Reality
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. A still more broad definition includes everything that has existed, exists, or will exist.
Philosophers, mathematicians, and others ancient and modern such as Aristotle, Plato, Frege, Wittgenstein, Russell etc., have made a distinction between thought corresponding to reality, coherent abstractions, and that which cannot even be rationally thought. By contrast existence is often restricted solely to that which has physical existence or has a direct basis in it in the way that thoughts do in the brain.
Reality is often contrasted with what is imaginary, delusional, (only) in the mind, dreams, what is abstract, what is false, or what is fictional and imaginary. The truth refers to what is real, while falsity refers to what is not. Fictions are not considered real.
See also
- Absolute (philosophy)
- Alternate history
- Allegory of the Cave
- Authenticity
- Roland Barthes
- Consensus reality
- Counterfactual history
- Delusion
- Derealization
- Dissociation
- Dream
- Dreamworld
- Empiricism
- Existence
- False awakening
- Fiction
- Fictionalism
- Imagination
- Hallucination
- Hyperreality
- Illusion
- Jorge Luis Borges
- Language and thought
- Map and territory
- The Matrix
- Mental representation
- Nihilism
- Noumenon
- Ontology
- Paranormal
- Phenomenon
- Principle of locality
- Psychosis
- Rashomon (film)
- Realism
- Real world
- Reality TV
- Red pill
- Reification
- Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
- Semiotics
- Simulacrum
- Simulated reality
- Skepticism
- Social constructionism
- Surrealism
- Vanilla Sky
- The Truman Show
- Thoughtform
- The Usual Suspects
- Waking Life (film)
