Are Mental Images Real?

Are Mental Images Real?

This essay was my first stab at defining and discussing reality for my freshman seminar, What is Reality?. Using a questionable topic of reality (in this case -- are mental images 'real'?), we were to attempt a working definition and method for determing that which is real. Pretty lousy, I'm not gonna lie, but an interesting assignment.

In the middle of the night, a boy awakes from the most horrifying chase scene he’s ever witnessed, terrified in a cold sweat. His heart is pounding, he’s lost his breath. And yet he wakes to the comfortable knowledge that it was “all just a dream.”

The mind is a strange entity, in that it is essentially our guide to that which we experience - it perceives, processes, interprets, analyzes, and utterly convinces. We respond physiologically to our minds’ wills, be it with elevated heart rates, elation, or a deep-rooted sense of confusion in the inability to distinguish between what our mind says and what we know to be true.

Herein we see the quandary of existence as human beings in society : are the images and experiences of our mind truly real? To a schizophrenic, a hallucination in which he is attacked by a big black dog is as real to him as a true assault by a New York mugger. Where, then, is the line drawn between a pure mental image and reality, and what does this say about the nature of reality?

Enlightened philosopher Rene Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am,” claiming the reality and validity of his existence based on the inner workings of his mind. The mental images and experiences he had were, to him, the fundamental proof that, as an entity, he was truly functional and definite. Yet how many of us have, at one point or another, asked ourselves, “Is this really happening?” and, despite the knowledge that we must be conscious to be questioning thusly, still couldn’t verify or discredit the reality of the situation? To quote a classmate in a discussion about the nature of existence, “All that individual existentialism stuff sounds pretty funky, but you’ve got to believe in it for it to work.” Indeed, the idea that reality is created or destroyed by one’s own willingness to exist is a terrifying and thought-provoking concept, riddled with metaphysical questions of procedure and mechanics of life. Do people’s minds allow them to know of their own horrifying and grotesque deaths, or is there perhaps an “I-am-dying-peacefully-in-my-sleep” hormone released when the body becomes aware of its infinite peril?