Respond to this quote from The
Matrix: "What is real? How do you define real? If real is what you can
feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals
interpreted by your brain."
What is real to you? How do you personally
define 'real'? If needed refer to Plato's Cave Allegory or scenes from The Matrix or personal experience.
The way I determine if something is real or not is recognizing the feeling associated with the "real moment". If it makes you feel anything, it is real. For example, when I was in the 5th grade, my best friend Ben died. The overwhelming feeling of loss, loneliness, sadness, and terror made the situation real. I believe that the realization of Ben leaving us was the hardest thing to cope with. That was a real situation. I also think that things are real if they stick with you. Obviously the feeling of your best friend dying will never leave you so you know that the loss is real. So to conclude, what is real is determined by the feeling you get and if the feeling sticks with you. And I also appoligize for all of the times I used the word real.
ReplyDeleteTo me, emotions are real. When the class as a whole first started talking about this, Ashley mentioned that emotions were real to her and it hit me. You can't actually hold emotions in your hand. When I feel an emotion such as happiness or the feeling of falling in love, my actions and the way I think change. For example, when I moved away, the emotion of fear and sadness really kicked in. It was by far the most real moment as some of my closest friends were sitting with me in my empty room after filling up the trailer with everything from my house. For some of those people, that was the last time that I saw them. There will be some days that the same emotion hits me like a brickwall and the realness of the fact I live 2500 miles away from my best friends and family. Much like Ann, real is the emotions that are carried with you from experiences.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that we might be living in a simulated world is so fascinating because it is impossible to disprove the theory that we are living in a simulated universe. In order to see how difficult it is to disprove, consider the Brain-in-a-Vat Argument. The Brain-in-a-Vat Argument considers the situation whereby a person's brain has been removed from their body and is floating in a life-sustaining fluid. The brain is connected by wires to a computer which provides the brain with exactly the same impulses as the brain would normally receive, the computer effectively creating a "virtual reality". The person with the disembodied brain would continue to have perfectly normal conscious experiences without these being related to objects or events in the real world. It would be impossible for the person to discover the reality of their simulated world.
ReplyDeleteAnything that is not imagined or fabricated without a solid foundation must be real. However, I also wish I could argue that things that don't make sense or don't have a strong cornerstone can also be real. I'm not at the point that I can, but I really wish I could. I love imagining and creating things in my mind. It's very odd to think about where those imagined thoughts come from. If they aren't ever real, how can our mind produce them? How do you explain the things that certain artists paint, or the certain designs of buildings and creatures that people conjure? Well, it's obvious that 100% of the time, as much as we may hate it and argue against it, these things are based off of other things that already exist to us. I'd like to argue that anything we can base something off of must be real. Otherwise, that idea would crumble and wouldn't make any sense to anyone. So I suppose my definition of the capital R "real" is anything that can have something based off of it. Anything that the human mind understands and can branch off of.
ReplyDeleteWhen Phillips originally asked us this question my mind immediately went to physical objects, but when he started to explain how unreliable our senses are I began to think that if each of us sees, feels, tastes, and hears things differently than is there any one true "real" thing that we can all agree on. My afterthoughts began thinking of emotions just as Kaytlin and Ann. I believe that emotions are very really because they change the way we think, act, and look at the world. I also believe that emotions are real because they can not be disputed by those around you. People may have an opinion on the degree of your emotion but if you say that you are happy, they can not deny the fact that you are happy because you are in control of the emotions that you are feeling. One example in my personal life of something that is indisputable is when I became a Christian. I have a personal testimony about my experience that no one can deny because it is mine alone. To me, my relationship with my God is very real and because I can not rely on my physical senses to explain God, I believe that He is real. While some may disagree with me on a religious standpoint I still believe that the emotions I have for things, others, God, and life are real. Anything other than that? Well I may not be so sure but at least I know something is my life is real. It is something I will never doubt or question and that brings me peace in my situation. What about you?
ReplyDeleteReality is a very difficult thing to qualify; there is very little you can deem irrefutably real without relying on your five senses, which are not only flawed, but tailored to our own isolated perception of life. One thing that I know with certainty is that I am real. My mind generates images and engenders my unique perspective and personality. Something that does not exist cannot foster perspective or create identity; something cannot come from nothing. Beyond my own self-awareness, I have no concrete knowledge of reality. My senses are my only means of discerning what is real and what is not, and the reliability of my senses is completely indeterminable. However, it’s reasonable to assume that if I am alive, then I must exist in some habitable environment. My conception of my environment, which hinges on my five senses, could either be wholly accurate or hopelessly skewed, or anywhere in between. Therefore, the world I exist in is real, but the world I perceive is not.
