What is reality?
People have debated this for centuries. Is reality objective — something definite that exists independent of us? Or is it subjective, existing only in our individual heads?
Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, argues it’s neither. Instead, she believes reality is relational.
Relational reality explained
So, what does relational reality mean?
Barrett offers this example: Suppose you tell your therapist you’re mad, and they say you’re actually sad. An objective view might say there’s a correct answer — one of you is right, or perhaps both of you are wrong. Others would say the answer depends on each person’s individual experience.
Barrett says it’s neither.
“Reality may not be out there in the world, separate from you, and it’s definitely not only in your head,” she says. “It’s actually a combination of the two, which means that reality exists, but it exists in relation to you.”
How the brain makes meaning
Perception isn’t simply a faithful recording of the external world, Barrett explains. Rather, the brain draws on past experience to interpret incoming sensory signals, creating each individual’s very own Perception Box, the invisible mental frame through which we each experience the world.
“Your box is the ingredients — the signals that you bring to creating the relational present,” Barrett says. To illustrate the idea, she turns to an old parable: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
A relational realist would say a falling tree creates vibrations in the air, but those vibrations become sound only when an organism detects and interprets them, Barrett explains. Without an organism there to do so, the tree does not make a sound.
Seeing beyond your own reality
Different organisms have access to different signals. Animals have sensory surfaces that humans don’t, meaning aspects of reality available to them may be inaccessible to us.
For example, in the ocean there are vibrations humans don’t detect that may be meaningful to whales. Their sensory systems allow them to experience signals that we don’t perceive, Barrett says.
“We interfere with their ability to communicate with each other by our ignorance of their perspective,” Barrett says.
That same idea can apply to interactions between humans.
During an argument, people often appeal to the authority of objective reality to declare they’re right. But if reality is relational, you can’t do that.
“In order to resolve the conflict, it means you have to admit the idea that somebody else’s experience has equivalent authority to your own,” Barrett says. “The idea that somebody else’s experience is part of reality as much as yours doesn’t invalidate your experience. It means that your experience is a part of reality, but it’s not the only part.”
How to expand your Perception Box
According to Barrett, some aspects of reality are shared, while others are accessible to one person but not another. Exposure to different people and experiences can give us access to new signals and meanings, expanding the aspects of reality available to us.
Spend most of your time around people who are just like you — who have similar reactions and experiences — and you’ll likely reinforce the remembered past that’s easy for you to conjure. But if you’re curious and foraging for new sets of signals and new meanings, you’re likely to expand the aspects of reality that you have access to.
“The goal there is to be curious and be humble,” Barrett says. “As a person, I think it’s incumbent upon us. We really ought to experience as many aspects of reality as we can. Otherwise, we’re ignorant, and ignorance is not helpful.”
We interviewed Lisa Feldman Barrett for Relational Realism, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Watch the first episode above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series.
This video How to experience more of reality is featured on Big Think.