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[B0R5]

Hi everyone,
I'm new here, and I joined because I’ve been working on an idea that tries to bring some structure to how we think about reality. It’s not a finished system or rigid theory — more of a framework in progress, open to critique and refinement.

I don’t have a formal degree in philosophy yet, though I’m seriously considering starting a Master’s program in the near future. For now, I treat philosophy as a discipline of honest thought and shared inquiry — and I’d really appreciate thoughtful engagement from people who see things differently.

The core question driving my thinking is:
How can we meaningfully talk about “reality” when everyone seems to experience it a bit differently?
Is there a minimal shared ground we can stand on — without falling into relativism or rigid dogmatism?

The working name for the framework is The Theory of Consensual Reality. It assumes that what we consider “real” emerges from a kind of ongoing consensus between conscious beings — not just socially, but ontologically. I’m still working through the implications, and I’d be grateful for any feedback, challenges, or questions.

Thanks for reading — looking forward to the conversation.

[Sy Borg]

The reality is that we are part of a planet that is travelling through space at almost four million kilometres per hour. Everything else is probably up for grabs.

However, we are not evolved to perceive reality, we evolved to be most effective at surviving passing on our genes. Thus, we see the coconut tree as separate to ourselves. It's not actually separate, just as cells in your hand are not truly separate from cells in your liver. We all contain chemicals that were once part of trilobites and dinosaurs, but seeing everything as separate allows us to operate in such a way that we survive.

Given that we don't know what triggered the Big Bang, we don't know how life emerged, and don't know what consciousness is or how it works, we have little choice but to tend towards practicalities.

[Good_Egg]

Three thoughts you may wish to consider:

1) if your theory deals with reality, then presumably it distinguishes reality from unreality ? Allows a category of apparent phenomena which don't really exist ? Imaginary beings, illusions etc ?

2) Language is social - the meaning of words is by consensus. And we can only communicate using language. So in discussing the merits or otherwise of a theory, we have to distinguish between, just for example, a dog and the word "dog". If you encounter a friendly, hairy, slobbery, pet quadruped, then your society may or may not use the word "dog" to describe it. But that social act of naming does not - within my naive realist philosophy, at least - bring the dog into existence or change the reality of the creature in front of you. The act of naming a thing presupposes a thing to be named. And that thing just may bite you if you try to ignore it or define it away.

3) Our common experience is that we encounter at least 3 categories of stuff:
- objects that have physical existence,
- social structures and conventions that exist only because people agree that they do, and
- interior concepts and emotions that seem to exist only for so long as we pay attention to them.

Naive realism has three realms, if you will, that form the subject matter of respectively the physical sciences, sociology and psychology. "Consensual reality" sounds reductive - in some way seeking to explain the objective and the subjective in terms of the inter-subjective.

"Theory of reality" sounds like it's setting out to explain everything. If your theory covers all of the above ground (rather than paying selective attention to only parts of it), it may be worthy of that title.

Good luck...

[B0R5]

1. It's true that the human mind wasn't "designed" to perceive reality as it is, but rather to survive effectively. Our senses and mental models are simplified and pragmatic – not absolute. But that doesn't mean we have no access to truth at all. It simply means our knowledge is partial and conditional.

In the Theory of Consensual Reality (TCR), reality is understood as a dynamic consensus between conscious beings. Consciousness is not merely a byproduct of the brain, nor is it a sovereign creator of the world. It is a medium for receiving, interpreting, and co-creating reality – based on principles that may have been defined beforehand (by God or a higher meta-level).

So the question “Does reality contain consciousness, or is it contained within it?” cannot be answered simply. The two are co-dependent. It's like asking whether language exists independently of meaning – one only exists through the other.

You're right: we see the "coconut tree" as something separate, even though we’re materially and historically connected to it. But this functional separation is what enables experience at all: in order to be ourselves, we must be able to say "I am not that."

TCR doesn’t deny the evolutionary usefulness of perception, nor the fact that we don’t know the origin of the Big Bang, life, or consciousness. On the contrary – it embraces these unknowns as part of the path toward deeper understanding. We don't know everything – but that doesn't mean we can’t learn anything. The key question is: how do we negotiate that unknowing – with each other and with God?

In this way, reality shows its dual-layered structure:

on one side – a shared, stable, and predictable world (consensus),

on the other – a personal path of experience leading us to uncover what that structure truly is.