ReplyDeleteI cannot confidently conclude that something is real unless that conclusion stems from objective deduction. However, my subjective ideas and reactions can impact the real environment around me. If I am blind and no one has ever told me about anything that I could not see, I would be living under the assumption that the world was nothing but a vast expanse of darkness. But I would still walk and leave footprints, take in oxygen, stomp my foot and dent the dirt out of anger, drag my feet in the dust out of sadness; I am exchanging and interacting with an environment that I have no notion of, that I have no idea exists. In this same way, because I am real, I can interact with the real environment around me, even from underneath the veil of my senses. And in this way, even the subjective drives its stake into reality.
Whelp, I just typed a long deep comment and it all got erased... but in that long deep message i said that i believed emotions and the material objects surrounding us are compatible. I believe emotions are more real than objects in that they have a deep effect on us. But without objects around us then we cannot have emotion. Every emotion that we feel is caused by something. I can't think of any feeling of sadness, happiness, love, or anxiety that hasn't been caused by something material (except by a divine power). It's the effect of something on us that causes emotion. For example, maybe you're anxious about a big test coming up. Its not the test itself that makes you anxious, but the effect that the test has on you. Emotions make objects real, and objects cause emotion.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of reality, to me, is too difficult to even wrap my head around. In order to answer this, I am going to allow my mind to wander a little and will type my thought process. (So this may seem a little messy) When we are dreaming, we see, feel, smell, and touch things that are not actually there; our brains make everything up. You can feel true terror, sadness, happiness, and despair while dreaming. But there isn't really anything happening to us. It's all an illusion our minds are making up. As real as these dreams can seem, they are completely fake. They are stories made up by our imagination. And we never know that our dreams are not reality until we wake up-- if we ceased to wake up, we would forever be stuck in that dreamworld. And it would be our complete reality.
ReplyDeleteWe like to tell ourselves that things that are real are things that we can sense, but we can sense things in dreams just as much as we can sense things when we are awake. Even emotions. So I think reality is, essentially, truth. Honest, whole truth. I believe that it is capital "T" Truth, and that Truth and (capital "R") Reality are the same concept. That, at least, is what reality means to me, and how I would define it.
Real to me is having the sound mind to realize that you are self aware. Not just BEING self aware, but knowing that you are. Understanding that you exist and that you can articulate thought are things that can feel the most real. I believe that the mind is what makes things real, so being aware of the aforementioned mind during a train of thought, you can logically conclude that you are real, and alive, and that you exist.
ReplyDeleteAllow me to explain. You have eyes so your mind says that you can see what’s real. You have ears so your mind says you can hear what’s real. You have a nose to smell, and skin to feel what your mind says is real. And you have a mouth and tongue to taste what is real to your mind and, ultimately, you. All these things are interpreted by your mind to let you know what things are real and what’s just our thoughts. Our senses determine where the line is drawn between the thoughts created by the mind, and entities that are real and exist.
So since human beings are capable of understanding our minds and how they work, the fact that we can think ABOUT our mind ITSELF, says to our mind, that our own mind… exists. With this logic we can conclude that we exist because our minds know that we exist. “I think therefore I am”.
This logic can set the rules of classifying whether an entity exists or not. Emotions can be felt… so they are real. Even if emotions can’t be seen or tasted or smelled or heard physically, they are real to the mind, and therefore real to you. This remains true and constant through other scenarios as well. As long as the entity can be sensed by at least one of the senses, said entity, exists and can therefore be classified as real.
I believe that what is real is based on your senses because at a certain level you have to accept what is going on around you as real life. I believe that while your senses can be fooled they are still the best way to determine reality. I believe that while senses can be fooled reality is more based on your perception of reality and that your senses are not wrong just that you can’t necessarily properly interpret what your senses are telling you. I think that in the cave allegory reality doesn’t change nor do what your senses are telling you just how you interpret your surroundings and what your senses are telling you. I believe that you have to accept reality on faith and that you can’t live life wondering what if this isn’t reality.
ReplyDeleteTheir are two types of realities: lower case and upper case.
