What is Reality? What is Truth?
The Puzzle of All Puzzles
The question of «reality» bedevils philosophy and science. Closely connected is the notion of «truth». I regard «reality» as the way things are, and «truth» as a statement that corresponds accurately with that.
Most people take both «reality» and truth for granted, and regard detailed scrutiny and analysis of the abstraction as abstruse and arcane. But arguments about the status of assertions are nevertheless rather frequent. 
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When the frame of reference is scientific, then «reality» is viewed as:
- what exists utterly apart from human wishes, beliefs or intentions, or as
- what is most fundamental and on which everything depends (including wishes, beliefs etc).
- what can never be fully grasped.
Our frame of reference is taxonomic. Here, the distinguishing quality of «reality» in is that it can be discriminated because it is causative i.e. it makes things happen.
Being psychosocial, any experience of «reality» must be shareable: which is why reference to «truth» is unavoidable. Truth claims, once articulated, become part of psychosocial «reality», and the two can become almost indistinguishable in practice.
THEE, being a practical taxonomy, should provide a useful perspective that is not unduly complicated. The present investigation of the seems to shed light on this age-old puzzle. From this latest perspective, reality is intrinsically about where our functioning (i.e. our minds as most would say) and the world interact, the Primal Nexus.
Division into Two Sets
In this investigation, I found a distinction between the upper two and the lower five. This dichotomous 2+5 splitting of THEE hierarchies has been described elsewhere as generating the Control Dimension. This accords with the frequent efforts by people to control what counts as reality and what is taken as truth.
Each of the lower five appears to generate a distinctive form of reality and an associated quality of truth. When that view is defended, a dominant personal attitude becomes evident.
This lower set shows a hierarchical phenomenon in that reality/truth at one level builds primarily on what emerges at the level below (and therefore at lower levels too).
The two in the upper set seem to have no independent view. We use them to take control of what emerges from the lower set.
Control in the Lower Set
Summary Table for Lower Set
| L | Root Levels (Primary Domains) |
Psychosocial Pressure | Primal Need via Primal Means |
Reality Form |
Dominant Attitude |
Truth Quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RL5 | Understanding | Association via a shared reality |
Group | Conformist | Given | |
| RL4 | Well-being | Individuality via a sense of self |
Subjective | Private | Idiosyncratic | |
| RL3 | Acceptability | Fitness via clarification |
Constructed | Self-interested | Perspectivist | |
| RL2 | Certainty | Knowledge via conjectures |
Unknowable | Skeptical | Provisional | |
| RL1 | Performance | Achievement via management |
Practical | Pragmatic | Inevitable |
In this realm, achievement is about production of some change in reality via management of actual situations.
This is the level of doing and practice, and so reality becomes whatever is significant for achieving in the broadest sense. Objects in reality may be an outcome, an obstacle, an opportunity, a factor—anything connected with getting something done.
The attitude here is pragmatic to deal with the pressures for performance.
Truth is what works or what has happened and the process of achievement is akin to a «truth machine». It is meaningful to talk about "reaching the truth" insofar as that is about events unfolding, potentially in public view. We say that "the proof is in the pudding". In regard to the reality-truth of future states, you say: "we will see". So truth assertions embody an inevitability and a promise of eventual certainty.
Hierarchy: This is the base level for what counts as reality-truth for everyone. There is no lower level on which to depend.
Representative Use: Daily life. Reporting the direct result of an action.
Name: Practical Reality.
Alternative:
In this realm, knowledge is about investigating reality, starting from conjectures.
The position taken is that reality is uncertain, and can never be known, but that it is definitely there. If we could know it, then we would possess absolute truth. As a result, the focus is on the search for truth, which is taken to be endless. For those engaged here, it is often said that questions are more important than answers—at least you can be fully certain about your question. Any claimed truths are provisional (i.e. hypothetical) and progress is based on efforts to falsify hypotheses. An idea that is not falsifiable does not belong.
The attitude here is skeptical to confront pressures for certainty.
Scientific findings are naturally conflicting and confusing. Any comprehensive account invariably reveals gaps, inconsistencies, anomalies, disagreements, assumptions and mysteries (cf. Weinberg on physics
). The complexity, uncertainty and fragmentation of comprehension (cf. Newton's "pebbles on the beach") is intolerable for most people. Even dedicated scientists in their everyday work cleave to a paradigm that permits serious anomalies to be minimized or ignored.
Hierarchy: Scientific propositions and hypothesis-testing appeal to experiment or analyses, which depend on achievement. Establishing knowledge optimally involves managing and documenting specific achievements in a highly controlled, systematic and shareable way. Because science depends on practical achievements, it shares the problems and difficulties of reality in that realm e.g. resource shortage, time pressures, fraud, mistakes, breakdowns &c.
