On this view, higher levels show greater complexity and new phenomena but depend on the lower ones and could not exist without them. Some philosophical approaches rely on the idea of fundamentality and dependence to analyze the world in terms of levels or layers, such as material, biological, psychological, and social reality. In the Hindu tradition, it is often identified with Brahman as the all-pervasive reality and the supreme principle grounding all being.
A related topic concerns the possibility and limits of knowledge as a successful cognitive contact with reality. Anti-realism, by contrast, holds that certain aspects of reality depend on mental processes, subjective perspectives, or social conventions. Realism is the view that reality does not depend on human knowledge or consciousness and exists apart from them. An event that has actually happened, or a thing which really exists is said to have “reality.” Something close to reality is realistic.
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.

• For example, one view suggests that macroscopic objects, such as a chair, depend on the microscopic objects that underlie them, such as elementary particles.
• Anti-realist views reject the mind-independent existence of values and can take various forms.
• Phenomenalism, a related view, reduces physical objects to collections of actual or possible sensory experiences.
• Existence monism contrasts with existence pluralism, which aligns more closely with everyday experience by asserting that reality is made up of many objects.
• More general constraints arise from limits of human cognitive faculties rather than situation-specific circumstances, such as facts too complex for anyone to conceive.
• This view emphasizes that reality is encountered, rather than invented, and can resist or frustrate beliefs and desires, unlike malleable imaginary creations.
• Epistemology, another philosophical subdiscipline, explores how people can know reality.

Realism and anti-realism

The reality–virtuality continuum is a theoretical framework that posits a continuous scale of mixed reality forms. It denies the existence of knowledge in any form or domain, arguing that knowledge is impossible. These limitations indicate a gap whereby reality is not fully captured and exceeds knowledge.

Levels of reality

According to a common view, concrete objects exist in space and time, such as a flower, a horse, and a ship. Events are proposed constituents of reality that occur in time, such as the discovery of penicillin and the Second World War. 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. Similarly, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics suggests that in quantum measurements, not only one but all possible outcomes occur, interpreted as a branching of the universe into multiple worlds. It is frequently possible to understand the essence of something without knowing whether it exists.

• Causal determinism is the view that every event is fully determined or necessitated by prior events.
• It comprises beliefs, ideas, and attitudes that form a background against which people interpret experiences, make decisions, and navigate life.
• Testimony is a transmission of knowledge from one person to another through communication.k
• It opposes the idea that world and mind are essentially correlated, emphasizing the mind-independent nature of reality beyond the way humans perceive and think about it.
• Other suggested criteria identify reality with what is observable, measurable,a coherent,b useful, objective, intersubjective, or fundamental.
• Fictionalists argue that discourse about abstract objects concerns fictional entities within make-believe frameworks.

It holds that the debate is not based on a substantive disagreement but arises instead from conceptual confusions. Relativism, another mister golden 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.
In this sense, realism and anti-realism encompass many domain-specific positions across diverse fields. Anti-realism rejects this view, arguing instead that there is no external world or that reality depends in certain respects on mental processes, subjective perspectives, or social conventions. Realism and anti-realism are families of views concerning the mind-independence of reality. Some interpretations of quantum mechanics hold that measurement outcomes are inherently probabilistic, thereby rejecting causal determinism, but this is not true for all interpretations.g According to this view, what happened in the past fixes what will happen in the future, including human behavior. Causal determinism is the view that every event is fully determined or necessitated by prior events.

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.

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.
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.
It holds that the scientific view of the world is either exactly or at least approximately true by presenting reality as it is. For example, emotivism holds that value statements express emotional attitudes of subjective approval or disapproval rather than objective facts. Anti-realist views reject the mind-independent existence of values and can take various forms. Realists hold that values are objective features of reality, meaning that there are mind-independent facts about whether something is good or bad, irrespective of subjective beliefs or personal preferences.