# perception, our brains and the truth



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

That thread about objective qualities in a composers music, which yet again turned into a giant argument about the meaning of objective and subjective, got me thinking about these ideas on a greater scale and I'd like to have a (civil) discussion about what I am thinking about. Mostly I just need to know if my theories have truth to them or if I am just losing it.  But it would be great if a discussion came out of it too. A civil discussion that is, but I know telling you all make the discussion civil wont necessarily make it civil, it just takes the blame off of me if it's not. 

Anyway, I was thinking about whether or not it is possible to actually know what the world is like outside of our brains, outside of our perception of what the world is like. I think it might not be possible but I haven't really reached a conclusion myself so I was wondering what you guys think.

First off, we know for a fact that our brains are very malleable and they can be bent to see and perceive things that aren't actually there. There are numerous examples of these cases where people see and perceive things that aren't there, such as schizophrenic people, people on LSD or any other hallucinogenic drug, psychopaths that convince themselves that they haven't done something that they actually have (and truly believe that they haven't), people with split personality disorder. The examples of the brain being bent to perceive things in a false way are incredibly numerous. These are all extreme examples but just that fact that it is possible to mold the brain to see something that's not there begs the question; is it possible that all of our brains have been bent and molded to perceive things not how they actually are, just in a more subtle and not so sudden way than those extreme examples I have pointed out?

I'm going to attempt to answer my own question and say that yes, I think that we have all been brainwashed to a certain extent from our youth. I'll give one of many examples of this and I'll make it a musical one. 
Somewhere in our early stages of cranial development most of us started associating major keys with happiness and minor keys with sadness. This became stuck in most of our brains at the most impressionable stage in our lives and now it is nearly impossible to shake the perception of a major key being the "happy" sound and the minor key being the "sad" sound. However, if you took a child and somehow made sure that every negative experience they had was accompanied with major key music, and every positive experience was accompanied with minor key music I am sure that their brain would make the opposite connection and the link between major and sad and minor and happy would be just as strong in their own perception as our perception of the opposite. So which one is right? Well neither is. We know from science that major and minor chords are just sound waves vibrating at certain ratios that give the major and minor chords their unique sound. If our brains were to interpret major and minor keys completely objectively, we would merely perceive them as sound waves at various ratios in relation to each other with no connotation to any type of emotion. The happy/major sad/minor interpretation of those keys and the happy/minor sad/major interpretation are two sides of the same coin. Both are false perceptions of the brain through association in either direction. If this is true, then I can't help but wonder what other false perceptions of reality have we learned at a young age but don't know about?

Another example might be a solid and still object, like a wall. We see a wall as a still and solid object. But we know now from science that the atoms that make up a wall are always in motion. The fact that we see a wall as being completely still is another false perception of our brain because (I think, someone correct me if I'm wrong) there are so many atoms that are so densely packed that their movement becomes undetectable. The reason also why we feel the wall as a hard solid object instead of a group of atoms and molecules that you can break through is only because the molecules are so tightly compact compared to our own body's molecules that it feels hard and solid to us. Contrast that with water which does not feel like a hard solid object only because the molecules are less compact and moving quicker than our body's molecules. However, neither of them are a completely solid or still thing.

So can we get "outside of our brains" so to speak so we can see what the world actually is? No, I don't think so. Your cranial reciprocal is the only way you can interpret anything at all. The fact that all information comes to you through the medium of a brain that is quite possibly brainwashed in some way means that every thing we interpret through our brains perception is one step removed from what reality actually is. Even if you try to imagine what the world might be like outside of your perceptions, your ideas will inevitably be influenced by your brains perception of how the world already is.

For example, if I see someone with a red shirt on, the only reason I think that the shirt is red is because my brain takes reflecting light and interprets it as red. However, I in fact have no idea if it is actually red in real life, outside of my brain's interpretation of reflected light. I mean, you could make an argument that everyone would recognize the shirt as red and that means it is objectively red. But that is not necessarily true. We have all been taught to perceive what we are seeing as red, collectively as a culture. But there have been scientific studies that show that people cannot see colors that they haven't been taught to see. Is this another warped perception of reality by our ever malleable brains? (which are especially malleable at a young age).

I could go on, but I think that is enough for now. I'm not necessarily stating any of these things as fact. But these are just ideas I have been thinking about in my spare time. I just wanted to know what you guys thought of them.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

An interesting read there, covering many areas. Eg. re the brain things, neuro-sciences. Re the things like how we interpret colours and music (major/minor keys) it may be related to cultural studies (anthropology).

In pop culture, these issues have been big for a while - eg. the film _The Matrix_.

In terms of perception, and the effect of drugs on the brain or psychiatric disorders you mention, it only becomes a problem if it is harmful to the individual, or (potentially?) harmful of others. Eg. the film _A Beautiful Mind_ covered this, how this brilliant mathematician was having these delusions and couldn't tell reality from his own delusions.

