The name is absent

Chapter I

(Con)fusing (un)reality

The difficulty in distinguishing between ‘reality’ and ‘unreality’ has
been a significant concern in western philosophical thought throughout its
history. Nevertheless, in recent years the phenomenon has acquired peculiar
characteristics. In short, the rapid development of technology has
complicated our understanding of our own creations and the consequences
that they invoke. Current technology has provided us with new visual, digital
and virtual sources for the creation and perception of realities in fictitious
spaces; yet our culture seems unprepared to assume, with its cultural
baggage, these transformations concerning all social and psychological
scopes. It is in this gap between our existing technology and our
understanding and knowledge of this technology that the current confusion
between ‘reality’ and ‘unreality’ resides. It is important, then, to be
conscious that a new reality is being produced. In order to understand this
distinctive new space between what we know as ‘reality’ and ‘unreality’, the
solution may be to find how to live with and within the coexistence of both.
The discrepancy between these complex entities of ‘reality’ and ‘unreality’
will be the territory explored in this short introductory chapter.

1.1. (Un)reality in context

According to the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ‘reality’ relates
to ‘the states of things as they actually are, rather than they are imagined to
be’ (Audi, 1999: 677). In this sense, what has true and effective existence is
what we perceive through the senses. However, from a philosophical point of
view, and following Descartes, the founding father of modern observational
science, the senses are deceptive and serve to distort reality. Descartes
(1977: 19) suggests that we cannot trust in our own senses when perceiving
reality. We rely on our five senses to transmit information to the brain and
consequently we create a construction in our mind that is classified as real.

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