What is real? How do we know what is real?

Truth Seeker

1. Solipsism – Only your own mind is sure to exist.
Why it's unfalsifiable: Any evidence you receive — from people, books, or even me — could just be a product of your own mind.

Implication: Radical doubt. You can't verify that anything outside your consciousness is real.

2. Idealism – Only minds (or mental states) exist; the material world is a construct.
Why it's unfalsifiable: All physical evidence could be interpreted as patterns of experience or ideas within consciousness.

Implication: Challenges the idea of objective reality; everything may be “mind-stuff.”

3. Simulation Theory – We’re living in an artificial simulation (e.g., a computer simulation).
Why it's unfalsifiable: Any feature of the simulation could be indistinguishable from “real” physical laws.

Implication: If advanced civilisations can run simulations, and they would, we might be one.

4. Philosophical Zombie Theory – Other beings look conscious but lack inner experience.
Why it's unfalsifiable: You can’t access others’ inner lives; their behaviour might be perfectly human but devoid of sentience.

Implication: Raises deep questions about empathy, moral consideration, and what we can ever know of others.

5. Panpsychism – Consciousness is a fundamental aspect of all matter.
Why it's unfalsifiable: You can’t measure the subjective experience of an atom or rock.

Implication: Consciousness is ubiquitous — a kind of mental “stuff” in everything, not just brains.

6. Pantheism – Everything is God.
Why it's unfalsifiable: It redefines “God” as synonymous with the totality of existence — making it a matter of interpretation, not evidence.

Implication: Spiritual or religious reverence directed toward the universe as a whole.

7. Panentheism – Everything is in God, but God is more than everything.
Why it's unfalsifiable: Like pantheism, it’s a metaphysical interpretation that isn’t testable. It adds transcendence beyond the universe.

Implication: Allows both immanence (God in all) and transcendence (God beyond all).

8. Dualism – Mind and matter are fundamentally distinct.
Famous proponent: René Descartes

Why it's untestable: No clear empirical way to prove the existence of an immaterial mind separate from the brain.

Implication: Suggests consciousness could exist after death.

9. Theism – A personal God created and oversees the universe.
Why it's untestable: Claims about God typically lie beyond the scope of scientific inquiry.

Implication: Provides a moral and existential framework for billions, but rests on faith or personal experience.

10. Deism – A non-interventionist creator started the universe but does not interfere.
Why it's untestable: The absence of divine interference is indistinguishable from naturalism.

Implication: God exists but doesn't respond to prayer or intervene in history.

11. Nihilism – There is no inherent meaning, value, or purpose in the universe.
Why it's untestable: Meaning and value are subjective constructs.

Implication: Can lead to despair or radical freedom, depending on interpretation.

12. Eternalism (Block Universe Theory) – Past, present, and future all exist equally.
Why it's untestable: You cannot directly observe future events as already existing.

Implication: Time is an illusion; "now" is just a perspective.

13. Multiverse Theory – There are countless parallel universes.
Why it's (currently) untestable: Other universes are, by definition, beyond our observable horizon.

Implication: Our universe may be just one of infinitely many, each with different laws or histories.

14. Reincarnation – Consciousness is reborn into new lives.
Why it's untestable: No conclusive way to track consciousness or memory between lives.

Implication: May promote ethical behaviour, depending on karmic beliefs.

15. Absolute Idealism – The universe is the expression of a single universal mind.
Why it's untestable: The "absolute" mind cannot be externally observed.

Implication: All existence is interconnected as part of a single consciousness.

16. Nondualism (Advaita Vedanta, Zen, etc.) – There is no fundamental separation between self and universe.
Why it's untestable: It’s a shift in consciousness rather than a theory with predictive power.

Implication: Suffering arises from the illusion of separation; enlightenment dissolves this illusion.

17. Cosmic Solipsism – The entire cosmos exists for one observer (e.g., you).
Why it's untestable: Similar to solipsism but extended to cosmic scale.

So, what is real? How do we know what is real?

That depends on your epistemological framework — how you define and justify knowledge.

