I was having a conversation with some students yesterday about possible future technologies, such as contact lenses that will allow everyone to see virtual objects floating in the air. One student took issue with this vision, because he thought that it would take people away from reality.<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, we then had a rousing discussion about what, exactly, constitutes “reality”. And eventually I realized that he and I were talking past each other in a very specific way.<\/p>\n
“Reality” can be defined at least two different ways. One definition focuses on the physical: Reality is whatever physically exists, which I can therefore directly experience through my body’s senses. This was the definition the student was assuming.<\/p>\n
According to this definition of reality, an experience of going to the theatre is real, in a way that watching a movie is not, because in the former case the actors and the audience physically share the same room.<\/p>\n
The definition I was assuming is rather different. To me, the more important part of reality consists of our interaction with other minds. Most often these are human minds, but in some cases those minds can belong to individuals of other species.<\/p>\n
According to this definition of reality, an experience of going to the theatre is real, in a way that watching a movie is not, because in the former case the actors and the audience are aware of each other, and therefore their minds have an opportunity to mutually influence each other.<\/p>\n
Obviously what I am describing is a continuum. Physical reality and psychological reality are both extremely useful concepts. But which is the more essential?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was having a conversation with some students yesterday about possible future technologies, such as contact lenses that will allow everyone to see virtual objects floating in the air. One student took issue with this vision, because he thought that it would take people away from reality. Not surprisingly, we then had a rousing discussion … Continue reading “Definitions of reality, part 1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16476"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16477,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16476\/revisions\/16477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}