Here's a possibly disturbing thought

[UnseenParticipant]

It seems to be a fact that the world of our senses is a hallucination presented to us by our brain.

Oh, come on. That’s nonsense, right?

Well, the philosopher Thomas Nagel, in a famous essay, famously asked What is it like to be a bat? and while his intention was to argue against physicalism, it set me off on a more practical tangent.

Consider an apple. A bright red apple. Is it really red? Not to a cat. Cats are red/green colorblind. The same apple probably looks some shade of gray. And as for the bat, he can “see” it metaphorically using his version of sonar, but try to imagine what it’s like to be a bat sensing an apple and you’ll understand what I mean when I say that he sees it metaphorically. More accurately, he knows it’s there, maybe knows its shape and if it’s moving or holding still. In other words, while he’s sensing the same world I’m sensing, it’s incalculable and beyond any understanding to know what it’s like to be a bat.

It’s quite the same with sound. What’s it like for a mole or a moth when a tree falls? We can’t even imagine, really. “Well, the mole and moth probably respond more to the vibrations created by the falling tree,” but what else is sound other than vibrations.

Gautama Buddha had it right: The world is nothing more than vibrations all the way down to those famous vibrating strings the physicists talk about.

And we only sense the vibrations our sensory equipment presents to us. We see (sense) a limited part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Some creatures sense less and some more. For example, many cold blooded creatures can sense infrared radiation (heat).

So, the real world outside our senses has no color. It has no solidity in a sense, either, because a physicist will tell you that when you touch something you generally are not actually coming into contact the way you think you are. Every physical thing is composed of atoms that are not solid and are mostly empty space. When we do manage to get subatomic particles to bump into each other, as in a collider, the result is an explosion.

But here’s a thought which gives me the shivers: Since I can only see or hear or touch what my sense organs give me, is there an entire reality out there I don’t know about, in parallel with the one I do, because I lack the sensory organs that would give it to me?

 

 

• This topic was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by  Unseen.

[AutumnParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

Consider an apple. A bright red apple. Is it really red?

Yes. The apple skin contains pigment that reflect certain wavelengths of light. Our eyes have photoreceptors sensitive to those wavelengths and our brains interpret that in a certain way. The specific term ‘red’ is arbitrary, but it’s descriptive of a real-world phenomenon. We can also describe other wavelengths that we can’t see, but other animals can.

It’s true the underlying mechanics of the world we experience and how we experience it are often unexpected or even counterintuitive, but this doesn’t render the experiences illusory or hallucinatory. The idea that the way our brain interprets part of the light spectrum is not universal to all other animals or even all other humans can be odd. I think most of us have gone through the thought experiment wondering if the way my brain interprets red may, perhaps, be the way your brain interprets green. How would we prove otherwise? But it doesn’t really change what colour actually is; just how we think about it.

It has no solidity in a sense, either, because a physicist will tell you that when you touch something you generally are not actually coming into contact the way you think you are.

In this case too, how we conceive of something has minimal bearing on the actual phenomenon itself. Even when we learn basic chemistry and find out that matter is comprised of a whole lot of space between microscopic particles, part of us still defaults to the macro level experience. It’s more intuitive to think that the chocolate bar I recently ate isn’t mostly empty space the way I understand ’empty’. But even if I did grasp that concept fully, it’s not going to hurt less if I punch a brick wall because that interaction is a real phenomenon.

But here’s a thought which gives me the shivers: Since I can only see or hear or touch what my sense organs give me, is there an entire reality out there I don’t know about, in parallel with the one I do, because I lack the sensory organs that would give it to me?

Even with the ones we do know about, we only get a very tiny glimpse of any of it leading to countless realities we’ll never really comprehend. Perhaps there is an entire plane of existence that spatially intersects our own, but the phenomena relevant to that plane do not interact with ours in any appreciable way. Hell, maybe they do interact with our plane periodically, and that’s what results in certain mutations leading to birth defects and cancer. Not likely, but human scope is quite limited despite how much we’ve expanded it through technology and science.

[_Robert_Participant]

I agree with Autumn’s points. No need to invalidate our or any creature’s senses just because they are incomplete or narrowly focused.  I often wonder what other people are perceiving of a common experience, let alone what other species are getting. It could be incredible or nightmarish if we could visually see, smell, feel or hear infrared light or magnetic/radio waves but evolution just didn’t work out that way. It is unfortunate that sometimes we have to detect infrared radiation or pressure via nerve pain. Much of our technology is simply an extension of our senses.

[AutumnParticipant]

Autumn wrote:

Unseen wrote:

Consider an apple. A bright red apple. Is it really red?