Empiricism says reality is what can be observed and tested.

Rationalism says reality is what can be logically deduced.

Phenomenology says reality is what appears in conscious experience.

Pragmatism says reality is what works — what lets you survive and make decisions.

View Answer

Relativist

In the strictest sense of "knowledge", you can't "know" what is real. However, we do have an innate belief that we are perceiving and interacting with aspects of reality. My question is: why deny this innate belief? One is justified in maintaining a belief that has not been defeated. I can't see how it is justifiable to believe any specific alternatives. The innate belief is pragmatic, and all alternatives are unpragmatic.

Because our innate belief is POSSIBLY false, it might be reasonable to be agnosticism toward the question, but I'm but I'm skeptical that anyone can truly be agnostic toward this - are they going to stop eating because they are agnostic to what they are seemingly doing?

T Clark

What is real? How do we know what is real? — Truth Seeker

The only things that have a true claim to being real are those phenomena we humans experience in our own daily lives - gummi bears, 1975 Ford Mustangs, love, ball-point pens. The only sense in which all other phenomena are real is as reflections of that primary reality.

↪Truth Seeker

'Reality' is the one word that should always appear in quotation marks. — Vladimir Nabokov

Wayfarer

↪Truth Seeker

Bear in mind that 'falsifiability' is not a be-all and end-all in philosophical terms. It was articulated by Karl Popper as a way to differentiate empirical theories from those of other kinds. It can have no bearing, for instance, on rationalist type of arguments, but then, it was never intended to provide criteria for assessing arguments of those kinds.

Besides that, this is not a particularly useful original post. It is a grab-bag of so-called philosophical positions or views, with a brief comment after each. You're not really presenting any contender for serious consideration or indicating any way to explore the question other than whether its 'falsifiable' which is not a suitable criterion for many of these ideas, as explained.

Banno

↪Truth Seeker

The wile of the metaphysician consists in asking 'Is it a real table?' (a kind of object which has no obvious way of being phoney) and not specifying or limiting what may be wrong with it, so that I feel at a loss 'how to prove' it is a real one.' It is the use of the word 'real' in this manner that leads us on to the supposition that 'real' has a single meaning ('the real world' 'material objects'), and that a highly profound and puzzling one. Instead, we should insist always on specifying with what 'real' is being contrasted - not what I shall have to show it is, in order to show it is 'real': and then usually we shall find some specific, less fatal, word, appropriate to the particular case, to substitute for 'real' — Austin

The problem is in the wording of the question.

Wayfarer

The wile of the metaphysician consists in asking 'Is it a real table?' (a kind of object which has no obvious way of being phoney) and not specifying or limiting what may be wrong with it, so that I feel at a loss 'how to prove' it is a real one. — Austin

Bearing in mind, 'table' in this case is a stand-in for 'the object' or any object whatever. And the origin of the question was, how we know that an object really is what it seems to be? You might excavate an object from an archeological dig, without really being able to tell what it is, but then find other evidence supporting the fact that it was used as a table, so, really was a table. So Austin here is just taking bad textbook examples ('take any object') as the basis for a caricature. That's why it's a badly-worded question.

NOS4A2

It’s an adjective.

Banno

↪Wayfarer

If you are saying that it depends on context then you are agreeing with Austin. And if you are not, then you are still trading on the ambiguity.

Clarifying the contrast isn't a way of dodging the philosophical question, it’s a way of dissolving a pseudo-question. Austin isn’t denying that there are meaningful inquiries about what things are or how we know them—he’s just insisting those questions stop pretending to be about some singular metaphysical “realness.”

T Clark

Besides that, this is not a particularly useful original post. — Wayfarer

I disagree.

Tom Storm

So, what is real? How do we know what is real? — Truth Seeker

You forgot scientism.

Theism – A personal God created and oversees the universe. — Truth Seeker

Not all theisms seem to accept a personal god.

From my perspective, none of the above really matters. I'm happy to drift on experience, not abstractions. I doubt that humans can truly uncover what is "real," since the very word is a construct, an umbrella term covering a multitude of possibilities, as you've shown.

