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Back to Subjects - Philosophy

Reality

Reality My theory of reality seems to go along with Berkeley’s in the fact that reality is in the mind. Reality is non-physical and exists only in the minds of us and/or of others. There is no right or wrong in reality and it is proven through different examples and concepts of what is real. Each person sees what he or she wants to from a certain experience and believes it to be reality. The existence of what a person sees does not depend exclusively on seeing it. Berkeley's central claim is that sensible objects cannot exist without being perceived, but he did not suppose that an individual is the only perceiver. So long as some sentient being, some thinking substance or spirit, has in mind the sensible qualities or objects at issue, they do truly exist. Thus, even when a person closes their eyes, the tree they now see will continue to exist, provided that someone else is seeing it. This difference, Berkeley held, precisely marks the distinction between things. What a person merely imagines exists in their mind alone and continues to exist only so long as he or she thinks of it. But what is real exists in many minds, so it can continue to exist whether they perceive it or not. The existence of sensible objects requires that they be perceived, but it is not dependent exclusively on one person’s perception of them. In fact, the persistence and regularity of the sensible objects that constitute the natural world is independent of all human perception, according to Berkeley. Even when none of us perceives this tree, God is. (McMullin) (I do not like this idea. I think that using “God” as an explanation for anything is laziness or lack of knowledge.) The mind of God serves as a permanent repository of the sensible objects that we perceive at some times and not at others. This argument is articulated in a number of places in Berkeley's works, but is perhaps expressed most succinctly by him in the Principles: But whatever power I may have over my own thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceived by sense have not a like dependence on my will. When in broad day-light I open my eyes, 'tis not in my power to choose whether I see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view; and so likewise to the hearing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is therefore some other will or spirit that produces them. (Fraser). So Berkeley's philosophy can claim to defend common sense. It emphasizes that bodies or sensible objects really are just the ideas we have of them, yet can also explain their apparent independence of our perception. All he rejects is the mysterious philosophical notion of the as an extended substance capable of existing independently of any perception. That supposition, he argued, is both unnecessary and untenable. The best way to explain my concept of reality is in examples of my own dreams and of the movie The Matrix. This may seem to be in a simple format. But really I feel it will be easier to get out my point to the masses rather than target solely to the elite with a lot of “fluffed up words.” (Yes that is right, I am for the kitsch (German term for the masses) and not for the elite.) As I doze off into my dream state I usually feel like I am falling down a tunnel. This tunnel seems to take its likeness strongly from Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland animated movie. When I am falling is the point where I am not quite fully asleep yet. Mostly, it just involves music and echoing noises. I do not remember most of my dreams. In fact, I rarely ever remember any part of them. Most of the time I just wake up thinking that I had a really cool dream, but can’t remember what it was about. One dream that I have had for quite a few years is a complex one at best. I think that is why I remember it in such vivid detail or even at all. My dream seems so real that it even makes me question the issue in my lively wake state. I have this dream that I keep hearing my name called when I am in a crowd. Or at least I thought I was hearing my name called. I am sure everyone has had it happen to him or her at least once; where they thought they heard their name called when it wasn’t, or maybe it was and they dismissed it, while they were walking. Anyway, I kept walking and living my life hearing my name called, and it went on in my dream for years (sometimes in a night’s worth of dreaming I turn my dreams in to sagas that extend over days and even years). Usually I dismissed the voices calling my name, or what I thought I heard as my name. But not the last time. The last time I was positive that it was my name being called. I stopped walking in the crowd and just let the bodies pass me. Just picture one person who has been individualized with features amongst a crowd of faceless common bodies. They are not people, merely bodies with blankness where a face should be. I vision it as myself, a fully animated person, and hundreds of men and women without faces in black suits and derbies. It was like the scene in The Thomas Crown Affair where there are all those men wore derbies to confuse the police. I turned around to see who was calling out my name. Once I turned around I woke up to be in a hospital. It turns out that I had been in a coma for years. I had been making up my whole life in a dream state. And when I would hear what I thought was my name, that was people talking to me in the hospital. All those times that I had dismissed the voices or noises that I had questioned as people calling out for me were real. Then I would wake up for real. It really makes me think about when that happens to me when I am awake, or if I am even awake. I know whenever I hear somebody saying “Heather,” or what I think is my name...it could all just be another level of consciousness. I could actually be dreaming when I am hearing it. I guess it is just silly. Perhaps it is a tiny portion of my childhood imagination that still remains with me. Or maybe I am right and there is a constant new level of reality. The more and more I think about it, I tend to believe the latter. The Matrix is filled with examples that fit my theory of reality. But there is one scene that just sticks out more for me than most. There is a scene where a guy is eating gruel. He explains that he is imagining it being Tasty Wheat. When questioned how does he know what Tasty Wheat would taste like, he gave the explanation that it is all in the mind. The man went on to give an example of chicken. He stated that in the matrix (what we think of as “the real world”) a lot of food seems to taste like chicken (and it is true, a lot of things taste like chicken). How can we know what chicken is if everything tastes like it? Maybe the chicken tastes like the gruel and we just don’t know it. Things taste like chicken because we believe it to be so. Once again, we make our own reality. Reality is a never-ending concept. It is one best left to the individual and their private beliefs. To define reality to suit a group would never be accurate. A person’s sense of reality will always get distorted and compromise who the person is. An individual should keep their own reality. A mind is owned by a single being. Reality is in the mind. Therefore reality is individualistic. Bibliography: Bibliography: Fraser (reprint of 1886 ed. Locke, J. Essay Concerning Human Understanding). New York, Dover, 1959. McMullin, The Concept of Matter in Modern Philosophy. London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978.

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