Is reality just an illusion?
469682
What you are reffering to is the mind/body problem.\n\nThe question assumes that Consciousness is something that can be purely manifested in either physical matter or simulated in program, these kinds of statements dot not solve the mind-body problem.\n\nIf you consider the concept of a soul than this is a better model for consciousness. Otherwise one would be forced to except that nerve cells which are made up of atoms can possess an attribute known as consciousness. If that where the case then there is no reason as to why any other atoms can not possess a conscious. Since the laws of Physical state that one atom can not be no different to another atom. This would mean ultimately to except that we have a conscious, we would also have to except that any other objet can also have a consciousness (such as a rock, or toaster) but we now that is not true. Rocks do not feel love, hate or get angry.\n\nIn short, your computer can not have a consciousness, nor can it be “emulated” as it is not a physical phenomenon, rather the physical mind is merely the transmission medium between consciousness and the physical world.\n\nHope that helps\n\nAnhar Hussain Miah
363851
Life could be a theory too...how do you prove that you exist? Try reading Descartes' Meditation...
866607
Yes I definitely think its real.  I've experienced it a few times myself.  Sometimes you just "know" its there with that other person and you know that they feel it too.  Otherwise nothing would happen.
1161258
Remember the chicken discussion in The Maxtrix.  I liked that explanation.\n\nWhat is reality? It is something we feel, smell, taste, see, or hear?  But then again, all these sensations are electrical impulses that is relayed to our brain and our brain interpret those impulses.  If that is true then something that is real is really our interpretation of impulses.  \n\nLet me ask, if a person with schizophrenia is hallucinating about a flower pot in front of him and everyone else around him doesn't see it.  Does that mean its not real.  It may not be real to everyone else but it is very really to that schizophrenic person.  \n\nWhich brings me to my next point.  I think reality is based on consensual and shared interpretations.  If 100 people can agree that a red table is a red table then its a red table.  well then again if you were color blind you wouldn't see red :).  Now lets say another alien species which could see infrared saw that table.  Our interpretation and the alien's interpretation of color would be very different.  Lets take another example: a photograph.  To most people a photograph can be easily identified.  However, to a tribe in Borereo the photograph may represent a captured soul.  In this instance culture definitely affects our interpretation of reality.\n\nSo to define what a real object is not very easy or even possible to do.\n\nI also thought it was funny to describe the fourth dimension as time in defining an object.  I mean what exactly does that mean.  My table or photograph ain't got a clock on it last time i checked
215754
Very philosophical.  Everything is already in our head and is relative to the beholder.  The same can be said for life and all that applies.\n\nThere are three positions on what reality is:\n1.  Reality is Hidden\n2.  Reality is Attainable\n3.  No one agrees as to what reality is\n\nSee the source below for full details.
525237
No, unless it's a magic trick and only an illusion.
937102
our life is a dream you are right! Everything we do is just an illusion .\n\nour mind created it and we just follow blindly. If just for a second before you want to do anything.....pause for awhile check whether you are at present or the past or the future..........then maybe one day you get the answere.\n\nYour experience are great!  Maybe you should go for a retreat under a great meditation teacher
1106728
Hello dear!\nGreat wondering! This is my perception of existence! It is really like that! Of course it does not agree with the laws, dimensions and way of thinking, but I am convinced that this is the truth!
134618
I depends what you mean by real?  Yes, they really are tricks.  They trick your mind to think you are seeing something different than it really is.\n\nWhen you see something "disappear" it doesn't really disappear into thin air.  You are tricked to believe you saw it disappear, but really it was simply concealed by some "magic" trick.  They all use different ways to conceal the REAL action.\n\nWhen someone is suspended in mid air, there is a hidden, concealed way to do it.  All magic tricks work by natural, but hidden means.  The better the magican, the better hidden it is.
341652
I dont believe it...\n\nBut human mind can make amazing illusions\n\n;)
835078
No.  Reality is what we perceive it to be.  Absolutes do not exist.  Without perception, therefore, reality does not exist.  And hence, a tree falling with no one to hear, makes no sound.
507845
They call it misdirection. What the mind sees thinks is real. When they show you one thing they are secretly doing something you wouldn't know what to look for on the side to get the awe inspiring effect. Only other magicians or people on the "know" can understand. Scientifically, the whole world would know if Chris Angel really levitated or he'd be locked in a jar for Military research and we would never see something like that for real.
