I don’t know of any pre-existing forms of this hypothesis, but The world as a Placebo simply means that we see things and associate them with their concept, much like we learn english as a child, likewise, since the concept of things was discovered by men, then by nature they would be different. We believe that the way we eprcieve things is how they actually are. Then, how would one be able to see the world as it truly is?
On a slightly separate association with the ‘world as a placebo’ theory, it is true that one will experience the effect of a thing as the person has come to believe which effect will take place, in example:
Person has headache
Person blieves advil will relieve headache
After person takes ‘Advil’, person feels fine
Advil was really a water pill
To tie it all together: If what we associate the concept of something with something different we will experience the effect of the ‘something different’ So If we associate the concept of the desk with a chair, then in our minds, that chair is a desk. I think I confused myself by losing track of what I am writing.
‘We believe we perceive things the way they really are’…
What’s a real thing?
Simply by saying ‘we perceive’ you assume that there is image and reality.
and by denying all your senses and intuitions you get nowhere. There are a million explanations of how our perceptions can theoretically be fooled into showing us a false reality (like the matrix). We have absolutely no information about this other world, because everything we know is collected and flitered through our perceptions. So, if that is the case, then you might as well sart drinking now and go get laid or something, because there is no point in debating it. One person’s idea of the “real” world is as baseless and unprovable as another.
Now, to address the original question…that’s pretty much how it works. what we beleive we see is sometimes more important than what our eyes transmit to our brains. It depends on the situation and your emotions at the time. If someone has a motive to beleive something other than what they see, then their vision will be slanted depending on how strong that motive is.
This may sound a bit childish to you more educated people, but here’s an example I like to offer people:
We all are brought up to believe the colour of the sky is blue. That colour is named blue. But what if I could somehow get into your head and see through your eyes - what if I saw the sky and saw it as what I would call red? But as we were both told a certain colour is called blue, we seem to agree on its colour. And we can never know if our concept of blue is the same as anyone else’s, because you can’t describe a colour except in terms of other colours.
