Welcome to Gaia! ::

ok...then think of it not so much as bursting the bubble but a slow merging of bubbles...when two bubbles come in contact with eachother they form a single entity then slowly combine to become one larger bubble...but only in the dream state...in your dream, you've reached a higher plane of reality...but when the bubble hits the ground...popping...ending the dream as it were...you come back to the first reality and to the security of you bubble...

Does that make sense to you? reality and dreams are hard concepts to describe I hope I'm not losing anyone.

So many great ideas in here! All varied and wonderful... I disagree with the one guy who said as philosphers we must all agree on a universal standard/theory. This is not true, as the whole purpose for philosophy is to break the standards & find new ground. But we do need to all agree on which definition of reality we are discussing here, which may be what he was getting at.

Reality requires proof that you can use to make others believe something is real. If you drop a pen, then you can show me that the pen definitely moved towards the ground and could not pass through the ground. This is real. But how did the pen get there? You may say it was gravity, but can you prove that was the force responsible? Maybe the pen stayed stationary and the ground collided with the pen. Maybe the pen fell to the ground because you expected it to do so, thereby exerting your will upon it and causing it to collide with the ground. Herein lies the difference between perceived reality and physical reality.

Another good example is the every-so-dangerous topic of God. If you believe in God, then you obviously think that God is real and that the events that occur around you were his doing. You can prove that these events happened, but you cannot prove to me that God was responsible. Meanwhile, if you do NOT believe in God... then he is NOT real and the events occurred for other reasons.

Lastly, I'd like to touch base on historical reality. Again, same circumstance. Can it be PROVEN to be real to others? I can show you a dinosaur bone and you can touch and feel the bone. I can then show you bones on a carcass and prove that the bone came from a living creature at one time - but as to what that creature looked like, it is up to your perceptions. And as to it's name, that is also a perception - as some may call it a dinosaur and others may call it a dragon. Neither of us is wrong if that's what we believe...

This is dangerously skirting the edges of the difference between truth and fiction, as well. I think we could spin in circles all day with this topic.