Mereological universalism holds that any collection of entities constitutes a whole, even if the entities are otherwise unrelated. Various theories of the mereological principles underlying composition have been proposed. For example, David Lewis’s modal realism asserts that there exist countless spatiotemporally unified possible worlds, each just as real as the actual world. A different view suggests that reality is made up of many worlds that exist in parallel to one another, each representing a distinct way of how things could have been. In a narrow sense, being contrasts with becoming, and denotes stable or permanent aspects of reality. Some philosophers, such as Alexius Meinong, hold that being is a broader concept than reality, encompassing nonexistent objects, such as merely possible or incomplete objects, in addition to real or actual ones.
Some doctrines hold that God constitutes the most fundamental level of reality as the divine origin of all creation. One strand of the field analyzes culture-specific worldviews and compares them across societies. The simulation hypothesis is the view that the whole world and everything within it is a simulated reality, including humans. Computer scientists discuss how systems of knowledge representation can organize information about reality and make it accessible to computational processes. Reality testing is another suggested psychological function in which individuals distinguish intrapsychic from external events to assess how their experience aligns with reality.
- Anti-realism, by contrast, holds that certain aspects of reality depend on mental processes, subjective perspectives, or social conventions.
- According to this view, what happened in the past fixes what will happen in the future, including human behavior.
- For example, one view suggests that macroscopic objects, such as a chair, depend on the microscopic objects that underlie them, such as elementary particles.
- Computer scientists discuss how systems of knowledge representation can organize information about reality and make it accessible to computational processes.
- By contrast, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) criticized German idealism and held that a blind, irrational will is the underlying principle of reality.
Related concepts
It characterizes realism as the view that the truth or meaning of sentences is determined by external standards or mind-independent reality. A semantic approach to the debate between realism and anti-realism, proposed by Michael Dummett, argues that the underlying disagreement concerns the meaning of statements rather than the existence of entities. On this view, reality is made up of countless concrete worlds existing in parallel without interacting with one another. In the social sciences, critical realism holds that observable events in the social world only partially disclose reality. Local realism is a view that combines the principle of locality with the notion that there are definite physical properties, whether or not they are being observed by someone.
- Anti-realism rejects this view, arguing instead that there is no external world or that reality depends in certain respects on mental processes, subjective perspectives, or social conventions.
- Various categories of being or constituents of reality are discussed in the academic discourse.
- E. Moore (1873–1958) drew on common sense and empirical science to oppose idealism, emphasizing that the world exists independently of the mind.
- Anti-realism is understood as a view that identifies the meaning of a statement with the evidence that would support it or the conditions under which a person is justified in asserting it.
- According to this view, even a complete understanding of physics would not render sciences dedicated to higher levels, such as psychology, obsolete.
- Various theories of the mereological principles underlying composition have been proposed.
On this view, higher levels show greater complexity and new phenomena but depend on the lower ones and could not exist without them. Some philosophical approaches rely on the idea of fundamentality and dependence to analyze the world in terms of levels or layers, such as material, biological, psychological, and social reality. In the Hindu tradition, it is often identified with Brahman as the all-pervasive reality and the supreme principle grounding all being. Some outlooks suggest that only the fundamental level is ultimately real, arguing that non-fundamental entities are in some sense eliminable since reality can be described without them.
As individual entities, they contrast with universals, which are general, repeatable entities that can have many instances, such as the color blue, the shape roundness, and the property of being a mammal. Various categories of being or constituents of reality are discussed in the academic discourse. Similarly, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics suggests that in quantum measurements, not only one but all possible outcomes occur, interpreted as a branching of the universe into multiple worlds. It is often contrasted with essence, which denotes the nature or characteristic features of an entity.
Realism and anti-realism
It overlaps with the cognitive sciences, which investigate how cognitive processes transform information about the world, and with neuroscience, which studies the brain activities underlying such processes. It concerns the question of how mental and linguistic entities, such as thoughts and words, can establish contact with reality by successfully referring to things in the world. It focuses on how individuals experience reality and how conscious states are intentional or directed towards entities other than themselves. Epistemology, another philosophical subdiscipline, explores how people can know reality. They examine what it means for something to be real, how entities are divided into different categories of being, and which entities exist at the most fundamental level.
In psychoanalytic theory, the reality principle is a proposed mechanism that counteracts the pleasure principle, delaying immediate gratification when it collides with the demands of external reality. For example, value theory is concerned with the reality of values, and the philosophy of mathematics explores in what sense mathematical objects, like numbers and sets, form part of reality. Different worldviews offer distinct answers to existential questions about meaning, morality, and the nature of reality, such as the contrast between religious and secular worldviews. A worldview is a comprehensive framework for understanding reality and humanity’s place within it. One perspective holds that such objects are illusory or unreal because they lack existence in the physical world outside the simulation. The reality–virtuality continuum is a theoretical framework that posits a continuous scale of mixed reality forms.
In China, beginning roughly in the 9th century, Neo-Confucianism maintained that reality has a rational order expressed in the principle Li, which acts as a ground of being. In ancient Greek philosophy starting in the 6th century BCE, the pre-Socratics discussed the first principles from which all things arise. The school of Vaisheshika arose roughly in the 2nd century BCE and developed a system of six fundamental categories of being. Various historiographical debates address the question of whether a truly objective account of the past is possible.
Realism and anti-realism
It holds that this practice can be useful in some contexts without ascribing substantive or framework-independent reality to such entities. Relativism, another form of anti-realism, holds that what counts as real varies based on one’s perspective or conceptual framework. Phenomenalism, a related view, reduces physical objects to collections of actual or possible sensory experiences. In the broadest sense, realism is the view that the external world and its constituents exist as they do regardless of how people perceive or think about them.
It holds that the debate is not based on a substantive disagreement but arises instead from conceptual confusions. For example, metaphysical idealism asserts that everything is essentially mental, for instance, by understanding material objects as ideas in the mind. In this sense, reality does not depend on human knowledge or consciousness and exists apart from them, including the aspects that no one is aware of. The widely accepted Big Bang theory holds that the universe began about 13.8 billion years ago, initially in an extremely hot, dense state, expanding and cooling ever since.
Values
In a broad sense, appearances are not limited to what people perceive but can also include memories, beliefs, and thoughts. Unreal entities, by contrast, depend for their existence on thoughts and ideas; they would not arise or would vanish without the mental activity creating or sustaining them. A related topic concerns the possibility and limits of knowledge as a successful cognitive contact with reality. Anti-realism, by contrast, holds that certain aspects of reality depend on mental processes, subjective perspectives, or social conventions.
Levels of reality
For example, psychologism asserts that mathematical objects are mental constructions or ideas rather than abstract objects. Fictionalists argue that discourse about abstract objects concerns fictional entities https://www.zumospin.net/ within make-believe frameworks. According to conceptualism, universals exist in the mind as concepts through which people categorize and order their impressions, acting as tools of cognitive organization rather than properties of external entities. Platonism about universals holds that they are part of reality in their own right, independent of the particular entities that instantiate them.
For example, one view suggests that macroscopic objects, such as a chair, depend on the microscopic objects that underlie them, such as elementary particles. The structure of reality concerns the fundamental patterns of being, describing how entities are organized and interact with each other. According to a common view, concrete objects exist in space and time, such as a flower, a horse, and a ship. Events are proposed constituents of reality that occur in time, such as the discovery of penicillin and the Second World War.
