Monism and pluralism are families of views about the roles of unity and multiplicity in the structure of reality. According to this view, even a complete understanding of physics would not render sciences dedicated to higher levels, such as psychology, obsolete. Non-reductive physicalists hold that everything is ultimately physical while insisting that higher-level psychological facts cannot be reduced to fundamental physics. In this sense, there can be matter without biological life, whereas life is built upon matter and depends on it. Lower levels, by contrast, operate according to more basic mechanisms and are prior to the higher ones.
- According to this view, even a complete understanding of physics would not render sciences dedicated to higher levels, such as psychology, obsolete.
- Non-naturalism, another form of realism, maintains that values differ significantly from empirical properties and belong to another domain of reality.
- These limitations indicate a gap whereby reality is not fully captured and exceeds knowledge.
- Realism is the view that reality does not depend on human knowledge or consciousness and exists apart from them.
- Various historiographical debates address the question of whether a truly objective account of the past is possible.
- Contemporary technology in the form of augmented and virtual reality can inform experience and raises questions about the ontological status of virtual objects.
Discussed in ancient Greek philosophy as the Eleatic principle, it states that to be real is to be able to produce changes and to be affected by them. Criteria of reality are proposed features or standards that distinguish real entities from unreal ones. In this sense, it is the state of being real or what all real entities have in common, separating them from unreal or illusory ones. In a slightly different sense, reality is not the totality itself but an aspect shared by all its constituents. Theories of the nature of reality have been discussed since antiquity and continue to shape contemporary inquiry, with influential early traditions originating in ancient Indian, Chinese, and Greek thought. Contemporary technology in the form of augmented and virtual reality can inform experience and raises questions about the ontological status of virtual objects.
More general constraints arise from limits of human cognitive faculties rather than situation-specific circumstances, such as facts too complex for anyone to conceive. Testimony is a transmission of knowledge from one person to another through communication.k Memory is the capacity to store information from other sources and make it available to cognitive processes when needed. Reason is the ability to draw logical inferences and arrive at truths independent of immediate sensory input. Anti-realism is understood as a view that identifies the meaning of a statement with the evidence that would support it or the conditions under which a person is justified in asserting it.
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The term reality overlaps with various related concepts, such as being, existence, world, actuality, and truth. This view contrasts being real with being fake, like the distinction between a real duck and a fake one used as a decoy. In a broad sense, appearances are not limited to what people perceive but can also include memories, beliefs, and thoughts. Debates between realists and anti-realists span multiple domains, addressing the objective existence of universals, abstract objects, values, and unobservable entities posited by scientific theories. The concept of reality overlaps with notions such as being, existence, world, actuality, and truth.
Levels of reality
- In this sense, there can be matter without biological life, whereas life is built upon matter and depends on it.
- A different view suggests that reality is made up of many worlds that exist in parallel to one another, each representing a distinct way of how things could have been.
- Memory is the capacity to store information from other sources and make it available to cognitive processes when needed.
- Becoming, by contrast, covers change, like when an entity shifts from one state of being to another.
- In China, beginning roughly in the 9th century, Neo-Confucianism maintained that reality has a rational order expressed in the principle Li, which acts as a ground of being.
- The structure of reality concerns the fundamental patterns of being, describing how entities are organized and interact with each other.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) rejected the possibility of objective knowledge of the things in themselves, arguing instead that all experience is shaped by the innate structures of human cognition. Plato (c. 427 – c. 347 BCE) argued for the existence of a realm of eternal forms or ideas in addition to the material world of mutable entities. Skepticism about metaphysics holds that it is not possible to know the fundamental nature of reality, such as claims about categories of being or the existence of universals.
It characterizes realism as the view that the truth or meaning of sentences is determined by external standards or mind-independent reality. A semantic approach to the debate mister golden between realism and anti-realism, proposed by Michael Dummett, argues that the underlying disagreement concerns the meaning of statements rather than the existence of entities. On this view, reality is made up of countless concrete worlds existing in parallel without interacting with one another.
Values
Some outlooks suggest that only the fundamental level is ultimately real, arguing that non-fundamental entities are in some sense eliminable since reality can be described without them. For example, one view suggests that macroscopic objects, such as a chair, depend on the microscopic objects that underlie them, such as elementary particles. The structure of reality concerns the fundamental patterns of being, describing how entities are organized and interact with each other.
The reality–virtuality continuum is a theoretical framework that posits a continuous scale of mixed reality forms. It denies the existence of knowledge in any form or domain, arguing that knowledge is impossible. These limitations indicate a gap whereby reality is not fully captured and exceeds knowledge.
Various criteria for distinguishing real from unreal entities have been proposed, including causal powers, mind-independence, and being non-illusory. It is often contrasted with appearance, opposing what is with what seems to be, although the accuracy and fundamentality of this contrast are disputed.
Levels of reality
Another structural feature concerns the idea that some entities depend on, or are grounded in, other entities. Mereological universalism holds that any collection of entities constitutes a whole, even if the entities are otherwise unrelated. Various theories of the mereological principles underlying composition have been proposed. Various categories of being or constituents of reality are discussed in the academic discourse.
It is often contrasted with essence, which denotes the nature or characteristic features of an entity. A central topic in ontology is the categories of being—fundamental classes that map out a comprehensive inventory of reality. Becoming, by contrast, covers change, like when an entity shifts from one state of being to another.
