YourNeverThere

I have been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence, and he brings up this concept at one point, that's been in my head for a while now. He talk's about how everything that we call reality, consist's completly of what our sense's receive. Think of a person, that was born without any sense's, can't see, can't hear, can't feel, can't smell and can't taste, he is fed intravenously or otherwize kept alive. What is going on in his head? does he really have a mind at all? he would have no perception of reality! So, if our minds only recieve reality through our sense's, and our sense's are fool so often, how can anyone be sure about reality at all? Just think of the movie, like the moving film, it's just different pictures moving very fast and tricks us into thinking that its moving, what if reality is like that? but its all moving so fast and in such a way that it tricks all 5 sense's into thinking that this is what reality is. This sort of thing has been running around in my head for a long time, and its driving me nuts.

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The Above post is a direct quote from Shakespeare

Dragonlich

you'll eventually get over it, dude. Accept it, and move on.

cliche

There are some really good arguments that, basically, whether it's real or not doesn't matter - and actually should be considered the same thing. I'll try to find them for you

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I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones. -- John Cage (1912 - 1992)

lumpenprole

I always go with PK Dick's hard and fast rule about reality. I'm quoting from memory, so I might get it a little wrong.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, continues to exist."

tardka

Well, suppose our senses are being tricked, then by what and how?

rogue49

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
- Philip K. Dick

YourNeverThere

thats a great quote, but its not that i dont believe in reality, and when if stop nothing will change becuase im still getting the same signels from my sense's. Im excited about cliche arguments though, this could be really interesting.
Thinking about this more, and reading more, and he said something about how you cant feel time, as in none of your sense's fell time. I dont think thats right at all though, in fact i think its the opposite, that all your sense's make up time. If your in a featureless room with nothing changing, does time move? if you never leave that area, has time stopped? for you it as, nothing is changing, nothing moving. When things change around you, move, and shape themselves, that is how we sense time.
I think anyway

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The Above post is a direct quote from Shakespeare

Dragonlich

YourNeverThere... actually, your body has an internal clock. You will indeed start to feel hungry after a while, and after yet more time, you'll grow tired and start to sleep. Without sunlight to regulate it, your clock will start to fuck up eventually, though.

phukraut

by aliens who put our brains in a giant vat and hooked us up to a machine that 'fools' our senses.. err.. or by Descartes' great Deceiver.. the options are really endless because we can never have true knowledge about the world outside our own consciousness.

Xell101

Maybe the universe doesn't exist as we believe it does, but only in our minds, but in reality we may be just energy floating amongst whatever it is we are in, maybe we are the multiverses version of sea monkeys in a jar. Whatever the situaiton, it doens't matter since this is all we have.

TheKak

Its the difference between something being *possible* or *probable*. It is possible that our brains are in vats being controled by a computer, or that a Demon is just casting illusions at us, but it isnt probable. Either way, as was already stated, it doesnt really matter, its all we know/have.

phukraut

the problem with this is, how do you calculate the probabilities? based on what sample space? in order to calculate a probability like that, you need to know more than what you can experience. if you base the probability on experience in order to show that what we experience is more likely, then that's begging the question. just because it's all we see, that doesn't mean it's all that's out there .

CAN_skate

I noticed the other night while in bed that if i close my eyes and look either one up and towards my nose and then prod the other corner of my eye with my finger I can see bright flashes of light. But there is no source of light. My brain is making it up for some reason. That's odd. Maybe my brains make up other shit, like sometimes I buy pants thinking they fit, and then they are way to baggy.

After I while my eye hurt, so I don't suggest this.

maxero

my light is blue ;D
personally im fascinated with the idea of what we can perceive as reality, what we can sense out of everything there is
i also get caught up a lot thinking about where inside you your existance is really located, i mean i know weve got brains and all, but what is 'consciousness', its not really a tangible thing, so where is it? its just weird that all of your thoughts arent physical things. and memory is a really weird concept to me too ;o

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cough

ARTelevision

pressing the eye stimulates the retina - the retina changes the physical pressure into electrical signals - the electrical signals that go from the optic nerve to the brain are indistinguishable from the ones created by light stimulation of the retina. these physically produced flashes of light are called phosphenes.