Representative Use: Scientific output
Name: Unknowable Reality.
Alternatives:
In this realm, fitness is about recognizing significant features of a situation and clarifying them in order to construct reality. This relates to change because
It is taken for granted that there is a partly known and partly knowable reality. However, it possesses a depth, complexity and detail that engenders confusion and uncertainty. As a result, truth depends on the depth of penetration, on the effort to represent, and on relevant intentions. Reality only gets represented in terms of some interest in it, and so people are liable to differ in how they depict the same situation. Truthis perspectivist because it lies in the depiction method unconsciously used or perspective consciously taken. This position shapes what is emphasized, what is excluded, what connections are made, and what conclusions are drawn. Seeing with these blinkers then becomes believing.
The attitude here is self-interested as a response to pressures for acceptability.
Hierarchy: Any representation of reality usually draws on the results of that may be more or less stringent. However, systematic inquiry findings may be cherry-picked, distorted or discounted in the name of truth. are also selected and incorporated strategically.
Representative Use: Narrative offered by a group leader about a current situation.
Provisional Name: Constructed Reality.
Alternatives:
In this realm, individuality is about recognizing a self that functions within its own view of reality.
Our sense of a self differentiates and determines reality in a particular and often idiosyncratic way. This produces a personal truth. What you experience in your life, especially socializing and traumatic experiences, creates a reality that you find yourself constructing, inhabiting and using. It is then the truth you live by. This reality includes inner fears, wishes, hopes, and feelings as well as what you sense, perceive, and know or believe about the world. Much of this is kept private or hidden from others and even from oneself. Because it is accepted that each person is unique and must sustain their individuality, privacy is valued as a need.
The attitude here is idiosyncratic due to differences in how pressures for well-being are handled.
Hierarchy: The sense of self primarily depends on from the level below. It draws into its reality-truth ambit preferred beliefs and depictions () because self-interest is so important for survival. () and () may also contribute.
Representative Use: Personal accounts of experiences.
Name: Subjective Reality.
Alternatives:
In this realm, association is about getting together through sharing a reality within a group. A common language is intrinsic to group formation and reality formation.
Reality has become intrinsic to the realm because language is used to construct reality. Sharing a reality enables stable enduring interactions with others and enables groups to form. The group confuses reality with the shared reality. It comes to determine what must be taken as truth. Truth for us i.e. truth in my group, is therefore a function of socialization, belonging and popular pressures. Any plausible reality-claim, even a lie, rather easily becomes true based on repeated assertions by authority figures—as Lenin observed and propagandists know. Self-preservation of any group has a high, even top, priority. That is why the shared reality may be imposed coercively and dissidents get expelled. There may be taboo issues if sub-groups have members feeling strongly about divergent truths.
The attitude here is conformist. The approach to communicating is tactful and diplomatic so as to avoid personal offence. The reality shared within your main group is like the water that fish swim in: largely taken for granted. Pressures for understanding are then easily met without the need for any depth or genuineness.
Hierarchy: Truth for us builds on the truth for me. The reality used here must fit with the members subjective reality or associating will not be congenial. Members will leave the group or become isolated and need to find others who share their personal experiences. The lower levels are also relevant e.g. propaganda uses of reality, as well as findings, and on the ground. These lower level truths are incorporated unpredictably and unreliably.
There seems to be a cyclic pattern evident here in that carrying responsibility for -achievement is a function of to perceive and engage with a certain reality (See: ).
Representative Use: Social interaction; a published account by a journalist adhering to editorial guidelines.
Name: Group Reality.
Alternatives:
Shared Reality in Practice: The Importance of our Social Arenas
Because reality is sustained by groups, it might be expected that the above forms of reality might conform to the groups generated by the taxonomy. Since the initial publication of this topic, the Q-expansion of Communication-RL5 has been found to contain 7 which determine how humans form groups.
The descriptions in this topic have not been modified to conform to the . Conversely, the Arenas were not discovered and posted with conscious reference to the findings here. As I would not have hesitated to do so if it had occurred to me, there may have been an unconscious influence.
The postulated primary psychosocial pressures in the , uncertain at the time, appear to be confirmed by the Root associations apparent here.
I have tabulated the to confirm the relations between membership of these groups and the inescapable biological demands that these groups place on our handling of reality.
