Life is but a dream

[RDClip]

It's really late a I've been reading the God threads too much and it's got me thinking about the nature of existence.

Have you ever questioned the existence of everything? Obviously I exist, I know I do because I think, as Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." However I'm not sure that anything other than me exists.

What if my real body is asleep somewhere in another reality and I just haven't woken up yet? What if this entire reality and all that I think is existence is just a creation of my own mind?

Or even if everyone else exists, is existence relative to each person? If I die and I cease to think, does my reality and thus my created universe of existence cease as well?

So, have you ever questioned existence itself?

[baslisks]

multiple times. daily even. If I'm just making up the universe I'm one sick bastard.

[TygressVirgo]

OMG my mind has been sent into a tailspin.

I just concentrate on what is relevant to my world. God is there, and I want to be where he is.

[RDClip]

God is there, and I want to be where he is.
What if you're your own God? What if the universe is your creation?

[Jay]

Today a man on acid realised that all matter is merely energy condensed into a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness staring at ourselves subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and the imagination of ourselves.

[Kustom]

How do you know that the color you call "blue" doesn't look like the color you call "red" to other people's eyes?

It is possible that the whole world around me is fake and has been built to deceive my senses and my mind. However, since the people and animals around me closely mirror my physical or intellectual reactions, I think it is safe to assume they are the same as me as a working hypothesis, to not complicate the theory further than it needs to be. The virtue of reasonable doubt. Thus, since people's eyes are built the same way as mine are, with the same basic layout, I assume that they see the same "blue" as I do.

However, I shall never know, until some big black guy calls my cell phone to inform me that I am the one.

[TygressVirgo]

What if you're your own God? What if the universe is your creation?

Than I have created a world that had grown to have many problems. However there is always hope in Love.

[Praetorian]

Well, I have once before said on this very forum that I am the center of the universe, so I think you know my answer.

[Jay]

You're the center of your own universe in whatever self-deluded dream you're having at the time. But that's okay, every forum needs its schizophrenics. :)

[Praetorian]

You're the center of your own universe in whatever self-deluded dream you're having at the time. But that's okay, every forum needs its scizophrenics. :)


Schizophrenics. Stop bashing my spelling if you can't even type out simple worlds like these.

[Jay]

Typo you dumbshit. :mad:

[Nessa]

I think about it all the time...

How do you know that the color you call "blue" doesn't look like the color you call "red" to other people's eyes?

However, I shall never know, until some big black guy calls my cell phone to inform me that I am the one.

Then how would you know to take the red pill or the blue pill?!O_O!

[koku]

yeah I've thought of that. Like all you guys don't exist and I've just created you because that's how I "see" or "view" the world.

I am living a big giant dream and "the truth" could be something bigger or who knows what.

Then again, i've imagined some pretty complex intelligent things; Also a history and ecosystem to boot.

I doubt it could ever be true. We'll never know :P



Am I a figment of your imagination? Have you dreamed me and everyone else up? You are one step closer to the truth but you will never figure it out; dream on.

[caseylim]

Son't care about this shit. Don't question this stuff since it would led t confusion. Do what ever you like.

[Kiljou]

Multiple personalites... That would mean that two universes are created by one single entity. However, the fact that you have two or more personalities could also be a creation of your own brain.

Everyone, please get up from your chair, and pace a few times around them room. Sit back down, and think. How the hell did you just move? You did not say, "Hyoid muscle, twist right!" or "Femur bone, swing right!" You just did it. Very strange.

[Eijiro]

I used to think about this sort of stuff a lot. Then I realised that it just gave me headaches and even more confused than I originally was. There's no point.

[Ahimsa]

and to the age old question of the red pill or the blue pill......Would you really want to know if your whole existance was just a figment of your imagination? And if I and everyone else in the world is nothing but a creation of your mind, Why did you make Bush president? I want answers! LOL :D

[Jay]

^ Good points. Damn good points. :D

[Ev0]

The philosophy teacher at my old high school had a good saying about this sort of thought.

His response to this question was: 'See that wall over there? If it's not real, you should be able to pass through it. Now go ahead and run through it.'

And just for the record, I never took a philosophy class in my life (I heard the line from a friend). Although, I do consider myself to be a philisophical person, as I to tend to think of these things quite a bit.

