Reality, is it subjective or objective?

sid_16

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What we experience is filtered (What we see is exactly what our brain tells us. What our brain tells us is based upon the information received from our sense organs.

So the best you can get is- What I see is based upon the (narrow spectrum of, but not all of) electromagnetic waves hitting my eyes, that my eyes are adapted to relay to my brain.

The brain does a lot of parallel processing very quickly and picks out a small portion of the information it receives to send to the top of the stack, which is what your consciousness pays attention to. This process is what I have referred to as filtering.)by our brain. Therefore, I think everything is subjective.---

There are studies of people who have lost the ability to smooth out the images their eyes send to their brain, and rather than fluid motion, they see in a kind of strobing animation-- makes it pretty hard to pour your coffee. If our frame rate is really 1/10th of what we perceive it be, how many other things are filtered and smoothed that we don't know about?

But just how subjective is it?

How can you determine what is real, and what your mind tells you is real?
Do your dreams seem real to you , ever?

Sometimes my dreams are surreal.and sometimes, the only thing that is separating my dreams from reality are the physical rules of "reality."

Is reality relative to each person?

If everything you experience is a chemical reaction inside of your brain, how much of what you experience is your subconscious imagination?

Do we create objective reality with our collective consciousness?
Is it real because we all agree it is real... or do we all agree it is real, because it is?

What strange thought processes and glitches have you experienced in your life?
With enough concentration, you can alter your perception of anything, you can make foreground objects seems to be in the background--you can make proportions variable, colors shift of hue.etc.

You can trick yourself into believing almost anything.
 

Cowpipe

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I have a couple of "states" that my brain enters sometimes which are slightly weird. The first is pretty common and something I call "auto-pilot". I can end up navigating complicated routes, crossing roads, filtering and sorting information, even programming unconsciously whilst my mind thinks about something else. Only if I hit an obstacle which my unconscious mind deems needs thought rather than being able to rely on automated processes and remembered rules (eg: cross road when road is empty... statements must terminate with a semi-colon etc). At that point, I hit a 'breakpoint' and jolt into consciousness.

The other state which I think is less common is something I call "hyper-reality". Our brain can only process a subset, a small proportion of what we see, for example in our peripheral vision we may 'see' a red car, but we won't 'notice' it, that is we won't process the fact that it's a car, that it is moving or stationary, it is just raw visual information.

When I enter the state called "hyper-reality", I absorb all of this additional information, the first thing I notice is that my field of vision expands dramatically, I am now essentially processing the raw visual information 'as-is' and not translating this information into collections of objects, not applying rules to these objects. For example I will 'see' a building but I will see it as somebody who has never seen a building before would. It is just something very tall, and large, that has a particular colour and texture (though these concepts do not register, they purely affect the visual information I receive).

It is something anybody can do, I've personally trained myself to do this quite well, I find it useful for my work as I can see a picture for what it is. Otherwise your vision of something can be tainted if you've been looking at it too long. For example if you've ever tried to get a title in the middle of a page on word or powerpoint or something and you keep edging it 1mm left then back again and it never looks right...

Interesting thoughts anyway, thanks for sharing :)
 

Kate_L

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I think all that we live in matrix, our eyes and ears "tell" us what the waves are, what we are able to detect. We create everything with the present, with our conscious ... with no "conscious" there is nothing only data (frequency), for the people that do programing it is like you only render what you see, everything else is "data".
 

sid_16

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Some time our brain is domineering when it comes to coping with reality. We sometimes see things, that are not as they really are, sometimes invent categories that do not exist and sometimes fail to see things that are really there,e.g - there are people who have never seen or heard of an aircraft or some other object/s e.i a tall building (as mentioned Above by Cowpipe) and will not be able to imagine it and a real airplane overhead or a sky scraper will be distorted in their minds, creating alternative realities.

Objective reality is an imaginary term with no meaning. What we then do, as subjective humans, is to 'experience' a subjective inference of that objectivity. We never experience the objective, because we are subjective. Everything we 'see', is seen subjectively. everything we hear, is 'heard' subjectively. etc. In objectivity, red does not exist, Melodic Minor Scale (C Minor) does not exist, pain does not exist, cold and hot do not exist. Subjective concepts, do not exist in objectivity, and our subjective experiences are only a translated reference to the objective.

Anyway, from that subjective translation of the objective, we attempt to talk 'objectively' about that experience. We talk 'objectively' by appealing to inter-subjectivity. for example: we try to find the common basis of all of our personal subjective experiences.

I don't know that what I see when I see red looks anything like what you see when you see red (I only know that you have been taught to call that experience as 'red'). So what we do is, we find the common source of that 'red' phenomenon and claim that this source is the objective unit of 'red'-- Of course though, even without detection of this unit, we are detecting it through a series of other subjective inferences.
 

sid_16

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I think all that we live in matrix, our eyes and ears "tell" us what the waves are, what we are able to detect. We create everything with the present, with our conscious ... with no "conscious" there is nothing only data (frequency), for the people that do programing it is like you only render what you see, everything else is "data".

Does 'time' (present) exist? and what about people with brain damage? what is consciousness and where does it reside in a living body?
 