Ordered according to Root Level #:
| RL | Q | Arenas of Association(Communication Domain) |
Psychosocial Pressures (Primary & Secondary) |
Root Primal Need via Root Primal Means |
Reality Form |
Dominant Attitude |
Truth Quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RL5 | Q4 | Societal Institutions | Well-being
& Autonomy |
Association via a shared reality |
Group | Conformist | Given |
| RL4 | Q1 | Family Households | Performance & Understanding | Individuality via a sense of self |
Subjective | Private | Idiosyncratic |
| RL3 | Q5 | Philosophy Schools | Understanding
& Selflessness |
Fitness via clarification |
Constructed | Self-interested | Perspectivist |
| RL2 | Q3 | Academic Disciplines | Acceptability
& Certainty |
Knowledge via conjectures |
Unknowable | Skeptical | Provisional |
| RL1 | Q2 | Formal Organisations | Certainty
& Performance |
Achievement via management |
Practical | Pragmatic | Inevitable |
Ordered according to Arena # to show the fit of Psychosocial Pressures
| Q | Arenas of Association(Communication Domain) |
Psychosocial Pressures (Primary & Secondary |
RL | Root Primal Need via Root Primal Means |
Reality Form |
Dominant Attitude |
Truth Quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q5 | Philosophy Schools | Understanding
& Selflessness |
RL3 | Fitness via clarification |
Constructed | Self-interested | Perspectivist |
| Q4 | Societal Institutions | Well-Being
& Autonomy |
RL5 | Association via a shared reality |
Group | Conformist | Given |
| Q3 | Academic Disciplines | Acceptability
& Certainty |
RL2 | Knowledge via conjectures |
Unknowable | Skeptical | Provisional |
| Q2 | Formal Organisations | Certainty
& Performance |
RL1 | Achievement via management |
Practical | Pragmatic | Inevitable |
| Q1 | Family Households | Performance & Understanding | RL4 | Individuality via a sense of self |
Subjective | Private | Idiosyncratic |
The implications of these Tables require further investigation.
Control by the Upper Set
It is evident from the lower set that reality is either unknowable or whatever you want to make it—which is almost the same thing in practice.
It seems that handling reality in the upper domains, occurs under a variable pressure to respect truths from some or all lower level versions.
However, the reality that matters most in practice, probably due to evolutionary pressures, relates to achievement (). Life is pragmatic, and "what happens" is the focus for control within the upper set.
In this domain, governance is the Primal Need and it depends on politics, which is the use of power within a group in order to get personal benefit from social goods. Those in possession of social goods, especially wealth and power, have the advantage over others in the group.
The psychosocial pressure here is autonomy. Combined with power, which is intrinsically anti-rational when it comes to generating benefits, autonomy permits truth to be handled flexibly. Truth may be twisted, bent, deformed or ignored, so that reality may be adjusted—for good ends or bad.
Autonomy may lead to help for others or benefit for the group. In this regard, the critical feed within is from which determines the production of goodness in governance as in all endeavours.
The challenge here appears to be operating via the -reality of your main group, recognizing your own -subjective reality, and using truths derived from handling reality in other applicable realms, but especially .
In this realm, competence is about being effective in order to generate benefit for others in particular social situations. Under the pressure of selflessness, personal biases and self-interest are put aside in a spirit of service.
Reality and Truth of any form are handled sensibly in order to facilitate the relevant outcomes and ultimate achievement ().
The focus here seems to be on mastery of reality within the limit of what is socially possible () and a readiness to apply any relevant perspective while engaging with the challenge in actuality ().
Review of Concepts
Here is a Summary Table:
| L | Root Levels Primary Domains |
Psychosocial Pressure | Primal Need via Primal Means |
Reality Form |
Dominant Attitude |
Truth Quality |
Example Output | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RL7 | Selflessness | Competence via Effectiveness |
Effectiveness and Politics demand selection of realities and attitudes to produce outcomes. |
Serves impersonal requirements. | ||||
| RL6 | Autonomy | Governance via Politics |
Serves personal values/interests. | |||||
| RL5 | Understanding | Association via A Shared Reality |
|
Group | Conformist | Given | Journalistic | |
| RL4 | Well-being | Individuality via a Sense of Self |
|
Subjective | Private | Idiosyncratic | Confessional | |
| RL3 | Acceptability | Fitness via Clarification |
|
Constructed | Self-interested | Perspectivist | Narrative | |
| RL2 | Certainty | Knowledge via Conjectures |
|
Unknowable | Skeptical | Provisional | Scientific | |
| RL1 | Performance | Achievement via Management |
|
Practical | Pragmatic | Certainty | Result | |
There are other compound terms in use e.g. mundane reality, psychosocial reality, inter-subjective reality. By examining each in context, the reference should become evident.
Psychosocial reality is a standard phrase used to refer to the field of the Taxonomy. It is described here as something created by a person that is shared or shareable with others. It therefore involves reality and reality.
- Back to the Review.
Originally posted: 30-Nov-2013. Updated: 2-Jan-2015. Last amended: 5-June-2024