I think reality, our experiences of it can be different, but nobody would say the paranoid delusions of John Nash in that film were within the boundaries of what we'd call 'normal.' It was abnormal, therefore an illness.

Other related example is that Monet, when he was painting his famous waterlillies series of paintings, his eyesight over those decades was deteriorating. So what you get in these series of paintings is his change of perception, eg. they increasingly become blurry (that's what he saw, & my understanding is that he refused to use eye-glasses).

So it is true that physical & mental perception (incl. sensory) does effect how we percieve, experience, relate to our world.

But I don't know the links between these. You're talking of many areas here, it's between disciplines of sciences and cultural studies.

Sorry to not say any specific opinion but I'm hesitant to do that in the current climate of this forum.


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

There are no facts, only interpretations. - Nietzsche


----------



## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I theorize that there are basic, lower level parts of our brain that give consciously unbiased information about the world to the higher levels. This is still subjective information, but processed by more stable and time tested neural circuits that share things in common with mammals lacking the human capacities of reason. But accordingly our conscious mind has the power to interfere with these things and cloud our basic perceptions.

Edit, I don't know to what degree we can reprogram some of these basic functions at an early age against their natural tendencies, or to what degree this generally happens. But if you are worried about going insane on this basic level, your brain is probably much too rigid for that at this stage.


----------



## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

tl;dr?....


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

starthrower said:


> There are no facts, only interpretations. - Nietzsche


Now, is that statement a fact or an interpretation?


----------



## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Dodecaplex said:


> Now, is that statement a fact or an interpretation?


I don't see the problem


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Dodecaplex said:


> Now, is that statement a fact or an interpretation?


I suppose the intended provocativeness of the statement is to prompt us to ask the question, what do we really know? And what do we just think we know?


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Philip said:


> I don't see the problem


Mu?

[filler text]


----------



## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Dodecaplex said:


> Mu?
> 
> [filler text]


μ?........


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

clavichorder said:


> ...
> Edit, I don't know to what degree we can reprogram some of these basic functions at an early age against their natural tendencies, or to what degree this generally happens. ....


Don't understand most of what you said, but what this sentence makes me think of that in Nordic countries, there is more depression, partly to lack of sun in a very long winter (6 months, I think). They try to treat this depression through therapy involving artificial light to simulate the person being in summer (eg. body reacts positively to heat, the muscles relax, etc.).

Don't know how I got here exactly but I'm thinking, major key = light/heat in summer. Minor key = dark/cold in winter. So these affect our emotions, these can be linked. Similar to deep voice vs. high voice. But it's simplistic, I think I'd leave any conclusions to experts - eg. neuro scineces, anthropology, & your post even made me think of things involving study of animal/human evolution (don't want to open this can of worms, just saying).


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Philip said:


> μ?........


No, I thought you were referring to the Zen concept of unasking the question.


----------



## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Dodecaplex said:


> No, I thought you were referring to the Zen concept of unasking the question.


Oh, 无.....


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Sid James said:


> Don't understand most of what you said, but what this sentence makes me think of that in Nordic countries, there is more depression, partly to lack of sun in a very long winter (6 months, I think). They try to treat this depression through therapy involving artificial light to simulate the person being in summer (eg. body reacts positively to heat, the muscles relax, etc.).
> 
> Don't know how I got here exactly but I'm thinking, major key = light/heat in summer. Minor key = dark/cold in winter. So these affect our emotions, these can be linked. Similar to deep voice vs. high voice. But it's simplistic, I think I'd leave any conclusions to experts - eg. neuro scineces, anthropology, & your post even made me think of things involving study of animal/human evolution (don't want to open this can of worms, just saying).


I interpreted Clavi's post as relying on intuitive qualities.


----------



## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Sid James said:


> Don't understand most of what you said


I don't mean to sound contrary, but why was it hard to understand? I'm always a bit puzzled and hurt that when I share my most thoughtful thoughts, people seem perplexed and skim right over them. I thought it was clear.


----------



## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

starthrower said:


> I interpreted Clavi's post as relying on intuitive qualities.


Sort of a validation of the intuition yes, by some sort of home brewed, quasi scientific thinking about mammal brains, based on a teenage obsession with neuroscience. Thanks. I was thinking for a moment that I was having another one of those moments...


----------



## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Philip said:


> Oh, 无.....


我学习汉语  ...


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

starthrower said:


> I interpreted Clavi's post as relying on intuitive qualities.


I've reread clavi's post, don't get it, but I think it's the word "reprogram" which triggered what I was thinking. Eg. in the wikipedia article below, it says in relation to depression, light therapy is used to treat seasonal affective disorder (similar to the Scandinavians having bad depression in winter). This form of therapy is also used to treat other illnesses, but I didn't know about that.

Wiki article on light therapy


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Philip said:


> 我学习汉语  ...


Good Zhaozhou! How many languages do you know? Or are you just using google translate?


