question reality

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

to subject the nature, reliability, or independence of perceived reality to philosophical scrutiny, asking whether what one takes to be real is genuinely so or whether it is a construction of the mind, a social convention, a hallucination, or a deceptive appearance concealing a deeper truth; the injunction to question reality runs from Plato's allegory of the cave through Descartes' evil demon, Kant's transcendental idealism, and contemporary simulation hypotheses to the sociological insight that social reality is collectively constructed and therefore subject to reconstruction; it is both a philosophical method and a cultural attitude that treats received reality as contingent rather than given