Notes on Reality

Objective reality. There must  exist an external, objective reality; otherwise, our 5 senses would have nothing to detect, to activate them.

It is in fact possible that we have more than 5 senses, but define them differently than the 5 that sense material things. I am not saying that this is so, but it is certainly not impossible that it is so. Someone, I do not know who, at some point in time defined “senses” as relating only to the material universe. While I think it is wonderful to explore the material universe, as through the arts and sciences, I think I will show, there is more to reality than the material universe alone, and that these other aspects become apparent more in the arts than in the sciences.

Personal Reality. This is the result of our mental action on the 5 senses. We exist in, as a part of, a universe that is, in effect, imperceptible to anything without senses.

Proposition 1: We do not know what those senses are, or rather we know of only the 5 that we, as human beings, possess. Therefore: we cannot with an confidence say that we know what, precisely, the universe is or how it would appear to all senses. Also: We cannot know the full extent of who we share this universe with.

Proposition 2: To the extent that we do know any of the nature of the universe and what populates it, we know directly only as individuals.

It follows, therefore: Reality, as we know it, derives from our imagination of what our sensory input represents.

Hence: We each create the perception of our universe as we envision it.

In other words, we each create the reality which we, subjectively, inhabit.

Shared Reality: We do, in fact, however, share the objective reality with numerous personal realities.

Through developing such things as language and music, which are based on our sense of hearing; the graphic and plastic arts based on our sense of sight; gastronomies based on our sense of taste; and so on, we are able to communicate between personal realities, creating a shared reality, or more precisely, many shared realities, which can be both fortunate and unfortunate; fortunate, as is the case in cultural endeavors, and unfortunate as in political, cultural, and religious conflict, & wars.

Or shared personal realities can build on each other of destructively conflict with each other.

Abstract perception. Is the result of extended mental & spiritual action on all the physical & metaphysical realities from which we have have gathered evidence.

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What is reality?

There are 5 ways, or modes, of perceiving reality:

1. First is the presupposed Objective Reality which all the other perceptions act upon; so technically, I suppose, it is NOT a mode of perception, but rather a mode of beingm even though it is absolutely required for the other modes to exist at all.
    

2. Second, is Personal Reality. This is a worldview formed by our 5 (or more?) senses and is the result of our mental action on these senses. It should be noted here that there are two important aspects of personal reality.

   •  First, the act of physically sensing anything only exists for about 1/20th of a second when the sensed data is passed to a neuron in the brain.
     

   • Second, everything else is created by the individual preconceiving it. In other words, it is more properly called “envisioned” or “imagined” as opposed to “sensed”.
     
     

3. Third, Shared Reality is the result of our accumulation of evidence from other (presumed) individuals and their personal realities. When two or more Personal Realities describe a similar feature this builds a shared (or learned) reality, aka "culture" as anthropologists might call it. These can be two things or learned)seen, heard, thought or imagined. If another individual communicates that they have seen, heard, thought or imagined something like what you saw, heard, thought, or imagined, then that has entered two realities and therefore is shared.
   
   This would encompass much of folklore, science, religion, the Fine Arts, etc.
   
   

4. Fourth, Abstract Reality Is the result of extended mental action and projection on our view of the universe, and the evidence gathered from the other realities we have access to, such as when logic projects an unexperienced reality, such as a |point" in geometry, an "instant" in time, and many theological things for which we have not physical evidence. This is the realm of philosophical realities (which includes many things in the realm of theology).

This is the realm of philosophical realities, which includes many things in the realm of philosophy and theology (and which can induce other modes of individual or shared experiences not of the senses). This loops back to sense reality insofar as it is not impossible that we have metaphysical senses not listed among among traditional"five senses".