NASARA JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

The nature of reality and how to identify it has remained an age-long philosophical problem. Metaphysicians and Tepistemologists have attempted to unravel this mystery for ages now. This has led to the rise of two schools of thought (the empiricists and the rationalists or idealists). In view of this, this work re-echoes some of the issues raised by these groups that continuously beg the question: what is reality?, what can be known, can reality in its ultimate nature be known?, can one be deceived in his perception of reality?, what are illusions?, are illusions real?, is everything which is knowable illusion?, is life an illusion?, are discourses on illusion an exclusive preserve of the empirical sciences?, can that which is said to be illusory be defined outside of the ultimate reality? These are some of the major issues this work seeks to address. This work, using the philosophical method of analysis, establishes that while scientific experiments (in its logical positivist variant) may establish the ontology of illusion, from a metaphysical point of view, it is hard to distinguish between when the real becomes illusion and when reality is so called- Reality. It also establishes that the “Real” is and can only be perceived from a point of view at each instance of knowledge. The work therefore concludes that, that which is seen at some point or to one person as illusory, may be real at another point or to another person.

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