Yes. The apple skin contains pigment that reflect certain wavelengths of light. Our eyes have photoreceptors sensitive to those wavelengths and our brains interpret that in a certain way. The specific term ‘red’ is arbitrary, but it’s descriptive of a real-world phenomenon.

It occurs to me in retrospect this could be interpreted as me patronizingly explaining something you obviously already know. In shorter terms, I’m saying I don’t agree with the hallucination characterization; however, I don’t disagree with the thought that gives you shivers. While it doesn’t give me shivers, at least as a thought experiment, it’s an interesting premise concerning what could exist outside our abilities to detect or even currently conceive. The gamut of human experience and comprehension is certainly smaller than the universe(s).

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

Well, the philosopher Thomas Nagel, in a famous essay, famously asked What is it like to be a bat? and while his intention was to argue against physicalism, it set me off on a more practical tangent.

Oh, please, not Thomas Nagel and his What Does It All Mean? drivel!

A Philosophy class I had many Moons ago featured that book and everyone in class grasped the obvious absurdity of it and unanimously hated it.

Folks, if you’re going to actually buy it and not use the .pdf file, What Does It All Mean? would make a great prop for a wobbly table leg at the book section of the Dollar store, right next to Francis Fukayama’s The End of History and The Last Man. Pickles and Eggbert say: ” Two Thumbs Down.”. 👎👎

• This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Correcting AutoCorrect

[jakelafortParticipant]

How our senses evolved to perceive is explained in Genesis. It is so cool that eyewitness testimony is famously unreliable. And what fun would it be if we were like machines and missed out on optical illusions. Our sensibilities yaw to the tune of alcohol and dope. Our moods shift to the beat of the internal and external influences.

The finite never gonna grasp the infinite. Try as it might the infinite won’t bite. As long as our tools are an extension of ourselves i am assuming the scope of what can be learned is quite limited. On the other hand AI may go deeper into the onion. Who knows?

Have you noticed that AI has some stunning and unexpected results in its evaluation of the cosmos and human biology? Does it achieve those result simply by having greater pattern recognition?

[UnseenParticipant]

@autumn

Yes, I’m keenly aware of the sense in which an apple IS red. Ah, but what is red to a bat? Or even a cat? We don’t even know what red would look like if we could look through each other’s eyes (Wittgenstein’s discussion of pain and private language). I might, if I could be transferred into your body think, “Wow! To Autumn, red looks more like blue!”

Imagine if you could somehow allow a bat to see through our eyes. They’d probably be like those poor souls who were once blind, are given vision, and simply feel lost, having no idea what to make of the new perceptions flooding in.

As for touch, when we touch something, it’s not particles touching particles so much as fields encountering other fields. At least as I understand it. Atoms are composed of particles which can’t accurately be described as having solidity, so it’s not just the emptiness between the components of the atoms, it’s the atoms themselves which have no solidity to impart to the next level up.

I was making a distinction between fact and the qualia of perception.

So, yes, if I punch a wall it hurts, but that’s part of the hallucination that is our consciousness. Bats hallucinate in a different way as do dolphins, who mix sonar with vision, and moles who, like bats, do not possess vision, but substitute touch, taste, smell, and probably a keen awareness of vibrations including the sounds made by their earthworm prey.

Of course, when I refer to consciousness as a hallucination, I’m using it without some of the baggage that normally comes with it. It’s not a distortion of perception in the way of a mere illusion or dream. It’s more akin to a shadow on a wall. Something that isn’t as it seems yet has a basis in fact.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by  Unseen.

[UnseenParticipant]

@Enco

I didn’t hear even a single meaningful critique of Nagel in that outburst. What did he get wrong? And does this mean you are a physicalist? Or perhaps you think philosophy is just a waste of time(?).

[AutumnParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

@autumn Yes, I’m keenly aware of the sense in which an apple IS red. Ah, but what is red to a bat? Or even a cat? We don’t even know what red would look like if we could look through each other’s eyes (Wittgenstein’s discussion of pain and private language). I might, if I could be transferred into your body think, “Wow! To Autumn, red looks more like blue!”

I’ve already gone over those scenarios. It doesn’t change anything. To refer to that as illusory or hallucination is simply misusing the word. Or perhaps one could argue repurposing the word, but it’s safe to say I wouldn’t argue that.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

I didn’t hear even a single meaningful critique of Nagel in that outburst. What did he get wrong? And does this mean you are a physicalist? Or perhaps you think philosophy is just a waste of time(?).

