Although we briefly touched upon this topic already, I was so intrigued by the question that I thought it might need further emphasis.
How do we know what is real? Rather, if we perceive something in the extensional world, how do we know that it actually exists there and is not an addition inserted in by our intensional world?
We never can be too sure of what is real and what is not. Our intensional world inevitably colors our perceptions of the extensional world, and so sometimes we may unconsciously add elements to our view of the extensional world. For example, if I were terrified and alone in a dark dank forest, my mind would soon play tricks upon me and I would be hearing and seeing things that did not really exist in the extensional world. My fear has blurred my vision of the extensional world.
But then in the "real world," how would we even be able to tell if something did exist or not? People hallucinating are probably not aware of their condition and may believe their visions to be real.
And when we are dreaming, are we aware during our dreams that we are not in the extensional territory but are lost within our intensional maps? Many times it is only after we wake up panting and shaking do we understand that "it was only a dream." After all, how many times in real life have you told a friend, "Pinch me. I must be dreaming"? Zhuangzi, a Chinese philosopher, once dreamed that he was a butterfly. After he woke up, he asked himself, "Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man."
How do we know that what we are experiencing right now is real, and not just a dream that we will soon wake up from?
Just a few idle musings. Thoughts are greatly appreciated.
(Eric Wei)
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26 comments:
Hayakawa mentions that our environment is established based on agreement. The majority of people have agreed upon the "fact" that when we are in a subconscious state ("dreaming"), the events/actions taken place are not "reality." In fact, indigenous Australians believe that dreaming is reality and the time spent awake it "dreaming." Who is right?
They say that we know we ourselves exist since cogitamus ergo sumus. we think, therefore we are. If one person is only aware of their own existence, everything else is based around that single grain of knowledge.
While what we term "reality" is based on individual choice, it seems easier to just "go with the flow" most of the time.
I, for one, believe that dinosaurs walked the Earth with humans.
Grace Yuan
I think a comment Steve made yesterday. Actually heres the actual quote.
"Do you take the red pill and have the wool lifted from your eyes and see your surroundings for what they truly are? Or take the blue and live in ignorance, described by some as bliss but unaware of your universe and therefore less capable of making any kind of change."
Its your choice if you want to live a skeptic or just take the world for what it seems.
(Arvind Kalidindi)
So then, do we simply choose whether we are living in reality or just dreaming?
There is no way to tell then?
I could not help gaffawing aloud when I saw the final sentence of Grace's post. But anyway...
This reminds me of how we cannot feel how other people feel, or for that matter know for certain that other people exist the way that we think we exist. Seriously contemplate this idea. Edgar Allen Poe once said "All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream." Every "human" connection, "human" emotion, and "human" belief is technically nonexistant. I mean, I hate to ruin the magic, but humans are a system of complex cellular processes working together to create a cohesional being. But why do the electrical impulses in the brain create "thoughts"? Probing for these answers just produces more questions.
It's rather frightening to consider this question. What if everything we think is real is just a hallucination? And if so, is there anyway to verify this fact?
Another point that Eric's post made me consider is the fact that we ourselves run computer simulations all the time (i.e., Sims, Second Life, etc.) Do these computer simulations possess a conscious mind? Are they aware that they are computer simulations, or they perceive their world as reality?
Sounds far-fetched, I know, but it's something to consider.
-Paige Walker-
Eric, your post reminded me a great deal of our discussion concerning Orwell's 1984 from earlier on in the summer. To most of the party members, freedom was not a reality. They accepted this theory and lived their lives as a restrained people. To Winston, however, freedom seemed to be a vague reality of the past, and this resulted in his failure to comply with the code of the Party.
This sense of reality versus falsity is also exemplified in the argument of faith. When God and His divinity may seem true to one man or woman, the teachings of Buddha may be the path to truth for another man or woman.
In regards to possibly being stuck within a dream at this very moment...well, that thought frightens me. Does that mean that we dream of lives of labor, yet are truly awake in lands of folly?
(Samantha Maliha)
P.S. Does anyone know where the assignment Mr. Lazarow said he would post would be? Is it still not posted? Or is it hidden? Thanks!
Oh and I posted the comment about Edgar Allen Poe's quote... (TAYLOR BURKE)... I can't believe i keep forgetting to do that
As many people have stated (I'm afraid I can't name you all), it really depends on the person. With these comments, I can't help but think of a quote I once heard: "On the stage of life, everyone is their own main character." It really depends on what people have gone through and how they interpret such experiences that make up their beliefs, what they think is real.
Also, going back to what Grace said, many people do just tend to go with the flow. It reminds me of last year when we had that assembly with that one actor that did all these different types of impressions. I remember how he said that we don't really accept differences in others because we learned in preschool to 'find the differences and cross them out.' It gets me thinking that it's because of things like this that people won't really share what they think reality is, especially when they think it's something far fetched.