[UlrichRyddle]

Reality is all just perception and belief. Someone sees something and then decides what they believe that thing is, or was caused by, or they ask someone they trust and believe to have knowledge on the subject, and that explaination is thus adopted into their perception of reality. Most things in child hood work like that. If a little kid asks where babies come from the parents say that a big bird carries the baby in a basket to the front door and leaves it there, then until the kid finds out otherwise, that's where babies come from.

I'm not really sure exactly what existence is but I think about it a lot sometimes.
Are we all here for a specific reason, or is the reason we're here the fact that there usually is no reason? Everyone needs help from someone else to get along at some point in their lives, so are we here to help eachother, or drive eachother to seek help? Perhaps, we're here to find out.

[StormShadow]

Atoms. Atoms are composed of a nucleus with small components, which are surrounded by electrons. My body is full of atoms. But doesn't the concept of the atom kind of sound like the solar system? A group of small particles (protons and neutrons) surrounded by patricles which are super far away (Stars). If our solar system is just one giant 'atom', and isn't it entirely possible that the group of solar systems make a galaxy, and if built up enough could build a cell for something far larger than we can imagine? And if that could be said, then couldn't every organ in my body contain cells wich contain atoms which are solar systems? My body is composed of thousands upon thousands of galaxies and solar systems.

[p1c4z0]

The answer is simple, we are all inside the matrix and right now as we speak, Neo is fighting the machines.

[LJustus]

cogito, ergo sum

I think, therefore I am

[Rusty]

Lay off the grass people. Most of these suggestions are absurd, unspecific, and with no evidence to back them up.

And read this if you want to feel smart.
The Holographic Universe
by Michael Talbot


In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.

Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.

University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser.

To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film.

When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose.

Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.

The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts.

A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes.

This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.

To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following illustration.

Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's front and the other directed at its side.

As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them.

When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly not the case.

This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic particles in Aspect's experiment.

According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-light connection between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality.

Such particles are not separate "parts", but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since everything in physical reality is comprised of these "eidolons", the universe is itself a projection, a hologram.

In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess other rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected.

The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky.

Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.

In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish on the TV monitors, would also have to be viewed as projections of this deeper order.

At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that given the proper tools it might even be possible to someday reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck out scenes from the long-forgotten past.

What else the superhologram contains is an open-ended question. Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the superhologram is the matrix that has given birth to everything in our universe, at the very least it contains every subatomic particle that has been or will be -- every configuration of matter and energy that is possible, from snowflakes to quasars, from blu� whales to gamma rays. It must be seen as a sort of cosmic storehouse of "All That Is."

Although Bohm concedes that we have no way of knowing what else might lie hidden in the superhologram, he does venture to say that we have no reason to assume it does not contain more. Or as he puts it, perhaps the superholographic level of reality is a "mere stage" beyond which lies "an infinity of further development".

Bohm is not the only researcher who has found evidence that the universe is a hologram. Working independently in the field of brain research, Standford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram has also become persuaded of the holographic nature of reality.

Pribram was drawn to the holographic model by the puzzle of how and where memories are stored in the brain. For decades numerous studies have shown that rather than being confined to a specific location, memories are dispersed throughout the brain.

In a series of landmark experiments in the 1920s, brain scientist Karl Lashley found that no matter what portion of a rat's brain he removed he was unable to eradicate its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery. The only problem was that no one was able to come up with a mechanism that might explain this curious "whole in every part" nature of memory storage.

Then in the 1960s Pribram encountered the concept of holography and realized he had found the explanation brain scientists had been looking for. Pribram believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of film containing a holographic image. In other words, Pribram believes the brain is itself a hologram.

Pribram's theory also explains how the human brain can store so many memories in so little space. It has been estimated that the human brain has the capacity to memorize something on the order of 10 billion bits of information during the average human lifetime (or roughly the same amount of information contained in five sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Similarly, it has been discovered that in addition to their other capabilities, holograms possess an astounding capacity for information storage--simply by changing the angle at which the two lasers strike a piece of photographic film, it is possible to record many different images on the same surface. It has been demonstrated that one cubic centimeter of film can hold as many as 10 billion bits of information.