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

clavichorder said:


> I don't mean to sound contrary, but why was it hard to understand? I'm always a bit puzzled and hurt that when I share my most thoughtful thoughts, people seem perplexed and skim right over them. I thought it was clear.


I did not mean to hurt you, apologies if I did, but what you wrote served as a trigger to my thoughts above as I've explained.

I try to use simple language and speak my mind (but not insult people, or be sarcastic/cynical, if you got any of that kind of thing from my post, it's the opposite of what I intend, which is to give basic respect).


----------



## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I know you Sid and know you are not like that, its just that I was surprised that my post seemed kind of byzantine to you or something. But whatever. Lets get back to the thread questions.


----------



## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Dodecaplex said:


> Good Zhaozhou! How many languages do you know? Or are you just using google translate?


My native language is French. I only started learning Chinese a few months ago. 我不是中国人


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Overwhelmingly the scientists that I have worked with and whose works I have read believe there is an objective world that is knowable. The general idea is that while we can be fooled by sensory perception we have ways of testing the consistency of our ideas. If we learn to test different aspects of reality and find that all our measurements and theories are consistent with each other, we have higher and higher confidence that what we are measuring is objectively real and not a construct of our mind.

As an example consider our perceiving red light. We see different colors and find out that others do as well. Further when I differentiate two separate colors (say red and green), others do as well, and we both differentiate those two colors consistently. Then we get smart and start using scientific instruments to learn more about colors.

1) We realize that light can be refracted (bent) and that green light bends more than red light. Red and green not only look different to us but behave differently when refracted.

2) Through Maxwell's equations, we learn that all light travels at the same speed and that the wavelength times the frequency = the speed of light. We realize that red and green light have different wavelengths, and therefore, must behave differently when refracted.

3) We discover quantum mechanics and learn that the frequency of light is proportional to the energy of the photon that carries light. Red light has a lower frequency than green, and therefore, has lower energy photons. Our experiments show an exact agreement with the theoretical difference in energy. Red and green light behaves exactly as we expect from our knowledge of optics (wavelengths), quantum mechanics (frequency), and the relationship of wavelengths and frequency as specified by Maxwell's equations.

4) We learn that our eyes sense photons because our eyes have special cells called cones that absorb photons of specific energies and produce electrical signals. The cone cells work exactly as we'd expect for sensing the energy in red and green photons.

5) We learn about evolution and how senses evolved. Organic molecules that are produced from our genes can sense light in wavelengths from roughly infrared through UV. Most animals including us sense optimally in what is called the visible spectrum (red through violet light). Our sun produces electromagnetic radiation in a very wide band of wavelengths much larger than the visible spectrum, but the maximum luminosity (the majority of photons) occurs in the visible spectrum. That just happens to match our optical sense.

All of these completely separate areas of knowledge are remarkably consistent (i.e. they fit together perfectly). Could we have made all of them up _and_ have them so consistent? Scientists think not, and therefore, believe that an objective world exists that is apparently knowable.


----------



## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

im starting to think now that there is nothing objectively quantifiable about reality.

Think about this:

a few men live on an island:
the first man claims there are only two on the island.
the second man claims there are three on the island.

Which one is the delusional one? without a consensus or agreement, you cannot say. Both see their reality and believe what they know. This little riddle made me realize that which we call reality, is but a placebo effect on a population of people. 

If someone sees the letter 'A' and says that is an 'A' but is then told by 30 people that they are wrong and it is not an 'A' but a 'B', even though this person is entirely correct, will change their reality to believe that 'A' is 'B' because they believe that they are abnormal. as a result of peer pressure, fear of exclusion or ridicule, culture, and the fact that he has no means to prove that 'A' is 'A'. 

Can anyone of us technically prove our reality as being the authentic reality? This smells alot like Descartes...


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

violadude said:


> First off, we know for a fact that our brains are very malleable and they can be bent to see and perceive things that aren't actually there. There are numerous examples of these cases where people see and perceive things that aren't there, such as schizophrenic people, people on LSD or any other hallucinogenic drug, psychopaths that convince themselves that they haven't done something that they actually have (and truly believe that they haven't), people with split personality disorder. The examples of the brain being bent to perceive things in a false way are incredibly numerous. These are all extreme examples but just that fact that it is possible to mold the brain to see something that's not there begs the question; is it possible that all of our brains have been bent and molded to perceive things not how they actually are, just in a more subtle and not so sudden way than those extreme examples I have pointed out?


