As long as we're on the subject of existence, you don't exist. I don't exist. The cat doesn't exist. Read the book "Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot for further info on what's really going on. For a while, I've been reading up on it, and I'm fascinated by how he has interpreted the "fundamental" life of human existence and what humans actually perceive as the truth. I've based this whole thread on basically what I learned from the book, whether it should be read as truth, or be judged as NOT the truth. I guess since my future career is going to be a neurosurgeon, I was even more fascinated by how the brain really "creates" this reality for you. I've known for awhile that the back of the brain controls what you experience, but never really thought of it this way. Anywhoo, read on, fellow AG members:
From the very moment you are born, you indoctrinate the idea that the world has an absolute material reality so you base your entire life on getting more material possessions and further pursuing this view. Everything that you think you know is conveyed to us by our 5 senses, (i.e. taste, touch, sight, hearing, and smelling). The world you know of is only consistent of what your eyes see, ears hear, noses smell, tongues taste, and our hands feel. You, as a human, have depended fully on those 5 senses your whole life, and that is why you know this material world only the way these 5 senses project it to you.
Matter makes up the whole external world. Man is an image and everything experienced is temporary and deceptive. This universe is a shadow. When you see something, clusters of light called photons travel to your eyes, travel through the eye lens, and focus on the retina, located in the back of the eye. In the retina, these photons are converted into electrical signals and sent by neurons to the center of vision, located in the back of the brain.
Everything you've ever seen in your whole life is viewed right there in the tiny, dark place we call the Medulla Oblongata. This text that you're reading, and the whole world you see when looking out of a window is all viewed in the back of the brain, a place of merely a few cubic centimeters. When you say "I see" you really only see the effect of the rays reaching your eyes form in your brain by being transformed into electrical signals. When you say "I see" you're really only viewing the electrical particles in the brain.
Michael Talbot wants you to keep in mind, the brain is sealed to light and the inside of your head is 100% dark.. Therefore the brain never comes in contact with light itself. If you view a candle, you're viewing it in the back of your brain but the candle light never illuminates the inside of your head, however we view a colorful and bright world inside of our dark brain. The same situation applies to all of our other senses. They are all perceived in the brain as electrical signals. Everything you see, touch feel, smell, or taste is all perceived in the brain so therefore our brains never confront the original of the matter existing outside of us, but rather an electrical copy of it formed inside of our brain. We are mislead to assume these copies are instances of real matter outside of the brain.
Everything we see, touch, hear, and perceive is matter. The world, and the universe is only electrical signals in our brain. Everything involving your senses is nothing but the brains interpretation of electrical signals. The distance between you and this screen is nothing but a feeling of space formed in your brain. The objects that seem to be very distant in one persons view are just images clustered in one spot in the brain. (i.e. Someone who watches the stars through a telescope assumed they are millions of light years away from him, yet the stars are right inside of himself, in the center of vision in his brain. You are also not inside the room you assume yourself to be in. On the contrary, the room is inside of you. You seeing your body makes you think that you are inside of it. However, you must realize that your body too, is an image formed inside your brain. How can we be sure an external world even exists? We can't. The only reality we cope with is the world of perceptions we live within our minds. To imagine matter to have an existence outside of the mind is indeed a deception. The perceptions we observe can possibly be coming from an outside source.
Let us suppose we can take our brain out of our body and keep it alive in a glass jar. Let us put a computer in where all kinds of information can be recorded. Finally, let us transmit the electrical signals of all the data related to a setting such a sight, sound, and smell to this computer. Let us connect to the sentry centers of our brain. Your brain will see and live the setting correlated with these. This imaginary world will continue as long as the simulations keep coming from the computer, just without the senses being the part of the body that SHOWS what the brain is perceiving. We would never realize that we only consist of a brain. It is very easy for us to be deceived into believing perceptions without any material correlates to be real.
