Reality
Reality is an interesting concept. What is real and what is perception has puzzled philosophers for long. Indian philosophy too talks about 'sab maya hai' - an allusion to the fact that nothing is real (that is not my contention here though). I am not offering answers here but there are some arguments that make this subject clearer (at least to me).
First a recap of the standard arguments:
Say, you see a straight line. You show it to me and I see a straight line. Now where is the straight line? In our minds, of course. We share a common physiology so our eyes will do a transformation that is same. Our mental conditioning is also similar so the meaning that we attach to it is similar. Finally what we see is a mind interpreted image through our eyes that we both are able to agree upon.
Now imagine some other animal like say a dog sharing our culture and mental conditioning but having a different physiological system. If I show that dog a rose - both of us will be able to agree that it is a rose but will be seeing different things. Now a question that begs answer is that if we are seeing different things how does it really look like? There are of course many answers to this or many versions of the answers but ignoring them for a moment lets ask another question - does it matter? Won't we be substituting one reference frame for another? In some schools of thought we do have the concept of one underlying unchanging reality - something independent of the reference frame - Absolute (as opposed to relative) truth. Whether this one underlying absolute exists is a subject of debate/discussion and philosophical research.
This concept of observer dependent reality is easier to agree with in a discussion but really difficult to internalise. All our intuition and understanding of the world builds a model in our mind. Keeping ourselves aware that this is just a model at all times takes effort. If we could change the way our mind works and see/hear/feel this world in different ways that would really drill in this concept of relative reality. One way to alter the mind is to use mind altering chemicals. That's euphemism for drugs. Hallucination is usually looked down upon but in this context its a good technique (not to be tried without a guide though). A drug temporarily brings chemical changes in the nervous system. Imagine if you were born with that chemistry - the world will appear different but normal. In fact the world as it appears today will be hallucinatory.
The concept that how we view things is just one way of seeing things is not old but how often we forget that. Even if we don't venture into the very fundamental aspects of reality, it is useful to start with the fact that different people can have different opinions and worldviews.
First a recap of the standard arguments:
Say, you see a straight line. You show it to me and I see a straight line. Now where is the straight line? In our minds, of course. We share a common physiology so our eyes will do a transformation that is same. Our mental conditioning is also similar so the meaning that we attach to it is similar. Finally what we see is a mind interpreted image through our eyes that we both are able to agree upon.
Now imagine some other animal like say a dog sharing our culture and mental conditioning but having a different physiological system. If I show that dog a rose - both of us will be able to agree that it is a rose but will be seeing different things. Now a question that begs answer is that if we are seeing different things how does it really look like? There are of course many answers to this or many versions of the answers but ignoring them for a moment lets ask another question - does it matter? Won't we be substituting one reference frame for another? In some schools of thought we do have the concept of one underlying unchanging reality - something independent of the reference frame - Absolute (as opposed to relative) truth. Whether this one underlying absolute exists is a subject of debate/discussion and philosophical research.
This concept of observer dependent reality is easier to agree with in a discussion but really difficult to internalise. All our intuition and understanding of the world builds a model in our mind. Keeping ourselves aware that this is just a model at all times takes effort. If we could change the way our mind works and see/hear/feel this world in different ways that would really drill in this concept of relative reality. One way to alter the mind is to use mind altering chemicals. That's euphemism for drugs. Hallucination is usually looked down upon but in this context its a good technique (not to be tried without a guide though). A drug temporarily brings chemical changes in the nervous system. Imagine if you were born with that chemistry - the world will appear different but normal. In fact the world as it appears today will be hallucinatory.
The concept that how we view things is just one way of seeing things is not old but how often we forget that. Even if we don't venture into the very fundamental aspects of reality, it is useful to start with the fact that different people can have different opinions and worldviews.
posted by Saurabh Chandra at 12:35 AM
1 Comments:
Reality, as a concept, is relative. The absolute truth of what exists out there cannot be known, just interpreted in our own way. I am aware of the fact that vision and decisions about what we see are controlled by two different parts of brain. So, sometimes you can fool the eyes by playing a trick, but the decision making is still accurate.
Perception is a function which is dependent on indivisuals' brains. What you percieve isnt always what you see. Some people would say a glass is half full with beer, others would say it is half empty. The meaning that our brains assign to all the input recieved through our eyes is different for different people. And what we percieve is the meaning, and not just the object that we see.
The existance of Absolute truth is debatable, but interesting. There should exist some basic information for us to percieve. That basic information can be said to be the absolute truth. If a human and a dog watch a rose, and agree that it is a rose, it doesnt mean that both are seeing the same thing. Both of them will agree on the idea that there is something infront of them, and it is termed as rose by the decision making part of their brains, but thats it.The example of drugs is interesting. People hallucinate and percieve the world in a different way. If all of us were born with such chemicals driving our neural systems, this world would have been a different place.
People must have differnt opinions. Its absolutely imperative for human beings to have opinions which are different because that is the source of inspiration and survival. Its all possible because our brains are developed enough to percieve things and give meaning to them. I think this topic can have an endless debate/discussion so I will stop here and wait for more opinions.
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