Kate_L

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I don't think time exist, I think we created. About people with brain damage it is the same as with us. What we see, we "interpret" based on what our senses say.

If a fish was born in water and all his life was there, is he aware of the water ? ... or ... if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound ? This is the same because we focus on what the waves are light, sound and so on.
 

sid_16

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I don't think time exist, I think we created. About people with brain damage it is the same as with us. What we see, we "interpret" based on what our senses say.

If a fish was born in water and all his life was there, is he aware of the water ? ... or ... if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound ? This is the same because we focus on what the waves are light, sound and so on.
Reply to the bold part;
I would like to say that the tree did fall but there will be no sound. Sound is a feeling generated in the mind when vibration of air molecules are detected and interpreted by a brain. Sound is not a physical entity but a feeling. In the absence of a conscious entity, which can translate air waves to sound only air waves will exist not the sound.
 
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Kate_L

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I love this post and how people view things. It is just amazing. :D ;)
 
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D

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one of my favorite topic :D

i used to describe reality as a manifestation of our sentience ( known as mind/spirit/soul whatever you call it) to give purpose to our "life" ; reality is a translation of electromagnetic signal processed by our brain, but what is our brain? our brain is an accumulation of subatomic particles coagulated together to manifest a form. so basically we are particles that interact with other particles via particles.

From that what is your reality may be just YOUR reality , it is just an interface for your sentience to interact easily with other sentiences.

imagine your reality as just a "bubble" made by your sentience for interaction, a kind of interface, it gives to that universe a shape to ease our processing of the universe and interact with it (like an OS desktop allow you to interact with the code).
Now your are not the only one sentience , others create their own bubble, and when those bubbles meet each other , another interface is created to align our different perception then we can share the "datas" we create and allow us to interact and communicate; it may be why we never see similar things than others.

If you take one color and ask 2 people to describe it ,they will say it is red but not the same red, one will say it is darker or lighter. if both see a girl, one with say she is nice but the other ugly, because their interface says so to them; variation of perception is the key word.

now imagine, that some sentiences has a total and different interface that can't align properly with some ours, maybe their interaction with the universe at a subatomic level is different , the "resonate" differently , it may explain the existence of parallel universe.

If i push more , what are ghosts , invisible creatures, poltergeist, etc... maybe just sentiences that interact with us but in a different way, not aligned by our perception interface.

the topic is endless in theories
 
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Kate_L

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The topic is endless in theories

Yes! And this is the amazing thing, we can see all the new ideas and how people see one subject. Also we learn from each other and we expend how we see an idea.
 

sid_16

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Our old perception was a flat earth with the sun and stars going round it. It is not a wrong perception. The earth is approximately flat at visible distance and with reference to earth everything else is moving in circles. At the first layer of perception, it is true. Our mind is not lying here.

If you go up on a rocket, at some distance the earth will appear round and rotating about an axis. This perception is right again from that distance.
As you go further up the perception changes again to a solar system and Milky Way and so on and so forth. At each level, our perception is true.

Does it mean all the other perceptions were wrong? At each level there are different realities; all right ones. So logically one has to conclude that our perception is dependent upon our space-time position in the universe.There could be an infinite number of layers of perceptive realities and the universe is a sum total of all those layers. The so far unknown areas are good ground for mystics to fill up with fancy stories.

After all, there is still the issue that the entire universe may be in your head and there are no other people. But setting that aside, even language is not always agreed upon. I doubt there is even one word in the English language that every single person would agree to the meaning of. Nor would even every single person agree that it is English.

Perhaps someone from an African tribe might mistake it for German, for example. What I am saying is that subjective reality is sovereign over objective reality. Even when someone claims that 'A' thing is objective, it is through their subjective reality that they find it to be objective. So it really is just an opinion. I think what most people claim to be objective/absolute reality, is really just a majority consensus on an issue.

But how does a majority vote make it objective at all? I for one am not too quick to jump on "the majority is usually right" . Common belief has more then often been later proven incorrect. For instance, it was once commonly believed that the world was flat and there were sea monsters at the edge of the world. I think it is safe to say that is not the case now. Also it was once believed that the sun rotated around the earth. That has also been proven false.

I personally think the most commonly believed things are usually the incorrect ones. People go through life believing whatever makes the most sense to them until something better comes along. Facts come and go. History is rewritten. Different schools of thought manipulate reality at various times. How do we really know that science is any more accurate than religion? Truth is that we don't. This may seem like a contradiction in terms, but reality appears to be for all intents and purposes made up. We make it up as we go along.

A child's maturity is an evidence of that. As we grow older we change, and so does our perception of what is real and what is not. Little children believe in say- Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny but when they reach a certain age they stop believing that. Hardly anyone grows up continuing to believe in Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny.


So what changes? Do Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny change? No our perceptions of them do change. In this case, our perceptions of their very existence changes. But that is actually false. The Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny do still exist but they are just not real.

The human mind is a universe in and of itself. It is this magnificent universe that forms what we conveniently call objective reality. If everybody on the entire planet perceived that the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause were real, then wouldn't they be?