Perhaps my perspective is closer to pragmatism. Which is sidestepping the matter.

At any rate, chasing after "reality" has become a kind of surrogate for God: an ultimate reference point that people invoke to ground meaning, truth, or authority. But just like the divine, it's elusive, shaped more by our frameworks and desires than by any stable essence. You can devote your entire life to chasing what's "real" and get precisely nowhere, and even forget what's actually important.

You can call yourself an idealist, a nondualist, or a psychophysical parallelist, but the moment anyone walks out the door, they're generally a realist and behave pretty much the same as everyone else.

Truth Seeker

↪Tom Storm

You are right, Tom. Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts.

Truth Seeker

↪Wayfarer

Just because one can't falsify a possibility, e.g. solipsism, it doesn't make it true.

↪Banno

And the origin of the question was, how we know that an object really is what it seems to be? — Wayfarer

I read Wayfarer as giving a context, as you suggest: In his formulation, "real" is stipulated to mean "as opposed to illusory or misleading". But I think he's doing a little more than that, as well. His stipulation is meant to appeal to an originating situation in which the question first came up. His stipulation for "real" isn't arbitrary -- in a way, it's ameliorative, in that he's suggesting we ought to adopt it as being philosophically clear and useful.

But even if I'm right -- and I hope Wayfarer will tell us -- the fact remains that "real" does need a context of use in order for it to have any meaning at all. It doesn't identify a metaphysical feature all by itself.

DifferentiatingEgg

Consider this: even dream experience is "real" enough to impart knowledge to the dreamer.

Wayfarer

I read Wayfarer as giving a context, as you suggest: In his formulation, "real" is stipulated to mean "as opposed to illusory or misleading". But I think he's doing a little more than that, as well. His stipulation is meant to appeal to an originating situation in which the question first came up. His stipulation for "real" isn't arbitrary -- in a way, it's ameliorative, in that he's suggesting we ought to adopt it as being philosophically clear and useful. — J

I wouldn't have put it like that, but it is close to what I mean. I find the Greek origins of metaphysics quite intelligible (although not entirely). I agree that in the subsequent centuries, it became ossified and dogmatised and often meaningless. But I don't agree with the predominant view amongst analytic philosophers and positivists that metaphysics is a subject empty of meaning. That itself becomes poor metaphysics.

So allusions to chairs or the proverbial 'apple' or 'tree' as possessed of an indubitable reality, such that only a 'metaphysician' (is there such an occupation?) would call their existence into question, is what I said - a bad textbook example, drawn from centuries of pedagogy, 'metaphysicians will cast doubt on things that all of us know are quite real'. It is true that metaphysics calls into question what we assume about the nature of the real but it does so in quite a disciplined and meaningful way, when in the hands of contemporary Aristotelian philosophy, for example.

Banno

↪Wayfarer

,

↪J

What exactly is the phenomenon that metaphysics is addressing? If it’s something like the surprise that there is something rather than nothing, why should we treat that surprise as indicating a real problem? Isn't it just a psychological reaction, not an ontological puzzle? Why assume there’s a “why” here at all?

Perhaps the very urge to ask “why is there something rather than nothing?” is a kind of metaphysical craving that misunderstands the role of explanation. Explanations work within the world—given that things exist, why does this or that happen?—but they break down when we try to apply them to existence as such. The impulse isn't deep; it’s a confusion of category.

Janus

The impulse isn't deep; it’s a confusion of category. — Banno

It seems to be a deeply imbedded psychological impulse in some. Metaphysicians, to quote Nietzsche: "They muddy the waters to make them seem deep".

Tom Storm

↪Banno

I've often thought that some personalities are drawn to narratives of enchantment, while others are not. Those who are see in metaphysics a realm of possibilities, alternative ways of being that imaginatively transcend the immediate and the empirical.