ReplyDeleteThe lower case reality is uniquely tailored specifically to each individual that has ever lived a life with a reality. Reality is defined by how we see our surroundings in any state of our being. And to say that people all experience the same reality is not correct. For the most part a person can define their own reality by what they can sense though their physical body. For example some people see their surroundings with their eyes and some can not see because their eyes do not work. This means they perceive their surroundings very differently. The person with the good eyes uses them for most things and becomes dependent on them. The person with poor eyes uses other senses more like smell and touch. This enhances them to a point where he or she can sense more through their smell and touch then good eyed man, thus creating vastly different realities. Another point is their are other senses that we as humans have that define our reality. Here are some other senses that we have: Magentoception (sense of direction through earths magnetic field), Equilibrioception (sense of balance), Time (sense of the passage of time), Thermoception (sense of hot and absence of hot), Proprioception (sense of location of body parts), Thirst (sense when your body needs more water), Hunger (sense when your body needs more water), and Nociception (sense of pain). All these form differently in each person and this creates a different reality. In conclusion we all have a lower case reality, but not a unified upper case reality.
Upper case Reality is very different then lower case reality. Going back to Plato's cave story it talks about how everything physical and metaphysical has a perfect version of itself and also shadow versions. The shadow versions are lower case and I described those as being in-perfect personalized versions that only aspire to be as perfect as the perfect surreal version. The perfect version is the upper case version. So uppercase Reality is a big thing to think about. The lowercase human can only marvel at the lowercase idea of an uppercase Reality that can never fully be understood by our lowercase brain. So to describe uppercase Reality is kind of impossible, but I will try. Uppercase Reality is the main Reality. It gives a baseline for all shadow realities that resemble the main structure of the Reality. Example being how in big neighborhoods their are rows and rows of houses. Each house has the same structure of the base line House. But each of those houses are only shadows of it and are all different with in each and every house in the neighborhood. The same is true for how our different realities are all tied together by similarities and differences, but can never be the same or as perfect as the Reality.
What is real, and reality are both ideas that are extremely hard to explain. I believe everyone experiences their own reality, and what is real because everyone has different perspectives. So I believe that anything that your mind and body can both actively feel at or about the same time, or something your body can feel or sense. If it is your mind alone feeling something it may not be real, because our minds can be faulty, and betray us at points.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing we as humans can prove is real, is our own minds. We are conscious of our own minds but we can't prove that anyone else is real because we're not in their mind. The reason we can't prove that anything else is real besides our mind is because our mind could be deceiving us! Of course this theory only applies to those who believe in dualism!
ReplyDeleteReal to me is not easy to explain. The reason I say this is because I, myself, do not understand what is real or what isn't. I do think that there is a "real" world out there, far off into the deep parts of the universe, but the world we live in is nothing but a holding ground for something much greater. I think the "real world" would be a lot like the world we see in The Matrix. It is dark, gloomy, ran by AI's (that is a capital "i"). I also think that the "real world" is beautiful. It is warm, there is a lot of sunshine, everyone is happy, and there is no such thing as sickness/death. I define real as kind of a "wake up call" feeling. Let's take getting a college admissions letter, for example, and it saying, "Dear Connor, I am pleased to announce that you have been accepted into (insert college name) for the Fall semester of 2015!" That to me is big "R" real. I finally realize that I am moving on and moving out! I am moving on to bigger and better things, and I am moving out of my house. But there comes more responsibility too, because I will have a lot more freedom than I used to. So when we finally reach the end of our time, here on earth, I believe that is when we will find the answer.
ReplyDeleteBeing human, we all feel that we know more than we really do. We have this way of living where, "I'm right and you're wrong." Humans are so egocentric that opinions don't seem to matter nor did they in the past. For example, the word "real"; it's an effortless word but never really thought of in a philosophical way. When used in the correct context, "Real" is such an opinion based word. What's real to you may not be real to me; what's real to me may not be real to you. Therefore the true meaning of "real" has been demoted from a valuable standpoint to a meaningless adjective. In my opinion, "real" is something so unexplainable that it's just a self interpretation and that's all it can be. As hard as a person try's to explain how real an experience was, it can't be done. It's not that such a person is incapable of a vast amount of adjectives, but the fact that it's all an internal feeling that can't be shared. Words do not describe feelings but instead, words label feelings. It's easy to state situations that were "real", but that doesn't explain the emotion or feeling (physical) factors. My point is, that it doesn't matter how long I make this post, I can't "personally" describe real. That's a self opinion and interpretation.
ReplyDeleteReal to me is being not just able to feel an object but to also be able to understand the purpose/understanding of the object.
