What is reality? How do you define what is real?

Nathan said:
I used to think that reality is pretty much cut & dried, and that only our perceptions of a finite reality is what differs. Hmmm, as I type this I realize that I still feel that's true.
From a physiological standpoint, what we experience as reality is determined by what's going on in the synaptic cleft, where neurotransmitters influence our sensory inputs. Here is one of many articles that describe the processes taking place in our nervous system: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-neurotransmitter-2795394
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Thing is, a great deal of what our senses perceive does not make it into our conscious waking mind. It sometimes surfaces in dreams or as intuition, instincts such as feeling someone is untrustworthy.

I suspect it is a key factor in the adaptive unconscious. Those 'hunches' that get confirmed--because some bits of info that our senses perceived but never made it to mind conscious gave us clues that we formed the seemingly random opinion on.

BTW i think neuroscientists arrived at the notion of our mind filtering out a great deal of info when trying to figure out why eyewitness testimony is generally unreliable. Using inanimate sight/sound recorders to capture all of what present and comparing it to what people observed/heard in a clip.

Pareidolia is a caused by our pattern recognition function working, usually unnecessarily, overtime. My experience with my eye disease until i had my surgery made it clear our brains, are constantly trying to make sense of our sensory input and sometimes will draw ridiculous conclusions based on minimal info.
Plus i've seen demonstrations that prove prejudices can actually alter facts about what someone has seen within their mind. So i'm not as impressed with human ability to accurately percieve things thru physical senses as some are.
 

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hollydolly said:
what if for example you felt you could touch it, which made it very real for you?

For example for many years as a young adult..20's/30's.. after a particularly traumatic event in my life, I suffered from what took me years to learn was probably sleep paralysis.. but at the time was a horrendous feeling while I was asleep of someone sitting on my bed, or on my legs.. and I was awake, and in sheer terror of what this thing was.

I couldn't move no matter how I tried, nor could I cry out much as I tried... and the feeling of dread and horror was overwhelming to the point that sometimes I would stay sleeping with the light on, it never seemed to happen then. I started sleeping with my bible and rosary next to my bed.. I feared I was being visited by some kind of poltrgeist, and this was as real to me as this computer is to me right now..
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But now you realize that it wasn't. You can see & touch your computer. Thoughts are real, the basis for the thought as you described were real to you at the time. But as circumstances changed like sleeping with a light on the reality in your sleep went away.

So I think real has more than one reality. Defining a constant reality & a temporary reality would entail a lot of life experiences/examples by each person.
 
We are all just characters in an alien's video game. Outside of what we consider reality, we don't exist. Our deaths are just someone killing off their character in the game.
JUST KIDDING, EVERYONE! (I know...a little morbid.)
 
Knight said:
But now you realize that it wasn't. You can see & touch your computer. Thoughts are real, the basis for the thought as you described were real to you at the time. But as circumstances changed like sleeping with a light on the reality in your sleep went away.

So I think real has more than one reality. Defining a constant reality & a temporary reality would entail a lot of life experiences/examples by each person.
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yes but for many years while I was going through it, I felt my experience was very real .It was frustrating because people clearly didn't believe me, and at one point, when I fist started having it happen, I was screaming and my husband was lying beside me and it was as tho' he was in a coma and wouldn't wake up....When I told him all about it the next day, he clearly was unaware of anything, hadn't heard anything, at all..

Then eventually I wasn't able to speak or call out for help .. as I say this was all very real to me at the time..I'm only surmising even to this day that it was some kind of sleep paralysis.. for all I know, it really, really might have been real!!
 
While reading the below text, count the number of letter F's and keep it to yourself until tomorrow when we'll talk about what your memory recalls. If you have seen this before, please keep it to yourself. Tomorrow morning (PST) will return and ask a question.

FFiles.jpg
 
After trying to wrap my head around the "Double Split Experiment" I had to rethink my concept of reality. At this point I think that reality is fluid and created by our individual observations. That is just what I think. In reality I have no idea. Take a few minutes and watch the video link below. To see what I mean. Also it seems that nothing is truly solid on a quantum level. The chair you are setting in by all intents and purposes seems to be made up of a solid material.

In actuality it is made up of atoms which are made up of smaller parts still, add infinitum. There is space between these particles so what we see as a solid is actually billions of particles each one with space between them. I believe the smallest particle they have discovered so far is a Quark. It is so small it can pass through the center of the earth and not come in contact with anything.

 
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I use my senses to define reality. If I can touch, smell, feel and see it it may be real. Tasting it makes me wonder what it is. Good question!

On the other hand I have experienced some non reality although it sounded real I knew it was not. Yet that kind of makes it real in an unreal way...lol. And that goes the same for the senses. Things can really be unreal yet very real.

For example, I had a side effect to taking 2 medications at one time: I heard a dog bark loudly in my mind and it sounded very real yet I knew it was not.

Gosh I don't even know if I'm making sense now....
 