Our uncanny ability to quickly retrieve whatever information we need from the enormous store of our memories becomes more understandable if the brain functions according to holographic principles. If a friend asks you to tell him what comes to mind when he says the word "zebra", you do not have to clumsily sort back through ome gigantic and cerebral alphabetic file to arrive at an answer. Instead, associations like "striped", "horselike", and "animal native to Africa" all pop into your head instantly.

Indeed, one of the most amazing things about the human thinking process is that every piece of information seems instantly cross- correlated with every other piece of information--another feature intrinsic to the hologram. Because every portion of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with ever other portion, it is perhaps nature's supreme example of a cross-correlated system.

The storage of memory is not the only neurophysiological puzzle that becomes more tractable in light of Pribram's holographic model of the brain. Another is how the brain is able to translate the avalanche of frequencies it receives via the senses (light frequencies, sound frequencies, and so on) into the concrete world of our perceptions. Encoding and decoding frequencies is precisely what a hologram does best. Just as a hologram functions as a sort of lens, a translating device able to convert an apparently meaningless blur of frequencies into a coherent image, Pribram believes the brain also comprises a lens and uses holographic principles to mathematically convert the frequencies it receives through he senses into the inner world of our perceptions.

An impressive body of evidence suggests that the brain uses holographic principles to perform its operations. Pribram's theory, in fact, has gained increasing support among neurophysiologists.

Argentinian-Italian researcher Hugo Zucarelli recently extended the holographic model into the world of acoustic phenomena. Puzzled by the fact that humans can locate the source of sounds without moving their heads, even if they only possess hearing in one ear, Zucarelli discovered that holographic principles can explain this ability.

Zucarelli has also developed the technology of holophonic sound, a recording technique able to reproduce acoustic situations with an almost uncanny realism.

Pribram's belief that our brains mathematically construct "hard" reality by relying on input from a frequency domain has also received a good deal of experimental support.

It has been found that each of our senses is sensitive to a much broader range of frequencies than was previously suspected.

Researchers have discovered, for instance, that our visual systems are sensitive to sound frequencies, that our sense of smell is in part dependent on what are now called "osmic frequencies", and that even the cells in our bodies are sensitive to a broad range of frequencies. Such findings suggest that it is only in the holographic domain of consciousness that such frequencies are sorted out and divided up into conventional perceptions.

But the most mind-boggling aspect of Pribram's holographic model of the brain is what happens when it is put together with Bohm's theory. For if the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is "there" is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality?

Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion.

We are really "receivers" floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the superhologram.

This striking new picture of reality, the synthesis of Bohm and Pribram's views, has come to be called the holographic paradigm, and although many scientists have greeted it with skepticism, it has galvanized others. A small but growing group of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of reality science has arrived at thus far. More than that, some believe it may solve some mysteries that have never before been explainable by science and even establish the paranormal as a part of nature.

Numerous researchers, including Bohm and Pribram, have noted that many para-psychological phenomena become much more understandable in terms of the holographic paradigm.

In a universe in which individual brains are actually indivisible portions of the greater hologram and everything is infinitely interconnected, telepathy may merely be the accessing of the holographic level.

It is obviously much easier to understand how information can travel from the mind of individual 'A' to that of individual 'B' at a far distance point and helps to understand a number of unsolved puzzles in psychology. In particular, Grof feels the holographic paradigm offers a model for understanding many of the baffling phenomena experienced by individuals during altered states of consciousness.


[Against the light of this holographic principle, the fractal nature of the universe, the so-called "morphic field," and hyperspace/superstrings (in other words, Vedic esotericism), the case for a concrete reality according to common belief becomes increasingly dim.]

You know how it is.

[Jay]

...My brain is dead.

[PiccoloNamek]

Lay off the grass people. Most of these suggestions are absurd, unspecific, and with no evidence to back them up.

And read this if you want to feel smart.
The Holographic Universe
by Michael Talbot


In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.

Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.

University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser.

To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film.

When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose.

Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.

The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts.

A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes.

This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.

To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following illustration.

Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's front and the other directed at its side.

As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them.

When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly not the case.

This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic particles in Aspect's experiment.

According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-light connection between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality.

Such particles are not separate "parts", but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since everything in physical reality is comprised of these "eidolons", the universe is itself a projection, a hologram.

