What is Reality?

This simple question has perplexed philosophers, scientists, and theologians for millennia and has not abated into the 21st century. How the question is answered—if the question is answered—depends on the biases and predispositions of those doing the answering.

Some answers may defer to the natural and physical, others to the supernatural and metaphysical. There may be talk of perceptions and consensus, weltanschauung and worldviews, phenomenology and existentialism, materialism, empiricism, cognition, the five senses. Thousands of books have been written on the subject, but I'd like to suggest it doesn't have to be that weighty a topic or difficult.

In fact, reality as it affects you and me is rather quite simple.

  • Reality is what you have when you don't talk about it or read it or write it down.
  • Reality is what exists prior to things spoken, to language, the artifice of words, before the verbal slurry of symbols and abstractions, sophistry and semantics.
  • Reality is the way things are and the way things work before words are ever used or in spite of words being used.
  • A lot of what is wrong with the world throughout history is because people have fallen under the spell of a reification error and confuse the ability to use words—and the words used—for reality.

To put it another way , if the only way you can 'prove' the existence of something is through language then you can rest assured that that thing isn't reality. It's only word play. Verbal gymnastics. A sentential construct of the mind.

If you can't experience that thing without ever using words or if it's existence requires the use of words to be defended, than that thing is not reality.

Now it might be an interesting exercise to discuss matters that can't be proven outside the intellection of language, but in the end it's a meaningless endeavor. Hocus-pocus. Smoke-and-mirrors. Because we are able to talk about 'real' things we experience outside the need for words—things like trees and clouds and buildings and people—we often confuse other things that depend solely on words and spend a great deal of time and energy discussing these things as if they were real—things like Yahweh and Allah and Sin and Heaven. We wage holy wars because of them. We slaughter the innocent. We forfeit our lives and autonomy and personal responsibility in servitude to something experienced only through discussion, only by reading words on paper, only because we've empowered some words to have more power and purpose than the extraordinary vitality of our own unique lives.

To live this way is to not live in reality. If we attribute to words an authority that trumps the importance of our own autonomy, our own responsibility, our own health and breath and blood, then we've gotten disoriented along the way, become entangled in the prickly vines of language, too caught up in concepts and ideas to recognize the simplicity of reality while it unfolds around us. We would rather deny ourselves, our families, our very lifes and livelihoods for the sake of words than to live as free and responsible human beings, to make up our own minds, to see reality as it has always been, right here and right now.

You can touch a tree or feel the warmth sun on your face or smell a flower without ever learning how to speak. You can comfort a child without ever learning how to read. You can live your whole life without ever knowing the meaning of one single word, and that life you live prior to succumbing to the artifice of language, that is reality.

What is a Reification Error?

In philosophy, empiricism is the attitude that beliefs are to be accepted and acted upon only if they first have been confirmed by actual experience. This broad definition accords with the derivation of the name from the Greek eµpe???a empeiria , "experience." More specifically, however, empiricism comprises a pair of closely related, but still distinct, philosophical doctrines—one pertaining to concepts and the other to propositions.

The first of these doctrines, a theory of meaning, holds that words can be understood only if they are connected by their users with things that they have experienced or could experience (e.g., pieces of wood, or the gases in a gasoline engine). The second doctrine, a philosophical theory of knowledge, views beliefs, or at least some vital classes of beliefs (e.g., that Jane is kind ), as depending ultimately and necessarily on experience for justification (Jane is seen performing acts of kindness ).

It is not obvious, however, that either of these two doctrines strictly implies the other. Several recognized empiricists have admitted that there are a priori propositions but have denied that there are a priori concepts . The reverse disconnection between the two forms of empiricism, however, has no obvious exponents, since there are hardly any philosophers who totally deny a priori propositions and certainly none who would at the same time accept a priori concepts.

Stressing experience, empiricism is thus opposed to the claims of authority, intuition, imaginative conjecture, mysticism, and abstract, theoretical, or systematic reasoning as sources of reliable belief. Its most fundamental antithesis is with the latter (i.e., with rationalism, also called intellectualism or apriorism ). A rationalist theory of meaning asserts that there are concepts not derived from or correlated with experienceable features of the world, such as “cause,” “identity,” or “perfect circle,” and that these concepts are a priori (Latin: “from the former”) in the traditional sense of being part of the mind's innate or natural equipment—as opposed to being a posteriori (Latin: “from the lattMarch 27, 2006and, a rationalist theory of knowledge holds that there are beliefs that are a priori (i.e., that depend for their justification upon thought alone), such as the belief that everything must have a sufficient reason or that a process cannot exist by itself but must occur within some substance. Such beliefs can arise either from intellectual intuition, the direct apprehension of self-evident truth, or from purely deductive reasoning.