These are good examples, but you use them with the basic assumption that we can perceive a reality external to our brains, otherwise we would not be able to assess schizophrenic hallucinations as unreal. I think it's right that we can come to know an external reality by which our subjective experiences can be measured, but there are limitations.



violadude said:


> Somewhere in our early stages of cranial development most of us started associating major keys with happiness and minor keys with sadness. This became stuck in most of our brains at the most impressionable stage in our lives and now it is nearly impossible to shake the perception of a major key being the "happy" sound and the minor key being the "sad" sound. However, if you took a child and somehow made sure that every negative experience they had was accompanied with major key music, and every positive experience was accompanied with minor key music I am sure that their brain would make the opposite connection and the link between major and sad and minor and happy would be just as strong in their own perception as our perception of the opposite. So which one is right? Well neither is. We know from science that major and minor chords are just sound waves vibrating at certain ratios that give the major and minor chords their unique sound. If our brains were to interpret major and minor keys completely objectively, we would merely perceive them as sound waves at various ratios in relation to each other with no connotation to any type of emotion. The happy/major sad/minor interpretation of those keys and the happy/minor sad/major interpretation are two sides of the same coin. Both are false perceptions of the brain through association in either direction. If this is true, then I can't help but wonder what other false perceptions of reality have we learned at a young age but don't know about?


Interactions of brain and environment are extremely complex, and different phenomena should be taken each in their own right, but it's always best to be skeptical of any argument that suggests something is _completely_ environmental (on this issue, Steven Pinker's _The Blank Slate_ is a great book). With the example above, we can state with certainty that equal temperament is an arbitrary construct, and that our immersion in it from youth colours our perception of other musical scales, but there are arguments that the major/minor distinction is not completely arbitrary, as certain intervals mimic those of speech sounds in individuals feeling a certain emotion (e.g. a minor third is close to the interval heard in many people speaking with a sad tone of voice). This doesn't mean that the association is entirely innate, but it means there is potential for there to be a complex musical-linguistic interaction going on.



violadude said:


> Another example might be a solid and still object, like a wall. We see a wall as a still and solid object. But we know now from science that the atoms that make up a wall are always in motion. The fact that we see a wall as being completely still is another false perception of our brain because (I think, someone correct me if I'm wrong) there are so many atoms that are so densely packed that their movement becomes undetectable. The reason also why we feel the wall as a hard solid object instead of a group of atoms and molecules that you can break through is only because the molecules are so tightly compact compared to our own body's molecules that it feels hard and solid to us. Contrast that with water which does not feel like a hard solid object only because the molecules are less compact and moving quicker than our body's molecules. However, neither of them are a completely solid or still thing.


This is the more general point that I was going to make when I saw your thread - because of the environments in which human brains evolved, we have limited perceptive abilities. We can only understand three spatial dimensions along with time, and within space we can only conceive of things on a scale similar to us (not micro, and not super macro), and we can only conceive of things that occur in time-spans similar to a human life (not micro-seconds and not millions of years). There are other limits too - for example, the visible spectrum of light is only a small slice of the full spectrum; we perceive a narrow band of possible frequencies of sound; and our innate statistical reasoning is also very primitive, leading us to see patterns where they don't exist and thus forming superstitions. All of this makes it very difficult to understand the world as it really is, but then that's what certain kinds of scientific reasoning are for. Double-blind trials allow us to understand phenomena as they occur without the influence of human psychology, and technologies such as microscopes and telescopes allow us to extend our natural senses. Nevertheless, through all this, we can only understand the universe in terms of models and metaphors that fit well with the natural human way of perception - we can never intuitively understand the universe as it really works.

I would be a little more careful in the conclusions I draw from this, however. With your example of the red shirt, I would say that people would perceive the colour of the shirt differently, but we can determine with scientific instruments the actual wavelength of light reflected from the shirt, and that would be an objective fact outside the realm of human perception.


----------



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

@mmsbls and Polednice, hey thanks for all the info! I'm no science buff so all that was very informative. I thought the red shirt thing might have been pushing it a little but I thought I might as well include it. But I was wondering, if it were possible to see the shirt outside of our brains perception would it still look red? Or would it just look like light or something like that? It's hard to think about what perception without a brain might be like...since it's impossible and all haha but just speaking hypothetically.


----------



## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Igneous01 said:


> If someone sees the letter 'A' and says that is an 'A' but is then told by 30 people that they are wrong and it is not an 'A' but a 'B', even though this person is entirely correct, will change their reality to believe that 'A' is 'B' because they believe that they are abnormal. as a result of peer pressure, fear of exclusion or ridicule, culture, and the fact that he has no means to prove that 'A' is 'A'.


When you say that the weirdo who sees the 'A' as an 'A' is "entirely correct", you admit the existence of an objective reality.


----------



## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

emiellucifuge said:


> When you say that the weirdo who sees the 'A' as an 'A' is "entirely correct", you admit the existence of an objective reality.


only in the context of this example, which in itself is ambigious


----------



## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Violadude, better than any of us will be able to expound I suggest you read the thoughts of some of history's greatest minds on the issue:

Schopenhauer; The world as will and representation
Kant; Critique of Pure Reason
Aristotle; Metaphysics

Keywords; Metaphysics... perhaps Epistomology


----------



## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

violadude said:


> ...people on LSD...
> 
> So can we get "outside of our brains" so to speak so we can see what the world actually is? No, I don't think so.


