On Multiple Realities

Abstract

In a famous chapter of his Principles of Psychology William James analyzes our sense of reality.¹ Reality, so he states, means simply relation to our emotional and active life. The origin of all reality is subjective, whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real. To call a thing real means that this thing stands in a certain relation to ourselves. “The word ‘real’ is, in short, a fringe.” ² Our primitive impulse is to affirm immediately the reality of all that is conceived, as long as it remains uncontradicted. But there are several, probably an infinite number of various orders of realities, each with its own special and separate style of existence. James calls them “sub-universes” and mentions as examples the world of sense or physical things (as the paramount reality), the world of science, the world of ideal relations, the world of “idols of the tribe”, the various supernatural worlds of mythology and religion, the various worlds of individual opinion, the worlds of sheer madness and vagary.³ The popular mind conceives of all these sub-worlds more or less disconnectedly, and when dealing with one of them forgets for the time being its relations to the rest. But every object we think of is at last referred to one of these sub worlds.“