REFLECTIVE PIECE

In the chaos of everyday life, the line between reality and illusion can often become blurred. In this piece
I will refer to the texts of David Chalmers, provided in this course, as well as my photo journal to discuss
how the concept of illusion is explored in my album and the course.

To commence, I would like to discuss the concept of illusion in the Bhagavad Gita. David Chalmers
describes the story of Sushila and Narada; where a Hindu God named Narada experiences life as a Lady,
Sushila, after he states to the God Vishnu that he has “conquered illusion (Maya)”. Vishnu Makes him
Sushila to teach him that his entire life is an illusion. With this analogy in mind, we could view our own
lives as illusionary, where all that we see isn’t as we perceive it. This could also tie into the concept of
virtual reality, where a reality exists that is real in and of itself but comprised of virtual objects. In my
photo journal, the entry “SIMULATED WORLDS” served to emphasize the existence of virtual worlds,
with each individual pixel as an individual world. If we adopt a virtual digitalist perspective this sort of
reality wouldn’t be real to us, a virtual object would be an illusion.

Furthermore, I wanted to investigate the relationship of illusion and perspective. David Chalmers
suggests the idea of reality as genuiness, where reality if real if objects in that reality are genuine
objects. However, looking at “I FOUND HER IN A BOTTLE”, and “BIG BANG IN A BOTTLE” from my photo
journal , one might conclude that our reality isn’t real as it is illusionary; in this context I take illusionary
to mean “capable of illusion”. One could, however, argue that these illusions are created by genuine
things in a real reality and are therefore not “real” illusions.

Finally, I will look at how my photo journal pertains to this course: “Knowledge and reality”. In terms of
the reality aspect my entry “DOES THE WORLD LOOK FUNNY TO YOU” suggests heavily that reality can be
questioned as we only know our perspectives and not the perspectives of others. And the entry “A
BREAK IN THE CONTINUUM”, suggests how easily reality can be manipulated to look unreal. Through the
inclusion of elements like these, we can see that there is much to investigate about the nature of reality,
and what it means to be real. However, these pictures do align with some of David Chalmers paradigms
for reality, as these images do have an effect on our perception, hence possess causal power, and they
are also perceivable by us hence may actually be real.

To conclude, there is much about our reality that is real, as well as illusionary. However, we may never
truly know as we do not have the instruments or capacity to. But that does not stop us from exploring
the many horizons and views presented to us. As Edgar Allen Poe wrote “life is but a dream within a
dream.”

PHOTO JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT:

https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipPAkD-0ts3UwF0GKbAJrHFtR1JIChc3pYbdfd0