2. Thank you for your thoughtful remarks — each of them touches on crucial questions that the Theory of Consensual Reality (TCR) takes seriously, though not always in the traditional way.

1. Distinguishing reality from unreality — Yes, TCR draws such a distinction, but not based on absolute ontological criteria (whether something “exists” in itself). Rather, it defines reality in terms of how stable and acknowledged a phenomenon is within the consensus of conscious beings. Illusions, fantasies, fictional entities — these are part of “internal realities” with limited scope, yet they can affect shared reality if they gain recognition. So something being “unreal” doesn’t mean it’s powerless — it just lacks validation in the broader network of shared experience.


2. Language and reality — I agree that naming something doesn’t make it real. TCR does not claim that a dog exists because we call it a “dog.” What it does say is that our ability to mutually recognize that something is a dog — and that we should fear it or not — is key to functioning in a social world. In other words: words don’t create beings, but they allow for shared experience of them, which gives them practical presence in our lives. And yes — if you ignore the dog, it may still bite you. TCR doesn’t deny realism — it emphasizes that operational realism is grounded in shared recognition, not just pure perception.


3. Three levels of reality — That’s an insightful classification: the physical world, the social world, and the inner world. TCR builds directly on this triad — but rather than seeing them as separate domains, it sees them as interwoven layers of one experience, each with different degrees of consensus and stability. So the aim isn’t to reduce everything to intersubjectivity, but to recognize that everything we can know involves shared meaning — even if that meaning refers to something outside or beyond us.



As for whether this is a “theory of everything” — TCR doesn’t claim to explain everything from above. It tries instead to offer a framework where different disciplines (physics, sociology, psychology, theology) can engage in dialogue using a shared conceptual language. The point is not to trap reality in a system, but to shape a structure that helps us understand it honestly, in motion.

Thanks again for the inspiration — and warm regards.

[Pattern-chaser]

3. Three levels of reality — That’s an insightful classification: the physical world, the social world, and the inner world. TCR builds directly on this triad — but rather than seeing them as separate domains, it sees them as interwoven layers of one experience, each with different degrees of consensus and stability.

Interesting. I am partial to a holistic view of things, where everything is seen as being — and is — connected to everything else. This meshes nicely with what you say here.

Just a thought...

[B0R5]

I truly value the holistic approach — in fact, it’s the perspective I hold in the highest regard. However, the idea that everything — even time itself — emerged as a result of a primordial contract between conscious beings leads me to a deeper conclusion: that only an eternal, all-knowing, and all-powerful Being could be the guardian and guarantor of such a foundational agreement.

[Good_Egg]

That sounds like TCR isn't a theory at all - it's just a focus.

So for example it doesn't deny that there is a difference between the reality of zebras and the reality of unicorns - it just focuses attention on the extent to which these concepts are part of our shared culture and can be used in communication. Or not, in the case of tribal cultures that lack these concepts.

If I've understood you right, it doesn't deny the existence of feelings that we cannot put into words. So is not metaphysics. Nor even epistemology - it does not deny that we can know that we have such a feeling in the absence of shared perception of it. It's just more interested in the social aspects (and how these influence our perception and experience).

[B0R5]

That's a very insightful interpretation — and yes, TCR is less of a traditional "theory" in the metaphysical or epistemological sense, and more of a shift in perspective. It doesn’t aim to prove that zebras are real and unicorns are not, but rather asks: how does something become real for us? What makes a concept enter the shared field of meaning and experience?

TCR does not deny private feelings or ineffable inner experiences. However, it holds that shared reality — the one we live in together — arises from consensus. That is, from what can be communicated, understood, and recognized between conscious beings.

So in that sense, TCR is primarily interested in the relational space — language, gesture, ritual, cultural memory — through which reality is stabilized and negotiated.

We don't discard metaphysics or epistemology, but we pass through relationality as the organizing principle. It's a reframing: from reality as something given, to reality as something co-constructed.

[B0R5]

What’s the difference between a theory and a focus of attention?

1. A focus of attention is a perspective — a cognitive orientation.
It’s a choice: “this is what I want to explore; this is where I place importance.”
It doesn’t have to explain, prove, or systematize anything. It’s like a lens — it helps us see the world in a certain way, but it doesn’t build a structured model of that world.

> Example: I can focus on emotions in a conversation, but that doesn’t mean I have a theory of emotions.



2. A theory, on the other hand, is an organized system of concepts and assumptions that:

explains why something is the way it is,

identifies underlying mechanisms,

allows for prediction and interpretation of phenomena,

and is open to critique, revision, and development.



