Are Mental Images Real? :: Reality Philosophy Philosophical Essays

ar Mental Images Real?This essay was my first stab at define and discussing existence for my freshman seminar, What is Reality?. Using a questionable government issue of reality (in this case -- are mental images real?), we were to attempt a workings definition and method for determing that which is real. Pretty lousy, Im not gonna lie, but an interesting assignment. In the middle of the night, a boy awakes from the most horrifying chase characterisation hes ever witnessed, terrified in a frigid sweat. His heart is pounding, hes lost his breath. And yet he wakes to the easy recognizeledge that it was all just a dream. The mind is a unidentified entity, in that it is essentially our guide to that which we experience - it perceives, processes, interprets, analyzes, and utterly convinces. We respond physiologically to our minds wills, be it with elevated heart rates, elation, or a deep-rooted disposition of confusion in the inability to distinguish amid what our mind says an d what we know to be reliable. Herein we see the quandary of existence as kind-hearted beings in society are the images and experiences of our mind truly real? To a schizophrenic, a hallucination in which he is attacked by a life-sized black dog is as real to him as a true assault by a New York mugger. Where, then, is the line drawn between a pure mental image and reality, and what does this say about the genius of reality? Enlightened philosopher Rene Descartes said, I think, therefore I am, claiming the reality and hardship of his existence based on the inner workings of his mind. The mental images and experiences he had were, to him, the fundamental proof that, as an entity, he was truly functional and definite. unless how many of us have, at one point or another, asked ourselves, Is this real happening? and, despite the knowledge that we must be conscious to be questioning thusly, still couldnt verify or discredit the reality of the situation? To quote a classmate in a password about the nature of existence, All that individual existentialism stuff sounds bewitching funky, but youve got to believe in it for it to work. Indeed, the idea that reality is created or undone by ones own willingness to exist is a marvelous and thought-provoking concept, riddled with metaphysical questions of procedure and mechanics of life. Do messs minds allow them to know of their own horrifying and grotesque deaths, or is there perhaps an I-am-dying-peacefully-in-my-sleep hormone released when the body becomes aware of its infinite scotch?