Metaphysics - What is Reality?

Descartes

I think therefore I am

• You are a thinking thing
    * You can’t be for sure that everything around you is real
    * Dreams can feel so real yet be only a fake dream
    * What he was certain of though, was that in order to think and know that you senses can be wrong, you have to be able to think
      * The one thing he knew was true was that we are thinking things

"The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once”

Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems

Locke

The mind is a blank slate (at birth)

• You can’t have innate knowledge (things you know before being born)
• Your mind is shaped by experiences
• Things have primary and secondary qualities
    * Primary is objective, measurable things such as mass, solidity
    * Secondary is subjective, based on perception and will differ depending on the person
• Reality is created through observation and experience

Berkley

To be is to be perceived

• Ordinary objects are collections of ideas
• Nothing exists or is real if no one is seeing it
• Everyone has their own reality
• If a tree falls, and no one perceives it, does it make a sound?

Materialism

Everything in the universe except energy is made of matter, and so everything in the universe is made of atoms. An atom is made of three tiny particles called subatomic particles: protons, neutrons and electrons. This is reality

• Rooted in modern science
• Matter is the fundamental substance in nature
• We can’t observe the material world without being influenced by our senses