Looks like you haven't really experimented this for yourself, señor, for you'd know the true answer and that not only is it possible to entirely leave ourselves but to even forget one's self for a significant amount of time. No perception. Only what is and what is not. In the end you always come back. Our selfish, little ego just has to pull us back but oh is it possible.


----------



## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Igneous01 said:


> im starting to think now that there is nothing objectively quantifiable about reality.
> 
> Think about this:
> 
> ...


You're not making much of an argument in my view.. if you don't know how many people there are on an island, you can claim that you are uncertain, or simply state what is the known population, by counting; that's what a reasonable person would do.

Arbitrary tags like A and B don't reflect anything about reality. For a long time people used to think the world was flat, does that affect reality? People change their minds but reality seems to stay the same, as far as we know.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

violadude said:


> @mmsbls and Polednice, hey thanks for all the info! I'm no science buff so all that was very informative. I thought the red shirt thing might have been pushing it a little but I thought I might as well include it. But I was wondering, if it were possible to see the shirt outside of our brains perception would it still look red? Or would it just look like light or something like that? It's hard to think about what perception without a brain might be like...since it's impossible and all haha but just speaking hypothetically.


I don't think it's possible to see the shirt outside of our brains' perception - I don't really know what you mean. My point would simply be that we can quantify the wavelength of light coming from the shirt, and know that regardless of our perception. So, in the case of someone who's colour-blind, we can take two colours they can't distinguish between, show them that the wavelengths of light coming from the two coloured objects are in fact different, and they'd go, "Oh ****!", though that wouldn't mean that they could then perceive the difference experientially.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Polednice said:


> This is the more general point that I was going to make when I saw your thread - because of the environments in which human brains evolved, we have limited perceptive abilities. We can only understand three spatial dimensions along with time, and within space we can only conceive of things on a scale similar to us (not micro, and not super macro), and we can only conceive of things that occur in time-spans similar to a human life (not micro-seconds and not millions of years).
> 
> Nevertheless, through all this, we can only understand the universe in terms of models and metaphors that fit well with the natural human way of perception - we can never intuitively understand the universe as it really works.


Our sensory perception is limited, but, as you point out, our scientific instrumentation is vastly less so. There is little fundamental difference between visible light entering our eyes then being processed electrochemically inside our brain and cosmic rays entering an underground detector then being processed by electronics then the results entering our brain (say though pictures produced by the electronics) to be processed.

I agree that we can only intuitively understand a subset of reality. But some of us can understand more than 4 dimensions of spacetime. Some of us can understand phenomena on scales vastly different from us (atomic scales or cosmological scales). We can understand these things in some sense much better than we intuitively understand parts of nature. We can build models that make much more accurate and precise predictions, and we can understand the genesis, structure, logic, and agreement with experimental data of these models.


----------



## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

Philip said:


> You're not making much of an argument in my view.. if you don't know how many people there are on an island, you can claim that you are uncertain, or simply state what is the known population, by counting; that's what a reasonable person would do.
> 
> Arbitrary tags like A and B don't reflect anything about reality. For a long time people used to think the world was flat, does that affect reality? People change their minds but reality seems to stay the same, as far as we know.


i dont know, did it effect reality? no one was there to observe the ocean to see that it went around until the late 15th century. Prior to 15th century, the reality was certainly different from the perspective of the peoples was it not?

point is reality is only defined by observation and consensus, from the human point of view.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Igneous01 said:


> point is reality is only defined by observation and consensus, from the human point of view.


By "reality", do you mean the shape and function of the universe, or our perception of its shape and function?


----------



## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

Polednice said:


> By "reality", do you mean the shape and function of the universe, or our perception of its shape and function?


is there a difference between the two? what we describe as the shape and function of the universe is relied solely on our observation of it, thus is it not our perception too?

i dont have an answer for that. reality is ambiguous at best.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I haven't done heroin, but part of the discussion here reminded me of something I've heard about it: supposedly, when you're high on it, you feel so certain of things. Now whether that's true of heroin or not, it's an interesting possibility. "Certainty" is a feeling. We may sometimes feel it at inappropriate times. 

And - if there were a safe drug to give you that feeling, would you take the drug and enjoy feeling certain all the time, even when (as must be true sometimes) you're completely wrong? Or, if there were the opposite drug, that would prevent you from enjoying that feeling, even though you would actually be right more often, would you take that drug? 

I think those scenarios are not entirely hypothetical....


----------



## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

science said:


> I haven't done heroin, but part of the discussion here reminded me of something I've heard about it: supposedly, when you're high on it, you feel so certain of things. Now whether that's true of heroin or not, it's an interesting possibility. "Certainty" is a feeling. We may sometimes feel it at inappropriate times.
> 
> And - if there were a safe drug to give you that feeling, would you take the drug and enjoy feeling certain all the time, even when (as must be true sometimes) you're completely wrong? Or, if there were the opposite drug, that would prevent you from enjoying that feeling, even though you would actually be right more often, would you take that drug?
> 
> I think those scenarios are not entirely hypothetical....


hard to say for me... does it really matter either way? whether your right or wrong is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.


