### What do we mean when we say "reality"? The word "reality" broadly can be understood in the following two senses: - **Phenomenal reality**. Our experienced world, subjective awareness of having a world. - **Phenomena-constraining reality**. Our phenomenal reality is constrained by something - we can't arbitrarily choose any phenomenal reality (except in dreams). We know our phenomenal reality is constrained by this reality because: a) when our phenomenal reality is in conflict with phenomena-constraining reality, the latter trumps the former (i.e. if we "see" a path where there is a cliff, we die); b) when we're dreaming (hence having a different phenomenal reality), the phenomena-constraining reality doesn't disappear. It's still there and we can verify it by simply waking up at any point we choose to. We can model these two senses of reality as an interaction. Phenomenal reality <--> Phenomena-constraining reality ### What do we mean by "nature of reality"? Note that our access to phenomena-constraining reality is _only_ via phenomenal reality. We observe data and patterns in our phenomenal reality and from that we try to _infer_ the process behind phenomena-constraining reality. This process of inference can lead to mystical beings such as God or simple automatic rules such as Newton's three laws of motion. One of the basic assumptions in Science is that the phenomena-constraining reality is fully describable by "automatic" rules which don't change. The physical laws such as those in quantum field theory effectively describe the entire phenomena-constraining reality as a clockwork. Of course, current conception of Science cannot describe how these rules came to be in place. Another shortcoming of current attempts to describe the "nature of reality" is that we implicitly assume there's one true "nature". That is, everything we ultimately observe in our phenomenal reality is ultimately constrained by ramifications of one rule (which we currently don't know yet, but attempts at the "theory of everything" is underway). However, instead of finding one ultimate rule, what we've found is different rules describing different chunks of our phenomenal reality at different degrees. This shouldn't be surprising because the same patterns can be generated via infinite number of rules. For example, seeing Sun rotate around Earth can happen if sun rotated around Earth or Earth rotated around Sun or a magical angel made us hallucinate precisely this. Since all we have access to is phenomenal reality, the best we can hope for is doing good detective work and find out as many clues as possible to disambiguate between multiple competing explanations for what we observe. But as repeated revolutions in science has shown, mistaking our conclusions as the "true" nature of reality would be a naive. There are infinite number of possible 2D projections of a 3D objects. All of those 2D projections are equally true, however none of of them can claim to be the only truth (in the sense of the said projection is the only thing that exists and there's no deeper 3D object that can lead to multiple views). In the same sense, while doing the detective work, the regularities we come up with are views of the phenomena-constraining reality. We can try combining regularities to infer existence of a deeper regularity but we'd never be able to claim to have hit upon the "true" and "deepest" regularity. Why? Because it's possible a different regularity than the one we're proposing also explains the same set of regularities that we've uncovered. Perhaps the regularities we came upon will break down in some context (which we've not yet encountered), leaving the "deeper" regularity in lurches. **Here is what we can and cannot say about the nature of reality:** - We know a phenomena-constraining reality exists that causes certain patterns/regularities to hold true in our phenomenal-reality. - Like good detectives, we can postulate/infer regularities in that phenomena-constraining reality. - Multiple levels of regularities exist. If (and they often are), they're a view of the "deepest" regularity, all of them are real. - We cannot tell what is the "true" or "deepest" dynamics of this phenomena-constraining reality. - We can't even say whether those dynamics are "automatic" like mathematical equations, or whether they contain an element of choice. Even though the success of science and engineering suggests regularities hold true and aren't random, we have no logical basis to reject the alternative hypotheses that a far more capable being is "choosing" to run the dynamics so that they appear consistent with some regularities (which we've happened to pick up) Doing science is doing detective work. - Clues = observed data - Guesses = hypotheses - Raids = experiments - Arrests = results - Jury = peer-review So, in colloquial sense **when we say "nature of reality", we're really just talking about regularities that appear at the interface of phenomenal reality and phenomena-constraining reality.** > Phenomenal reality <-- (regularities) --> Phenomena-constraining reality. These are regularities in phenomena reality constrained by phenomena-constraining reality. ### What about the nature of phenomenal reality? So, we've established that it may not be possible to uncover the "only true" or "deepest" regularity in phenomena-constraining reality. It may be forever beyond the reach of our understanding. But what about phenomenal reality itself? Since we know that we're limited to knowing the regularities in the phenomena-constraining reality, one thing we can say about phenomenal reality is that it exists. What we know is that some regularities in phenomena-constraining reality (other people in universe) should be generating their own phenomenal reality (consciousness). We also know through personal experience and reports of others that some parts of bodies are non-essential for consciousness (say losing a limb) while some are essential (central nervous system). Ultimately, this takes the form of a regularity of the following type: > If I observe X regularity in my phenomenal reality, I must conclude another phenomenal reality exists associated with X. The structure of X in _my_ phenomenal reality (say observing a brain network cascade encoding image of a bird) should match/be isomorphic to the phenomenal reality from the point of view of the person whose brain we're observing. When (and if) we're find such an isomorphism, we should just conclude that the regularity and the phenomenal reality is one and the same thing (two views of the same thing). There is a catch, however. Verbal report is simply one type of behavior. There can be other types of behaviors. It will be pretty arbitrary (anthropocentric) to conclude that the *only* evidence of phenomenal reality / consciousness is a verbal description. In fact, behaviorists rejected even verbal description as an evidence of phenomenal reality on the grounds that it's simply one type of behavior. Hence, while we can grant a phenomenal world to someone else based on their similarity to us in structure and their verbal reports, we have no basis of rejecting a phenomenal world to things that don't share their structure with us or can't do verbal reports. So we're put into a position of agnosticism about what regularities in the phenomenal constraining world are instantiating a phenomenal reality of their own. Since there's no way to prove or disprove which systems are conscious and which are not, I prefer the simpler explanation that all regularities are associated with their own phenomenal reality instead of drawing an arbitrary line to humans or animals based on mere familiarity. In short, > **we can take a wild leap of faith and say that a phenomenal reality is what a regularity in the phenomenal constraining reality (i.e. the universe) feels from the inside.** Our belief in the statement should increase if we believe that there's one "true" regularity which we can't know but we can access different views of it from various points of view. One such point of view of _all_ regularities is phenomenal world and the phenomenal world is obviously constrained by the phenomenal constraining world because phenomenal world is nothing but a view of the same thing. So, if something changes in the one "true" reality, it changes our perception of it too. In fact, we can only access other regularities of the world because the regularity that instantiates our phenomenal world is (causally) part of the the same one 'true' reality.