Two other viewpoints related to but not the same as empiricism are the Pragmatism of the American philosopher and psychologist William James, an aspect of which was Radical Empiricism, and Logical Positivism, also called Logical Empiricism . Though these philosophies are, indeed, empirical, each has a distinctive focus that warrants its treatment as a separate movement. Pragmatism stresses the involvement of ideas in practical experience and action, whereas Logical Empiricism is more concerned with scientific experience.

The most influential empiricist of the 20th century was the great British philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), who at first was Lockean in his theory of knowledge—admitting both synthetic a priori knowledge and concepts of unobservable entities. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), the influential pioneer of the school of Linguistic Analysis, convinced Russell that the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic; and Russell then came to believe, with Hume, that the task of philosophy is to analyze all concepts in terms of what can be directly present to the senses. In this spirit, he tried to show that even the concepts of formal logic are ultimately empirical though the experience that supplies them may be introspective instead of sensory.

Doctrines developed through the collaboration of Russell and Wittgenstein yielded the Logical Positivism of the German philosopher Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) and of the Vienna Circle , a discussion group in which that philosophy was worked out. The empiricism of Logical Positivism is especially evident in its restatement of the fundamental thesis of Hume's philosophy in a form known as “the verification principle,” which recognizes as meaningful and synthetic only those sentences that are in principle verifiable by reference to sense experience.

In contemporary philosophy, there are thinkers who, though broadly sympathetic to Positivism, have voiced reservations about its more specifically empiricist elements. One important philosopher of science, Karl Popper, has rejected the inductivism that views the growth of empirical knowledge as the result of a mechanical routine of generalization. To him it is falsifiability by experience that makes a statement empirical. An influential American philosopher and logician, W.V. Quine, has been critical of the Logical Empiricists' frequent recourse to the concept of meaning and has rejected the sharp distinction they make between analytic and factual truths, on which most of contemporary empiricism rests. For Quine, both human concepts and beliefs are the joint outcome of experience and conventional decision, and he denies that the role of the two factors can be readily distinguished as empiricists assert.

The basic strength of empiricism consists in its recognition that human concepts and beliefs apply to a world outside oneself, and that it is by way of the senses that this world acts upon the individual. The question, however, of just how much the mind itself contributes to the task of processing its sensory input is one that no simple argument can answer.

"Empiricism" Encyclopædia Britannica < http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=115431 >

What Is Reality?

Does reality exist? Do our perceptions accurately map the world on the other side of our senses? Can we know with any certainty that the “out there” matches what’s “in here"?

Physics tells us that the “out there” is an interference pattern of quantum magnetic fields. Our individual interfaces give it form, solidity, and meaning. Our human sensory apparatus, constructed from shared genetics, provides us all with a roughly equivalent representation of the interference pattern “out there". We all see the sun and the moon and buildings and cats, but cultural and psychological factors layer associative relationships on top of the shared forms. My sun is paternal and reminds me of desert sand and circling hawks. Another’s sun might be harsh and dessicating, inspiring melanoma. The interface becomes personalized. The reality we rely on is an exposure on the neurocortex painted by associative emotional complexes.

Language is an abstraction layer between the interface and the mindbrain that allows us to classify and communicate. As language is acquired it quickly replaces the direct apprehension of the thing “out there” with a simplified data structure. Words become a painting of the thing; an occasionally effective representation of the garbled mass of signals coming into our heads, transduced into patterns, and modulated by neurohormones washing through associative networks. The next time you think about a piece of fruit try to do it without using words. Language defines the reality that we know.

Reality with a capital R is something far greater over which we hold only marginal dominion. For us ultraviolet colors are not a part of our reality. Yet bees and other insects see the world awash in such frequencies. Most mammals engage a world of smells everpresent, yet we generally acknowledge only the more pungent odors, usually related to food. Dogs smell cancer. “Out there” is a field of probability, a fractal hologram, a quantum wave function. Reality is the interface of a billion billion perceptual organisms, collective, witnessing. Human reality is a subset, narrow in perception but rich in meaning.

When we still the mind and let words settle and cease, what we are witnessing is the naked interface between our sensory networks and the quantum field. Dust motes hanging in a sunbeam. Soft notes echoing off shiny metal chimes. A brook babbling gently. The steady pulse of blood beating through our veins. These miracles are assembled within our heads. Modifying or shutting down the sensory apparatus through meditation, sensory deprivation, exogenous chemicals, or otherwise, can strip away even the interface and reveal the singular holographic quantum field, the interference pattern of the hologram.

