The Nature Of Reality

One of my favourites in the Philosophy world is Schopenhauer.  He wrote some interesting, though some say pessimistic works which I believe have stood the test of time.   Schopenhauer thought we could know the nature of reality, the will, because we are part of it.

here is a little piece I wrote for a competition run by the rather excellent Philosophy magazine ‘Philosophy Now’   A relatively new magazine, which has some fascinating articles, and to my surprise was not dry or unimaginative at all.  The competition asked for articles on the nature of reality, so suitably challenged I sent off a little piece.   My interest in Philosophy has endured for quite a while now, but unfortunately there is not a lot of money to be made from it!

A nice introduction to Schopenhauers writing can be found in this Penguin Classic:

What Is The Nature Of Reality?

How does reality appear to us? What are the circumstances that could cause ones reality to be different from another? Our perception of reality is a generation of sensations caused by our minds, and the sense that they make of the inputs to the brain, be they aural, visual, by physical stimulus, taste or smell. These sensations, particularly the visual one will give us a sense of our surroundings, and their dimensions. It would be very easy to distort this perception, and this can easily be done through the ingestion of mind altering drugs, or through the loss of one of the senses. Visually impaired people, who have never seen, can have their own sense of reality, which may be vastly different to a sighted person. They may have an internal visualization of a bodily form for example, which if drawn or created could be completely altered from what is perceived to be normal.

Questions have been raised which hypothesize that one persons sense of reality may be different to the next persons. However, as we are made of essentially the same genetic structure and receive essentially the same inputs, this seems unlikely.

How different would an insect or animals perception of reality be compared to ours? A fly for example, will have a distorted (to us) pictorial representation of its visual stimuli, but this is caused by evolution and the necessity for the fly to be aware of more of its surroundings, and potential threats.

The other sense of reality is the sense caused by the aggregation of all that makes up our world. Could we be in a ‘Matrix’ type world, where our stimuli are provided to us by an outside agency? How would we know this? In a dream state, situations which seem absurd when awake often occur. These dream states provide our minds with an outlet which cannot be accessed when our conscious mind is in control. Therefore, we seem to have a duality of existence, one conscious and the other subconscious. The subconscious state can seem as real as the waking state to a person who is dreaming or having a nightmare for example. How often is it that you wake, and then go over your dream to realize that some of the things you were doing are impossible. Or are they?

Alternate realities can now be induced by wearing computerized headsets, which can place a person inside a virtual reality setting. As graphics become more sophisticated, can this visualization be separated from actual reality?

Here is a link to the magazine, a nice read and some top quality information for the budding Philosopher!  I think most of the content is hidden behind a subscription barrier now, but have a look if you feel inclined.

Philosophy Now