What
is real?
If real is what appears to our
senses, then, to quote Morpheus from The Matrix (1999), ”real is nothing
more than electrical signals interpreted by the brain”. By that definition
anything that the brain processes might be called real: illusions, hallucinations
and dreams. Is real, then, any sensation that occurs as a psychical event in a
person who experiences it? Obviously not. The fact that something appears to
the senses is not sufficient to be called real or reality. We need a more precise definition here:
“real is whatever is truly in one's experience and is not falsely
alleged to be so and what is coherent with the overall network of our
experience” ( Ritchie 265). So the criteria for “real” can be summed up as follows:
(i) there is an agreement between the inferences drawn from the experience of our
different senses, (ii) other people’s judgements concur with our own,
(iii) the present experience is
consistent with the results of our and other people’s previous experience.
What
is reality?
There
are many definitions of reality, but the most exhaustive reads:
“the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as
opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the
ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms,
reality is the totality of a system, known and unknown” (Wikipedia). The “unknown” part here is interesting, taking into consideration the fact that
as human species we only get access to a tiny fraction (less than 1%) of the electromagnetic
spectrum[1] (NNSA). We do not perceive most of reality surrounding
us, at least not with a “naked eye”.
Views on reality
Before
the advent of science in the XVIIth century, the philosophical perspectives
on reality can be summed up as a debate about whether the external world is
independent of the observer’s mind (Platonic realism, naïve realism, indirect
realism), or whether it is the
observer’s mind that brings it into existence (George Berkeley’s idealism)
(Wikipedia). These two positions were reconciled in XVIIIth c. with Immanuel
Kant’s transcendental idealism: there is a mind-independent reality (noumena)
but what the observer makes out of it is
an entirely different thing (phenomena) (Stang). The observer cognizes
the external world not as it is in
itself, but only as it appears filtered through or processed by the
observer’s mind’s innate systems. It is as if we had blue-tinted glasses[2] on all the time, and anything we look at looks bluish,
even if the objects are not bluish themselves (Blumenau). This was a
revolutionary insight.
Problems
of perception
Human
species acquire knowledge about the external world primarily through sense
perception: five sensory modalities of vision, audition, olfaction, touch and
taste). The role of the sense perception is therefore to help us successfully navigate
reality. The fact that we have survived as a species must mean the sense
perception is doing its job well. Naturally, we tend to assume that our
perceptions are an accurate portrayal of the real world, quite literally
what we see, is what we get, but when we compare our sensory experience
with other people, we often find out that
the same things cause different sensations in us: we disagree about the
colour of things, temperature of the ambience, smells, and tastes of meals. We
also notice that there are people whose perceptual experiences differ
substantially to ours (e.g. colour blindness or tetrachromacy[3], lacking certain receptors that decide whether
or not we experience certain tastes or smells[4] ), and as medical science progressed we learn that
our differing perception has its roots in the structure and the workings of the
organs responsible for receiving and relaying the signals from the outside
world through the nervous system to the brain. All of the above show that, in a way, we live in different
subjective realities. Such constatation may raise doubts whether there is any
objective reality (a blow for a realist), independent of the observer. On the
other hand, something is causing perceptual sensations in us. Something external
to us, “the thing in itself” or
noumena as Kant
calls it (Stang).
Another
important thing we know about perception is that we do not perceive objects
directly - the perception is mediated by tiny particles, in case of vision they
are photons which bounce off the objects and hit the retina of the eye, in case
of the audition vibrating particles hitting the receptors in the ear, or in
case of olfaction molecules released by substances hitting the olphactory
receptors. The signals are transmitted to the brain which translates the data
into images, sounds or smells.. This fact alone should make us cautious that since
we have no direct access to the material world, we can’t know for certain that what
we perceive with our senses is the thing in itself. We are directly
acquainted only with what is mental in nature (Westerhoff 39). The
external meaningless sense data is translated into meaningful information
understood by the brain, which means that perception is an active process. What
appears in our mind depends largely on the structure of the sensory apparatus
(e.g number of cones and rods in the eye, nerve cells condition, etc), the fact
that our cognitive tools are integrated
and as a network affect the decoding and interpretation process (Russell’s analogy to blue-tinted
glasses illustrates nicely how the sensory apparatus affects perception). And
on top of that there are cognitive factors that contribute to the whole process
(prior experience, expectations, implicit biases, etc). All
things considered, it is obvious that all these factors affect the picture of
reality that we conjure up in the mind. It is only obvious that there must be
distortions, some information “lost in translation”, all leading to subjective
renditions.
