in fact not be just one world but several small worlds. Unless of course the illusion of the one reality is being projected upon us all by an outside source of some sort. And that can get into all sorts of questions about religon which I do not want to touch upon just now.

The other issue I had with the reality as a myth theory is sort of related to the first, but I have yet to think of a counter agrument for it. Which is that if reality is all just illusion and everything within it is an illusion then the person who precives this and is not fooled should be more or less invinseable. The example I use for this is, if a person was to shoot someone who knew that reality was all just illusion then he would know that the bullet was not real, but an illusion itself, and in he turn he was not real but an illusion and if two illsuionary objects were to pass through each other, it should be just like passing through air and no harm should be done. How can an illusionary bullet penetrate flesh which is not really there but only precived in the mind?

Well that is just something to think about.

10:54 AM - 3/10/2006 - post comment

Reality Clause

The question is a very interesting one. The idea is that the shared reality paradigm is not fixed but mutable. In fact, the application of magic is what is supposed to alter reality by the imposition of will (according to Mr Crowly). The emount by which the shared paradigm is believed in the local environment is the resistance that must be overcome to alter reality. Technology is just another form of 'magic' that everyone believes in. New technology is always flaky because it it not yet believed in sufficiently by enough people to work regularly.

What I discovered in many years of on-site IT support is that half the time, problems seemed to stem from technophobia. Clients would report many problems with their equipment that the engineer never seemed to encounter on site, which had no clear origin or cause that the engineer could define. My solution to this problem was psychological rather than physical: demonstrate to the client that the equipment does work and should work, get them to work it while I was present (and my power of belief raised the local technology paradigm threshold so that it did work) and thus reinforce their belief in the equipment.

It never failed.

Dabbler - 1:40 AM - 3/13/2006

Quote of the Week: We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another--Jonathan Swift

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