Skip to main content

What is Real?




An individual’s behaviour (“strategic conduct,” to be more precise, as phrased by Anthony Giddens, sociologist) is based largely on how s/he interprets his/her environment, or the reality around.  But what is reality?

How real is my laptop?  The ancient Greek philosopher (to start with our ancestral wisdom) Plato would say that the idea of the laptop is more real and this particular laptop. Ideas are more real for Plato than particular concrete things.

Modern science will tell me about the various components that make up my laptop which in turn are made up of atoms which consist of subatomic particles which are made up of more fundamental particles!  Which among all these is real?

This post is a sort of continuation of my previous one titled Truth is Beauty.  I think we cannot speak of truth unless we tackle the issue of reality.

People see reality differently.  Hence truth too varies according to people.  For most people the scientific world of atoms and subatomic particles will make little sense, although they may be making use of things invented or manufactured putting the scientific truths to practical use.  The whole science of electronics and information technology mean little to me and I understand little of it though I can make efficient and effective use of my laptop.  My laptop is real to me in a way significantly different from how it is to the mechanic who repairs it when it fails to function properly.  The laptop is almost a meaningless reality for an illiterate labourer in the granite quarries off my village.

I know I’m mixing up reality, truth and meaning.  They are, in fact, interrelated.  Cognitive scientists today argue that the human mind is embodied.  That is, human reason does not transcend the body.  Human reason is not as abstract as Plato would have us believe.  It is shaped “crucially by our physical nature and our bodily experience,” (Fritjof Capra). 

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, eminent cognitive linguists, argue that most of our thought is unconscious, and the argument is backed by scientific researches.  Most of our thinking operates at a level that is inaccessible to ordinary conscious awareness.  “This ‘cognitive unconscious’ includes not only our automatic cognitive operations, but also our tacit knowledge and beliefs,” (Capra).  Even without our awareness, this cognitive unconscious shapes our tacit knowledge and beliefs. 

That’s why reality appears differently to different people.  That’s why truth is not singular.  That’s why there are so many opinions on the same issue and occasionally violent conflicts too.

It is facile to insist that the reality shown by scientific equipments like the electron microscope is the real reality.  Real for whom?  Real for what purposes?

It is here the arts make their entry.  Literature, painting, music, etc express the non-scientific truth of certain reality in their own way.  When I assert the epistemological value of these handmaidens of human quest for the truth, I’m not devaluing science.  I’m merely stating that these too are as legitimate tools as science in the human pursuit of truth.  This is not condescension.  Nor is it schadenfreude.  And I’m aware enough of the limits and limitations of each of these as a method of inquiry into truth; hence not exultant about any of them.  

Comments

  1. That is perfectly fine Matheikal, but somehow I cannot accept statements of the kind, "Science cannot explain this." This has been done enough number of times in the course of history, and had to be withdrawn many a time, whatever "to explain" may mean. True, there are some statements of this kind that have carried their credibility thus far. But ... what tomorrow brings is anyone's guess.

    I cannot even accept that for so and so, truth is not philosophical or scientific understanding. That appears to me to be limiting oneself in the quest for truth. I just need some one, anyone, to tell me that trying to understand anything logically brings on a negative premium and why this happens.

    Reality for one is never the reality for another. OK. Moreover, such a reality cannot jump from one mind to another. Then, what exactly can be explained? It is not that I am looking at the utility value of a piece of artistic work. All I am asking is whether any two people can ever agree at all?

    Take the case of the photograph Piss Christ by Anders Serrano. I do not think the reality of this photograph will be the same for ANY two people! If Shakespeare has so many people interpreting him, does that not mean that his reality, as perceived by him, has mutated vigorously as it jumped from him to the others? This is perfectly fine. I have no problem. I do not shy away from interpreting any photo, any piece of writing, but I am capable of it only at the lowest level (I am metaphor-challenged, as you know). If you remember one Rajarumugam - I burnt my fingers repeatedly trying to interpret what he had written, the photographs he had posted. But, that never deterred me, because I understood that the reality he depicted is subjective. But, I know my limitations enough not to call literature a sour grape. This accommodation I do not see elsewhere.