1162379
There are two definitions of reality:\n\n1. Absolute reality.  This is seperate from perception in that it is the totality of everything.  Goofy ideas do no have an impact on it.  For example, suppose you decide to behave like a bird and believe that there is no such thing as glass so you constantly walk smack into sliding glass doors and foolishly wonder what happened.  Meanwhile, the glass in the door does not care if you believe in it or not.  It just is.  This is absolute reality.\n\n2. Subjective reality.  This is "reality" as we perceive it.  Post-modernists are usually referring to this sort of reality instead of absolute reality when they talk about things like culture constantly changing reality or something as silly as "personal reality."  To me, reality is about as impersonal as you can get, but that's because I normally operate using the first definition.  Anyhow, culture is a lense through which you see reality and interpret it.  Culture, despite whiny people that say it can't happen, changes constantly - particularly with changes in technology, so the perceptual lense changes.  Maybe the changes are miniscule and difficult to detect, but they occur.\n\nOk, let's take an example... I like dangerous ideas, so lets jump right in with abortion:\n\nIn absolute reality, there may be no moral imperative whatsoever.  There might not be a God or other deity.  There may only be the mechanical aspects of the universe.\n\nIn our subjective realities, most of us prefer not to think that we live in a cruel and heartless universe that would just well wipe us clean from existence as have us exist at all.  We turn to "God" and we generate all sorts of meanings for things.  In fact, this cuts at the meaning of life, but that's a huge digression!  So we go about making meaning of things that might otherwise be random.  Even someone embracing chaos makes meaning of their life and thus creates an order.  Culture is the sum of many people coming to some common conclusions about how they make meaning of the total reality.  This creates a cultural reality.  The shocking thing for most people that have never left their own culture is that they do not have a corner on creating a meaning for absolute reality.  For those that never leave, they are blind to this fact and think that their cultural reality is absolute reality.  (I love these people because these are the ones that get most disturbed by my more Cheshire Cat-like attributes, although I know that I did not actually suddenly appear or disappear, nor was my seemingly cruel advice meant to harm, but to chastize.)  I learned more and more about this from bouncing from culture to culture a bit and also making many friends from many countries.  There are other such "realities" out there and these competiing realities sometimes come into conflict.  This may or may not play a key role in what is happening in what we call the "Middle East" today.  Such realities collide constantly, however, in my own country, such that perceptions change constantly.\n\nHow else might culture change reality?  Let's skip the fluffy stuff and go straight for absolute reality.  Culture is, despite there being many cultures and incompatible belief systems, a part of the absolute reality.  Given the vastness of space, it's a puny part, but still a part.  Making any change, such as building a church, constitutes a change in the absolute reality.  It is inconsequential to the laws that govern absolute reality, but a tiny, inconsequential change happens.  This is difficult to express because as individuals we are so wrapped up in our own "personal realities" that many of us could not get it if we wanted to...  Metaphor is handy, but some people also have difficulties with that... Anyhow, suppose absolute reality is a train carrying several loads of steel and one subjective reality happens to be a gnat that believes that it is always
1020563
are you for real  or just having an illusion....lover boy?  \nbwahahahaha!
306187
Everything is Just Perfectly Real, Happening & Existing!\nJust Like the Reality T.V. program---
730887
I have a pair of those interesting deep-dish-shaped double-domed parabolic mirrors from Edmund Scientific, the top one sits upside-down on the bottom one, and the top one has a hole in it.  So when you put something inside it, and move away at an angle, an image of the object appears to be sitting above the top dish.  I ask people, "Hand me that little pink pig sitting on that dish".  They see it, reach for it, pick up nothing, reach for it again, and see their fingers apparently pass right through a solid object.\n\nWhat is the reality there?  My eyes tell me there's a little pink plastic pig sitting on the top of that dish.  Yet when I try to pick it up, my fingers pass right through it.  But then I distort the mirrors a little, and the pig blurs in an odd way that lets me see that he's actually a reflected image from inside the unit.  And if I understand optics sufficiently, I understand that it is possible, with certain arrangments of parabolic mirrors, to erect "real" images (versus the more common "virtual" images that we see in most mirrors and lens) of objects, and even design and build versions of my own, with the effects and capabilities fully determinable in advance.  That's reality.\n\nReality does exist.  Granted, we have a limited and distorted view of it due to the limitations of our senses, but it does exist.  For example, this desk in front of me seems like a solid object.  But in truth, my view of it is limited by the fact that my eyes are not able to resolve the electrons orbiting the nuclei that make up the desk, and that the vast majority of this desk is vacuum, therefore the fact that, when I touch this supposedly-solid desk, what's actually happening is that the electrostatic field generated by the electrons of the desk are exerting a force against the electrostatic field of the electrons orbiting the nuclei of the atoms making up my fingers.  There are no "solids" touching anything, just fields pushing against each other the way 2 magnets can push against each other.\n\nTo me it looks like reality begins immediately outside your eyes.  All is reality.  The only place it ends is inside your head, when you misinterpret what your limited senses tell you.
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Einstein-"Time is an Illusion, although persistent still just an illusion." \n\nwhat he is talking about is that physical unverse exists in a single infinitesible moment just as much as it does over the span of a million years. Time presents our senses with the concepts of mass and form. Time only exists so that we may perceive the universe and of course if we could not perceive the universe it would not really exist would it? Do you beleive in God now?