In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess other rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected.

The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky.

Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.

In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish on the TV monitors, would also have to be viewed as projections of this deeper order.

At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that given the proper tools it might even be possible to someday reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck out scenes from the long-forgotten past.

What else the superhologram contains is an open-ended question. Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the superhologram is the matrix that has given birth to everything in our universe, at the very least it contains every subatomic particle that has been or will be -- every configuration of matter and energy that is possible, from snowflakes to quasars, from blu� whales to gamma rays. It must be seen as a sort of cosmic storehouse of "All That Is."

Although Bohm concedes that we have no way of knowing what else might lie hidden in the superhologram, he does venture to say that we have no reason to assume it does not contain more. Or as he puts it, perhaps the superholographic level of reality is a "mere stage" beyond which lies "an infinity of further development".

Bohm is not the only researcher who has found evidence that the universe is a hologram. Working independently in the field of brain research, Standford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram has also become persuaded of the holographic nature of reality.

Pribram was drawn to the holographic model by the puzzle of how and where memories are stored in the brain. For decades numerous studies have shown that rather than being confined to a specific location, memories are dispersed throughout the brain.

In a series of landmark experiments in the 1920s, brain scientist Karl Lashley found that no matter what portion of a rat's brain he removed he was unable to eradicate its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery. The only problem was that no one was able to come up with a mechanism that might explain this curious "whole in every part" nature of memory storage.

Then in the 1960s Pribram encountered the concept of holography and realized he had found the explanation brain scientists had been looking for. Pribram believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of film containing a holographic image. In other words, Pribram believes the brain is itself a hologram.

Pribram's theory also explains how the human brain can store so many memories in so little space. It has been estimated that the human brain has the capacity to memorize something on the order of 10 billion bits of information during the average human lifetime (or roughly the same amount of information contained in five sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Similarly, it has been discovered that in addition to their other capabilities, holograms possess an astounding capacity for information storage--simply by changing the angle at which the two lasers strike a piece of photographic film, it is possible to record many different images on the same surface. It has been demonstrated that one cubic centimeter of film can hold as many as 10 billion bits of information.

Our uncanny ability to quickly retrieve whatever information we need from the enormous store of our memories becomes more understandable if the brain functions according to holographic principles. If a friend asks you to tell him what comes to mind when he says the word "zebra", you do not have to clumsily sort back through ome gigantic and cerebral alphabetic file to arrive at an answer. Instead, associations like "striped", "horselike", and "animal native to Africa" all pop into your head instantly.

Indeed, one of the most amazing things about the human thinking process is that every piece of information seems instantly cross- correlated with every other piece of information--another feature intrinsic to the hologram. Because every portion of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with ever other portion, it is perhaps nature's supreme example of a cross-correlated system.

The storage of memory is not the only neurophysiological puzzle that becomes more tractable in light of Pribram's holographic model of the brain. Another is how the brain is able to translate the avalanche of frequencies it receives via the senses (light frequencies, sound frequencies, and so on) into the concrete world of our perceptions. Encoding and decoding frequencies is precisely what a hologram does best. Just as a hologram functions as a sort of lens, a translating device able to convert an apparently meaningless blur of frequencies into a coherent image, Pribram believes the brain also comprises a lens and uses holographic principles to mathematically convert the frequencies it receives through he senses into the inner world of our perceptions.

An impressive body of evidence suggests that the brain uses holographic principles to perform its operations. Pribram's theory, in fact, has gained increasing support among neurophysiologists.

Argentinian-Italian researcher Hugo Zucarelli recently extended the holographic model into the world of acoustic phenomena. Puzzled by the fact that humans can locate the source of sounds without moving their heads, even if they only possess hearing in one ear, Zucarelli discovered that holographic principles can explain this ability.

Zucarelli has also developed the technology of holophonic sound, a recording technique able to reproduce acoustic situations with an almost uncanny realism.

Pribram's belief that our brains mathematically construct "hard" reality by relying on input from a frequency domain has also received a good deal of experimental support.

It has been found that each of our senses is sensitive to a much broader range of frequencies than was previously suspected.