The remarkable quality of entering the singularity of quantum consciousness is that consciousnous does not cease in such a state. Self-awareness does. Duality does. But consciousness persists. Information can be conserved and brought back into the kingdom. The body is simply a vehicle to which consciousness attaches and is momentarily restricted by. When we think of Uncertainty and the notion that consciousness is required to collapse the wave function and cause probability to occur, we assume that means that some being like ourselves must be opening every subatomic Schrodinger’s Box in order for reality to even exist. And it may be so. Or it may be that there is indeed a cosmic/atomic consciousness that pervades everything like a unified field, incessantly causing the “formality of actually becoming". Something we are at present unable to fully comprehend. Indeed, our definition of consciousness is limited by our consciousness itself. How can we imagine what we cannot imagine?

LVX23 February 10, 2005

The idea here is that anything we learn is learned through our senses (sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste) and not through some supernatural skirting of the senses. Knowledge is not beamed directly into our minds through some invisible gamma ray from the dog star Sirius nor is it "breathed" into our souls by a talkative yet invisible deity. While it is true we can construct original yet abstract concepts internally and then exhibit these concepts artisitically, we could never have been able to make such abstractions unless we first acquired our knowledge empirically (i.e., through the senses). One example would be painting a picture of a purple and green-spotted banana. While such a fruit does not occur naturally in the real world, we can conceive of it mentally and then represent it physically either through a literary description (like here →), through a drawing, computer animation, painting, etc. This abstraction, however, would never have been possible unless we hadn't first learned of fruits and bananas and colors through our senses. In other words, without empirical knowledge mental abstraction is impossible. We know what we experience and we imagine using tools from what we've already experienced. And just because we can draw it or paint it or talk about it or write books about it doesn't mean it exists or ever existed. Don't fall prey to reification error.

To press the point a bit further, let's try a small mental experiment:

Draglopon, Trivariton, SpoolakovLet's say I have one draglopon, one trivariton, and one spoolakov and I would like you to construct an abstract representation of these three creatures combined into a single discernable albeit fantastic whole. Go ahead, do it. You have ten minutes.

What? You say you don't know what draglopons, trivaritons, and spoolakovs are so you can't create an abstraction? This does pose a slight problem, doesn't it?

Okay, go ahead and create an abstraction based on what you think draglopons, trivaritons, and spoolakovs might be based on your experiences, even though you've never encountered any of these in the real world. You have ten minutes.

All finished? Good.

Since you've never actually experienced draglopons, trivaritons, and spoolakovs empirically, yet created a conceptualization of these three as a united whole, from where did you gather the information to create just such an abstraction? You created it solely out of your human, empirical (sensate) experiences. Now that you've conceived of this fantastic unified creature pieced together from your sensual human knowledge, does this now mean your three-in-one creature is real (even though you have no idea what draglopons, trivaritons, and spoolakovs are) or is it simply imaginary?

If you say it is real, how do you know since you (nor anybody else you know) has actually encountered a draglopon, a trivariton, or a spoolakov. If you go further and vehemently argue that it's real isn't this a sure sign that there's something pathologically wrong with you, that you're harboring some psychological issues that really need to be addressed? By falling victim to our old friend the reification error, you've allowed your ability to name and discuss abstract concepts to be confused for the reality of abstract concepts.

If you concede that it's imaginary, and obviously so, since no one has actually encountered a draglopon, a trivariton, or a spoolakov, then you recognize you've just made it up from scraps of other information you've garnered empirically over the years.

Now, whether you argue it's real or whether you argue it's imaginary, where did the information come from that you used to construct your three-in-one creature? Was it magically beamed into your head or did you make abstractions based on information you've collected through your physical senses? The point here is that abstractions, even imaginary and non-existent abstractions, must first rely on the senses in order to be constructed, however once abstractions are made do not entail something metaphysical (outside the physical) has occurred or exists solely because such abstractions can be made. It makes no difference if you can conceive of a draglopon, a trivariton, and a spoolakov all united and now called a Dragtrispo, or a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all combined and now called the Trinity. Both the concepts of the Dragtriso and the Trinity are abstractions—things that you have never actually experienced—but constructed in your mind from bit and pieces of things that you've gathered empirically through your physical experiences.

