Is It All In Your Head?

Philosophers throughout the ages have pondered the nature of reality. There is a duality to reality that to this day remains unresolved. There is subjective reality, which is the universe as each individual perceives it in his or her own mind. There is objective reality, which is the universe as it really is outside any perception by an individual. The problem is, no matter how hard we try to get out of our own heads, we cannot. We all see things from our own perspective. That is the reason that on certain subjects, such as the existence of God, people will never agree. For an atheist, such as myself, the idea of God seems simply absurd; the faithful, however, see a universe which cannot exist without a diety. For the same reason conservatives and liberals disagree so strongly. Their world views are "worlds" apart.

For most of us in our every day life, subjective and objective reality are essentially the same thing. We automatically assume what we ourselves view is what is real. We only run into trouble when we come in contact with someone who views reality differently from ourselves. But how do we know what we think is real, is what is actually out there? For example, some people have hallucinations and delusions. But from their point of view, the universe they inhabit is as real as the one we "sane" people inhabit.

There is also the case of dreams. While we are dreaming, our dreams, no matter how absurd, seem real. It is only after we are awake that we realize they are fantasies. But are they? Is it possible that the waking world is the fantasy and our dreams the reality?

That an objective universe exists is one of the basic assumptions of both science and religion. Nonetheless, it remains simply an assumption. There is not or ever can be any positive proof of this. For more definitive discussion of these concepts, read the writings of the eighteenth century philosophers David Hume and Bishop Berkley.

The ideas I've put forth are sometimes used by science fiction and fantasy authors. Two novels that I've enjoyed much which have a premise of the unreality of the objective universe are Ubik by Philip Dick and The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LeGuin. In Ubik strange events occur to the protagonist until he finally realizes that he is really dead and his dying brain are giving him illusions. In The Lathe of Heaven, the protagonists dreams become reality.