Studies in cognitive science and neuroscience
further confirm the thesis that we do not perceive reality as it is, but
as we are – with our sensory limitations, cognitive biases and
post-perceptual interpretations. As Anil
Seth, a neuroscientist, puts it: "We
don't just passively perceive the world, we actively generate it. The world we
experience comes as much, if not more, from the inside out as from the inside
in. […] In fact, we're all hallucinating all the time, including right now. It's
just that when we agree about our hallucinations, we call that reality” (Seth)
Conclusion
So can reality be known as it is? The
answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no’. It is knowable, even if only within certain ranges of
frequencies. We do have access to it through our senses (albeit indirect and mediated,
but still first-hand). Over the centuries we have managed to build vast
knowledge about reality – knowledge that works in practice, so we get something
right. We have survived as a species, which means that our sense perception is
efficient. However, there is no way we can
step out of ourselves (or take off the blue-tinted glasses) to check if what
we get is what we see.
Errors and illusions show (together
with studies) that perceptual reality
does not match the objective reality. The brain has an active part in the
decoding of data. Reality is constructed in the mind, but for sure there is an
external reality which causes the perception. The role of the sense perception
in the quest for ‘real’ is to make reality as user-friendly to enhance
our chances of survival, as the computer desktop interface is to its users.[5] Accuracy is not as important as fitness of
perceptions. We perceive what we need to perceive and in way which will be best
understood and utilized by the brain.
WORKS CITED
·
Blumenau,
Ralph. “Kant and the Thing In_Itself.” Philosophy Now, no. 31, 2001, www.philosophynow.org/issues/31/Kant_and_the_Thing_in_Itself .
·
Britannica,
The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "electromagnetic spectrum". Encyclopedia Britannica, 11 Mar.
2019, www.britannica.com/science/electromagnetic-spectrum . Accessed 24 Nov 2021.
·
Hoffman,
Donald. The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes . W. W. Norton &
Company. Kindle Edition
·
NNSA National Nuclear Security
Administration. “Visible Light: Eye-Opening Research at NNSA.” Energy.Gov,
17 Oct. 2018, www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/visible-light-eye-opening-research-nnsa .
·
Ritchie,
David G. “What Is Reality?” The Philosophical Review, vol. 1, no. 3,1892, p. 256. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2175783.
· Seth,
Anil. “Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality.” TED Talks, TED Ideas Worth Spreading, 18 July
2017,
www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality
·
Stang, Nicholas F., "Kant’s Transcendental Idealism", The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring
2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/kant-transcendental-idealism . Accessed 21 Nov 2021
·
Wachowski, Lana, and Lilly Wachowski. The Matrix. Warner Bros., 1999.
www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the_matrix.pdf
·
Westerhoff,
Jan. Reality: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 15). OUP
Oxford. Kindle Edition.
·
Wikipedia contributors. "Reality." Wikipedia,
The Free Encycloped Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 6
Oct. 2021. Web. 24 Nov. 2021.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
·
Guttenplan,
Samuel; Hornsby, Jennifer; Janaway, Christopher; Schwenkler,
John. Reading Philosophy.
Wiley. Kindle Edition.
·
"Primary
and Secondary Qualities ." Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.
Encyclopedia.com. 25
Oct. 2021 www.encyclopedia.com. Accessed 20
Nov. 2021
·
Perman,
Anna. “The ‘brussels Sprouts’ Gene: TAS2R38.” The Guardian, 14 Feb.
2018, www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2011/nov/01/brussel-sprout-gene .
[1] The electromagnetic spectrum covers
an extremely broad range, from the
lowest to the highest frequency (longest to shortest wavelength), includes all
radio waves, infrared radiation,visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays,
and gamma rays (Britannica)
[2] The blue spectacles analogy was used by Bertrand Russell to
describe the work of Immanuel Kant in A History of
Western Philosophy
(1945)
[3] The women with
superhuman vision
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140905-the-women-with-super-human-vision
[4] The 'brussels
sprouts' gene: TAS2R38
https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2011/nov/01/brussel-sprout-gene
[5] Analogy used by Donal Hoffman in
his book The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes
. W. W. Norton & Company. 2019
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