This Powerpoint describes our personal reality and our environment. Processes and how one gains knowledge is also explained.

1. How Real is
Reality?
Arin Khodaverdi
Professor Marteney
Speech 104
May 13, 2010

2.  It is difficult for one to understand the
difference between personal realities and
their environment.
 Cognitions (senses), environment (actual
surroundings), reality
(interpretations), and perception (process
that forms our reality) are key to
understanding that personal realities are
strictly interpretations of what surrounds
us in our environment.

3. Realities are not real…
Environment is.
 A person's reality consists of anything they can perceive the
meanings that are attached. These can be physical
objects, people, and situations. However, every person’s
perception is different, therefore, each person’s reality is not
the same.
 Therefore, each person is creating their own world.
 Their reality exists to them because they are putting it
there, whether they are consciously aware of it or not. They
are the ones who perceive, see, smell, taste, and decide what
their reality consists of.

4.  Main Entry: re·al·i·ty
 Pronunciation: rē-ˈa-lə-tē
 Function: noun
 Inflected Form(s): plural
re·al·i·ties
 Reality : the quality or state
of being real

5. How do we create our reality?
 Perception is the process where one
attaches meaning to what surrounds us
through our senses through
selection, organization, and interpretation.
 Selective Perception is what one decides
to hear, see, and ultimately believe to be
their reality in order to accommodate with
their personal needs.

6.  We create our own world.
 People use their culture and
experiences to create their
reality and their own world.
 Each language and culture
creates a different world for
each person, or world
perception.
Our perception of the world are
always shaped by our
conceptual schemes.

7. How does one choose what
they believe?

8. Optical Illusions
 Our brain takes in cognitions from the
environment to invent a desirable and
believable reality.
 However, cognitions can also trick our minds
into seeing an illusion. These cognitions
become distorted in such a way for the brain
to again create a reality.
 This can be understood by simply looking at
an optical illusion.

10. Artists that use Illusions
 Maurits Cornelis Escher is known for
his famous artworks that challenge the
mind to see different perspectives at
the same time, and truly make an
effort to understand the environment
as a whole rather than objects in the
environment.
 Maurits Cornelis Escher’s “Three
Worlds” shows different perspectives
and the fact that you don’t initially
know which way the artwork is meant
to be held. I felt confused since my
brain was being challenged to see the
different perspectives, and it was
being challenged to finally understand
and come face to face with false
reality.
 Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvard is
the "father of impossible figures." He
was the first to deliberately make
impossible figures

11. How do we come to know
things?
 Rationalists argued that knowledge is based on reasoning inside
our minds.
 Empiricist disagreed saying that all knowledge must come from
the senses.
 The way we perceive the world is by our sensory apparatus. We
have concepts and are necessary, but we cannot change them.
However, how we conceive the world is shaped by the concepts.
The senses perceive only the surface of things, but reason is
able to grasp the inner core of things.
 We know the world through the changing sensations, but the
mind has to see the world as stable. Our mind is unified, so our
sensations have to be organized as well in order to have
knowledge. Knowledge begins with the senses, but these senses
must have a rational structure. Rationalists and Empiricists must
come together. You can’t have knowledge without both of these
theories working together.

12.  It is important for one not to modify their reality. One
must consume their environment, and not let their brain
fool them into changing the situation into something that is
more comfortable or appealing.
 One must argue for their reality, instead of modifying it.

13. The End