----------



## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Igneous01 said:


> i dont know, did it effect reality? no one was there to observe the ocean to see that it went around until the late 15th century. Prior to 15th century, the reality was certainly different from the perspective of the peoples was it not?
> 
> point is reality is only defined by observation and consensus, from the human point of view.


You seem to confuse sensibility, reason, and most importantly the dialog that they share.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Igneous01 said:


> is there a difference between the two? what we describe as the shape and function of the universe is relied solely on our observation of it, thus is it not our perception too?
> 
> i dont have an answer for that. reality is ambiguous at best.


Are you thereby suggesting that the universe would not exist if there were not a consciousness to perceive it?


----------



## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Igneous01 said:


> is there a difference between the two? what we describe as the shape and function of the universe is relied solely on our observation of it, thus is it not our perception too?
> 
> i dont have an answer for that. reality is ambiguous at best.


Observation beyond the sensible realm is done by instrumentation, what is the perception of instruments? Do they have minds that distort reality?


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

science said:


> I haven't done heroin, but part of the discussion here reminded me of something I've heard about it: supposedly, when you're high on it, you feel so certain of things. Now whether that's true of heroin or not, it's an interesting possibility. "Certainty" is a feeling. We may sometimes feel it at inappropriate times.
> 
> And - if there were a safe drug to give you that feeling, would you take the drug and enjoy feeling certain all the time, even when (as must be true sometimes) you're completely wrong? Or, if there were the opposite drug, that would prevent you from enjoying that feeling, even though you would actually be right more often, would you take that drug?


Permanent wrongness and comfort, or temporary rightness and discomfort? I think I chose the latter a while ago.


----------



## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

Philip said:


> Observation beyond the sensible realm is done by instrumentation, what is the perception of instruments? Do they have minds that distort reality?


we interpret the instruments, without us instruments cannot observe reality, because theres no one observing the instruments observing reality.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Igneous01 said:


> we interpret the instruments, without us instruments cannot observe reality, because theres no one observing the instruments observing reality.


I'm not sure what you mean by "observe". Generally we say that instruments interact with reality and change their state based on that interaction. I guess you would then say that we observe the state of the instruments.

Instruments can certainly "observe" (using the definition - interact with reality and change their state appropriately) without humans observing them. Certain experiments that demonstrate quantum behavior have shown that the behavior of photons or electrons will be significantly different if instruments "observe" the particles. In those experiments people only observe the behavior of the particles and not the instruments or their results.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I think that in order for the argument that instruments observe differently from humans to hold up, it's necessary to postulate that there is something non-mechanical about human consciousness. I am yet to come across a convincing argument for this - we are just very complex machines interacting with an external environment.


----------



## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

mmsbls said:


> I'm not sure what you mean by "observe". Generally we say that instruments interact with reality and change their state based on that interaction. I guess you would then say that we observe the state of the instruments.
> 
> Instruments can certainly "observe" (using the definition - interact with reality and change their state appropriately) without humans observing them. Certain experiments that demonstrate quantum behavior have shown that the behavior of photons or electrons will be significantly different if instruments "observe" the particles. In those experiments people only observe the behavior of the particles and not the instruments or their results.


I agree, but the paradox lies that if no one is around to measure and interpret the instruments, then no one can claim or prove that the interaction had happened. Its like the age old question "If a tree falls in a forest, and no ones around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

But yes in the quantum world observation has direct influence on the outcome of an experiment, that could be in a sense proof of reality, assuming it is consistent.


----------



## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Igneous01 said:


> But yes in the quantum world observation has direct influence on the outcome of an experiment, that could be in a sense proof of reality, assuming it is consistent.


You're right, but i'd like to point out that the uncertainty principle (even if you're not referring to that specifically) is a property of waves in general, not of quantum physics; this is a common misconception.


----------



## Guest (Mar 23, 2012)

Hi, my name is Occam. I have a new razor that I would like to try out on this conversation.

Reality results when objects are perceived. Reality resides neither in the objects or in the perceiver but in the act of perception. "The world as it is out there" is just a bunch of unperceived objects with no meaning. Only when you get a perceiver perceiving do you have anything really real.

Different people perceive things differently.

It seems that most of the problems people have in conversations like this is accepting that fundamental fact (or in accepting that as a fundamental fact, I should say). We somehow want reality to be outside of us, immutable, separate, going its own way without us.* A reality of that sort calls for unanimity: all perceivers should be perceiving the same way. I almost always find myself more interested in this desire for unanimity than I am in the debate itself.

Anyway, we are social, so we like to know that what we perceive is shared by others. We want to be sure that that oak tree we're looking at is perceived as an oak tree by everyone else. And, if it is an oak tree and not a Douglas fir (which is actually a type of pine tree!), then everyone will. Everyone who knows those names for trees and such. Not much of a problem.