---

So what is TCR in this context?

TCR begins as a focus of attention:

> “I’m interested in how reality emerges through shared conscious experience.”



But it develops into a theory because it:

formulates axioms (e.g., “reality is a dynamic consensus of conscious beings”),

builds a conceptual structure (e.g., three levels of consensus: physical, social, and inner),

explains phenomena (e.g., war as a clash of competing versions of reality),

and engages metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical questions (e.g., the nature of Truth, being, language, knowledge, and moral foundations).



---

In summary:

> A focus of attention is where thinking begins.
A theory is how that thinking is shaped, structured, and communicated.



TCR takes the initial intuition — that “reality is co-created” — and builds a philosophical framework that can engage in dialogue with other theories, traditions, and disciplines. It’s not just a point of view.
It’s a language for expressing and testing a shared world.

[thrasymachus]

B0R5 wrote

How can we meaningfully talk about “reality” when everyone seems to experience it a bit differently?
Is there a minimal shared ground we can stand on — without falling into relativism or rigid dogmatism?

You are already headed for trouble, aren't you? To meaningfully talk about anything assumes that there is a ground for discussion, I mean, even if you are ready to disagree, there has to be that about which you are disagreeing, and without this this, the discussion turns into nonsense pretty fast. So here, what is it about which everyone seems to experience it a bit differently? Reality. But has this been defined yet, that is, definitions always possess "more language" which has a function of a metadescription, a description about something already in language, more language "about" language, for not to forget that 'reality' is first given is the structure of thought itself--it is a term discovered in a matrix of language, and so you can't go about talking about how to tell the difference between what is real and what is not real, say, until you at least understand what language is and how language can "speak" about the world at all.

If you are going to go into grad school to study philosophy, you have to make a decision, will it be anglo american philosophy or continental philosophy? 'Reality' is not going to be penetrated by the likes of the former, for they handle reality negatively (as Simon Critchley, who knows both worlds, put it, analytic philosophy is essentially nihilistic). Continental philosophy is very different, for is DOES take metaphysics seriously---even Nietzsche was a metaphysician, says Heidegger. Interesting to see why, but it takes a lot of reading, which leads to the problem of getting deep into a study of reality in a tradition that begins, let's say, with Kant and continues through post modern philosophers like Derrida, and beyond (post post modern thinkers like Levinas).

If you REALLY want to study the essence of reality (being) then it begins with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. One needs first to turn reality on its head to see that what we call reality needs to be first looked at "in the calling" itself. What does it mean to speak about something at all? Are there not underlying this speaking about everyday things (including science, of course), foundational issues? Epistemology: how does knowing a thing actually come to be, and it is possible at all? For you can't move on to ontology until you make this epistemic clarity possible, after all, nothing that IS has ever been acknowledged outside of a knowing relationship. The knowing of something is "co-real" of the being of something: to say something is real is to "posit" something as real. No way around this.

But something tells me you really are not looking for that much work...could be wrong.

[Mercury]

The Theory of Consensual Reality. It assumes that what we consider “real” emerges from a kind of ongoing consensus between conscious beings — not just socially, but ontologically. I’m still working through the implications, and I’d be grateful for any feedback, challenges, or questions.

A Theory of Consensual Reality would be better. 'The theory of... ' suggests this theory would be definitive, as opposed to conjectural. Like you're intending to prove reality emerges from an ongoing consensus. As 'A Theory...' all you need do is make a reasonably coherent argument that such may be the case. And honestly, I think that's the best you could hope for.

I have questions; when you say conscious beings, does that include bats?
If so, how do bats engage in forming this consensus upon reality?
If not; if by conscious beings you only mean humans, when, ontologically, did homo sapiens develop this ability?
And before then, was nothing real?

[Good_Egg]

That's a very insightful interpretation — and yes, TCR is less of a traditional "theory" in the metaphysical or epistemological sense, and more of a shift in perspective. It doesn’t aim to prove that zebras are real and unicorns are not, but rather asks: how does something become real for us? What makes a concept enter the shared field of meaning and experience?

TCR does not deny private feelings or ineffable inner experiences. However, it holds that shared reality — the one we live in together — arises from consensus. That is, from what can be communicated, understood, and recognized between conscious beings.

So in that sense, TCR is primarily interested in the relational space — language, gesture, ritual, cultural memory — through which reality is stabilized and negotiated.

