Aug 30, 2023 03:17 AM
(This post was last modified: Aug 30, 2023 03:49 AM by C C.)
https://youtu.be/RZdfE_7cde0
VIDEO EXCERPTS: Is there external reality? Of course there's an external reality. The world exists. It's just that we don't see it as it is. We can never see it as it is. In fact it's even useful to not see it as it is.
[...] However paradoxical it sounds, if we think of what is visible as just what projects to the eyes, we see much more than is visible. Let me give you an example. I walk into a room and there's graffiti on the wall and imagine it's graffiti that I find really offensive. I look at it, I flush, my heart starts to race, I'm outraged, I'm taken aback. Of course, if I didn't know the language in which it was written, I could have had exactly the same retinal events and the same events in my early visual system, without any corresponding reaction. Much more shows up for us than just what enters into our nervous system.
Our senses are also making up the tastes, odors and colors that we experience. They're not properties of an objective reality. They're actually properties of our senses that they're fabricating. By objective reality I mean, what most physicists would mean, and that is that something is objective real if it would continue to exist, even if there were no creatures to perceive it.
Colors, odors, tastes and so on are not real in that sense of objective reality. They are real in a different sense. They're real experiences. Your headache is a real experience, even though it could not exist without you perceiving it. So it exists in a different way...
[...] We always assume that our senses are telling us the truth. So it was quite a stunning shock to me when I realized that it's not just tastes odors and colors, that are the fabrications of our senses and are not objectively real. Space-time itself, and everything within space-time...
[...] It's interesting to compare the human perception of color, to the perception of sound. When you have two pure tones together, like a C and a G a simple chord, that's a fifth. If you hear that, you can hear the separate tones, even though they're played together and you hear a chord, you can also sense the separate tones.
Whereas with colors, if you have two different colors, say spectral green and spectral red and mix them. What you see is not a chord where you can see the distinct identities preserved, but rather an intermediate color. In fact, you'll see something that looks like yellow.
It's as if in music, when you play to the C and a G together, instead of hearing a chord, you just heard the note E the intermediate note.
So at this most basic level, we don't represent even the information we're getting in any accurate way. [...] Evolution by natural selection has shaped us with perceptions that are designed to keep us alive. ... but that does not entitle us to take them literally...
Is reality objective? These neuroscientists don't think so.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/RZdfE_7cde0
VIDEO EXCERPTS: Is there external reality? Of course there's an external reality. The world exists. It's just that we don't see it as it is. We can never see it as it is. In fact it's even useful to not see it as it is.
[...] However paradoxical it sounds, if we think of what is visible as just what projects to the eyes, we see much more than is visible. Let me give you an example. I walk into a room and there's graffiti on the wall and imagine it's graffiti that I find really offensive. I look at it, I flush, my heart starts to race, I'm outraged, I'm taken aback. Of course, if I didn't know the language in which it was written, I could have had exactly the same retinal events and the same events in my early visual system, without any corresponding reaction. Much more shows up for us than just what enters into our nervous system.
Our senses are also making up the tastes, odors and colors that we experience. They're not properties of an objective reality. They're actually properties of our senses that they're fabricating. By objective reality I mean, what most physicists would mean, and that is that something is objective real if it would continue to exist, even if there were no creatures to perceive it.
Colors, odors, tastes and so on are not real in that sense of objective reality. They are real in a different sense. They're real experiences. Your headache is a real experience, even though it could not exist without you perceiving it. So it exists in a different way...
[...] We always assume that our senses are telling us the truth. So it was quite a stunning shock to me when I realized that it's not just tastes odors and colors, that are the fabrications of our senses and are not objectively real. Space-time itself, and everything within space-time...
[...] It's interesting to compare the human perception of color, to the perception of sound. When you have two pure tones together, like a C and a G a simple chord, that's a fifth. If you hear that, you can hear the separate tones, even though they're played together and you hear a chord, you can also sense the separate tones.
Whereas with colors, if you have two different colors, say spectral green and spectral red and mix them. What you see is not a chord where you can see the distinct identities preserved, but rather an intermediate color. In fact, you'll see something that looks like yellow.
It's as if in music, when you play to the C and a G together, instead of hearing a chord, you just heard the note E the intermediate note.
So at this most basic level, we don't represent even the information we're getting in any accurate way. [...] Evolution by natural selection has shaped us with perceptions that are designed to keep us alive. ... but that does not entitle us to take them literally...
Is reality objective? These neuroscientists don't think so.
