Are we incapable of seeing things as they really are?

a reply to: Astyanax

Thank you for the detailed response. I will have to think on this a bit more before responding, and I will read the paper in full (which, admittedly, I should have done to begin with).

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: SystemResistor

Here's a more useful diagram:

It relies on the fallacious notion that we are little observers in the head of a human body, indirectly observing reality through some medium or filter or other, something like a screen, a "projection", a "perception", a "GUI", a "representation", or insert term here. Of course on simple inspection these terms reference nothing in reality.

Yes we see things as they really are. We see how things really are, but at the same time we see how these things really interact with our bodies. What we don't see are anything that remotely resembles GUIs and icons.

Strange that you would post this yet when i suggested i see the world as a computer projection you automatically assumed i had a medical problem.

What i see is exactly like a background radiation and our interpretation of reality is the GUI. When you take away the social programming and conditioning everything appears to be part of some kind of field.

The idea that what we perceive is really a self-generated illusion is, of course, very old in philosophy, where it is known as solipsism. However, what we are discussing in this thread is very far from solipsism.

We are proposing that there really is an external reality, populated and perceived by other sentient beings besides ourselves. We can describe this reality to others, and interact with it and them, in ways that seem true, coherent and rational to one another, even though we have no way of knowing whether others perceive reality the same way that we do, or in some altogether different way.

We do know, however, that reality is nothing like we perceive it to be. This has been known in science for a very long time. Here is a paragraph written many years ago by the scientist and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead:

There is no light or colour as a fact in external nature. There is merely motion of the material. Then your nerves are affected and your brain is affected, and again this is merely motion of the material... The mind, in apprehending, experiences sensations which, properly speaking, are qualities of the mind alone. These sensations are projected by the mind so as to clothe appropriate bodies in external nature. Thus the bodies are peceived as with qualities which in reality do not belong to them, qualities which in fact are purely the offspring of the mind. Thse natrue gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent; the nightingale for his song; and the sun for his radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves. Source

How, where and in what form these 'images' of colour are presented to the perceiver is a matter, perhaps, for neuroscientists.

The question of whether they are 'real' or not is a question for epistemologists, which is why I made this thread in the Philosophy rather than the Science forum. Science cannot doubt the existence of the reality it is designed to study, though it accepts — indeed, readily demonstrates — that all is not as it seems.

a reply to: Talorc

I worry that people will use theories like this to justify all kinds of weird, self-satisfied, negligent beliefs and behavior.

I am afraid that the quotation from Whitehead posted above will give you further pause for concern.

Look! He's saying 'it's all vibrations'!

We know what happened to that idea in popular culture, don't we?

I'll never know what I thought I knew. That is freedom.

So Alex, Sarah and John are looing at a chair.
Alex sees it as brown and small.
Sarah sees it as red and says it's bigger.
John sees is as a mix between red and brown and not so big.
It doesn't really matter what their perception of the chair is, the important thing is that they can't really see what is actually there, the so called "chair".
I think I got this right
Interesting post by the way.

a reply to: saudi

The Duchamp "delay in glass" was seen as a dynamic work of art until the late 1920's.

I don't think we see the way things really are..the grey aliens have bigger eyes and brains, so it seems we will evolve to see more...

a reply to: saudi

Interesting post by the way

Not sure which post you mean, but the effect we're discussing here isn't quite the one you describe.

First of all, there is something there which corresponds to a chair, but it is probably nothing at all like a chair as we perceive it.

Second Alex, Sarah and John may well see completely different things, but it will still be a chair to all of them. And most of the time, we will never be able to tell how what each one sees differs from what the others see.

Objects don't have existence - existence has objects.