Banno

↪Janus

,

↪Tom Storm

;

Let's not deny that it’s natural to be struck by the fact that there is something rather than nothing—or to want an explanation. Instead we should distinguish between the desire for a reason and the legitimacy of any particular answer. Our concern is for when that desire underwrites metaphysical commitments without sufficient warrant—when “I can’t imagine it being otherwise” becomes “this must be how it is.”

And my suspicion is that this is an approach common to Aristotle, and many of our friends hereabouts, including @Wayfarer.

Janus

I've often thought that some personalities are drawn to narratives of enchantment — Tom Storm

I'm attracted to narratives of enchantment, science being in my view the most potent narrative of enchantment there is. So, I don't see as science disenchants the world. I also like the old magical narratives of enchantment, but I no longer take them to be anything more than enjoyable fantasies.

I believe the real reason behind the claim that science disenchants the world is that it seems to foreclose on the idea of any kind of afterlife. People say science is dehumanizing and I can only think that the dispelling of the fantasy of an afterlife must be what they mean.

To be sure some technologies can be dehumanizing in real ways and the consumer culture our contemporary world so depends on can be too, but those are not inevitable outcomes of science.

↪Banno

Yes, the "I can't imagine it being otherwise, therefore that's the way it must be" is indeed a powerfully seductive thought for some.

Wayfarer

↪Banno

But in so doing, I'm only appealing to what was universally considered to be the substance of philosophy, up until the advent of the modern period. And also while fully conscious that some aspects of Aristotle are outmoded, superseded and not at all commensurable with today's science. But not all of them. I say that fully acknowledging my own limited education in the classical texts, but I still think there are elements that remain relevant. (I stumbled upon a 'bibliography of contemporary hylomorphism' (.pdf) Can't say I know much of what's on it, but it's describing a subject far from a dead philosophy.)

But there are aspects of Aristotelianism, or Platonism construed more broadly, that I don't believe are superseded - mostly just rejected, neglected and forgotten. As a consequence, I don't think the meaning of the Platonic forms (or their interpretation by Aristotle) are at all likely to be understood in this milieu.

For instance, this abstract of one of the entries in the above:

Barnes, Gordon P. “The Paradoxes of Hylomorphism.” Review of Metaphysics 56.3 (2003): 501–523.
Identifies a paradox at the heart of several recent critiques of hylomorphism. The paradox is that there are compelling reasons to think that the distinction between form and matter is mind-independent and real, and there are also compelling reasons to think that the distinction is mind-dependent and one of mere reason.

Who says reason is 'mere'? :chin: But regardless, directly relevant to many of the debates I'm having hereabouts.

Banno

↪Wayfarer

See how those arguments presume hylomorphism? That the right kind of explanation is one that makes essential-formal distinctions.

But why should we presume that there is such a thing as the form of the table—that what something really is must be explained in terms of its purpose or essence? Isn't that just importing a metaphysical picture shaped by our cognitive preferences, not by necessity?

As I said earlier, the theory of forms is an application of a mistaken theory of reference. That theory holds that names refer to things, and that therefore, if there is a name, then there must be a thing to which it refers; So there must be a thing to which universals and such refer - the forms. Alternatively, we might understand "triangularity" as a way of grouping some objects; as something we do, and without supposing the existence of a mystic form. Your reply was that "Words can only be general because they denote universals." This repeats the referential theory that is being critiqued, rather than responds to it.

The simplest way to understand universals is not as the names of etherial forms, but as a way we talk about the things around us.

And yes, that's an oversimplified version of the theory of forms, there are better ways to understand them; but all rely on reification and none are as clear as the treating them as word use.

There discussions amongst Aristotelians are irrelevant if Aristotelianism is misguided.

Wayfarer

But why should we presume that there is such a thing as the form of the table—that what something really is must be explained in terms of its purpose or essence? Isn't that just importing a metaphysical picture shaped by our cognitive preferences, not by necessity? — Banno

But our umwelt is also shaped by our cognitive faculties (which are not preferences, by the way. We don't get to choose them.)

There discussions amongst Aristotelians are irrelevant if Aristotelianism is misguided. — Banno

Which you will always say, and I will always dispute, so let's leave it there.

