Illusion vs. Reality

“Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”

  • Nietzche


In a Matrix-esque world, every person is under the illusion that what they are seeing is real, while oblivious to the fact that they are actually hooked up to machines. I would like to elaborate on this idea:

Instead of machines, consider that our brains are actually creating the illusion for ourselves. We all believe in a certain theme, a certain way of living, based on the experiences we’ve gone through and the objects we see, touch, hear, etc.

However, what if everything we experience is actually different from each person? Example: When I look at a human, I see a four-limbed creature with a head, adorned with facial features and hair. That is my concept of a human. But consider that perhaps the person next to me sees that human differently. What if that person views a human as… a slug (just go with me on this.) And the person next to him views a human as a robot. That is their reality; the four-limbed creature is mine.

Because our brains have a subconscious fear of change, and a highly-developed ability to adapt, my brain twists and re-shapes everything it takes in to become the world that I see - which could very well be different than the world that someone else experiences. If someone were to describe a human as a slug, my brain would immediately change that description into a human. Perhaps even the language that I speak is different than another English-speaking person, but my brain changes that which I hear into the language that I am used to.

This also relates to Plato’s theory of forms: A form is an abstract property or quality. Take any property of an object; separate it from that object and consider it by itself, and you are contemplating a form. For example, if you separate the roundness of a basketball from its color, its weight, etc. and consider just roundness by itself, you are thinking of the from of roundness. Plato held that this property existed apart from the basketball, in a different mode of existence than the basketball. The form is not just the idea of roundness you have in your mind. It exists independently of the basketball and independently of whether someone thinks of it. All round objects, not just this basketball, participate or copy this same form of roundness.

Therefore, my theory is this: All ideas, languages, objects, etc. are predetermined and created by the subconscious before birth. Every single person sees and experiences things differently. No one realizes this because of the adaptation occurring in their brains. We all have the illusion that we see things the same, but the reality is that each person’s world is completely different.

My idea of a basketball is that it is round in shape. Yours could be that it is rectangular. But I would never know!

…any thoughts?

From The Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy:

I disagree with Yangming on a variety of points, but I do think that such a view is complimentary to your own.

I tend to think that the mind is reflecting from the external world (since you mentioned experience before perception, you seen to agree with that), so the question becomes whether we are actually reflecting something meaningful or whether we do indeed create the world. Since physicality seems to be maintained independently of my interaction with it, I would argue that we are indeed reflecting something meaningful.

Furthermore, even if physicality is indeed dependent upon our existence in order to function we must assume that it is independent. I do not entertain the thought that my lab ceases to exist (and with it, the restriction digest I am running) when I go out to lunch. When things are out of my sight, I do continue to both believe and think that they exist. So, what is the merit of producing a philosophy that leads to an unlivable conclusion?

Xunzian,
You do your homework well and never fail to impress me.
Malek,
My son is a believer in the matrix assumption. I am not. If humans could not see though illusions, they would definitely become extinct, would have become so eons ago. I do agree that humans act and react on the basis of self-substantiating beliefs and are prone to kill or enslave those who would burst their bubble. But not all self-substantiating beliefs are illsions. Our hope is that those that are not will suffice in countering those that are.

Nahhh, it isn’t that I do my homework, I’m just on a crusade to show the world that asian philosophy isn’t all koans and guys sitting on mountaintops sayin’ things that just plain don’t make sense.

Just to throw another point onto the OP, since we can symbolically (usually through math) represent many objects (such as a basketball) and there is a great deal of similarity between the objects that are created by different people, it would also strongly argue against percieving a basketball as a cube and so-on. This can be further extrapolated to things like colour, where we can control the frequency of light that causes colour and map the area of the brain where the colour-signal is recieved and processed. While it is possible that in processing the signal the same way, different people come out with different results, but if that were the case it would also probably apply to other areas in our physiology. Since humans are more-or-less physiologically interchangable, it seems unreasonable to suggest that we would only be non-interchangable in these areas.

The problem with the idea that we are born with the knowledge of all the forms we have is that we can learn forms, we can define new ones. We can be confused as to what forms mean. We can debate whether or not something satisfies a form. We can find cultures who have different porms, who group things in the world differently (cultures that only have three number words, for instance).
There are ad hoc arguments that can be made to get around this, but it isn’t really all that good a hypothesis. It has little explanative value, it is hardly testable, and it opens up an array of more difficult questions (Where so forms reside? How do we all have them? Why are they ‘the forms’? How does our interaction with them work?)

It seems useless to say that everyone sees the world differently: I cannot see the world as you, and you cannot as me, and the very idea of the possibility is incoherent (read Nagel’s “What is it Like to be a Bat?”). Something as radical as my perception of a basketball being rectagular isn’t possible: Rectagularness and rolling are mutually excplusive. To say that I see a basketball as rectangular is to say that I call a shape that rolls in any direction “rectagular”.

(Edit: I started this post before anyone had said anything, and now I see that many have replied. Forgive me if I repeated or skipped anything)

It’s quite complimentary, although I wish I had thought of labeling it “the external mind.” :frowning:

I agree, but that’s not what I was trying to say. I’m merely saying that we all view the world in completely different ways - but never realize it.

I’m suggesting that everything is inter-changeable. What makes sense in my world doesn’t have to make sense in yours. 2+2 really could equal five in your world, but the answer will appear to be four in my world, and there is nothing you could do to convince me otherwise (because of the whole subconscious reflex).

It’s very useless, I agree. But is it possible?

