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Reality in everyday usage means "everything that exists." The term "Reality," in its most liberal sense, includes everything that is, whether or not it is observable, accessible or understandable by science, philosophy, theology or any other system of analysis. Reality in this sense may include both being and nothingness, whereas " existence" is often restricted to being.In the strict sense of European-German philosophy , in the tradition of Ludwig Wittgenstein, there are levels or gradation to the nature and conception of reality. These levels include, from the most subjective to the most rigorous:
1 Phenomenological reality
On the broadest and most subjective level, the private experiences, curosity, inquiry, and selectivity involved in the personal interpretation of an event, shapes reality as seen by one and only one individual and hence is called phenomenological. This form of reality might be common to others as well, but at times could also be so unique to oneself as to be never experienced or agreed upon by any one else. Much of the spiritual experience of an individual occurs on this level of reality.
2 Truth
When two or more individuals agree upon the interpretation and experience of a particular event, a consensus about an event and its experience begins to be formed. This being common to a few individuals or a larger group, then becomes the 'truth' as seen and agreed upon by a certain set of people. Thus one particular group may have a certain set of agreed truths, while another group might have still different set of truths that have reached consensus. This lets different communities and societies have varied and extremely different notions of reality and truth of the external world. The religion and beliefs of people or communities are a fine example of this level of reality. This is well expressed in the famous quote by Henry Thoreau, "It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak and another to hear."
3 Fact
A fact or factual entity is a phenomenon that is perceived as an elemental principle. It is rarely one that could be subject to personal interpretation. Instead it is most often the observed phenomena of the natural world. The proposition 'the sun rises in the east', is a fact. It is a fact for people belonging to any group or nationality regardless of which language they speak or which part of the hemisphere they come from. The Galilean proposition in support of the Copernican theoryIn mathematics, a theory is a set of statements closed under logical implication. In mathematical logic, "theory" is the term for a set of well-formed formulae consisting of certain axioms and all theorems provable from said axioms. Godel's incompleteness, that the sunThe Sun (also called Sol is the star in our solar system. Planet Earth orbits the Sun. Other bodies that orbit the Sun include other planets, asteroids, meteoroids, comets and dust. Not all objects passing through the solar system have been orbitally capt is the centre of the solar systemA generic solar system (or planetary system consists of at least one star and various orbiting objects (such as asteroids, comets, moons, and planets). The term originated to describe the planetary system around Sol, the Latin name for our sun. The planet is one that states the fact of the natural worldFor alternative meanings, see nature (disambiguation). universe, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF team. hydrogen atom electron orbitals shown as cross-sections with color-coded probability density flea. However during his life time he (Galileo) was ridiculed for that factual proposition, because far too few people had a consensus about it in order to accept it as a truth. Fewer propositions are factual in content in the world, as compared to the many truths shared by various communities, which are also fewer to the innumerable individual phenomenological realities. Much of scientific explorationFor the scientific journal named Science see Science (journal). Science is both a process of gaining knowledge, and the organized body of knowledge gained by this process. The scientific process is the systematic acquisition of new knowledge about a syste, experimentation, interpretationHermeneutics Hermeneutic means interpretive , is a branch of philosophy concerned with human understanding and the interpretation of written texts. The word derives from the Greek god Hermes in his role as patron of communication and human understanding. and analysis is done on this level.
