What is your criteria for deciding whether something is "real" or not?

Question

Straight up.

Answer 1

The test for reality is that if you kick it or try to affect it in some direct way that you feel the resistance that it is giving.

So like me on the internet, every time my line goes dead after I key in an answer, then I know that I have a problem!

Answer 2

There is an old philosophical question concerning whether you are able to prove the existence of a world outside of your own thoughts.  Is reality all in your mind or is it something that exists outside of our perspective?  In essence, if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a noise?

There is no ultimate "proof" of reality just as there is no ultimate "proof" of God.  If you accept it and if you believe it, you can live your life as if it is true.  Most people would say that accepting that there is a "true" external world is necessary to live within the world.  Their proofs are in things like physics, engineering, mathematics, or logic.  They quote things such as Occam's Razor to provide stregnth to their arguments.  But, in the end, it is all just window dressing on their beliefs.

All that we can know as true is what is in our minds or our thoughts or our souls.  And, given that all we know as true comes from within, we are able to create any "real" thing that we are able to concieve.  What is real for you and what is real for me may be different.

For me, reality is a flexible and ever changing part of my experience.  Most people when they were young believed in Santa, and they stop believing when they are old.  Does that mean that Santa no longer exists for the children who believe?  Does that mean that Santa exists whether you believe or not?  As our belief systems change, our perceptions change, and our realities change.  If I believe that it is real, it is real to me.  Thanks for the question!

Answer 3

if its image can be formed on a screen!

And it is inverted!

Answer 4

Reality seems to be whatever you find to be real... what affects you to the core.

You can deem anything as 'unreal'. Have you ever had an existential crisis? Nothing matters to you at all and nothing seems real. This is also the case for someone who is experiencing disassociation.

Reality is a state of mind. You have to choose what is real to YOU.

Answer 5

If more than one sense detects it, no matter how unusual, there is something worth investigating.

Answer 6

Evidence and plausibility take precedence for me.  Then it comes to a humble, tempered examination of personal experience.

Answer 7

If I dream of something, that is real.

If someone says they knew before it happened, that is real.

If a group of scientists spend years studying something using what they call "scientific method" and idiot "logic" stuff, that's just fake.

Answer 8

I use my intuitive sense or my guardian angel to help me out. At this point im working on leaving the state of mind that society has dragged on us of "seeing is believing"  I believe in a lot of things that many people rule out.

                      Love Light and Peace:)

Answer 9

If there is solid physical evidence, and more than one person saw it in person.  Pictures and videos can be "made up."  Than I have to see it myself, in person.

Answer 10

Okay, getting past all the new age answers about 'you make your own reality' since that is a completely useless answer...

Reality is that which can be sensed and correlated empirically.  Just because you can sense it yourself doesn't make it real.  Take any reasonably potent psychedelic drug and you will sense many things that aren't there.  And just because other people sense the same thing doesn't make it real either, as groups of people on drugs often sense the same thing.  The only way something can be meaningfully said to be real is if you can objectively and repeatedly make measurements of it.

Answer 11

The universe has a set of rules.I don't understand them all or know how they work.I do know anything not conforming to those rules is not"real".

Answer 12

Reality is an illusion or type of illusion.  Dreams are another illusion.  Reality is a word to describe the kind of illusion.  Everything happens in our head.  Our thoughts make everything feel real.

If we think of ourselves as being inside a life simulator looking out, we control what we do, but the screen in front of us is only played out outside of us as an illusion looking real.

Ok, so I view the world differently, that's why I write sci-fi movies. lol

Answer 13

The length of time that I see something that apparently is not of this dimension. If it is just a blip from the corner of my eye, I am curious, but I don't pay too much attention.

If suddenly the room smells like a food, or cigarette smoke without any reason, then I think I might be tuned into another dimension.

Same thing goes if I feel anything with no evidence based on sight (someone touching me or sitting on the bed).