What is reality?

[SoMoney]

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I think you have to start asking what is it that you want "reality" to do for you. If I say "yes, reality exists" or "no, reality doesn't exist." what's the difference? What have you gained or lost in either case?

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Good question. Maybe meaning?

[Metric]

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I think the only problem I have with this is that information is perceived via our senses and then interpreted via our minds. How do we know the information we interpret mirrors reality.

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You don't. If you're insane and constantly hallucinate, you probably live an unfortunate reality with a diminished ability to access the information the rest of us perceive as "real" -- however, if your hallucinations happen to be completely consistent, your reality is qualitatively no different from the rest of ours. It would simply be the case that your mental reality (the information built and processed by your brain) is insulated from the information that the rest of us have free and fairly reliable access to.

[Magic_Man]

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Brain in a vat FTW

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Reality APPEARS real, and that's all that matters. FTW.

[ChrisV]

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If reality cannot be known without arbitrary assumptions then what is the point of discussing it? What then is the purpose of this forum?

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We only really need one metaphysical assumption before we can have useful discussion about reality, and that is that there exists an objective material world. This assumption proceeds basically through Ockham's Razor - it is very simple, and the alternative explanations of why our perceptions are similar are very complicated.

After that, even though reality can't be directly known, it can be modelled accurately. That's the job of science, or natural philosophy as it was once known.

There are other areas of philosophy that don't require us to come to grips with reality before we discuss them. Examples are ethics, aesthetics, epistemology.

[guesswest]

The argument goes something like: a necessary condition of existence is impacting environment. If we are in some kind of matrix/BIAV type scenario, either the external force in question does have an impact, thus we can theoretically know it. Or it doesn't, in which case it definitionally does not exist.

[DougShrapnel]

All we can know is our subjective reality. I assume there is an objective reality out there, but I haven't the foggyist. It could very well be that reality is entirely subjective, but we would never be able to know that either, so it really doesn't matter. We can know all sorts of things about our subjective view of reality, beyond that nothing. Knowing subjectively isn't all that bad, what is wrong with knowing subjectively, why all the hubub about certainty? Must be a religious thing, having to know absolutes,,,.

[vhawk01]

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All we can know is our subjective reality. I assume there is an objective reality out there, but I haven't the foggyist. It could very well be that reality is entirely subjective, but we would never be able to know that either, so it really doesn't matter. We can know all sorts of things about our subjective view of reality, beyond that nothing. Knowing subjectively isn't all that bad, what is wrong with knowing subjectively, why all the hubub about certainty? Must be a religious thing, having to know absolutes,,,.

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Right, there doesn't HAVE to be an objective reality, but we do have to assume some objective reality in order to do certain things, even if we accept that this 'reality' is simply a model or a contrivance.