We don't discard metaphysics or epistemology, but we pass through relationality as the organizing principle. It's a reframing: from reality as something given, to reality as something co-constructed.

You're saying that what TCR is interested in is the process by which the concept of unicorns enters our language and culture, so that we can communicate about unicorns, understand the concept of unicorns, and recognise portrayals of unicorns.

Which is fine. There is genuine understanding to be sought in that area.

It's not interested in the fact that [/i]"zebras are real and unicorns are not".[/i] The empirical question of whether or not the concept of unicorns is instantiated in the physical universe.

No problem with saying that that's not the question you want to deal with.

Where I have an issue is when you try to co-opt the word "real" and its derivatives to refer to your area of interest. Sorry - that word is already taken, to mean the thing you're not interested in. (Within our shared culture and language, of course).

Maybe you need a different label ? Something like "conceivable" ?

Of course, I may have misunderstood you. Assuming that you accept that there is a difference between the thing itself and my understanding of it...

[B0R5]

Yes, I appreciate your concern — and I do understand the traditional attachment to the term real as denoting "what is out there, independently of us."

But here's the distinction I would make:

For something to be fully real, it must exist in the shared field of recognition — that is, as a conjunction of perceptions, meaning it is co-experienced or co-acknowledged by conscious beings.

This doesn't deny the possibility that something might exist "in itself."
But from the standpoint of lived and shared reality, only what enters the intersubjective web — what can be seen, spoken, agreed upon — becomes stabilized as real.

Now here's the crucial part:

It is enough for one conscious being to withhold assent — to veto — for a thing to remain imaginary rather than real.
If even one conscious observer denies or cannot perceive the unicorn, then the consensus is broken, and the unicorn remains a concept, a possibility, a story — not a shared reality.

But the reverse is also true.

If that one veto disappears — if the last dissenting perception aligns — then the unicorn becomes real within the field of shared experience.

In that sense, realness is not about objectivity in the classical sense, but about relational alignment — about the threshold of consensual coherence being met.

So I’m not trying to co-opt the word real. I’m simply grounding it in the only space where reality actually functions for us: between us, as a dynamic concord of perception and recognition.

[Dima]

I believe that reality is what you see and perceive. My reality is shaped by my intentionalism - the way I direct my attention to the world around me. We all, as humans, live in our own fragments of reality, which partially overlap but never completely coincide. But we do create a consensus of what world should be and look like to us. Like from childhood i will tell you that apple is a banana and you will believe it because your reality was shaped like that, your objective truth was formed that apple is a banana, what is subjective to me.

Other creatures, such as birds, have a different form of reality because their experience, senses, and "worldview" are different.

Therefore, any "true" or "absolute" reality, if it exists, is beyond our cognition. We can approach it, but we cannot possess it.

[thrasymachus]

B0R5 wrote

For something to be fully real, it must exist in the shared field of recognition — that is, as a conjunction of perceptions, meaning it is co-experienced or co-acknowledged by conscious beings.

This doesn't deny the possibility that something might exist "in itself."
But from the standpoint of lived and shared reality, only what enters the intersubjective web — what can be seen, spoken, agreed upon — becomes stabilized as real.

What is this shared field of recognition? One must first examine "recognition". When I recognize my cat, it is a temporal event, that is, the cat is a cat only in that she appears AS a cat, and this is always already done, cats being cats and fence posts being fence posts, such that the grasp of what it IS PRECEDES the actual encounter. This is critical to understanding the "reality" before you: the object (be it a thing, an emotion, a thought) is what it IS only in the acknowledgement, and this makes epistemology analytically bound to ontology. So what does this give you in terms of your question about relity"? It tells us that what is real is given to one in an analytic of time. To say what something IS, one has to analyze the temporal dimension of its being there, and this makes for a fascinating problem, for if the recollection of something is what rises up to to proclaim its being what it is, and this recollection is part of a totality of possibilities language and culture yield, then what happens to the fence post qua simply being there as a pure presence, stripped of the "reality" which recollection spontaneously generally gives this presence? Now the object is transcendental, that is, it transcends the knowledge claim that has always been there, constituting the familiarity, the habits of knowing and naming and pragmatically dealing with.


Now here's the crucial part:

It is enough for one conscious being to withhold assent — to veto — for a thing to remain imaginary rather than real.
If even one conscious observer denies or cannot perceive the unicorn, then the consensus is broken, and the unicorn remains a concept, a possibility, a story — not a shared reality.