Researchers have discovered, for instance, that our visual systems are sensitive to sound frequencies, that our sense of smell is in part dependent on what are now called "osmic frequencies", and that even the cells in our bodies are sensitive to a broad range of frequencies. Such findings suggest that it is only in the holographic domain of consciousness that such frequencies are sorted out and divided up into conventional perceptions.

But the most mind-boggling aspect of Pribram's holographic model of the brain is what happens when it is put together with Bohm's theory. For if the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is "there" is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality?

Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion.

We are really "receivers" floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the superhologram.

This striking new picture of reality, the synthesis of Bohm and Pribram's views, has come to be called the holographic paradigm, and although many scientists have greeted it with skepticism, it has galvanized others. A small but growing group of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of reality science has arrived at thus far. More than that, some believe it may solve some mysteries that have never before been explainable by science and even establish the paranormal as a part of nature.

Numerous researchers, including Bohm and Pribram, have noted that many para-psychological phenomena become much more understandable in terms of the holographic paradigm.

In a universe in which individual brains are actually indivisible portions of the greater hologram and everything is infinitely interconnected, telepathy may merely be the accessing of the holographic level.

It is obviously much easier to understand how information can travel from the mind of individual 'A' to that of individual 'B' at a far distance point and helps to understand a number of unsolved puzzles in psychology. In particular, Grof feels the holographic paradigm offers a model for understanding many of the baffling phenomena experienced by individuals during altered states of consciousness.


[Against the light of this holographic principle, the fractal nature of the universe, the so-called "morphic field," and hyperspace/superstrings (in other words, Vedic esotericism), the case for a concrete reality according to common belief becomes increasingly dim.]

You know how it is.


Ah! The holographic principle! I've read all about that! Good stuff!

Anyway, here's what I think about reality:

"Out there there is no light and no colour, there are only electro-magnetic waves; out there there is no sound and no music, there are only periodic variations of the air pressure; out there there is no heat and no cold, there are only moving molecules with more or less mean kinetic energy, and so on..."

[Monkey]

I have a very simple principle which I believe in as a scientist.

If the explanation involves a huge conspiracy covering up the truth (ie. Truman show, everyone knows the world is fake except for Truman), or maybe as in the Matrix (where everyone is a slave to the robot empire it's just that no-one can wake up).

If this is your only explanation, if your only explantation is something so far-fetched, then you might as well believe the simple truth. After all it makes no difference whether I believe this life is just a dream and when I die I will wake up from the dream. I will live my life no differently. There is nothing I can do to change the fact that this life is just a dream. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, the fact is that there is not one godamn thing that can be done about it. So why bother with it at all?

In a way it is similar to the principle of Occams razor, the simplest explanation is the best. We can come up with very simple physical explanations for things that happen, if you have to invent a very complex reason for the thing to happen then you are probably wrong.

In my mind this applies to the creationist thinking that some people have written in the creation/evolution thread. If you have to say that God created everything 6000 years ago, he even created dinosaur fossils which appear to us to be millions of years old, he created human fossils which appear to be much greater than 6000 years old, carbon dating is wrong because god alters the results when the scientists read them... etc...
If you have to make up such a far-fetched explanation just to hold your point, then your point probably isn't true.

The bottom line is that if you have to invent an explanation where you doubt the nature of reality in order to come up with a reasonable answer, then you might as well believe in the facts that you can see in front of your very own eyes. The wall might not be there, it might just be a dream, but just try walking through it and then tell me that it's all just a dream......



EDIT: I realise this may be a slightly hard concept to explain and I am not the best teacher, but if you have any questions on my point of view then please PM me.

[Collapse]

Reminds me of Star Ocean 3, but mostly, The Allegory of the Cave.

At least for me, what I can see and touch, I deem it real. The rest that I cannot see, I leave it to the unexplained.

[RDClip]

The bottom line is that if you have to invent an explanation where you doubt the nature of reality in order to come up with a reasonable answer, then you might as well believe in the facts that you can see in front of your very own eyes. The wall might not be there, it might just be a dream, but just try walking through it and then tell me that it's all just a dream......
I would say existence being a dream isn't really a complicated idea. Much less complex than the wonders of all creation.

[NERD]

This is an old concept, really.

???? Zhu?ng Zh?u mèng dié- Zhuang Zi dreamed that he was a carefree butterfly flying happily. After he woke up, he wondered how he could determine whether he was Zhuangzi who had just finished dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who had just started dreaming he was Zhuangzi.



