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Is anything real?

Every so often there are news articles on research being conducted here and there about who we are and what is the meaning of it all.

A recent study in the UK asked the same question and posited a response indicating that everything we think is real is in fact a hallucination.  Some dictionaries describe the verb 'hallucinate' as -experience a seemingly real perception of something not actually present, typically as a result of a mental disorder or of taking drugs.


I find that description fascinating.  There are a lot of assumptions in the description.  First is Experience.  Second the use of word Real.  Third the word Perception and then Present.  People that study this stuff would have a field day with it.  Everything is a matter of perception at the end of the day.  Whoa!

I just tried to present another weird cliche.  End of the day?  Which implies there is a certain beginning and end?  How arrogant.  Perception too is a matter of consensus.  What a majority thinks 'is' is becomes the societal standard.  Of course the counter argument is that - we empirically measured it and therefore it is not fantasy but scientific fact, thusly not un-real.

Well.  Your measurement was also based on tools and objects in the observed universe and agreed to in consensus.  But if we are all mind over matter assuming there is a mind, mind you then we are left to ask if there is a there there (as someone once asked).

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