Banno

↪Wayfarer

That’s just taking a way of talking and mistaking it for a structure in things.

We shouldn’t take the distinctions we make—like form and matter—as marking structures in reality. That’s just grammar projected outward.

The supposed problem in the OP only arise when we mistake the workings of language for how the world is. We ask what makes a thing what it is, then imagine there must be something—a form—that answers the question. But the need for that answer was created by the way we framed the question.

Instead of asking what makes a table, a table, we might just recognise that treating things as tables is an activity in which we habitually engage. Use, not meaning.

We can leave it there, since it'a a point of aporia between us.

More interesting might be the scientistic answer, that what is real is atoms and molecules and so forth - at the least we can agree that this is in error.

Banno

↪Truth Seeker

We just engage in certain activities and make distinctions that help us navigate the world. The need for an answer to “What is real?” arises only when we confuse our linguistic habits with the nature of the world.

Wayfarer

↪Banno

Or when we consider philosophical questions.

Banno

Or when we consider philosophical questions... — Wayfarer

...badly... :wink:

T Clark

Let's not deny that it’s natural to be struck by the fact that there is something rather than nothing—or to want an explanation. Instead we should distinguish between the desire for a reason and the legitimacy of any particular answer. Our concern is for when that desire underwrites metaphysical commitments without sufficient warrant—when “I can’t imagine it being otherwise” becomes “this must be how it is.” — Banno

I like this, but it raises the question of what “sufficient warrant” means. The answer I’ve always given is that usefulness is the measure of a metaphysical position. I think you probably mean something different.

Banno

↪T Clark

My wording could have been better. There's a logical gap between “I can’t imagine it being otherwise” and “this must be how it is” that's found in transcendental arguments of all sorts.

It's a transcendental argument becasue it goes: things are thus-and-so; the only way (“I can’t imagine it being otherwise") they can be thus-and-so is if forms are real. Hence, forms are real. The minor premise is the problem - how you can be sure it's the only way?

But there is also a different criticism here, the the transcendental argument also presumes hylomorphism in the major premise - the "Things are thus and so" just is the presumption that hylomorphism is correct.

So the "lack of sufficient warrant" just is that presumption.

(That's probably not very clear - but it's not so much about pragmatism as logical structure...)

Couple of things:

What exactly is the phenomenon that metaphysics is addressing? If it’s something like the surprise that there is something rather than nothing, why should we treat that surprise as indicating a real problem? — Banno

Honestly, that never occurred to me as a core problem in metaphysics. In any case, it doesn't surprise me at all. No, I think metaphysics wants to know about structure -- about how the world (including us) hangs together, what grounds what, and what can and can't be known about it. Something like that . . .

I wonder if the more-or-less-Wittgensteinian dismissal of metaphysical problems is trying to capture what we so often hear from non-philosophers: "You make problems, or try to, where there aren't any. What exactly is unclear or confusing about our conceptions of the world? How does any of this affect our daily lives? Philosophy should just leave the world, and life, alone!" And from this we would get "Philosophy leaves everything as it is."

There's a logical gap between “I can’t imagine it being otherwise” and “this must be how it is” that's found in transcendental arguments of all sorts.

It's a transcendental argument because it goes: things are thus-and-so; the only way (“I can’t imagine it being otherwise") they can be thus-and-so is if forms are real. Hence, forms are real. The minor premise is the problem - how you can be sure it's the only way? — Banno

This is interesting. What happens when we apply it, with some tinkering, to logical form? (in the noncontroversial, not Platonic, sense) "Modus ponens is 'how it is'; the only way this can be 'how it is' is if logical forms are necessarily valid. Hence, logical forms are necessarily valid." Is the minor premise still a problem? One wants to reply, "Yes, I am sure it's the only way. It's not simply that I can't imagine how modus ponens (given the usual stipulations) could be invalid, it's that such a thing would be like imagining a square circle." Notice that this can be said without invoking what's real and what isn't.

What is real? How do we know what is real?

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