h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yes the hard questions first. Science has contemplated whether what we call reality, is really a hologram. Well thinking about virtual reality and total immersion, perhaps only death will answer this question as 'movement with' creates the illusion of reality in my opinion. We may think this world is real because of over-identification with it (addiction).

It is like hypnosis, where the hypnotized reason things out but the audience know they are lying because they can see the truth and laugh at their imbecility in the same way parents laugh at children's absurd stories or anybody in a courtroom is nonplussed by obvious lies by criminals, trying to avoid punishment and taking responsibility for their actions (physically adults but mentally children).

This is the subject matter of Phenomenology in particular, and much of philosophy in general.

There are 6 or 7 billion unique perspectives about reality in the world. Most people have enough social wiring in their brains to maneuver through the societies they live in. Sociopaths would have little or no such wiring, but could manage fine as scientists or policemen. Then there are Solipsists, who doubt the reality of anyone but themselves. The good news is that Solipsists are rarely found outside mental hospitals.

So, do I personally believe that there's an objective reality that doesn't depend on any one person's perspective? Yes, I do. The natural world is pretty dependable. If a tree was growing near my home yesterday, it's still going to be there today unless it was chopped down or blown over by a tornado.

George Berkeley A3472986 gave the best response to this question.

There has been a tradition that "things are not what they seem" since the earliest dawn of philosophy. It reached a climax in Plato, who held that the Forms of things (their ideal designs) have greater reality than things themselves, which are all imperfect copies. Even those who disagreed with Plato held on to the idea of some unperceived "substance" in which the attributes of material things abide.

Thus we have a constant search for the true reality, which continued until the 18th century when Berkeley turned it upside down. Things *are* what they seem, he said. (Of course he was not taken seriously, and so the search still continues.)

Seeming is *all* that things can do, according to Berkeley: their essence is in their perception.

Things that are commonly perceived? I can go along with that.

For starters, I make a distinction between things that are sensed by the senses and things that are perceived, perceptions being a consequence of neurological processing, whether of sensation or perception.

I'm suddenly thinking about a lonely fellow sitting in a tin shack on an unknown planet talking to his cat whom he calls, "The Lord".

what is reality? . . . tricky. for sure. changible, in the way its percieved, through whatever means, and, thereby, one assumes, quite changible, or at least more broadly, open to great interpritation... I certainly find nothing is as it seems, or, more accurately, as it did once seem, when my senses all worked more 'correctly'

Bees and butterflies perceive color differently than we do. Honeybees don't see red, though bumblebees might. Butterflies are attracted to anything that's the color of pink flamingoes. Frogs can't see red, so at night you can use red flashlights to sneak up on them

Edward Lear could have written a wistful tale about The Butterfly and the Flamingo.

There once was a poor butterfly
Whose sad fate it was for to try
To pollinate pink
Flamingos. Just think
How absurd his intention to die.

I hadn't thought of that.

Butterfly fed flamingos, rather than the the pink brine shrimp they get their color from.