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create evolution

mepitans

I would have to say the people in that book aren't quite being fair to the five senses. The 5 senses are the tool of the eye of flesh. We can use the senses to catogorize things, which in earlier development was a huge accomplishment. Even when using the eye of mind(reason, logic, etc) many of it's greatest uses are grounded in the eye of flesh(5 senses). The Zen people expand their eye of contemplation(spiritual, "third eye") with meditation and other spiritual practice. But because of that they shouldn't reduce "reality" or material things to that eye. Material things are made sense of by the eye of flesh, so when dealing with such things, it is the best to use and is very very important, even if it is lower in development than the eye of mind, or contemplation.

cliff notes: The 5 senses are what should be used to deal with material things, not anything spiritual(unless it is using the 5 senses to the extent they should be) If you don't see, smell, hear, or even feel a bullet going through your brain, you are still going to die.

YourNeverThere

I meant a featureless room where nothing changes, sorry i cant spell worth a doller. So a room where there are no changes, not hungry or thristy etc.

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The Above post is a direct quote from Shakespeare

Johnny Rotten

You're asking whether or not reality as we know it is merely a combination of sensory input and possibly sensory illusion. But it is, by definition, a closed system. You can take mind-altering drugs that will alter your perceptions, but you're still experiencing things subjectively. When you and someone else can independently corroborate a highly unusual phenomenon, like a ghost or a miracle (without going into whether those occur or not), then you might be seeing beyond "the veil."

Try this on for size: Imagine a Neaderthal being presented with a spaceship. He cannot even begin to comprehend what he's looking at. No frame of reference. Now take into account Arthur C. Clarke's observation that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, add the very age of the Universe making extra-terrestrial life quite likely and abundant, and it's possible that we are surrounded by something so completely alien and advanced beyond our puny minds that we cannot even comprehend it, let alone see it like the Neaderthal can see the spaceship. Given those factors, anything is possible with regards to what we know as reality. Even the complexity of the Matrix is just a rough sketch, a starting point.

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"The idea that money doesn't buy you happiness is a lie put about by the rich, to stop the poor from killing them." -- Michael Caine

maxero

maybe we're chimpanzees with an inferiority complex that dillude ourselves into thinking were humans.

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cough

mepitans

Here is something I recently read that I think will help out this conversation. I talks about the three eyes(flesh, mind, contemplation). And how we should be using them to see things.





Sorry about the crude chart, I suck at paint.

If anyone wants me to expand on anything please ask.

YourNeverThere

mepitans, you could expand, that'd be cool, mabye in english, I admit i have no idea what you are talking about

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The Above post is a direct quote from Shakespeare

mepitans

Ok, humans have 3 ways to percieve things.

Either the eye of flesh, eye of mind, or eye of contemplation.

Eye of flesh: When we use the 5 senses. Before Galileo and Kepler science was largely rational(eye of mind), or explained by the church(eye of contemplation). When other scientists were saying "These two balls are the same size, but one is 10 times heavier. That ball must fall to earth 10 times faster" Galileo went out and used his 5 senses to try it. Him and Kepler invented simultaniously and independently, the scientific method.

"Prior to the time of Kepler and Galileo, the only developed systems of thought had been religious(eye of contemplation) or philosophic(eye of mind) organizations of subjective experience, while such objective observations of nature as had been collected had remained largely unorganized. Medieval rationalism was subjective; there was at yet no rational philosophy of nature(no empiric-analytic thought[5 senses])of comparable complexity or precision" - L.L.Whyte

So Whyte is saying, even though early on the eye of flesh was used('such objective observations of nature as had been collected remained largely unorganized') it was quickly thrown aside to make way for the eye of mind, and contemplation.

I guess when humans only had use of the eye of flesh(pre-symbolic) They could use it to say, that is not that, that is rock, that is tree. But it didn't go much further than that because when we got use of the eye of reason, the eye of flesh was quickly seen as lower, and the mind much more reliable.

"We should never allow ourselves to be persuaded excepting by the evidence of our reason" "These two methods[the initial rational truth and deduction] are the most certain routes to knowledge, and the mind should admit no others. All the rest should be rejected as suspect of error and dangerous" - Descartes
I will make 2 more posts trying to explain the other eyes in a bit. Need a break.

