Many of the philosophers we’ve been looking at are highly concerned with reality—Descartes claims we MUST establish a trustworthy concept of what is real and what is not outside of our senses, where a landmark of Hobbes’ philosophy is that we can trust nothing but our senses. Is there, or could there be a philosophy wherein what is “real” is irrelevant? Granted, Harwood’s example of one’s ability to simply kill another without consequence since neither can be definitively real would lead to chaos and a breakdown of society and morals, but there’s evidence that individuals can affect our realities, implying that they’re less static and uncontrollable than the philosophers we’ve looked at might agree to. There’s a film on the philosophy of quantum physics and consciousness called What the Bleep Do We Know? that proposes that consciousness constructs the universe rather than physical objects. It’s admittedly not scientifically proven, but neither are the philosophers we’ve looked at. This suggestion leads to the idea that what is “real” can be affected by individual thought since each individual’s consciousness contributes to that reality. It’s been called “new age” and “pseudoscience,” but has been equally encouraged by neuroscientist, physicists, and a molecular biologist or two. Connections can even be drawn between it and Oprah’s phenomenon “The Secret.” Yes, this idea is followed by many housewives who hope that they can control their weight before the next big PTA meeting and that the universe will send them that Coach bag, but there are vastly more legitimate and applicable understandings of the universe a collective consciousness. My question is not of the validity of this argument, but of its ability to be applied to our investigation of what is “real.” How would the philosophers we’ve studied respond the idea that reality is in our control and that what exists is less relevant. It essentially shatters Descartes’ conceptual look at the existence of God since our ability to affect our own environment removes absolute power from a higher being. Furthermore, it makes his ponderings of what can be known essentially irrelevant. Hobbes, on the other hand, might not have too big of an issue with this concept other than that it exists, to some extent, in la-la land where as Hobbes’ philosophy was very much about reality. I guess what I’m interested to hear are people opinions on whether a philosophy without reality could exist, and how it would affect and be affected by historically impactful philosophers like Descartes, Luther, Hobbes, Locke, etc.