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This observation gets me in all sorts of interesting philosophical debates with myself.
All our life experience and interaction with the world is essentially an illusion... an indirect virtual model of an assumed objective world. Let me explain.
We gather information about the world around us through sensory input collected by sensory organs. That information is transferred to our brain though electrochemical means through our nerves, where the brain turns it into a virtual model of what we experience based on how our brain interprets those signals and compares it with past experience.
Therefore we essentially exist only within our minds because of how our biology functions. We don't actually see the world when we open our eyes and look around; we see a model created by our minds which may or may not be technically accurate.
There are all sorts of brain teasers that illustrate how easy it is to "trip up" this system:
It's the same picture both times, but the second will make you blush simply because your mind automatically attempts to fill in the blanks (especially if you're a "properly wired" male brain )
Vision is perhaps the easiest sensory input to fool but NO sense is truly "hardwired" to the brain. Even pain input can be controlled and even extinguished if the practitioner is trained to do it:
It would seem we humans have the capability to manipulate our "mental model" to some degree and therefore our perception of reality, sans drugs, and is certainly the reason behind many so-called "supernatural" feats of mind...
...but it also begs this question:
If we can't objectively observe anything at all in the entire universe, how do we know we are actually here?
The answer... we can't. We just have to assume reality is "real" because there just isn't any other choice.
That fact means we technically aren't that far removed from folks who experience hallucinations through mental illness. Neither the schizophrenic hearing voices telling him what to do nor the guy having a conversation with his girlfriend over dinner can truly objectively confirm the existence or non-existence of the other party. Isn't the human mind great!
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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It's true that our brain constructs a version or subjective reality, but don't like the idea that if something is supposedly 'material' and outwardly observable its more real. Thoughts, emotions and ideas are every bit as real as rocks ans molecules...in fact, the physical world isn't what we perceive it to be. Seemingly 'solid' objects are composed of molecules separated by vast distances of empty space. Think of them like the stars in the galaxy. Thoughts create the world we know around us.
That's the thing with science. It is limited to the capabilities of our brain.
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