What is Real?

What is real? What is unreal? What is objective? What is subjective?  What is appearance? What is reality? What is an image of reality? What is a reflection of reality? Can we ever access reality? Or are we confined to accessing only our "conception" of reality? These are questions which have bothered me since I was 17 when I read my first book of philosophy. After so many years, I am no nearer to getting conclusive or definitive answers than I was.

However, through the intervening years, I have read many books around the subject. I have read books of philosophy about ideas on platonism, monism, dualism, idealism, realism, pragmatism etc. I have read books about the latest development in the strange world of quantum physics, and the role of human subjectivity in the "discovery" of quantum reality, its relations to mathematics and probabilities. I have read books about the history of scientific discovery about the nature of various aspects of physical reality. I have also read numerous books about human psychology, human perception and human memory. I have also read books on this metaphysical question from the perspectives of different major world religions like Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. Finally, I have read many books on the functioning of the human brain.

What do I think now? Do we have any direct access to reality? If so, how? Are we confined to having access only to our "image of reality" which itself may be the result of further images of reality by others, rather like looking into a mirror which reflects the images of other images in other mirrors placed at an angle to our own mirror. Are the images we see in that second mirror merely the images which themselves are merely reflections of still further images in a third or a fourth or a fifth mirror also placed at an angle to the second, third and so on ad infinitium and each of which may not have a perfectly flat surface or may even be deliberately made convex or concave or partly both for various reasons?

Although some mystics claim that they can have a "direct" experience of God, the Buddha, the Reality, the Abolute, the ultimate Void or Emptiness and give us vivid descriptions of what they "see", to me, it is just something very "real" to them, perhaps something more "real" to them than the so-called "surface reality" of things, people and events happening to or around them, I do not think they have any more right to claim that their "vision" is truly "true" than those who do not claim a similar access to that "Reality". If the others do not have access to his or her "Reality", then it is likely that that may only be due only to their having a "different" conception of what "Reality" means. The mystics may be talking about a personal "visceral" experience which they have,  by long years of training by fasting, all forms of ritual cleansing and religious "preparation" and meditation, been able to achieve and which they subjectively "feel" must be true, because they have sacrificed so much to get to where they think they are. We now know through monitoring their brain waves by fMRI and skin electric conductance measuring equipment that when they are in a deep state of meditation in which they claim they "see" or "feel" they are united with God or the Void etc, that their brain waves are different, much slower. Similar results may be obtained by those whose brains are affected through using psycho-drugs like LSD, mescaline, hashish etc. The work of Andrew Newberg , Eugene D'Aquilli and Vince Rause (Why God Won't Go Away (2001) have shown us that. Conviction, even strong conviction that one is "experiencing" a "super-reality", a "transcendental"  reality, is no guarantee that one is "really" having access to that "Reality".  It may be just another trick played on us by our brain. It may be just another illusion. It may "feel" real and transcendental to the mystic or the drug taker but feeling is no guarantee that what is felt truly exists. The feeling itself may be "real" in the sense that we "feel" it but not the "object" or "being" which the mystics or the drug takers think induces such feelling or which may otherwise be the cause of that feeling. What they "see" in their "vision" may be no different from what a dreamer "sees" in his or her dream. It may be a subjective "creation" of his or her own mind. It is something which is not entirely within his or her conscious control.  Perhaps it may precisely be because of this lack of control, this inability to "command" their appearance which when combined with their prior religious indoctrination, reinforces the mystics' "conviction" and "firm belief" that it "really" came from something or some one or some being other than themselves and that therefore it "must" be from that all encompassing being or reality within which they believe they live and have their being and which some called God. To me, the only assertion which such mystics and psycho-drug takers can claim is that they do have a "different" , an "unusual" or a "non-normal" experience. It remains their own very "real" and "convincing" but still "subjecttive" experience.

What about the "reality" of the physical world? To the extent that that the external physical world do cause certain perturbations and sensations in our brain, they must be considered "real". But we must never forget that the stimulation of the neurons in our brain can be effected by "images" of that external reality by self-created "illusions" no less than by the "real" direct stimulation by external reality.e.g a movie  ( in which disparate, discrete images if flashed to our eyes at a speed faster than the time it takes for our "residual image" to dissipate, then different discrete images will "appear" "continuous". Even a piece of music may move us to tears no less than a "real life" story. A dream can cause us fear, joy etc no less than a "real-life" experience!