It’s very possible, as I explained before - what makes sense in my perception may not make sense in your perception. What appears hard could be soft, what appears solid could be ghostly…

While you could twist semiotics to yield such a conclusion, I think it breaks down whenever we have shared experiences. In the case of shared experiences, it seems the only way to make the world you suggest work is to either say that everything is an illusion or that reality is the product of just one ur-mind.

I agree with Xunzian. It sure doesn’t seem that we see the world that radically differently, because we seem to agree about basketball shapes and math sums. If I were to be deluded to the point of experiencing that we agree despite our disagreement, it does not seem that I could be said to be experiencing you at all. I think a consequent of your propostition is that we are alone in the world, that all people are the result of our own thinking. I.e., the theory will break down to solipsism, which is possible, but unproveable and unworkable.

A certain degree of this argument is, do we learn by nature or nurture and if this can be found out we can then decide on how the individual will percieve the world and how different the perception is from another person. I agree on the main assumption but feel that it is far subtler than described or we can ever understand. This is mainly due to the fact that we do all see the world as relative similarities although we can be far removed from each other. We will never fully know how far this difference of perception goes, as soon as we try to make someone else understand our perception of any item the subtlties of the difference is then lost , for to understand is to agree and to agree you have changed you perception.

I was hoping someone would mention solipsism! :smiley:

That was probably the most insight I’ve ever received on this topic!

Malek, I disagree. Once we are born, we perceive all humans as humans…its the expressions on their faces that change. As we grow, it comes to a point where sub-conciously, all humans look the same and are believed to act the same, which in my opinion might be related to why we always talk to strangers at an early age (until parents begin to restrict and limit our exterior personality, which to an extent is the relfection of our own subconcious). Once we are older, our subconcious defines humans the same way and not differently…whereas our concious, or exterior personality is the factor which twists your perception and interpretation of all objects and beings (but cannot alter the basic components of the subconcious)

What is reality ?? What is reality in its absolute form ???

We are one but we are illusioned to think otherwise that I am different from you.

For example lets take away everything one has acquired; language,memory,knowledge etc. and what do we have ??? This is reality and in reality we are one…

Now let me look at an object … the moment I see it I am in a state that enables me to recognize it because i have been taught that whatever fits this particular description physically is this particular object… The identification of the object and its memory which is knowledge accumulates over time. Now what if i see something totally new even now I would strive to identify that object with previously accumulated memory and if aint sucessful then i will try to relate it to other objects stored up in my brain… this will go on and on… as for me the object makes no sense without the subject experiencing it hence the object is not independant…

nothing is predetermined in the sense that prior to a self being born it would make no sense to determine objectively as materialism is secondary to the self. It is unwarranted of thinking otherwise.

What then is absolute reality.The self is independant but everything else is dependant on the self. In self, i mean the true reality, the state wherein my brain is empty… no memory, no knowledge but is this possible… The question is not if its viable but if i can understand this whole thing and if anyone looks at the underlying theme on a much deeper level then one would discover that I am contradicting myself throughout and this is what I call Illusion.

if several native americans (true indians) were to observe a piano…they would view it the same way, physically it does not change. They can guess, based on particular shapes that seem familiar or that could have been present on another object…what they make of it is an illusion.

We can perceive objects and assume rather than guess their functions (due to knowledge), because some or several of its pieces are similar in function to another object or instrument, but the object remains unchanged…The most gramatically and philosophically correct question is “what can it be?” This would mean that I have established its existence, its raw physical appearence and function (unknown/useless; or establishing a function for a part that is similar to another object) and i intend to figure its undiscovered useful function (as a whole).

Is what we are discussing “intersubjectivity”?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersubjectivity

That we see things similarly?

Ultimately, we never think of things exactly the same based on odds that two peoples 10,000 trillion synapses are in exactly the same state.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_synapse

The part about the “subconscious before birth” I don’t understand.

Or pure Idealism - the belief that there is no mind-independent reality?

Personally, I think it’s a huge pity that philosophy still thinks it’s mission is to disprove radical scepticism.

Especially sceptism argued with mathematics. Numbers don’t really exist. 2+2=4 is only a content-free logic claim. It doesn’t relate to “real 2’s” at all.

I’m perfectly prepared to believe that numbers don’t exist, and that there are no perfect forms of circles and numbers on some perfect planet.

I always think that’s a weird contradiction when Platonists argue against the reality of the world that’s right in front of them, using unreal abstractions as “proof” that numbers exist but tables don’t.

Sorry, but I’ve given idealism quite a bit of thought and I’ve emerged a realist.

Carleas,
Nagel is neatly refuted by Rorty in “Philosophy:End Or Transformation” and by E.O.Wilson in “Consilience”.

You ever tried dribbling a rectangular basketball? it just doesn’t fly.

praxis,
Yes, I can imagine all sorts of phenomena that are not real. Doing so exemplifies my genetic potential, in which there must be many possibilities in order for me to explore practical possibilites.

Interesting. I’ll have to look into that. Can you explain how?

Carleas,
Yes. Rorty is a pragmatist who sees experience in living as something all organisms share. (Spinoza thought so, too.) This was brought out in Uexkull’s idea of "umwelt’’ and is complemented by Bose’s great experiments with plants. To assume that human subjectivityand its intersubjective agreements on experiential reality defines all knowable reality is to forget how subjectivity evolves. It is a shared experience among organisms, not a closed box of individual realities. Wilson wrote a fine essay on what it’s like to be a bee in “Consilence”. Reading that, I don’t think I’m too off base in realizing what a bee thinks.