Philosophy Final Exam

Philosophy Final Exam

Question One, Selection #1-What is real? How can we know that it is real?

Differentiation between Real and Unreal

The difference between the allocation of real and unreal within the human mind is a rather questionable statement. The honest answer to this question is that nobody knows what real is because it is so subjective. Real is a matter of perception and is determined by each individual differently.

Specifically, real can be defined by each person in the light of their own experiences, what they have been told by others both authorities and significant figures, social beliefs, religion, media and personal thoughts. What is surprising is that everyone's version of real is different yet completely true to the way that they see it.

Dreams: The Reflections of Reality

Dreams offer good examples of an altered sense of reality, when we believe that what is happening is real. We can often question if a dream is real, or if the dream doesn't begin until we supposedly wake up. A great example of not knowing what is real comes from a cult classic movie, The Matrix. Throughout the movie the main character believes everything that he encounters to be reality and therefore truly happening to him, only to realize that 90% of the time he is dreaming.

The entire concept of the movie causes the viewer to question what is really real, much like the doubt experienced by the character. If individuals define experience as real, a good contradiction would be long-term unconsciousness. For example, a person in a coma cannot be aware of what is going on in the moment outside of their consciousness or experience, a person believes their experience, so they may be in a state of blackness or nothingness and that can't be seen as a reality because it implies that nothing exists although that is the experience.

Reality is subject to Consistent Changes

The subjectivity of reality leads to questions such as, how we are certain that there are no other life forms that exist in the universe and that we would not in fact be the aliens to them rather than the traditional movie perception that they are the aliens. We know something is real until we don't. To me this statement means real is changing constantly because our experience and supposed knowledge is always changing.

We Believe in What We Perceive

One moment we believe that the earth is flat and the next minute round and we no longer can accept what we once knew, although at the time prior we were convinced we knew what was real. At a time, individuals probably thought that other races were myth until they encountered them and thus accepted them as real.

A good demonstration of this could be dinosaurs; until we discovered remains and backed our experience up with science it was not real. Everyone is a victim to the limitations of their experiences by believing “seeing is believing” side of the often used quote so easily. Insanity would engulf the world if we all ...