Reality is relative
 

No one can know if reality is existent. They can know they are real due to the fact that they have a concious mind, but they can never know if life or all it entails is truely existent or some elaborate hallucination because they cannot know if anyone else has a concious mind. Does this make sense to anyone but me?

You'll know I'm real when I kill you.

feisty aren't we

I have a better question: Who gives a flying fuck? >:

Re: Reality is relative
 

See solipsism, or radical skepticism. There is no way to disprove this assumption, though I consider it to be an immature philosophy. Thee're alot more interesting ideas out there, imho, but it's good that you're thinking about this sort of stuff.

this is a forum. what the fuck else are you suppose to do.

The old brain in the vat problem never dies. Dennett's explanation is satisfactory, I think.

yea, this is a really basic topic ;/

I've taken Perception to lengths nobody sho uld ever take it in their lifetime, up to collective consciousness, and to theories beyond it.

No, come on guys, Reality isn't really real.

How come it has a name, then ... huh?! >:

Santa Claus has a name, but he isnt real.

You better let HIM hear you say that! >:

Reality is necessarily existent, as your perceptions must be real.

A hallucination is a perception and it isn't real.

Hallucinations aren't real? They create very real emotions in the person who is deluded, who very real like may jump out of a window to escape them, or kill someone.

True but those things that cause whatever real acts a person may take while hallucinating are not existent except in that person's mind.

The hallucination causes a perception. The perception must exist, even if what is perceived does not. Therefore, the perception must be real.

If that is true Jesus, than your entire life is a fraud. The very first comment made in this thread is that you can never really know if what is going on is just inside your head, or not.

That comment just had too many holes to point out, it's below a good response.

A perception cannot cause phisical damage. It exists only in the mind.

My entire life is a fraud, but lets not get into that. If there are so many holes it would be possible to prove reality is not just a figment of imagination. Feel free to do so if that is what you desire.

Irrelevant. If it exists in the mind, it still exists.

This isn't Nightmare on Elm Street or the Matrix. In a perception, something is percieved (obviously), if what is percieved is not real, the perception is an illusion.

If you percieve your girlfriend cheated on you, because of some viscious rumor, so you go and kill her, it did harm.

If some stupid goth kid thinks everyone hates him because he has social anxiety and slits his wrist, it did harm.

If some schitzophrenic person thinks his mother is part of the FBI who are possessed by aliens so they try to save her by injecting random drugs into her and she dies, it did harm.

Just because, to you, their perception may not be real, does not mean it doesn't effect this reality in a very real way, and as effecting this reality it will effect yours;
I.e., the schitzophrenic person who killed his mother also killed his best friend, because they were in cohoots, this best friend of his was your younger brother. Very real effect on your reality, something you can understand.

In a simpler, more chaotic and complex way, somewhere along the way, some crazy unrealistic person did something to horribly effect someone, who horribly effected a 100 other people, who horribly effected another 100 people, and so on, until that single chain of events ends up hitting you, and effects your reality. So no matter how you look at it, you are always just going to be a result of people who don't fit into your perception.

That is also a way to explain karma ;)

I'm sure you can agree, that someone who believes something untrue, and false, is deluded-- whether or not they are insane-- and despite this fact, people will act on their delusions... so even if there hav ebeen no crazy people in some way contacted with you, there is going to be someone who believed something false, or merely functioned off of their perception.

In effect, there is nobody on this earth who doesn't fun ction off of perception and fallacy.

Like a christian who raises a child, or a buddhist. Or a mormon. or a jew. One of those has to be "Wrong" by most standards of reality.

That's not even considering the psychology of the situation...

physical damage? :rolleyes

It causes mental damage which then causes the person to react phisically. If you started to hallucinate, and in this hallucination a turtle paited on a wall jumped out and started to attack you, you would be terrified and act as if it was really happening, but when that turtle actually hit you, it would have no physical effect. You would not bleed because that turtle is not there. You would kick and scream and swing chairs at it to fight it off, and it may react, but the fact remains that there is no turtle and you are swinging a chair mindlessly. I know that is what would happen because it happened to me when I took LSD.