After a vigorous online discussion with someone who hasn't a clue who the heck he was talking to, I realized that it has been a while since I typed one of my "rants" and I now have a fairly good topic to go off of. (Hypothesizing that I'm getting pickier about my writing as I go along, but I may be wrong.)
As you may gather from the title, the entry has something to do with reality. More specifically, I'm going to consider the concept of reality. For instance, what is reality? What is real? What is not real? Is there anything between the two? And how can we tell?
And as usual, my post will bring up more questions than answers. So sorry.
The usual definition for 'reality' would be what we can sense, I suppose. What we see/hear/touch/smell etc. But, my problem with this definition is that, as we all know, the human senses can be deceived. I have a particular problem with the statement "eyes do not lie", especially given what I know about optical illusions. However, elaborating as to be more specific, I should say that I define 'seeing' as the brain's interpretation of the signal that is gathered by the lense, i.e. the eye, in the process called 'recognition.' I am not dealing with 'association', or, what the brain interprets and connects with the signals once it has been understood. I define 'seeing' as looking at a tree and being able to think "oh, a tree," not as something the eyes does. I am of the opinion that eyes can't see without the brain. Therefore, for someone who defines 'seeing' as gathering of signals, it would be a hard case to argue since we're on different, though parallel, threads.
And for someone who defines 'seeing' as what the eyes does (as in the case with the person I was talking to) then I suppose yes, the eyes would see.
Sorry, went off topic. I noticed.
Back to the original topic: if reality is defined as what we sense, and if know for a fact (this is usually where the arguments come in) that the human sense can be deceived, what is it, then, that allows us to call something real? Deception, as I understand it, is generally not associated with reality. Reality is generally associated with the idea of 'facts' and 'truth'. Then how can we 'sense' (marks for open definition) reality qua truth through deceiving receptors?
Alright, that was a bit far a bit fast. The receptors are not what's deceiving us, I conceed, it's the brain that interprets the signal that does the deceiving. Better?
But you can't exactly 'sense' anything if you can't recognize the signals you're receiving. So, back to the idea: how can we 'sense' truth/reality when sensing relies on the brain, which is always partial in the case of humans (don't have much experience with other species, sorry), and therefore biases, and therefore judgemental on all that we receive and recognizes it in ways that may not be fundamentally correct?
Allow me an open definition or two. Or my entry will be definitions alone. A pageful of them.
Thus, once again, my entire entry boils down to the idea of perceptions. Truth, I am concluding, once again, is a highly arbitrary thing, depending on each's perspective. Reality is what you sense, and I defy the idea of there being one reality for all of us.
The so-called reality that we live in is merely a perspective that we have agreed on by general consensus. And we can't even get the final points compromised yet, which is why there're lots of people all of the world trying to injure lots of more people all over the world.
On a completely unrelated and highly opinionated note: ranting DOES feel good when you get it all down.
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