Trickier when it comes to Japanese noise bands. If we hate Japanese noise bands, then we want to be sure that everyone else hates them also.:lol: There, we're outta luck. Not everyone else does. So strong is the desire for unanimity here, that some people will fall back on the argument that anyone who likes Japanese noise bands is crazy (in the same way that anyone who reacts to an oak tree as if it were a huge monster out to destroy them and must be killed is crazy).

Good luck with that one!

*An interesting counter view to that is the story of Helen Keller, a perceiver with practically no perceiving apparatus. But, as Anne Sullivan was able to exploit, a perceiver is pretty full already, even without some of the apparatus (eyes and ears). It seems from that that if we want to find a real reality, it's more likely to be inside rather than outside!


----------



## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Oh dear it looks like you just cut yourself with that razor!


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I think it's a non-sequitur to say that perceptive differences mean that reality exists in the interaction of objects and perception (I would be intrigued to hear exactly what degree of consciousness is required for a thing to be a perceiver as well - humans? Dogs? Single-celled organisms? Mechanical instruments?). Instead, I think it makes much more sense to say that there is an external physical reality independent of human consciousness which we happen to be unable to perceive in its totality.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> Reality results when objects are perceived. Reality resides neither in the objects or in the perceiver but in the act of perception. "The world as it is out there" is just a bunch of unperceived objects with no meaning. Only when you get a perceiver perceiving do you have anything really real.


You seem to be talking about two separate things - reality and meaning. You state that ' "The world as it is out there" is just a bunch of unperceived objects with no meaning'. That sounds like your are saying reality exists outside us, but perceivers are needed to create meaning. Then you say that perceivers are needed for anything to be real. I don't agree that real things exist only if they have meaning (i.e. are perceived and considered by, I guess, intelligent agents). I'm not sure what you believe.



some guy said:


> Different people perceive things differently.
> 
> It seems that most of the problems people have in conversations like this is accepting that fundamental fact (or in accepting that as a fundamental fact, I should say).


This is a trivial fact that everyone has known for a long time. Furthermore, everyone knows that the _same person_ perceives the same thing differently. If I look at a spoon and look at the same spoon in a glass of water, the spoon will seem bent in the second case but not in the first. If I look at my wife standing in front of me and then walk behind her and look again, I see perceive things.

The interesting thing is that we can _understand_ in many cases what others perceive. When my friend looks at my wife from behind, I can understand what he sees even if I only perceive her front. The trick is understanding and agreeing what _everyone_ perceives. Brains are the most complex objects we know of in the universe. It's not surprising that we don't understand them yet. Someday, I think we will understand them well enough to _understand_ what everyone perceives _and to all agree on those perceptions_.



some guy said:


> We somehow want reality to be outside of us, immutable, separate, going its own way without us.* A reality of that sort calls for unanimity: all perceivers should be perceiving the same way.


No, all perceivers should _understand_ the same way. That would be the goal of understanding reality. I'm not sure we want reality to be outside us. It's just that as we study it harder and harder, it becomes more and more difficult to believe that there is not a reality outside us. As I argued in an earlier post, reality appears remarkably _consistent_ the more we learn about it. We can look at reality in many different ways (as with visible light in my earlier example), and all ways show a powerful consistency. I'm not smart enough to make that up so I believe that I am seeing an objective reality rather than creating a subjective reality.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I have a hard time taking this kind of discussion seriously. My sentences begin something like, "But if the world doesn't actually exist, then..." and before I can finish, the pointlessness of the discussion smacks me in the forehead and I realize I need to listen to more music.


----------



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

science said:


> I have a hard time taking this kind of discussion seriously. My sentences begin something like, "But if the world doesn't actually exist, then..." and before I can finish, the pointlessness of the discussion smacks me in the forehead and I realize I need to listen to more music.


hahahaha! I know how you feel.


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

some guy said:


> Trickier when it comes to Japanese noise bands. If we hate Japanese noise bands, then we want to be sure that everyone else hates them also.:lol: There, we're outta luck. Not everyone else does. So strong is the desire for unanimity here, that some people will fall back on the argument that anyone who likes Japanese noise bands is crazy (in the same way that anyone who reacts to an oak tree as if it were a huge monster out to destroy them and must be killed is crazy).


No, not crazy. Just suffering from an undiagnosed listening condition yet unrecognised by medical science.


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Perception and information given are powerful sets. I have presented this thought experiemnt before: blindfold a person and subject them to some extreme noise-music that the majority of "normal" people would not recognise as music, and do not yet reveal any information about what (s)he is listening to. After the listening session, if this randomly selected person is then told that (s)he was listening to music, (s)he would most probably have not realised it was music during the listening experience. Without prior information, her perception of the piece during the listening experience was based on her own perception of sound while blindfolded, which statistically in all likelihood would have thought she was listening to pure noise.

