"Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Spoon boy: There is no spoon. "



[This is a hypothetical situation involving the movie "The Matrix" to convey a point]




The matrix is a completely machine-generated construct of the world which feeds into every single sensory perception human beings have; and hence whilst they [The human race] are in fact essentially "brains in vats" they experience the world within the matrix through all their senses as if it was completely real in every way, and are entirely oblivious of the existence of the matrix.


So the obvious conclusion is that; nothing in the matrix is "real"? There is no spoon, just a series of electronic impulses fed into our senses.



But is the spoon real? Where do we draw the line on when something is "real" or not?



The spoon; we can experience it through every sense and it can even end our existance by killing us.

It is also constructed in one sense; via a complex program.

But it isn't physically there, in what we would call the "real" world. But what if the real world is also a construct? Does that then make it "not real"?



So is the spoon "real" or is it not "real"?