.

[RDClip]

This is an old concept, really.

???? Zhu?ng Zh?u mèng dié- Zhuang Zi dreamed that he was a carefree butterfly flying happily. After he woke up, he wondered how he could determine whether he was Zhuangzi who had just finished dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who had just started dreaming he was Zhuangzi.



.
True, not a new question. Descartes asked it; I'm sure Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates asked it as well.

[NERD]

Zhuang Zi is from 4th century BCE. Actually I've studied Chinese philosophy, what with Confucious and all, and it's quite remarkable what they were able to cook up. Some totally different stuff from the School of Athens, and I believe they weren't too busy chasing some young boys either.

[DarkFire168]

How do you know that the color you call "blue" doesn't look like the color you call "red" to other people's eyes?

Of all the Holy Frackery! That's exactly what I've said to myself about 10,000 times!

By the way, how do you know you're not just a dream? That this isn't some complicated firing of electrical synapses in some guys head while he sleeps, and that our "reality" ends when he wakes up and gets ready to go to work or whatever?

[DarkFire168]

Reminds me of Star Ocean 3, but mostly, The Allegory of the Cave.

At least for me, what I can see and touch, I deem it real. The rest that I cannot see, I leave it to the unexplained.

SO3. How I love that game.

[PiccoloNamek]

How do you know that the color you call "blue" doesn't look like the color you call "red" to other people's eyes?

When you think about it logically, the question becomes rather silly. It would be fairly easy to prove scientifically that the other person's retinas and visual cortex process visual sensory information in the same way yours does. After all, we're all the same species.

[DarkFire168]

Right but here's the thing, we're all individuals. there's really no absolute way to be able to say that the color that I associate with green isn't the color you associate with red, even if our eyes work the exact same way. God this is hard to explain over the net. In person I could at least bludgeon it into you.

[PiccoloNamek]

I know what you're talking about. For example, there are many languages that don't differentiate between blue and green. This down not mean, however, that their eyes are incapable of distinguishing blue light from green light, or that their visual cortexes are incapable of generating different perceptions for those wavelengths.

I'm not talking about personal associations or differences in language, I'm talking about information processing, something that can be proven to be constant among all people. I'm certain it could be proven without a doubt that the vast majority of peoples eyes and brains process photons at a wavelength of 490 nanometers in the exact same way. Whether they call this "blue" or "green" or "wrhi;hg9w" is irrelevant.

[DarkFire168]

No you're not getting what I mean! It's different than information processing or differences in languages... it's... fucking complicated! Gr.

Try it this way, do you think in your native language or in the language you're using? It's not quite what I'm talking about but it's closer than what you're saying, much closer.

If you're a person who grew up speaking only english, and you learn italian (for example, it could be any language), when you speak italian, do you think the words in englsih and then translate them rapidly into italian, and when someone says something to you in italian, do you rapidly translate it into english? or do you understand the italian without the aid of english? meh, this frame of reference is a little confusing.

[PiccoloNamek]

That has nothing to do with the original question, which was:

How do you know that the color you call "blue" doesn't look like the color you call "red" to other people's eyes?

"Doesn't look like" are the key words. The question clearly concerns differences in visual perception, which is what I'm talking about.

As for your question, I think in the language I'm using as much as possible. Trying to translate it on the fly only complicates things and makes the
language more difficult to learn and understand.

[RDClip]

Zhuang Zi is from 4th century BCE. Actually I've studied Chinese philosophy, what with Confucious and all, and it's quite remarkable what they were able to cook up. Some totally different stuff from the School of Athens, and I believe they weren't too busy chasing some young boys either.
Oh, burn on you Socrates :p

Another odd though came to me. Is it possible to comprehend non-existence?

Say after we die, that's it(your a corpse, worm food, dead as a doorknob, etc) then our minds and conscienceness cease to exist. Thus is my problem. How can one possibly understand the idea of non-existence. It won't be like being blind, deaf, dumb, and without taste, touch or smell because even if you don't have any senses, you still have your thoughts.

However with non-existence there is nothing. Your mind has been destoryed and ceases to exist. So, how the hell can one explain non-exixtence.