ReplyDeleteThe thought to me that the Matrix could be real kinda scares the crap out of me. It makes me think when I am sitting there feeling sad or mad, I think, "What if this isn't even happening?". It makes me question everything that I have ever thought was real. Although, I do think emotions are real. I don't believe if there was a Matrix, that they expected human emotions. So, I think that emotions are real, my big "R" Real.
ReplyDeleteI don't think real isn't about what you can touch or see it has more to do with you mind. Like Morpheus says to Neo "Your mind makes it real; the body cannot live without the mind". I think we over think some things because our mind plays tricks on us. For instance when you go to the store and you freak out because you thought you saw somebody you know. When really it was somebody that just resembled that person. Without the mind we wouldn't be able to function really. The mind can heal and make the body do unexplainable things. Its a powerful thing that we cant really understand. Its up to us to determine what we think is real but without the mind we must determine what has more control.
ReplyDeleteReal things to me are things that affect me, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. When Neo was first fighting Morpheus in the matrix, he was tired from all of the fighting whereas Morpheus did not seem phased. Morpheus then explained that it was not air he was breathing. Once Neo realized it was not air and it was all just a simulated reality he was not tired and he was able to do anything because he realized it was not real. If something is Real, it would affect you in some way shape or form, no matter how unnoticed it may be, it will still affect you and others, if it does not affect anything at all then it can't be real.
ReplyDeleteReading the posts now...
ReplyDeleteTo me, real is something that causes me to feel emotions. For example, I'm a huge sports fan. Nothing gives me more of an adrenaline rush than when I'm playing sports. Because sports can instill multiple different emotions in me, it is real. My family also has the ability to make me feel many emotions. They can make me feel happy, sad, overjoyed, or angry. Because they can make me feel this way, they are real. I don't think there is a certain definition of the word "real". It's different for everyone and it depends on the things that make you feel your emotions.
ReplyDelete"Real things" are experiences that trigger emotions. You cannot experience something "real" until you are conscious of the fact that most of the emotions that you experience are not "real" emotions. Once you accept that, and understand that, you will begin to look at things in a much different light. Once you start questioning the emotions that you do feel, you will be able to decipher between the unbiased and the biased. The unbiased meaning you are of sound mind and are thinking clearly and rationally. The biased being the immediate reaction to an event when you are clearly heated and caught in the moment of the crossfire. I believe that "real" is what you get when you have taken the time to decide what is biased and what is not and when you come to terms with an event or a comment or a life situation and begin to deal with it. It is easily related to the after effects of an earthquake. The emotions hit all at once, (the earthquake itself) and slowly after, the Aftershocks come. They hit you at random times, like emotions would after something traumatic, and then slowly but surely diminish. And what you are left with, is the damage and the piles of clutter and debris that you must decide how to get rid of. The "real" part of this is how you are going to go about getting rid of this debris. How you are going to go about sorting your emotions and deciding what is worth worrying over and facing and what is not. And when you have decided, you are finally able to begin dealing with what is "real" and what is "relevant."
ReplyDeleteI think what separates the real from the interpreted is freedom and functionality. A dream is the closest i personally have been to an alternate reality, and in these dreams i do not have control over what is going to happen. If i am running towards a cliff i cannot stop and save myself, it's just how the dream is going to go. In reality i would not run off of a cliff because i have the freedom to make that decision. Also in these dreams, my emotion and feelings are not as sharp, so i can easily tell that i am not in reality. I do not think there is any system complex enough to stimulate the nerves in my entire body and my mind so much so that i believe i am living in a fake world. If Neo woke up from a realistic dream in the Matrix, would he know he is in the Matrix?
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ReplyDeletewhat is real to me may not be what is real to someone else. everybody has a different story on their life. i think what makes someone or something real is by how that person interprets it. the way everyone interprets thing to be real is based on their own life experiences. one person could have grew up poor and has never even seen a mansion and to them that is a fantasy and simply not real. although, to another who grows up rich and lives in that mansion it is just apart of his life experience and it is very real to him. so i think real is based on what your life experiences are each day, minute, and second.
ReplyDeleteWhat is real to me? The question has brought many thoughts to my mind. What real is to me is something like an object or an emotion. This is the only life I've ever known so everything is real to me. But it brings the thought of what if. What if none of this is real and we're all dreaming? You can can come up with so many different scenarios of what if. The question brings deep thought though of what is really there and what is not
ReplyDeleteTo me, the world around me is real, because it is all I have ever known. If I didn't believe this world wasn't real, then I would attempt to find a world I truly believe to be real. What is real to me is what I deem real. Some other person's reality has no bearing on my own and never will, until all realities are in agreement on what isn't reality.
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