by Milton Johanides

Created on: August 09, 2010

Attempts to define reality are hindered by human internal logic which is our perception of the world around us. This perception can be real, real and distorted, or fictional. Thus there are three different realities: the world as it is, the world as we see it and the world as we see it through the eyes of others. The "world as it is" exists without us, but the "world as we see it" can only exist in our own minds. The fictional world which we see through the eyes of others is a reflection of another´s reality interpreted by our personal internal logic. So if "the world as it is" represents Step 1, the "world as we see it" is Step 2, and the "world as fiction" is Step 3.

The majority of philosophical concepts, or attempts to define reality, fall into the Step 3 category. In other words anyone who proposes a philosophical idea is putting forward an interpretation of his own internal logic as it perceives the real world. We are therefore at least two steps away from reality, or the world as it really is. Plato tried to overcome the barrier of "internality" or "self" by inventing the mode of dialectic, a series of questions and answers which lead to a truth. While this was useful as a way of showing up the lie which is produced by our understanding of difficult concepts such as love, or goodness, it was not effective in drawing absolute conclusions. It was not until Descartes that the problem of self as thinking about self was articulated. "I can only communicate that which I already know, but if what I know is false, I am communicating falsely, but there is no way of determining falsehood from truth."  With the English philosophers, such as Locke and Hume, arrived the idea that nothing we see or comprehend can be totally trusted.

For modern philosophy, the challenge has become about breaking through the language barrier in order to get to Step 2 of the above category list, in other words to be able to communicate accurately that which we perceive, but this is proving to be an impossible task, since purely by the act of communication we are introducing a barrier to reality. Language is not sophisticated enough, for example, to define the colour blue without referring to other items which are already blue. Everything is thus a cycle of repeating definitions which have already been premissed on the same definitions.

Another way of arriving at a concept of reality is through literature and art. How can I explain the feeling of excitement I get when I see a glorious sunrise. Perhaps writing a poem which uses language that is recognisable to the reader and which then induces the same feeling of excitement. This at least begins to communicate the "feeling" that is involved when truth is recognised. But even this has its failings. A huge novel like War and Peace, for example, may succeed in exciting similar emotions in the reader to those which stimulated Tolstoy when he was writing it, but what those feelings mean or represent is still a grey area. Great truths however are occasionally revealed by fiction in ways which elude philosophy. So a clever combination of Step 2 and Step 3 can help us to come closer to Step 1.

The final method of defining reality is through religious ideas and symbolism. But a good deal of this means abdicating human responsibility for finding truth in favour of a deus or God. What we are saying when we talk about God is that only something outside of man could have created man and the reality we witness. We are then substituting God for the Step 1 of reality. This does not succeed in defining it, but it helps to end the search.

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