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Concept
Consensus reality
Summary
Consensus reality is that which is generally agreed to be reality, based on a consensus view.
The appeal to consensus arises from the idea that humans do not fully understand or agree upon the nature of knowledge or ontology, often making it uncertain what is real, given the vast inconsistencies between individual subjectivities. Humans can, however, seek to obtain some form of consensus, with others, of what is real. This consensus can be used as a pragmatic guide, either on the assumption that it seems to approximate some kind of valid reality, or simply because it is more "practical" than perceived alternatives. Consensus reality therefore refers to the agreed-upon concepts of reality which people in the world, or a culture or group, believe are real (or treat as real), usually based upon their common experiences as they believe them to be; anyone who does not agree with these is sometimes stated to be "in effect... living in a different world."
Throughout history this has also raised a social question as to the effects of a society in which all individuals do not agree upon the same reality.
Children have sometimes been described or viewed as "inexperience[d] with consensus reality," though are described as such with the expectation that their perspective will progressively form closer to the consensus reality of their society as they age.
In considering the nature of reality, two broad approaches exist: the realist approach, in which there is a single, objective, overall reality believed to exist irrespective of the perceptions of any given individual, and the idealistic approach, in which it is considered that an individual can verify nothing except their own experience of the world, and can never directly know the truth of the world independent of that.
Berger and Luckmann argue that "reality is socially constructed and that the sociology of knowledge must analyze the process in which this occurs". Rather than being a purely philosophical topic, the question of reality includes, for them, the sociological study of consensus reality.
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