MacGnG

DUDE we're all in virtual reality!

anyway, i think that person would literally be in their own world, something interesting to think about but still sad and nothing that should happen.

edit:spelling

Moonduck

Read Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" if you want a good presentation of how the mind/flesh fools you/internal observer/whatever it is that makes up the agent experiencing perceptions that thinks of itself as "I".

MacGnG

It is like what happens when we close our eyes, or when we open the fridge; either it's always there or only is there when we look at it. it makes no sense for it to only be there when we look at it.

C'est possible...

CSflim

Well then you would cease to think, and thus not percieve time, as you would be dead.
Your thoughts require the movements of electrical and chemical signals through your brain. Similarly, your body needs blood pumped around it.
If you are to accept this, then yes you could say that you wouldn't experience time, but you wouldn't experience ANYTHING.
Such is the thinking behind the sci-fi idea of "Chrono-Stasis" for deep space flight.

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CSflim

Well something has to exist.
We percieve things. This perception must have a cause. We define that cause as reality.
Now I'm under no illusions that there is more to reality than what we can percieve. And as we cannot percieve it, you cannot contemplate it, as we have no frame of reference.
We are starting to get brief glimpses at such "nonsense" when we observe the effects of relativity, and quantum mechanics, which very much go against what "makes sense". I believe that these phenomena are just the tip of the iceberg. Things even more incomprehensible would probably exist entirely outside of our "confined" reality of what we can percieve.
This is what makes questions such as "What came before the Big Bang" meaningless. NOTHING came before the big bang, as time didn't exist then. Such a concept as a time with nothing "before" it, makes no logical sense. But thats only because we are used to viewing time in an "everyday" manner.
Trying to imagine a "reality" external to our universe is impossible, as all of our undersatnding comes from our previous experiences.

So imagine that we were inside a "Matrix" of sorts. (Which as you can see from my above comments, I, in a way, believe). What of it? What difference does it make? We are still percieving A reality. We still percieve things, and we still try to explain that which we percieve. We define what is real in this way.

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dexlargo

YourNeverThere:

What you are talking about is one of the big questions in philosophy. It is generally believed that we can't know what is real. Why? Because we are simply receiving external stimuli that are filtered through our senses, like you said. But what caused them? All we know are their effects on us, and we rationalize them in a way that is consistent to us. But we can't know if what we perceived is the actual fact about the thing we are perceiving.

Another problem that is similar, is that since each of us has our own perception, how do we know that we are experiencing the same thing as someone else? For example, when I see red, I know what that color is. But what if what someone else perceived as red, looked green to me, if I could see their perception. Does this make a difference when we speak? we both agree that what we see is red, but we are perceiving something completely different from each other, but have both given our separate experiences the same label. So we can speak about these things to each other. Does it make a difference if we all perceive things differently, as long as we can all refer to things in a way that makes sense to us?

MacGnG

how do we know that things we cant see are (not) there? we dont.

manifest_deity

OK, this was actually the conclusion of my Philosophy final. If you'd like to read Berkeley's work: A dialogue between Hylas and Philonuse (or something like that) feel free, it's a good read though errant.

I do not agree with Berkeley’s ideology. Berkeley states that all sensible objects exist in the mind. But I think there is a contradiction in this statement. Berkeley views the mind as passive; it cannot control or change its perceptions, it simply has them. According to Berkeley, a mind cannot change the color of a chair or the temperature of water. He states that these perceptions exist in the mind but the mind has no control over these. So, a chair that is red will always be red and a tub of water will always be cold unless it is acted upon by some outside force. All said, the mind cannot change a sensible quality of an object, it simply perceives that quality. However, Berkeley leaves out a quality of an object that is very vital: its sensibility. Sensibility can be defined as the ability of something to be perceived, or sensed. So, if one cannot change the quality of something being red, or cold, or pleasurable, they cannot change the quality of it being sensible. This would mean that all objects are either always or never sensible, and because it is ridiculous to talk about objects that are never sensible, all objects must be constantly sensible. According to Berkeley, everything that is sensed, or perceived, exists in the mind. So, if something is always sensible, it must always be perceived or must be outside of the mind. Because no object is always perceived, objects must exist outside of the mind. To put it another way, the way in which sensibility is different from other qualities is that it is not dependant on perception; it is what enables us to have perceptions. So, if sensibility is not dependant on being perceived, and therefore not dependant on the mind, it can be said to independent, or outside the mind. Thus, material objects exist outside of the mind. That's what I beleive.

