Reality and apples

We use to thing about reality as all that is true, anything perceptible by our senses instead of the imaginary. Ideas - some would ask - are real? Others, more pessimistic (“realistic”) will say reality is that crap only crazy or drunk people can run away from. We say a plastic (ornamental) apple is “obviously not genuine” It is not a true apple. But the plastic apple is not unreal: the plastic with an apple shape itself is real. What I’m trying to illustrate is how our perception of reality is too determined by the relation between a phenomena (apple) and its name/concept (apple: the sweet fruit that grows in a tree... ) In other words, anything is real if coincides whit the label and description we assigned to it.

Now then, the apple issue gets complicated: That apple I have written about, neither you and me have seen it or touch it. A fruit called apple is real, a piece of plastic is real. That apple from the last paragraph was not vegetal nor... plastic; it was a “lets suppose/imagine” apple. Our apple... is real?

When we assume that something is only in our imagination, we deny it at once as real as we oppose it to the imaginary, to fiction. And of course, since the poor apple did not came to our brain from any of our senses then it’s as unreal as the Guachalaca monster, huh? However, it is possible to suggest that the imaginary is also real. In first place because we all interact with ideas as much as with objects. What kind of ideas?

• Ideas concerning objects
• Ideas concerning ideas

Ideas themselves are subordinated to the notion of false and true. In example, our imaginary apple, being an actual “organic" fruit or an apple shaped fruit, would be in any case a true idea provided we are agree there are apples and there’s apple shaped plastic pieces. But it’s false if we would be talking about something like a blue apple fruit with gold seeds: that is against our concept of a fruit called apple.

A blue apple with gold seeds! Not a big deal. But, what about obsessions, complexes, lack of self-esteem? There’s no other place in which “reality of ideas” can be more important than our own mental health, and so a mental perturbation from familiar or labor origin cannot find a real physiological solution (like medicines or brain surgery) as we are dealing with a conflict of ideas and not brain cramps (on the other hand, a little tumor somewhere can be the real inspiration for a psicho killer: you need to distinguish, huh?)

OK, objects themselves are real and ideas themselves are real. What about existence without witnesses: unknown objects and ideas? That stuff nobody’s ever imagined is real?

If we say “yeah, they’re real because we’ve named them (“that stuff”) and at least they’re an imaginary something” then we’re just making a mere... ontological? statement; that is to say, since we’ve stated its existence we cannot deny them any longer (as anything can not “not to be”) But “that stuff” has not any referent in the world of objects (sensible phenomena) nor in the world of ideas (imagined phenomena) Therefore, they exist but they are not real.

Fine, reality is everything that is perceptible and/or conceivable. Bye! Well, NO! Just keep reading:

In fact, in order to be real, what is to be perceived must be conceived. Lets start from the fact reality is itself an idea. To conceive something, understood this as “associating a phenomena (idea or object) to another idea”, a consciousness is needed, an “I” Only a being capable of bound itself from external stimuli can conceive; in other words, a being capable of differentiate its own existence in opposition to all the things outside its body: being able to self perception. If a being lacks this capacity all of its perceptions will be as hard to grasp as an stream.

In absence of conscious beings (humans, in this planet case) the other beings would interact with objects in a rather mechanical way and... who would care? Which makes us ask ourselves: why on earth are consciousness and reality so necessary?

The situation is this: there’s a wholeness (an everything, an absolute entity) If it is determined as “something specific” it would be suggested that there are some other else - meaning that is not so “total” as it was supposed to be - which is unacceptable. But it hast to be identified in any way, to be apprehended, as it is something. How is this solved? better: how is this solved for all of us? Well, through a little trick called “pretending not to be” In this way the wholeness tears itself in innumerable phenomena; something remarkable yet insufficient at that point: a successful “impostor” must be steady himself as the other person, the most he does the better. So this is what happens with conscious beings: we got attached to our identity, to our sensations, whereupon we barely notice we all are the same one thing. Reality is therefore a result of interactions between this consciousness and the other phenomena.

Oct. 25, 2005 - El jardín lúgubre