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.  
Labels:

Comments

  1. mandakolathurJanuary 31, 2013 at 8:50 PM

    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. UnknownFebruary 1, 2013 at 3:12 PM

    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. Woman'n'BeyondFebruary 1, 2013 at 4:06 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 1, 2013 at 8:16 PM

      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. The MukhtiarsFebruary 1, 2013 at 4:41 PM

    quite interesting mate

    ReplyDelete
  5. shajanmFebruary 1, 2013 at 5:16 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 1, 2013 at 8:20 PM

      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
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
17 comments
Read more

The Blind Lady’s Descendants

Book Review Title: The Blind Lady’s Descendants Author: Anees Salim Publisher: Penguin India 2015 Pages: 301 Price: Rs 399 A metaphorical blindness is part of most people’s lives.  We fail to see many things and hence live partial lives.  We make our lives as well as those of others miserable with our blindness.  Anees Salim’s novel which won the Raymond & Crossword award for fiction in 2014 explores the role played by blindness in the lives of a few individuals most of whom belong to the family of Hamsa and Asma.  The couple are not on talking terms for “eighteen years,” according to the mother.  When Amar, the youngest son and narrator of the novel, points out that he is only sixteen, Asma reduces it to fifteen and then to ten years when Amar refers to the child that was born a few years after him though it did not survive.  Dark humour spills out of every page of the book.  For example: How reckless Akmal was! ...
5 comments
Read more

Ram, Anandhi, and Co

Book Review Title: Ram C/o Anandhi Author: Akhil P Dharmajan Translator: Haritha C K Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2025 Pages: 303 T he author tells us in his prefatory note that “this (is) a cinematic novel.” Don’t read it as literary work but imagine it as a movie. That is exactly how this novel feels like: an action-packed thriller. The story revolves around Ram, a young man who lands in Chennai for joining a diploma course in film making, and Anandhi, receptionist of Ram’s college. Then there are their friends: Vetri and his half-sister Reshma, and Malli who is a transgender. An old woman, who is called Paatti (grandmother) by everyone and is the owner of the house where three of the characters live, has an enviably thrilling role in the plot.   In one of the first chapters, Ram and Anandhi lock horns over a trifle. That leads to some farcical action which agitates Paatti’s bees which in turn fly around stinging everyone. Malli, the aruvani (transgender), s...
8 comments
Read more

A Curious Case of Food

From CNN  whose headline is:  Holy cow! India is the world's largest beef exporter The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is perhaps the only novel I’ve read in which food plays a significant, though not central, role, particularly in deepening the reader’s understanding of Christopher Boone’s character. Christopher, the protagonist, is a 15-year-old autistic boy. [For my earlier posts on the novel, click here .] First of all, food is a symbol of order and control in the novel. Christopher’s relationship with food is governed by strict rules and routines. He likes certain foods and detests a few others. “I do not like yellow things or brown things and I do not eat yellow or brown things,” he tells us innocently. He has made up some of these likes and dislikes in order to bring some sort of order and predictability in a world that is very confusing for him. The boy’s food preferences are tied to his emotional state. If he is served a breakfast o...
6 comments
Read more