The empiricist definition of reality is “what can be proven.” The problem with this definition is that by itself it leads to nihilism. If reality is what can be proven, then if something can’t be proven to just one person, it isn’t real. You can’t prove much to a person with brain damage or a person who believes the earth is flat. This logically leads to the conclusion that nothing is real.
I went through a nihilistic stage as a teenager. Some people thought he was on drugs and others thought he was escaping from reality. The real reason was this cognition.
The nihilistic conclusion is corrected by a better definition of reality. This definition puts the cart before the horse. The test does not pre-exist reality; reality pre-exists proof. Reality does not exist in reference to a method to discern it. Reality exists in its own right, and there is the method to discern it.
While not much can be said in favor of nihilism in and of itself, it can nonetheless be a useful pathway into other systems of learning. There are a large number of spiritual disciplines that affirm that the true world is that of God, or that of superior consciousness, or that of perfect forms. Much can be learned from these spiritual disciplines, practiced as they have been practiced for centuries to enhance wisdom and understanding. The fault with many of these systems is that, when left to their own devices, they begin to militate against scientific facts and against “the world”; and that is not the right path either.
I want to see that people can have the benefits of both science and spirituality. Both the material world and the spiritual world should be in the best possible shape. People have both physical and spiritual existence; and depriving them of either impoverishes them.
The real reason for the conflict between the materialistic and spiritual worldviews is that they describe two different things. When a blind man holds an elephant’s trunk and the other his tail, he thinks he is describing two different things; however, what they are both describing are different aspects of the same reality. Man, the “rational animal” or “social animal,” and man, the spirit, are both men. They are simply different aspects of man.
What is reality? Reality is what exists. This is the case for both the material and the spiritual aspects. Any true learning system will have to be consistent with scientific knowledge, while also taking into account all the spiritual experiences people have without branding them as mental illness or worse. The spiritually inclined will have to acknowledge scientific fact, and the materially inclined will have to acknowledge spiritual phenomena. And then people can have the benefits of both approaches without killing each other over them.