I opened the Beyond Reality debate with a quotation from Ambrose Bierce: “Reality is the dream of a mad philosopher.” Bierce’s words seemed apposite because to me the notion of a single overarching ‘reality’ which might apply equally and objectively to all humans, now and forever, is a wild fantasy.
A standard dictionary definition of reality runs thus:
“Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.”
This sounds, at first, quite reassuring. Someone, somewhere, has carefully divided ‘things’ into two fixed categories:
(a) ‘Things’ which actually exist. These are objectively Real
(b) ‘Things’ which exist only as ideals or notions. These are not objectively Real.
‘Things’ can apparently only be one or the other – (a) or (b), real or unreal. Therefore, we might speak about someone refusing to face up to reality (meaning category a), or refusing to accept reality, and by this we would apparently suggest that there is something we all understand to be real (things as they actually are) which this poor person cannot accept. Worse still, their attempts to evade this immutable ‘reality’ have led them into the further sin of being ‘unrealistic’.
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