So, now, ask yourself. Is the abstraction you made real or imaginary? If you argue that it's real, on what do you base this conclusion besides referring back the artifice of words, the artifice of art, the artifice of the wild imagination?

Like naturalism, apologists and conservative church leaders don't care much for empiricism because it really throws a monkeywrench into their arguments of supernatural intercession, intervention, and inspiration. In order for the Bible to be the inspired (literally "breathed") Word of God, then the Bible writers had to get their knowledge from something beyond or outside their five senses (e.g., since the 'author' of Genesis wasn't literally at the Creation of the universe, then 'he' couldn't have obtained this information empirically, consequently it must have been supernaturally effused into 'his' mind by a talkative albeit invisible deity who might be schizophrenic since two different Creation stories were given).

For apologists, recognizing that all the words in the Bible are inspired by God (i.e., supernaturally ascribed by an invisible deity) they've deemed to be of utmost importance, even though they adopted this idea strictly through the use of their senses (they either saw the words, heard the words, felt the words transcribed in braille, etc). Not experiencing the supernatural anywhere in the real world, they will passionately argue for its legitimacy only because of words they've seen, heard, or felt in a book, then turn around and condemn empiricists and skeptics for being presumptious for advocating that knowledge must necessarily come through the senses.

Apologists spend a great deal of time and energy trying to show why naturalism and empiricism are bad things. They don't like either of them. They write books about them in an attempt to show that naturalism and empiricism are just plain silly, while lauding the supernatural, invisible, and metaphysical as the preferable truth (e.g., see numerous books by Philip E. Johnson, J. P. Moreland, and William Lane Craig). They compose fancy white-papers and articles. They lift their Bibles high and howl from the pulpits. But why should they care? What's so threatening about the natural order of things, about experiencing the natural orders through the natural senses?

It's because of the Bible. The apologists know it's as flimsy as a house of cards. If one card falls, the whole thing will come tumbling down. That is why conservative and fundamentalist believers are so adamant that the Bible be both inspired and inerrant (i.e., contains no errors or contradictions). If they were ever to admit that, yes, there are hundreds of places in the bible that contradict each other, that various books have obviously been influenced by earlier myths and stories, that it evolved over time by numerous anonymous writers and editors, that portions of the book were written solely to advocate a political agenda, etc., then they would be forced to question and consider the validity of all of it. And that is something that don't dare do. And why? Because there is something deep down inside that they are really afraid of.

So what is it that they are really afraid of?

The same thing you're afraid of.

Go ahead. Acknowledge your fear. Admit it. Now, ask yourself if you really believe the way you do because of this fear or in spite of it? Who do you think you're kidding? Are you being honest with yourself?

I'll ask it again.

Are you being honest with yourself? Can you say with all certainty and sincerity that all the unseen and supernatural and magical things you say you believe in are true?

And there's an even more important question.

Do you really believe in them or do you only believe because you hope they're true?

Are you manipulating your whole life, your actions and behavior, and interpreting the world around you, simply because of things you hope?

What kind of reality is that? What kind of life?

I can be honest with myself, brutally honest if need be. I know that I'm human and that I have biases and prejudices and make decisions based on certain presuppositions and assumptions. I also know that I may be carrying psychological baggage that provokes me to embrace one worldview over other worldviews.

Admitting this, I examine myself. I explore my intentions, my wants and desires, my hopes and dreams, my fears and phobias. I make a serious attempt at being objective. I ask myself if I am being completely honest with myself. I listen to my guts. If I have any doubts, if I hear a small nagging voice, no matter how much I don't want to do it I capture it and pull it kicking and screaming into the light. I examine it, probe it, dissect it. I want to hear what it is saying. I want to know the truth. I want to face the truth even if I dislike it. I ask myself again and again two simple questions:

  • Am I being absolutely honest with myself?
  • Do I believe the way I do because I'm afraid of something or hope for something?

Finally, I consider all the moral and ethical implications inherent in my belief system:

  • Is my embracing of a particular belief system motivated by moral considerations or out of self-interest?
  • Do I believe the way I do because I hope to gain something?
  • Is it more ethical of me to seek reward knowing so many others will be cruelly punished or do I indict the punisher and accept my own punishment as a consequence?
  • Isn't rejecting reward and embracing punishment the ultimate moral act in light of the severity of the punishment?

And I am able to consider all these things, and so much more, myself, the entire world, because of information I gathered solely using my five senses.

Return to Top

Copyright © 2007 by Craig Lee Duckett. All rights reserved
LAST UPDATED: March 27, 2006