(Kevin Trainer)
I always forget to taylor don't sweat it haha. As to the question Eric poses, I couldn't be in more agreement with Arvind. The truth is there is no way to tell whether this is reality, or what reality even is. Therefore, it is pointless to dwell on it. Believe what you want to believe. If a person chooses to continue to ponder about what is real, it is their decision, however the question is unanswerable and there a waste of time. I think the question is analagous to Hayakawa's point about proving the existence of god. You can choose to believe in a god or you can choose not to; however, do not spend time debating whether or not there is a god, because it can not be proven one way or the other. Eric brings up a good point when he talks about dreaming. However, don't we dream about things we have already seen or heard in our own extensional worlds? What does a blind person dream about if they have never seen anything? Aren't our dreams boud to our extensional worlds then? Certainly a blind person doesn't dream in color.
The truth is, even if there is any insane truth in what you have said, there would be no way to tell. You could all be mad figments of my imagination and I could never know about it. The fact of the matter is that you could live your life thinking of these things trying to figure out these unlikely possibilities, or you can enjoy the time you have before I wake up and this world disappears.
(Connor Tweardy)
All very interesting thoughts. Is this reality? Well, what is reality? If we define reality as what we are experiencing at this present moment, then this is reality. So, going back to definitions, they are all that really matter when it comes to speculation. Back to Orwell, does 2+2=5? Well, if the Party says it does, then it does. What is reality? Reality is how we define it.
(Emily Thompson)
I basically live by the saying, "Your preception is your reality". Therefore, whatever you precieve to be truth, is truth. It's a little Rene Descartes but, to me at least, thinking and precieving are different in that preception is based more on logic while you can think anything you want to. You don't believe everything you think. (which I believe is the title of some book...)
Therefore, reality is whatever you want to make it, so long as it's based on your logic. I didn't laugh at all when Grace mentioned the dinosaurs. I read a pamphlet titled "What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs". I cracked up the entire time I was reading it, but looking back, the points made perfect sense if you have a certain set of beliefs off of which you base your logic.
With the reality vs. fantasy and how do we prove it is what it actually is... Should we truly bother finding out the answer? Aren't we content knowing what we know and believing what we believe? Is it possible someone has already answered all of the questions we're asking but found the truth to be so horrid and life shattering that he encouraged the wool over our eyes? It's almost like Lowis Lowry's The Giver when the boy was given all of society's knowlege and it drove him mad and he ended up running away. Maybe we're not supposed to know what reality is. Maybe we should be thankful that we don't.
(Megan West)
Well, some of you, like Kevin and Connor, seem to believe that the question posed about the differences between reality and dreams is only an idle "waste of time."
I'd disagree.
Understanding how our intensional mind processes and understands reality to formulate our mental perceptions has real applications. For example, virtual reality has been used by people to overcome phobias. Consider a person who suffered a traumatic experience from 9/11. By immersing himself in virtual reality simulations of 9/11, from an intensional viewpoint he can relive the events of 9/11 over and over again until he is able to deal with his feelings.
Or maybe you have arachnophobia. Virtual reality simulators can gradually introduce you to images of spiders, then sounds, and generally acclimate your intensional perceptions until you can view the real extensional spider differently without fear.
Here's just one of many articles supporting this idea: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=99628&page=1
This is not reality, but virtual reality. Yet it is able to fool our intensional perceptions and change them, until we can view the extensional world in a newly changed manner.
The relationship between the intensional world and extensional one definitively exists, but many of the intricacies of it remain unknown.
So, do we simply choose to believe if something is "real" or not, as many of you have said? So if we all together believed and agreed that school buses are in fact giant pink/purple unicorns, does that make the unicorns real? Certainly, we may perceive them to be real, but are they actually existent? I'm not sure that we can decipher the complex relationship between the intensional and extensional worlds by simply "choosing to believe."
Should we truly bother finding out the answer? Aren't we content knowing what we know and believing what we believe? -Megan
By nature, humanity is curious. Why else have we advanced as far as we have? As I mentioned in a previous post, our drive to improve is unavoidable, and why shouldn't we attempt to solve life's mysteries? (The answer is not 42.)
Of course, I'm not certain that a group of teenagers can solve these mysteries fully, but we can at least discuss them.
The border between the intensional and extensional worlds is blurring every day. Some new prototype video games utilize a headset that measures brain waves. Namely, if we think in our mind the moves we wish our video game avatar to perform, the game will actually carry them through. Our intensional perceptions may one day have an effect upon extensional "reality". Here's another link verifying this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3485918.stm
Influencing the extensional world with our intensional mind and perceptions may sound crazy, but the innovations have already begun. Why don't we check back in another hundred years, and see how far we've come?
I apologize for the massive chimney of text, but these were a few thoughts that have been bouncing around recently.
So, are we butterflies dreaming of men? Or men dreaming of butterflies?
(Eric Wei)
If we were to solve all of life's mysteries, the ground would shake, bridges would fall and cities would crumble. Take the great mystery of religion. If it were proven tomorrow that there is no god, what would happen? Everything we've ever based on religion will fall through the cracks. Insurance coverage on "Acts of God", basic human philosophies, even common phrases such as "Oh my god" would be useless. They would have no merit because even the possibility of a higher being has been totally proven false. If we would have to restructure our lives if only one mystery were solved, imagine what would happen when there were no mysteries left at all.
