Philosophical Reality
A twist to the story of reality
is how the modern scientific realization of the nature of
reality as a representation of our sensory inputs was known
for thousands of years in philosophy and spirituality. The
suspicion, or the conviction, that reality is not all that
real existed in different branches of philosophy, both
Western and Eastern. The Indian and the Zen spiritual lines
of philosophy view our senses and mind as actual
impediments to an intuitive understanding of the absolute
reality behind our experiences. Western philosophy, on the
other hand, treats the nature of reality and knowledge as
the formal lines of metaphysics and epistemology.
Western philosophy also provides the basis of scientific
realism in modern physics.
Pillars of Reality
Discussing the nature of reality has the curious effect of
casting doubt on its realness.
With that ulterior motive, let's look at the different
pillars on which reality rests. Our senses provide the
inputs to the brain, which creates a cognitive model that
we think of as reality. The cognitive model heavily depends
on the other "software" running on the brain, namely
consciousness, language and memory. In the absence of
consciousness, reality has little significance. Similarly,
if the brain does not have a language apparatus to process
thoughts, reality cannot be created. Memory is the last
essential support to our sense of reality. What does it
mean to say something happened if nobody can remember it?
God
Spirituality also has a neurological basis. Some
neuroscientists claim that the faith in God and religion is
concentrated in a specific part of the brain; so much so
that the faith can be surgically removed! If God lives in a
reality that is created in the brain, it is probably not
surprising that He can be cut out from the brain. Then
again, if the whole reality is in the brain, we may be
looking at the wrong places to find a God. There are good
scientific reasons for the existence of God from the points
of view of neuroscience and evolutionary biology.
Furthermore, the concept of God is not in conflict with
physics, for there is plenty of room outside the bounds of
our knowledge and reality for a plausible God.
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