According to conventionalism, the truth of mathematical statements rests on linguistic conventions or definitions, rather than on their relation to language-independent reality. Anti-realism about abstract objects in mathematics takes various forms, including, but not limited to, fictionalism. Fictionalists argue that discourse about abstract objects concerns fictional entities within make-believe frameworks. Anti-realists hold that there are no abstract objects and offer alternative explanations.
More general constraints arise from limits of human cognitive faculties rather than situation-specific circumstances, such as facts too complex for anyone to conceive. Testimony is a transmission of knowledge from one person to another through communication.k Memory is the capacity to store information from other sources and make it available to cognitive processes when needed. Reason is the ability to draw logical inferences and arrive at truths independent of immediate sensory input. Anti-realism is understood as a view that identifies the meaning of a statement with the evidence that would support it or the conditions under which a person is justified in asserting it.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) rejected the possibility of objective knowledge of the things in themselves, mister golden arguing instead that all experience is shaped by the innate structures of human cognition. Plato (c. 427 – c. 347 BCE) argued for the existence of a realm of eternal forms or ideas in addition to the material world of mutable entities. Skepticism about metaphysics holds that it is not possible to know the fundamental nature of reality, such as claims about categories of being or the existence of universals.

• Some doctrines hold that God constitutes the most fundamental level of reality as the divine origin of all creation.
• Influenced by Kant, Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) argued that reality is tied to consciousness as an intersubjective correlate of experience that cannot be reduced to a wholly mind-independent substrate.
• Anti-realism about abstract objects in mathematics takes various forms, including, but not limited to, fictionalism.
• According to subjectivism, values depend on the attitudes and preferences of individuals.
• Anti-realists hold that there are no abstract objects and offer alternative explanations.
• Scientific realism is the view that the best scientific theories provide an accurate description of a mind-independent world.

Phenomenalism, a related view, reduces physical objects to collections of actual or possible sensory experiences. In this sense, reality does not depend on human knowledge or consciousness and exists apart from them, including the aspects that no one is aware of. In the broadest sense, realism is the view that the external world and its constituents exist as they do regardless of how people perceive or think about them. Unreal entities, by contrast, depend for their existence on thoughts and ideas; they would not arise or would vanish without the mental activity creating or sustaining them. For example, if a planet or a virus is real then it exists on its own and behaves according to its nature, even if people are unaware or hold false beliefs about it.

Realism and anti-realism

The term reality overlaps with various related concepts, such as being, existence, world, actuality, and truth. This view contrasts being real with being fake, like the distinction between a real duck and a fake one used as a decoy. In a broad sense, appearances are not limited to what people perceive but can also include memories, beliefs, and thoughts. Debates between realists and anti-realists span multiple domains, addressing the objective existence of universals, abstract objects, values, and unobservable entities posited by scientific theories. The concept of reality overlaps with notions such as being, existence, world, actuality, and truth.

Viewpoints on reality

Other suggested criteria identify reality with what is observable, measurable,a coherent,b useful, objective, intersubjective, or fundamental. This view emphasizes that reality is encountered, rather than invented, and can resist or frustrate beliefs and desires, unlike malleable imaginary creations. Another influential proposal treats mind-independence as a criterion of reality, arguing that real entities do not depend on how people think about them. The Eleatic principle is controversial because it is typically taken to deny that abstract objects studied in fields like mathematics, such as numbers, are real. However, stories about Santa Claus, such as written texts in children’s books, are part of reality since they can influence how people think.

• On this view, unobservable entities may be invoked in theory construction to aid prediction but should not be taken to exist.
• It focuses on how individuals experience reality and how conscious states are intentional or directed towards entities other than themselves.
• In psychoanalytic theory, the reality principle is a proposed mechanism that counteracts the pleasure principle, delaying immediate gratification when it collides with the demands of external reality.
• As a team of agents arrive and begin searching the house, Winner engages in casual conversation with the agents, all of which is picked up by recording device, the transcript of which forms the basis of the film’s dialogue.
• Non-reductive physicalists hold that everything is ultimately physical while insisting that higher-level psychological facts cannot be reduced to fundamental physics.
• As individual entities, they contrast with universals, which are general, repeatable entities that can have many instances, such as the color blue, the shape roundness, and the property of being a mammal.

It characterizes realism as the view that the truth or meaning of sentences is determined by external standards or mind-independent reality. A semantic approach to the debate between realism and anti-realism, proposed by Michael Dummett, argues that the underlying disagreement concerns the meaning of statements rather than the existence of entities. On this view, reality is made up of countless concrete worlds existing in parallel without interacting with one another.

Viewpoints on reality

While some skeptical scenarios use the idea of a simulated reality to challenge the reliability of human cognition, contemporary technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality can also inform experience. Although it is not a widely accepted position, various thought experiments undermining the reliability of human cognitive faculties are discussed in the academic literature. Moral skepticism is the view that there is no moral knowledge, for instance, that one cannot know whether a given behavior is morally right or wrong. Some forms target specific domains of knowledge, such as religious skepticism, which denies that beliefs about God or other religious doctrines amount to knowledge. Philosophers examine various limitations of knowledge or obstacles to the cognitive contact with reality. Philosophers discuss various sources of knowledge as ways of how this cognitive contact is established, including perception, introspection, reason, memory, and testimony.
Epistemology, another philosophical subdiscipline, explores how people can know reality. They examine what it means for something to be real, how entities are divided into different categories of being, and which entities exist at the most fundamental level. Accordingly, worldviews address not only theoretical matters but also practical and evaluative outlooks about what matters and how one should act.

Values

It holds that the debate is not based on a substantive disagreement but arises instead from conceptual confusions. Relativism, another form of anti-realism, holds that what counts as real varies based on one’s perspective or conceptual framework. For example, metaphysical idealism asserts that everything is essentially mental, for instance, by understanding material objects as ideas in the mind. The widely accepted Big Bang theory holds that the universe began about 13.8 billion years ago, initially in an extremely hot, dense state, expanding and cooling ever since.

Reality received positive reviews from critics at Berlinale, with praise for Satter’s direction and the cast performances (particularly Sweeney’s). In preparation for her role, Sweeney watched interviews and spoke with Winner over Zoom and text. As a team of agents arrive and begin searching the house, Winner engages in casual conversation with the agents, all of which is picked up by recording device, the transcript of which forms the basis of the film’s dialogue. Influenced by Kant, Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) argued that reality is tied to consciousness as an intersubjective correlate of experience that cannot be reduced to a wholly mind-independent substrate. In China, beginning roughly in the 9th century, Neo-Confucianism maintained that reality has a rational order expressed in the principle Li, which acts as a ground of being.