It may be possible that when we talk about something as being "real" and therefore "true", what we "really" mean may be quite different. One meaning of "true" is that something corresponds to physical "reality" e.g when we say that there is a computer before me, then the statement is true only if there is in front of me that thing we normally call a computer and not just a "picture" of a computer or nothing in front of me. If there is a computer before me, it will still be there and will not suddenly disappear even when I am not looking at it. Here true has the same meaning as "having real physical existence". But "true" may have another meaning in philosophy, e.g when applied to a proposition. In philosophic logic, a conclusion expressed by a particular statement is "deductively" true only if its premises are right and there is no logical inconsistency in the relevant inference, in the sequence of logical analytical process called "syllogism". What the philosopher means by "true" is that the relevant statement conforms with the rules of logic. But there is also yet another type of "truth" ie. empirical "truth" . We may say that the proposition "The earth circles the sun." is true. But there is no guarantee that it will be true after the "big Crunch" when the entire universe will collapse after it has run out of all energies. That statement is only "contingently true", so far or up to that point in tim we make that statement. So we may say that the proposition "the sun rises every day in the East" will correspond to empirical reality. But normally when a pedestrian in Mongkok talks about something being true, I don't think he would be talking about something being physically true, logically true or contingently true. He will be talking in a very vague and in very general terms, which is all that is required to see him through everyday life. Logic is a wholly diffferent sphere, relevant only in our thinking process and may only have the slightest connection to what the ordinary guy thinks of as the "Truth" or "reality'.

Further, many of the things and statements we claim to be true or real are merely so "conceptually" as in a deductive or inductive reasoning process or will occur in the contexts of  "opinions" e.g conclusions we draw about such questions as whether democracy is better than dictatorship, a totalitarian system of government is better for China than a liberal parliamentary sytem of government, whether homosexual marriages should be legally recognized, whether we should have a controlled economy or a free market, whether we ought to allow monopolies or quasi-monopolies, whether we should allow compensated dating by teenagers, whether we ought to allow for the establishment of a legal "Red light District" for better social hygiene or the control of the spread of various sexual diseases, whether we ought to do more reclamations of our harbor, whether we should use English or Chinese as our medium of instruction in secondary schools, whether Eastern philosophy is better than Western philosophy, whether we can have a morality without God, whether God exists or whether there is meaning to life etc. All these types of statement are value-laden and can be endlessly debated without any one being able to completely convince the others although many would like to think that they have better evidence and grounds for their beliefs than their opponents. In fact, when we say that something is true or real, the ordinary guy seldom makes a distinction between something which can be traced to sensory data or their interpretation of other more basic "facts" or interpretation of other interpretation of still further interpretations of the primary sensory data in different spheres ie. opinion on the primary or secondary or other statements at several removes from the "primary" factual data. They thus often make "categorical" or "classification" mistakes by confusing something relatively more physical (therofore relatively more objective)  with something less objective, confusing different levels of "reality" in the spectrum or hierarchy of physical, chemical, biological, psychological (rational, emotional)  social levels of  "reality" at progessive more abstract level of ideas and concepts and thus engage in heated but often misguided arguments because they are arguing at cross purposes! 

Finally, on whether it is possible to have any truly "objective" reality, my view is that such "reality" or what some philosophers call the "thing in itself" may exist but we have no way of accessing it except through the use of our senses and the interpretative organ we call our brain. As LaoTzu  said more than 2000 years ago, "the Tao which can be spoken of is not the true Tao." "Ultimate reality" can be defined only negatively, in terms of what it is not. All we may hope for is some kind of inter-subjective "truths" based on the consensus of adult, normally intelligent people not suffering from any obvious mental "delusion". There may therefore be huge areas of disagreement on what may constitute the "truth" or the "reality' of the case, depending on the age, the sex, the race, the culture and the historical time in which the relevant statements are made such that what may be considered true in one age in one place by one group of people may not be so considered by those of a different age, sex, place, time or group.  In other words, "reality" is a "social construct" depending upon the provisional consensus of those for whom this concept or idea means something or is otherwise relevant to assist them in determining whether and if so what to do about something to some person or things, for the purposes of "practical living". To me, each one of us and each group or society is a distorted mirror. We are distorted by our genes, the history of how we are raised, the kind of emotional experience we went through at various stages of our lives, the people we have met, the kind of books we have read and also the accidents of time and place and history and other chance elements affecting our lives. When we claim that what we are saying is true or correspond to reality, all that we may be asserting may be the provisional intepretative conclusion we form from the images reflected in the mirrors of our perception and interpretation caused and created by our brain as affected by what we think  we  "saw" in the "mirrors" of other's perceptual and interpretative "mirrrors" which in turn are affected by still other perceptual and interpretative "mirrors" of the brains of the others, and so on ad infinitum. Images of mirrors reflecting other mirrors reflecting other mirrors, each adding its peculiar distortions. What is real? What is true? What is false?