A side note: From a Christian perspective, this creates a wonderful connection between man (and woman, you know I'm refering to mankind) and the world God has put him in. One cannot exist fully without the other. The world would be without color, smell, texture, sound, and taste and man would obviously be without a world. This iconnection makes God's creation even more profound and intricate.

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Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?

Pennington

"I think, therefore I am."

Descartes referd to the fact that the only thing that you can be sure of in all reality is the fact that you exist. He proposed that God is an evil genius whose only purpose for being was to decieve him. He goes on to say that the senses cannot be trusted, as they can be tricked. The mind cannot be trusted because you may be insane. The body cannot be trusted because it may not really exist. The only thing you can be sure of is the fact that you exist, because if you didn't, you wouldn't be thinking. "I think, therefore I am"

kwIII

It has been awhile since I took a philosophy class last one was philosophy of science and I failed miserably so bear with me. Doesn't this whole train of thought originate from "The Allogory of the Cave" (Plato?). When I read this it blew my mind at first and definatly got the wheels turning, but being the scientific person I am I just came to a conclusion from what I have learned. Everything in our brain is transmitted by electrical and chemical signals, so these signals are sent to the sensory portion of the brain and interpreted into what they really are, we also remember certain things important for the future(i.e. touching a hot stove, staring at the sun, having sex, loud noises) we have EXPERIENCED these things or FELT them in our mind this is really happening and isn't that all that matters?

manifest_deity

Pennington, I think you need to go back and read Descartes. He said it wasn't God's nature to decieve and hence our senses could be trusted. I don't know where you got the whole "Evil genius" thing.

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Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?

mjollnir

This is exactly who I have adopted Taoism

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Yes I am a Pirate 200 years too late,
Cannons don't thunder
theres nuthin to plunder
I'm an over 30 victim of fate...

trudes1131

I'd say that's the worst possible advice you could ever offer someone.

eple

I think, therefore I am.

Time is an illusion, space is an illusion, existence is the only thing we can know as true.

bassport

Isn't it impossible to know what reality really is? Or time? Isn't it the same reasoning of the same people who invented the nuclear bomb? What does it matter wether we really live or just exist in some kind of matrix scenario?

The only thing we should care about is life as we experience it. We can't (and shouldn't) change the way we live within our natural environment. There's more to the human body than just its perception and his 5 senses. Our subliminal abilities (and disabilities) are living a life of their own.

freedomdowntime

Well, I don't think I have a whole lot to add to this topic (was a great read). I also wish to make a conclusion. I think therefore I am. In the same token, how do I know you exist? Every interaction I have ever had with you has been through my five senses.
I have not found it hard in the past to accept that everything might not be real but I was just thinking about wither or not I am real, but if everything else doesn't exist and shows the same signs of thinking that I do, what proof do I have that I do? Is the fact that I can think proof enough, what if I have never thought but only used a system of sensory details to come to a conclusion and misperceived it as thought?
I want everyone to try this. Look up, find the closest person to you, you have no proof that they exist.
This conclusion might help people get through their day, don't like someone, then you can know that they might not even exist.

Till my sences see you again, may peace be with you.

skinbag

If you wish to percieve reality directly, stop reading second-hand Buddhism! Read less, meditate more! Not mumbo-jumbo new-age crap either. I'm talking about methods for experiencing each moment more completely, as in following the breath, observing sensation without reacting, sitting with a big question (What is this?) and the like. You might try the Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing. For an online, although wordy and difficult, text relating more directly to your post try http://home.wanadoo.nl/ekayana/intro.html . Note: at the time of this sutra it was believed that seeing was projected outward. Light waves were a mystery, as was physiology as we know it. Although not literally accurate, it is an interesting foray into ancient Indian thought and logical methodology. The Buddha discusses the location of mind an sensation just a few pages in, so bear with it. ( I still don't REALLY understand it, and I'm a pretty poor Buddhist, but I am willing to discuss my little interpretations reading-circle style if you want to PM me.)