^(Megan West)^
Well, I don't believe that humanity will be ever able to solve all of life's mysteries. And even if we discovered the answers to a few, the world would probably be the better for it.
We've had controversy before, such as when Galileo declared that the Earth revolves around the Sun. A mystery solved! And while there certainly was religious outcry, the earth did not shatter and cities did not fall to the ground. On the whole, I feel that Galileo's contribution to society has helped us.
Some of the theories and beliefs we hold may be disproved, but such is the price of progress. At the very least, can we not at least try to solve life's mysteries?
In all honesty, my head is spinning in circles right now just thinking of how to answer Eric's question. How do we know what is real? If you wish to look at things from a simplistic perspective, you could say that, as many of you have suggested, reality is whatever you want it to be. If you wish to look at things from a more complicated perspective, you could argue that reality is something that we will never know because we are living in one enormous dream.
How do I know that I am actually sitting at my desk, pressing keys on my laptop and expressing my thoughts on this blog? What if I am merely a butterfly dreaming that I am human? How do I know that you and I actually EXIST? What if this entire universe is simply an imagination? Wow, my head is spinning...
I would love if I could cure my own headache, but unfortunately, I have merely asked questions that I myself am unable to answer. I wish that I could just take the easy way out and believe that reality is whatever we make of it, but at the same time, I do agree with Eric that this discussion may be an important one, no matter how much we wish to think that it is a waste of time.
So here I am, chasing myself in circles again. Or maybe not? What if I am not actually here?
Now I feel like I am simply wasting energy. Are there any other thoughts, preferably thoughts not as useless as mine? Sorry...
(Janet Lee)
A wee tidbit reguarding heliocentrism... the RCC didn't acknowledge it until 1992. (You probably heard this in APEH...)
But 1992!
It took that long to adopt a new philosophy. The world may end by the time we get everyone to adopt another new one.
This is really rather irrelevant to the argument I suppose, but still shows just how slow progress can be.
(Megan West)
Although the RCC may not have accepted it until 16 years ago, the rest of the world had accepted and understood it decades, if not centuries, of years before. Society has long ago accepted heliocentrism.
On the topic of accepting global (or universal) phenomena. Is "expert" opinion or popular consensus the usual route? On the flip side of an issue like heliocentricism, global warming, seems to be a widely accepted in the scientific arena but still maintains a significant amount of "non-believers" in the general population.
I would appreciate any clarification. :)
Grace Yuan
What do we mean when we say society? Do we mean people of the world as a whole? Or society as in a group of people associated by a common characteristic?
To say "society" has long accepted it would seem false on both accounts, as the first could not be whole without the small fration missing until 1992. And the other would have to be specific as to what societies accepted it. It is obvious that the Catholic society did not.
Did you have another definition in mind?
Hoorah for defining terms!
(Megan West)
I was referring to the society that is the human beings that form our world (plus the astronauts floating up in outer space). To be more specific, I suppose the general American population (including illegal and legal aliens etcetc) could define "society" as well.
I would hazard a guess and say that while religion has some correlation to rejecting the global warming phenomena, it does not necessarily possess any direct causal relation. (regardless of whether or not the "non-believing" population is bigger in that particular "society"/sub-"society".
Probably Not Helping At All,
Grace Yuan
In regards to the whole "[am I] a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or... am [I] now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man", isn't the distinguishing characteristic of man imagination?
"Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation." (J.K. Rowling)
It is imagination that lends the mind-boggling edge to the scenarios presented to us in our dreams. In fact, we don't need to know much about how a butterfly acts to be able to dream about being one. Imagination sets us apart from other animals, thus wouldn't it follow that we are human and dreaming that we are butterflies and not the converse?
Further, I believe that it has been established that dreams - and by association, the power of the human mind in this situation - have their limits. In our dreams we cannot tell time, or even see the faces of clocks for that matter. Apparently, time is too abstract a concept for our minds to comprehend at the subconscious level? Now, I'm not well-versed in the theories, but I did listen to Avesh ramble about what he'd learned from his Philosophy of the Mind class for about 1/2 hour. I'm pretty sure he mentioned something else about the depth of clarity that distinguishes reality from the dreamworld..
I just wanted to throw that out there to see if anyone else has ever considered such an idea.
So, for those who are curious, accost Avesh tomorrow during school. I'd elaborate more, but I took Principles of Logic.
I think this is the blog with the most comments so far....
Anyway, I think society can be defined as the community of people that one interacts with.
And, Janet, you're not alone. My brain is spinning just as fast.
Back to Eric's comment about Galileo. As Hayakawa stated, you need cooperation in a society for progress. Didn't many other scientists later agree with Galileo with their scientific studies? (this also explains the global warming thing: both sides have cooperation among others that such a thing does/does not exist)The thing is, when it comes to reality, so many people have so many different views (and going back to the fact that most are not really willing to share) it is hard to find such cooperation. Such a complicated topic...
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