This is exactly what happens in our dreams. To you, reality is everything that can be touched with the hand and seen with the eye. In your dreams you can also touch with your hand and see with your eye. In reality you have neither hand, nor eye, There is nothing that can be touched nor seen. Taking what youâve seen in your dreams to be material realities you are simply deceived. A person deeply asleep in his bed can visit different places, eat, drink, see friends, yet he hasnât stepped a foot away from his bed. It is when this person awakes that he knows all that was experienced were only perceptions, AKA a dream. If we are able to live an unreal world during our dreams, the same thing can equally be true for the world we live in. The same can easily be applied to what you consider "real life". We may eventually be awoken from what we thought we were living all along, just as we are awoken in a dream.
Our brain is a matter just like our arms, legs, or any other object, so it must be an illusion just like all other objects. Let us say that we can take the brain and take it out of our head and see it with our eyes, and touch it with our hands. In this case we can see the brain is nothing more than a perception. So then what are we? The ones who see, touch, and perceives smells and tastes? This metaphysical being that perceives is called the soul. Just as the bodies we possess and the universe we occupy have no physical reality. The absolute being is the soul. Matter consists merely of perceptions viewed by the soul. In conclusion, the cat does not exist. The woods in which the cat was in, does not exist.
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So there you have it. By the way, the philosophy that Michael Talbot used was called empiricism, where the human mind-- actually EVERY organism's mind is like a giant piece of white paper, collecting and recording experiences to use again in future events, whether they are remembered, or locked away to be forgotten. This somewhat-popular belief has been dead for awhile now, but every time I bring this up to people in a not-as-strong-as-the-book's fashion, people seem to be blown away by it, not knowing exactly what to think from it.
So, what do you think of this? Obviously, you can't truthfully post about this topic without reading it first, so drop the "tl;dr" act and start thinking. Is he a crackpot author, or is he making sense of all this? Obviously, we exist, but without the back of the brain, you couldn't possibly believe you are or did, because you technically "never experienced existence". All you would have is the mind, thinking and perceiving nothing while you float around in a vast, empty, black space called the universe. But I'm saying too much. It's now YOUR turn to do the thinking. What are your thoughts?
Well, dogs aren't actually color blind. I believe I saw somewhere that they can actually see every color except green.
Also, human sight is a FAR from accurate sense. And does nowhere near perceive all there is to perceive.
Just because we don't have the ability to see most things, doesn't mean it's inaccurate. I mean, it's far from precise, but accurate? Yes, I think it is. But only in our field of sight.
Unless they develop an alternate perception device, which will never happen. It's just weird to me. Following that ideology how do we know that we're not in some video game? If what we're perceiving is wrong, then what's right?
WE DON'T KNOW. And it's not ideology - it's fact. We can't know if our senses perception is correct or not, because senses perception is the only way we can see or get other input towards what's around us.
Really everything that is possible exists as a path. You simply choose the path you wish to perceive. The only things that can't change are the ones you have already perceived. Existence is determined by what path you choose to perceive no by what others tell you to.
Well, dogs aren't actually color blind. I believe I saw somewhere that they can actually see every color except green.
Technically besides my point, but alright.
Just because we don't have the ability to see most things, doesn't mean it's inaccurate. I mean, it's far from precise, but accurate? Yes, I think it is. But only in our field of sight.
Isn't that acknowledging that we're missing out on something, though? And, that we can't know what's beyond that - field of sensory perception?
If we're talking about the accuracy of our perceptions and the varied way of experiencing them, then why does this lead to skepticism? Human sensory experience is verifiable in that we can form beliefs about our perceptions that can be publicly verified. If I have a visual experience as if I were perceiving a red triangle in the center of my field of vision, I would form the concurrent belief that I am seeing a red triangle. If no one else who should be able to see this triangle can, then I'm bound to think I'm mistaken. The fact that the vast majority of our sensory experiences are shared by others is some of the strongest evidence that whatever we're perceiving - it's really there.
Isn't that acknowledging that we're missing out on something, though? And, that we can't know what's beyond that - field of sensory perception?
Missing out on something perceptually isn't bad. There are lots of things both visually and auditorially can't perceive. But take something like looking at an infrared light. Our eyes perceive this sort of light as a dull reddish color and when it hits our skin, it is interpreted as heat. Other animals likely don't perceive this in this way, but is that fact something we should lament? Why should we care to perceive things any differently than we already are? Already, our perceptions have a high degree of accuracy, and ultimately we have scientific equipment to do the perceiving in areas where we're not capable. The only thing we're missing out on, then, is to know "what it's like" to be another animal - a question which I don't find interesting in the least.
