Reality Vs Illusion.

[pljames]

I cannot understand in my mind how anyone accept on drugs can say life there's or someones else's is a illusion. Been on drugs totally a illusion, seen felt touched what I seen felt and touched and it was real. A illusion is self created in the mind or drug use. Reality is seen and felt. Reality is material a illusion is created in the mind why in reality. Thoughts please. pljames

[CraigD]

The question “how can I be sure that my senses give me an accurate view of objective reality?” is more in the domain of philosophy than psychology. It’s an old question and important question, addressed by a succession of famous philosophers. Here’s a partial, highly personally idiosyncratic list:

• 380 BC, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
  
• 1637 AD, Descartes cogito ergo sum
  
• about 1700 to 1900, phenomenalism, by folk such as Hume, Kant, and Ernst Mach.
  
• 1998+, the simulation hypothesis, by technologist Han Moravec, and better known by philosopher Nick Bostrom
  

What these philosophical investigations are about, is that it’s questionable to assume that our perceptions, even if informed entirely by our senses, are identical to or completely correlated with an objective, external universe. There’s a lot to them – a good understanding of them takes hundreds of hours, and for most people, skilled guidance, typically from professional teachers.

 

Setting aside these philosophical questions and assuming the existence of an objective reality, modern perceptual psychology shows clearly that our perception of “real” things – what we see, touch, etc. – involves neurological processes similar to those involved in our imagining non-real things, remembering experiences, or putting them into words. These perceptions are often incorrect, and fairly easy to consistently distort and deceive. Stage magic relies on this. Incorrect perceptions occur in people who have not taken drugs of any kind, as well as in people who have. Taking drugs, even those classified as hallucinogens, does not necessarily increase or decrease the rate or severity of such perceptual failures.

 

Further, at various times, nearly all people have suffered from failures to correctly perceive reality. At one time, nearly all people believe the Earth was flat, and the Sun, planets, and stars were small points embedded in a dome-shaped sky over it. At one time, most people believed that all matter was made of 4 “classical elements”, dirt, wind, water and fire. At one time, most people believed heat was a fluid that permeated mater. All of these senses-based perceptions are now believe by most people to be wrong.