    No scientist worth his salt will claim that what the microscope, even of the electron microscope kind, shows is reality. This was an unnecessary straw man.

    By the way, the "blue" in the blue sky you see, is it the same that someone else standing beside you sees? This is how subjective reality can be explained in simple terms. If you want to make it less subjective (remember, not objective), it can be said as EM waves of a specific frequency. That is it.

    RE

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey guys,
    Wanted to share some stuff with you. I used Vistaprint for some embroidered t-shirts with logo. Damn impressed. Check it out if you can.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am intrigues by both you article and Mandakolathur's reply. Both are talking about two side of coin. Reality, truth is indeed subjective. Even the blue thing appears 'blue' because it has absorbed every other colour but 'rejected' blue and sent it back. The blue thing is actually every colour but blue.

    This debate actually will always remain open ended, always throwing more questions than answers but it is worth the quest.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mandakolathur (Raghuram) and I love to debate on this issue and we have done it quite many times in different ways in the past. We have not succeeded in convincing each other of our views. So I've decided to call off the debate :)

      However, I stick to my guns. Reality, truth is highly subjective; even you agree on that.

      Delete
  4. What exactly is Real? That is THE question Matheikal. I think the answer 'Reality is what you can measure or at least express using a mathematical model' has a very compelling logic. If two intelligent people cannot agree on something how could it be called 'Real'?

    But this answer is wrong. I agree this is just my subjective feeling and need not mean anything to a skeptic. I may be just hallucinating!

    There has to be a way to prove the reality of the 'subjective', and there is a way. Stay with the skeptic and go on to ask what exactly is 'objectivity'? How come there is objectivity in the world? All our experiences are subjective and how do we construct this objective picture that appears so solid and alluring?

    -shajan

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Because, Shajan, I think, the objective picture runs the world of technology, science, materialism... Secondly, rationality can satisfy the mind while the irrationality of subjectivity is quite certain to unsettle minds that demand perfection or at least systemic order.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...

Taliban and India

Illustration by Copilot Designer Two things happened on 14 Oct 2025. One: India rolled out the red carpet for an Afghan delegation led by the Taliban Administration’s Foreign Minister. Two: a young man was forced to wash the feet of a Brahmin and drink that water. This happened in Madhya Pradesh, not too far from where the Taliban leaders were being given regal reception in tune with India’s philosophy of Atithi Devo Bhava (Guest is God). Afghanistan’s Taliban and India’s RSS (which shaped Modi’s thinking) have much in common. The former seeks to build a state based on its interpretation of Islamic law aiming for a society governed by strict religious codes. The RSS promotes Hindutva, the idea of India as primarily a Hindu nation, where Hindu values form the cultural and political foundation. Both fuse religious identity with national identity, marginalising those who don’t fit their vision of the nation. The man who was made to wash a Brahmin’s feet and drink that water in Madh...

Helpless Gods

Illustration by Gemini Six decades ago, Kerala’s beloved poet Vayalar Ramavarma sang about gods that don’t open their eyes, don’t know joy or sorrow, but are mere clay idols. The movie that carried the song was a hit in Kerala in the late 1960s. I was only seven when the movie was released. The impact of the song, like many others composed by the same poet, sank into me a little later as I grew up. Our gods are quite useless; they are little more than narcissists who demand fresh and fragrant flowers only to fling them when they wither. Six decades after Kerala’s poet questioned the potency of gods, the Chief Justice of India had a shoe flung at him by a lawyer for the same thing: questioning the worth of gods. The lawyer was demanding the replacement of a damaged idol of god Vishnu and the Chief Justice wondered why gods couldn’t take care of themselves since they are omnipotent. The lawyer flung his shoe at the Chief Justice to prove his devotion to a god. From Vayalar of 196...