Reality

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Reality

My theory of reality seems to go along with Berkeley's in the fact that reality is in the mind. Reality is non-physical and exists only in the minds of us and/or of others. There is no right or wrong in reality and it is proven through different examples and concepts of what is real. Each person sees what he or she wants to from a certain experience and believes it to be reality.

Berkeley

The existence of what a person sees does not depend exclusively on seeing it. Berkeley's central claim is that sensible objects cannot exist without being perceived, but he did not suppose that an individual is the only perceiver. So long as some sentient being, some thinking substance or spirit, has in mind the sensible qualities or objects at issue, they do truly exist. Thus, even when a person closes their eyes, the tree they now see will continue to exist, provided that someone else is seeing it.

This difference, Berkeley held, precisely marks the distinction between things. What a person merely imagines exists in their mind alone and continues to exist only so long as he or she thinks of it. But what is real exists in many minds, so it can continue to exist whether they perceive it or not. The existence of sensible objects requires that they be perceived, but it is not dependent exclusively on one person's perception of them.

In fact, the persistence and regularity of the sensible objects that constitute the natural world is independent of all human perception, according to Berkeley. Even when none of us perceives this tree, God is. (McMullin) (I do not like this idea. I think that using "God" as an explanation for anything is laziness or lack of knowledge.) The mind of God serves as a permanent repository of th...

... middle of paper ...

... How can we know what chicken is if everything tastes like it? Maybe the chicken tastes like the gruel and we just don't know it. Things taste like chicken because we believe it to be so. Once again, we make our own reality.

Reality is a never-ending concept. It is one best left to the individual and their private beliefs. To define reality to suit a group would never be accurate. A person's sense of reality will always get distorted and compromise who the person is. An individual should keep their own reality. A mind is owned by a single being. Reality is in the mind. Therefore reality is individualistic.

Bibliography:

Bibliography:

Fraser (reprint of 1886 ed. Locke, J. Essay Concerning Human Understanding). New York, Dover, 1959.

McMullin, The Concept of Matter in Modern Philosophy. London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978.

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