Edit: now I wonder if the most ardent supporters of noise-music could even tell the difference between pure noise and noise-music under such an experiment if they were blindfolded? Or maybe they don't at all care - whatever noise is enjoyable. I am very curious with this. Can anyone answer?


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Perception of reality = noise music debate?!


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Polednice said:


> Perception of reality = noise music debate?!


Why not? Some person perceives road traffic as music, while I do not. Perfect example for discussion in music forum.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Why not? Some person perceives road traffic as music, while I do not. Perfect example for discussion in music forum.


Maybe, but I think a cursory glance at violadude's OP makes it clear that that kind of question is not relevant, however you frame it.


----------



## Guest (Mar 24, 2012)

science said:


> I have a hard time taking this kind of discussion seriously. My sentences begin something like, "But if the world doesn't actually exist, then..."


Has anyone said that the world doesn't actually exist, though?

Look at a rainbow sometime. Is it really there? We can see it, but we know that what we see is the interaction of our eyes and drops of water and light. It's not really solid like a tree, though. So try to look at an oak tree and try to think of it the same way you think of a rainbow. What is the tree, "really"? A bunch of atoms spinning around in intricate patterns. That's not what we see, though. That's not what we feel when we touch it. No. Our receptors and our minds build up a tree from those tiny, spinning particles just as our receptors and our minds build up rainbows from water drops and light.

That all humans build up an oak tree from those particles says as much about humans and their senses as it does about the particles that make up what we call, when we perceive it, an oak tree. (After all, all humans build up rainbows the same way, too.) Which brings us back to the Keller reference. She had quite a lot going on already, without two main receptors to interact with various combinations of particles. If she did not, she could not have learned as much as she did.

And we haven't even got close to the non-physical realities.... You know, how Keller learned to understand love and such, and whether Merzbow is beautiful or not.

[That rainbow/oak tree bidness is not mine. It's from the opening of "Saving the Appearances" by Owen Barfield, and I'm sure I've botched it out of all recognition.]


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

some guy said:


> Has anyone said that the world doesn't actually exist, though?
> 
> Look at a rainbow sometime. Is it really there? We can see it, but we know that what we see is the interaction of our eyes and drops of water and light. It's not really solid like a tree, though. So try to look at an oak tree and try to think of it the same way you think of a rainbow. What is the tree, "really"? A bunch of atoms spinning around in intricate patterns. That's not what we see, though. That's not what we feel when we touch it. No. Our receptors and our minds build up a tree from those tiny, spinning particles just as our receptors and our minds build up rainbows from water drops and light.
> 
> ...


So the world does exist, and our knowledge of it is imperfect.


----------



## Guest (Mar 24, 2012)

science said:


> So the world does exist, and our knowledge of it is imperfect.


No, the world that exists consists of particles and perceivers both. And while it's not false to say that our knowledge is imperfect, that observation is not pertinent to what I was outlining. (I was talking more about experience than about knowledge.) Or put it this way, our knowledge of what we perceive has to include our perceiving, otherwise our knowledge, the picture we have of "reality," is incomplete.

What I find most fascinating in conversations about this topic is not the topic itself, though that's interesting enough, but the very strong urge that "reality" be something that's "out there," separate from us. Of course there are things that are separate from us and that go on their way whether we're around or not. But they're not trees or clouds or buildings or dogs or chairs.

Physically, all those things are mostly empty space, right? That is, the particles that make them up are tiny and the space between them is vast compared to their size. Plus, those particles are in constant motion, making intricate patterns as they move. Is that what you experience when you put your hand on a tree and feel its bark? That seems pretty real. Rough, solid, immobile. But the reality that physics studies is quite different from that, and quite different from our imagination of what the world looks like when we're not looking at it!


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> What I find most fascinating in conversations about this topic is not the topic itself, though that's interesting enough, but the very strong urge that "reality" be something that's "out there," separate from us. Of course there are things that are separate from us and that go on their way whether we're around or not. But they're not trees or clouds or buildings or dogs or chairs.


If it's obvious that "there are things that are separate from us", why is it fascinating that there is a "very strong urge that 'reality' be something that's 'out there'?" As far as I can tell, everyone believes there is a reality out there.

Actually they _are_ trees, clouds, buildings, dogs, and chairs. Just because they consist of atoms, doesn't make them not, for example, a tree. Are you not some guy because you consist of mostly quarks and electrons?

There are many instruments that interact with reality. Some are humans, some are underground cosmic ray detectors, some are radio telescopes. All of those instruments detect (interact) with photons and tell us different things about objects that emit or reflect photons. We find many ways to interact with reality in order to understand it, and yes, we must understand the act of perception or we will not understand reality as well.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Subjective!


----------



## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

mmsbls knows what's up.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

some guy said:


> No, the world that exists consists of particles and perceivers both.


Whatever. I didn't even imply otherwise. Since you want to argue so badly, argue with mmsbls.


----------