Well, if all you had to read as an introduction to Philosophy was Thomas Nagel, you would have to ask: “Well, what does it all mean?” and you would think it was a waste of time.

Fortunately, I had some better texts to introduce me to Philosophy. Frederick Copleston’s Philosophers and Philosophies (I think that was the name; it was a compilation of essays by different philosophers throughout the ages) was a good introduction.

The college text Philosophy Now was good at covering Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, and Political Theory. John Hospers Introduction to Philosophical Analysis and Problems of Moral Philosophy were the absolute best, since they used The Socratic Method and excerpts from news stories and literature to facilitate understanding of the topics.

But Nagel? That is some turgid stuff to slosh through!

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

The study of philosophy is but the introduction to philosophy……Hegel.

[UnseenParticipant]

@Enco

Different instructors of philosophy have different approaches. Coppleston is a fairly standard into text based on the history of Western philosophy. Nowadays, I suspect it’d be considered a bit dated.

My own intro course, in the mid-60’s, didn’t involve much reading. The instructor taught off the blackboard and did a pretty good job. It was in his class that I realized there’s a lot more to Karl Marx than Communism.

I do agree that a Nagel text was probably a bit too deep for a Philosophy 101 introductory course. It’s actually pretty dense for a guy with a Master’s degree and requires some knowledge of the what came before.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Well, if all you had to read as an introduction to Philosophy was Thomas Nagel, you would have to ask: “Well, what does it all mean?” and you would think it was a waste of time.

Fortunately, I had some better texts to introduce me to Philosophy. Frederick Copleston’s Philosophers and Philosophies (I think that was the name; it was a compilation of essays by different philosophers throughout the ages) was a good introduction.

LOL, insert incidental outrage here.

While it’s good you point out something I meant to before you wrote it: By itself, Nagel’s writing didn’t add anything worth reading for you, but there is still *some* context one can cite that gives it relevance. 🙂

[PopeBeanieModerator]

I’ve objected to the misuse of the word hallucination enough to just ignore writings that center around it, unless it’s about imagining something that’s actually not there. Even though “red” is a human construct, it has meaning when communicating to other humans, and it seems meaningless to argue that “red” is not there. As Autumn said, a specific frequency of light is being reflected, and I can’t think of a better way to explain that to someone else without using the word “red”… unless we want to discuss frequencies of light in long form.

As for imagining what a bat can “see” with echolocation, due to recent experience with audio equipment, specifically microphones in echoey rooms, I’m guessing that a bat can not only detect the apple, but hear things behind it and around it. Some blind people have an amazing knack for hearing echos off of some objects that sighted people just haven’t had to develop.

Unseen, I’m also wondering what kind of shivers you got, good, bad, or other? I’m first thinking of JWST scientists shivering, or more likely getting goosebumps from pictures coming back in the infrared spectrum of objects billions of light years away for the first time. If it’s just “data”, is it a hallucination? Why not think of red as data?

I think the other reason I’m more alert than normal to uses of the word hallucination is because I’m looking into hallucinogenic drugs, just in case I really feel a need to speed up some psychological therapy I’m undergoing. I’m seeing that many other hallucinogenic experiences keep strongly implicating the feeling that “everything is connected, including myself to the universe”, or something similar to that but not as hyperbolic. One could say that some feelings are just hallucinations, too, but I’m not ready to jump to the conclusion that all feelings are. In an evolutionary science context, feelings evolved in a way that improves fitness for the self, and as an added way to communicate importance of some experiences with fellow humans.

One more thing (sorry not sorry). Would it also negate everything we think about ourselves, somehow, if we’re just living in a simulation? Or a simulation within a simulation? Would it negate the feeling of free will? I’m not trying to argue one way or the other. It’s just that at some point, I feel so much better when I’m in control, when we can share feelings with each other, plus shareable knowledge of all kinds. What could be gained, other than perhaps in a philosophical sense or as an incidental scientific exercise/speculation, by denying the veracity of feelings, flavors, smells, colors, or what have you?

Occam’s Razor tells me that it won’t help much to deny that evolution has endowed us with senses that help us characterize realities around us, while still having the ability to self-examine these perceptions and share them when it seems helpful, even if perceptions do not perfectly reflect “reality”. And when it comes to wondering if reality is really real, what could be the benefit of denying it by default?

• This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by  PopeBeanie. Reason: added Razor paragraph

[_Robert_Participant]

I doubt common family/genus/species of biologics experience physical things very differently from each other just because of the common evolutionary process and similar biological anatomies. At some point we will probably be able translate ocular and auditory related brainwaves directly to pixels/soundwaves for example…..and therefore hear and see what others do and compare.

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