Ruthanne said:
I use my senses to define reality. If I can touch, smell, feel and see it it may be real. Tasting it makes me wonder what it is. Good question!

On the other hand I have experienced some non reality although it sounded real I knew it was not. Yet that kind of makes it real in an unreal way...lol. And that goes the same for the senses. Things can really be unreal yet very real.

For example, I had a side effect to taking 2 medications at one time: I heard a dog bark loudly in my mind and it sounded very real yet I knew it was not.

Gosh I don't even know if I'm making sense now....
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I have had auditory and visual hallucinations from prescription medication. It would happen in the morning when I first woke up. Like you I recognized it for what it was. It did not scare me to much because I payed good money in the seventies for the same experience. o_O
 
helenbacque said:
Reality is absolute fact, not the other kind (alternative). There are those who believe that if a statement is repeated enough times, it become fact. Lies stay lies no matter how often repeated.
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True....and this is why we must not allow ourselves to be brainwashed by illusionists. Truth is taking a vacation at the moment while fantasists try to implant their delusions in our minds. We must resist!
 
I think that reality is what a person believes to be the truth. People and groups of people believe their realities are the truth. The truth about realities is that we should not be concerned about all the different realities because all the do is cause worry and useless concerns because we have no control over it. Instead, we should be concerned what we do to overcome difficulties.
 
hollydolly said:
what if for example you felt you could touch it, which made it very real for you?

For example for many years as a young adult..20's/30's.. after a particularly traumatic event in my life, I suffered from what took me years to learn was probably sleep paralysis.. but at the time was a horrendous feeling while I was asleep of someone sitting on my bed, or on my legs.. and I was awake, and in sheer terror of what this thing was.

I couldn't move no matter how I tried, nor could I cry out much as I tried... and the feeling of dread and horror was overwhelming to the point that sometimes I would stay sleeping with the light on, it never seemed to happen then. I started sleeping with my bible and rosary next to my bed.. I feared I was being visited by some kind of poltrgeist, and this was as real to me as this computer is to me right now..
Click to expand...
While some elements of the experience you describe do sound like a classic sleep paralysis/night terrors the fact that it started after a trauma suggest the trauma was a triggering event for manifesting the feeling of fear and helplessness. Very similar to PTSD.

And again its a malfunction of a positive aspect of our minds--imagination. But if the person has suffered trauma tends toward the frightening.

If you'd seen a shadowy figure approaching you or even just in the room the sleep experts would label it a hypnogogic hallucination, which can happen in that time when we are 'falling asleep' but not yet asleep. From descriptions i've read and personal experience it is as tho we begin dreaming before our brain actually shifts from waking to sleeping consciousness.

It happened to me once standing up entering a lighted room with swinging door when i had not slept for three days. Between beginning to push the door open and standing within the room hearing the door swing shut behind me i had a 'dream' instead of being aware of my surroundings.
 
The reason I added post #14 was to re-direct members from posting views of reality from what goes on inside one's own mind. Reality is not about our perceptions or mind though can indeed correctly reflect such to degrees as animal brains evolved to do so. People, especially in casual conversation tend to speak and define reality from their own perceptions and mind but that again is misplaced, confusing what the term reality means. Our perceptions and mind model the external world as an internal model. The external world is reality, not what goes on inside our minds.

Sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent. Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, reality is the totality of a system, known and unknown... en.wikipedia.org

For example, someone might state they saw "two people in a car within a carpool lane". To further expand that to relate reality was there were 2 people in the car would be an extension beyond their perception. Thus to state, "Reality was I saw two people in the car in a carpool lane" is misuse of the term. Though reality could be that was true, it could also be reality was one was a mannequin used to trick law enforcement. Again using the term reality as what one's mind perceived misuses the term.
 
Ok, so what about that question I asked in post #33? How many F's did you count? Do you even remember my question haha? Brits, Aussies, and US American native speakers are most likely to... Pretty simple, please post.

The illusion @Chris P Bacon posted is an optical that plays tricks on our brain's visual system. As someone decades ago studying college intro psychology, I have an old book with many pages of such illusions. However there are other surprising illusions that trick our minds that are not visual.
 
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David777 said:
Ok, so what about that question I asked in post #33? How many F's did you count? Do you even remember my question haha? Brits, Aussies, and US American native speakers are most likely to... Pretty simple, please post.

The illusion Chris P Bacon posted is an optical that plays tricks on our brain's visual system. As someone decades ago studying college intro psychology, I have an old book with many pages of such illusions. However there are other surprising illusions that trick our minds that are not visual.
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Was it a trick question? I counted 3.
 
David777 said:
Ok, so what about that question I asked in post #33? How many F's did you count? Do you even remember my question haha? Brits, Aussies, and US American native speakers are most likely to... Pretty simple, please post.

The illusion Chris P Bacon posted is an optical that plays tricks on our brain's visual system. As someone decades ago studying college intro psychology, I have an old book with many pages of such illusions. However there are other surprising illusions that trick our minds that are not visual.
Click to expand...
I will bite. I counted four.
 
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