But the reverse is also true.

If that one veto disappears — if the last dissenting perception aligns — then the unicorn becomes real within the field of shared experience.

But you have tossed reality into the air by making the conditions for making things what they ARE arbitrary. Such a supposition itself is arbitrarily conceived. Language and its agreement certainly is not like this, but this is not to say there is no indeterminacy in language. Someone like Derrida will say both, BOTH, the agreement and its opposition are indeterminate, not because one can raise the objection, but because it requires context for anything to make sense, objections or otherwise. Weird as it sounds, one cannot "raise an objection" against something the raising of an objection requires to be raised at all. It's like asking about the nature of logic: one has to employ logic to even ask the question, making the question nonsense (Wittgenstein's Tractatus). See how Derrida and Wittgenstein are aligned!

In that sense, realness is not about objectivity in the classical sense, but about relational alignment — about the threshold of consensual coherence being met.

So I’m not trying to co-opt the word real. I’m simply grounding it in the only space where reality actually functions for us: between us, as a dynamic concord of perception and recognition.

Well, thee are some, Rorty for example, who believe truth is a social construct, even scientific truth, considering that, as Wittgenstein pointed out, there once was no science . Science is not so much about discovery (truth is made, not discovered, says Rorty) as it is historical and pragmatic (Heidegger). I think it was Popper who argued that induction and deduction are never really about the rigor of certanty and probability, for when one comes into a logical issue, this issue is always saturated with assumptions that are there antecedently, and antecedent to ANY issue, because the historical foundation is what brings logic to light in the first place.

There is some merit to this view, more than some. Rorty famously insisted that, and this really has no reasonable opposition, given the assumptions of a scientists ontology of naturalism (See Quine), physicalism, the is no way for anything "out there" to get "in here": the brain is not a mirror of nature! So if science is going to have the final word ontologically, and this word aligns with a big consensus (so if you are going after the matter of what reality is, you might want to read Rorty's Mirror of Nature and his Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. The latter is accessible and not a technical work, the former pretty much is), then you MUST deal with the issue of how anything out there can get in here. The only way to address this meaningfully (and Rorty has this very interesting argument with Hillary Putnam where Putnam thinks Rorty is just being absurd to consider that his wife is not "really there" for "things," like wives and house plants, out there simply do not get into a brain thing (an interesting, and even profoundly so, "test" is to simply ask the basic question, how do things get "in here" at all? Remember, causality is emphatically not epistemic. If epistemology is impossible, then your "reality" is out the window). Anyway, meaningfully addressing this issue: Consciousness is NOT localized, like a brain is. A human being is not "physical" at all, keeping in mind that physicality itself issues first from experience, from "knowing" the world.

This doesn't deny the possibility that something might exist "in itself."
But from the standpoint of lived and shared reality, only what enters the intersubjective web — what can be seen, spoken, agreed upon — becomes stabilized as real.

Stabilized as real? Put your hand above a flame and hold it there. Is this a consensus? Yet is there anything more real? One really has to drop the complete disaster of a naturalist ontology. Reality is what is there, in your YOUR midst. This is not solipsism for no one denies ther are other things all around you, and these are not you. But all of this is received through and in you and your interpretative existence: the world is always already taken up in YOU, and in you are other things ARE acknowledged. Language is a social phenomenon, but it is more than this. Language opens and reveals the world, but it is also very public, and this tells us that the "I" that receives the world, one's "ownmost "existence, is inherently social, a consensus, if you will, but in this medium consensus is more than what others say and agree to, there is the very nature of language itself. This is a big issue. See the arguments between Rorty's reading of Heidegger and Rorty's own pragmatism. "Only what enter into the intersubjective web— what can be seen, spoken, agreed upon — becomes stabilized as real, you said. Consider the flame under your hand above. The knowing is a matte of the pain taken "as" what this historical consensus (yes, there is Hegel very much in this) says, but it is merely disingenuous to concluded truth and its reality to be a consensus. What you face here is transcendence, at every turn, for as Kierkegaard put it, Hegel forgot that we "exist". An intersubjective web is a totality of "open" meanings, and the only way to address this seriously is to acknowledge that "reality" is featureless, a nothing, really (see Keirkegaard's Conceot of Anxiety), non0being, if you will, because it cannot be fit into this consensus, for it is not a being but being itself.

Neither Rorty nor Heidegger have the final word on this. Post-post modern thinkers like Jean Luc Marion do.