Why should we care to perceive things any differently than we already are?
Oh, I wouldn't say we should. I just think it's nice to be aware that there are other ways of perceiving the world than we have, and I don't think any of them can be labeled the correct way, nor a true perception of the world.
If I have a visual experience as if I were perceiving a red triangle in the center of my field of vision, I would form the concurrent belief that I am seeing a red triangle. If no one else who should be able to see this triangle can, then I'm bound to think I'm mistaken.
But would you be?
The fact that the vast majority of our sensory experiences are shared by others is some of the strongest evidence that whatever we're perceiving - it's really there.
Or, everyone is effectively being fed the same illusion. But since we don't know which of those two it is, it's probably wiser to believe that it's real.
Or, everyone is effectively being fed the same illusion. But since we don't know which of those two it is, it's probably wiser to believe that it's real.
Of course, there's the possibility that it could be something completely different to someone else, but they have no way of expressing that. Take colors. What you perceive as red, everyone else perceives, because we're taught to associate that specific color/shade with the word Red. Isn't is possible that someone may see it differently, like what we think is Blue is what they see as Red, but they have no way of comparing that to your sensory inputs, so they assume that to everyone else that's what Red looks like? When it comes to specific objects it'd be more complicated, and if the issue is whether or not an objects there, then its more definable, since we have more senses to back it up. Still, if its individuals brains sorting things out, maybe they see/hear/smell/fell/taste it differently based upon the way their brain functions. We can't know for certain if anything exists, even if others back it up, because it may be something completely different to them, and descriptions of the items can't be relied upon because of the language and teaching we have, going back to the red/blue thing but on a larger scale
There are two propositions at work here. In the triangle example I gave, there is the proposition that 1) I am in such a circumstance as to perceive a red triangular shaped object in my field of vision, and 2) There is, in fact, a red triangular shaped object in my field of vision. The first proposition would be true if and only if I were to perceive such a visual stimulus and its correspondence to others' beliefs is not relevant. The second proposition seems defeasible in light of the fact that no one else is perceiving what I am, despite their being in an optimal position to do so.
We can't know for certain if anything exists, even if others back it up, because it may be something completely different to them, and descriptions of the items can't be relied upon because of the language and teaching we have, going back to the red/blue thing but on a larger scale
Some studies show that this color problem might be something genuine in perception - but can we ignore the empirical scientific aspect of these perceptions? Certainly, why I might be calling "red" might look blue to you, even though you call it "red" because that's what you were taught. But "red" is defined as a specific wavelength of light and can be measured by a spectrometer. The names of objects or concepts are arbitrary, I will admit, and I can agree that descriptions of objects cannot relate an objective truth to another person. But this does not imply that the objects of our perception simply aren't there. Even though individual brains are sorting things out, we have public (in fact, global) perceptions that cohere on a fundamental level and very sensitive instruments that back up our perceptions.
Well I must say that I was quite impressed with ShintetsuWA's "godly wall of text". It is a concept that forces you to step back and think about it. Now here is what I think:
We as humans can only define existance based on our senses. It is possible that nothing truly exists other than as the electrical signals received by the brain. We can however prove that when two or more people observe a situation all of their brains recieve similiar electrical signals. Whether this proves that said situation exists I do not know. Humanity has created many sciences and religions to try to explain our existance. Personally I believe that it is possible the universe contains those who percieve existance in a way so unlike our own that we could not possibly comprehend it.
I have actually been thinking about this concept for quite a while, although I don't see how it would be possible for us to have come up with not only a universe in its entirety, but also come up with languages, history of each country, and all of our technology.
Plus this would mean that I (saying that I made this world, although it could be anyone else) am the only person that matters, and that other lives mean nothing.
Also, would this mean that you guys are all generated by me (going by the same concept of course)?
And this brings up another question, does this theory mean that when I (or whoever made the world) die, the whole world goes down with me, or whoever generated the world?
So that would mean that it would be like whoever made this world would practically be a supreme god?
I need to read the book so I can gain a full knowledge of this theory.