What if we all thought we knew Santa Clause personally and he was a great guy. I know that sounds like an impossible scenario, but people believe more outlandish things than that. We could actually be reptilian apes. Some people say we are. More then one would think.

I have a distant relative who is a (detective movie buff) schizophrenic and he actually thinks the CID/CBI put a microchip in his brain that they communicate to him via radio frequencies. I have told him that he is just mentally ill, but he insists that I am just not aware of the conspiracy. I told him to go for an X-Ray of his head, and if there weren't any microchip there then he would have to believe me. Though he did not take me up on that, I bet if he had, he would have come up with an excuse why it did not show up on an X-ray such as the X-ray technicians were in on it.

But this being the case, how do we know that we are not all crazy (for the above case) and he is the only sane one? We don't, and there is no way to prove it one way or another.
 
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sid_16

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I was trying to add multiquote but can't.
<double post>
 
D

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Click " +quote " on each wanted quote then "insert quotes " button locsted on the blank area , a popup should appears , validate the wanted quotes
 
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sid_16

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We should have more topics like this
Yes, off course! but this, being a security and computer related forums, people get very less time to ponder about the thought provoking thread.:D And not all are interested in 'DRY' philosophy......:p
 
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sid_16

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If everything is subjective then what is objective?
The idea of an objective reality means a reality which is independent of something else, exists on it's own, and for which there aren't causes for it's existence. These are the necessary criteria for objective existence.

We hold it that this objective reality, whatever it's nature is and how we look on it or perceive of it, has primacy (exists in first or primary instance) and forms the causes for all other forms of existence we know about.

Important to add is that we, when defining this objective reality, have not yet stated the nature of this objective reality, we only acknowledge the fact that such must exist, and must be the primary cause of everything that exists.

Secondly it is important to acknowledge that defining this primary and objective existence, does not mean that we know in a direct way (its 'cos we don't possese omniscience) about this objective reality, since:
a) we can only know about reality through our subjective existence, through our consciousness.

b)the way we can perceive of reality, of that which is outside, apart from and independent of our consciousness, is through observation

c) The act of observing reality means that in some or other way, a material existence form causes an awareness, whether that is directly through our own sensory perceptions, or through a perceptory instrument which is outside of our self.

Our knowledge about the material existence forms (e.g. light, sound, etc) has indicated that these material existence forms are always only secondary features of that primary substance which exists objectively.

Which means that we do not have a real perception of what this primary substance that exists objectively in fact is.

Not knowing what this primary substance that exists objectively is, does not disallow us to give it a name. At the same time however, giving it a name does not include that we know it any better as/than before, but it is at least convenient to know what we're talking about.

1. Objective perception, and 2. Subjective perception

I would like to deliberate on how I understand these concepts:
Objective Perception. An objective perception is one in which these criteria are met:
1. The object of interest must already exist.

2. The existence of the object is itself the prove that it exist. Note, it is a deliberate effort to state that, 'the existence of the object is itself the prove', and not to state that, 'the existence of the object proves'. The later implies a relativeness in association with an observer, while the former implies an absolute state.

3. The object itself must demonstrate that it can prove its own existence. It must not be proved by an observer, that an object exists. This will lead to a subjective perception of an object.

Subjective Perception. A subjective perception is one in which these criteria are met:
1. The object of interest must already exist.
2. The existence of the object can be proved to show that it exists. Thus,the existence of the object proves that it exists.

3. The object itself does not demonstrate, in any way, that it exists. An existing sentient being will satisfy the criteria for both the subjective and the objective perception. A non-living thing will not satisfy the objective criteria, and therefore, must be said to be a subjective reality.

What is reality then? It is that realm wherein things exist in a manner where they become mutually meaningful to each other. If we are to perceive thing on a strictly objective manner, we lose our identity, our ego, and the meaning of our existence. Only the object will exist in our paradigm, but not us. On the other hand, if we become strictly subjective, reality will become oblivious. What is real will be ourselves - the solipsists journey to his/her own ego.

Meaning is brought to define existence adequately by both subjective and objective perceptions. We cannot exist with only either of the one, we must exist with both. In other words, existence and reality is succinctly defined by relative interactions between subjective and objective perceptions.

I have endless debates in the matter and my conclusion is that for to know something truly objectively we must possess omniscience (at least about the phenomenon). Any other states of knowledge are merely phases of subjectivity, approaching objectivity.

That said however there is a possibility that you could know something objectively, that is purely by intuition, but the issue there in lies with the fact that you possess no extrinsic means of verifying the authenticity of your knowledge. In order just knowing is not enough, knowing that you are right about what you know is more important in such a debate.

Here is an interesting philosophical viewpoint on the matter-- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/
 

sid_16

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XhenED replied in 'Why there is something rather than nothing';
No. A thing cannot come from "nothing" because, as you already stated, "nothing" is void. We can even say that it's a "no-thing" (there is no thing in nothing). Nothing comes from nothing. To have something, something must first exist.
How do you determine that? Let me provide you an example. I am sure you've heard of the concept of vacuum fluctuations, this will give you an overview. Here is another one. virtual particle .
 

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