I know, I'm rambling. But, this is a though that has come to my mind many-a-times before. Personally, the idea of ceasing to exist petrifies me.

[PiccoloNamek]

You know what it's like when you're sleeping, but don't have any dreams? Well, actually, you don't, how could you? But at any rate, that's what non-existance will be like. The difference is, with sleep, you get to keep your frame of reference because you wake up in the morning. But death is forever, so you lose your frame of reference.

[RDClip]

You know what it's like when you're sleeping, but don't have any dreams? Well, actually, you don't, how could you? But at any rate, that's what non-existance will be like. The difference is, with sleep, you get to keep your frame of reference because you wake up in the morning. But death is forever, so you lose your frame of reference.
I don't know about when you sleep. But my mind is at least operating some of the time (REM sleep, right?) Even if I don't dream, I'm there at a subconscience level.

But, non-existence seems beyond imagination.

I've heard that coma patients don't dream(is that correct) anyway, if you are in a coma for several years, is it just like you went to bed the previous night? Or if they do dream, is the dream longer?

[PiccoloNamek]

Are you saying you've never had dreamless sleep? That's what I'm talking about. That's what death will be like, only with no FOR that lets you say "That was then, this is now. I'm here now."

[RDClip]

Are you saying you've never had dreamless sleep? That's what I'm talking about. That's what death will be like, only with no FOR that lets you say "That was then, this is now. I'm here now."
I don't know if I ever had a dreamless sleep. Dreams seem to seep out of memory very easily.

[Kustom]

When you think about it logically, the question becomes rather silly. It would be fairly easy to prove scientifically that the other person's retinas and visual cortex process visual sensory information in the same way yours does. After all, we're all the same species.

First of all, I could always argue that you don't know thatfor a fact until you actually open me up and check it for yourself, but that would be a bit silly, I'll grant you that.

What I meant was that, what if the actual image that your brain forms of green depends on a much complicated process than you think? It's entirely possible that each brain being different and functioning differently, the number of synapses involved of the intensity of the signals would change the actual image projected in your brain. This is so subjective it is really impossible to know. Like pain: how do you know that the way you perceive pain is the same way I feel about it? Perhaps you live with a constant level of pain I would find unbearable but don't notice because you've been like this since birth?

To give an analogy, it's like hearing the word "dog". We can both communicate using that word. But the pictures, sounds, smells etc we associate with the word "dog" are probably quite different, so the image that forms in your mind when I say "dog" is most likely pretty different from the image that forms in my brain, although there are similarities. For instance, whatever image you form in your mind when you think "green", a mix of what you call blue and what you call yellow will always be it. But if you have a lot of imagination, you can probably think of a world where what I call a circle could look to me like what you call a square, if our perceptions are bent in completely different ways. I believe the human brain is complex enought to defy accurate predictions for a long time...

[Mittens]

The Holographic Universe
by Michael Talbot

Fuckin' awesomeness

[Pierrot le Fou]

Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am."

cogito, ergo sum

Save that Nietzsche pretty muched crushed that by pointing out that 'cogito' (I think) presupposes the existence of 'I' because it's phrased in the first person. Of course I exist of I am already proven to be thinking. It could just as easily have been "There is thought, therefore I exist" which would be entirely inconclusive, but without involving a logical fallacy.

There is no proof that we exist, and one of the results of Nietzsche's statement was the rise of the Existentialist movement...

Everyone, please get up from your chair, and pace a few times around them room. Sit back down, and think. How the hell did you just move? You did not say, "Hyoid muscle, twist right!" or "Femur bone, swing right!" You just did it. Very strange.

Nope, very true. But that isn't strange. It would be evolutionally disadvantageous to have to consciously make an effort to use specific muscles, especially in the case of such important things as having one's heart beat, or having one's lungs pump air to the rest of our body. There is a such thing as muscle memory, and reflex, which do what we want without having to make specific reference to what we're trying to do.

I'm sure you know all this, but for the enlightenment of those who don't...

Try, for instance, to make the "Live long and prosper" gesture from star trek (index and middle finger separated from the ring and pinky fingers). It takes effort. Once you learn how to do it, and do it enough, you can just do it without putting thought into making your muscles move that way. Same thing with winking, or raising only one eyebrow, etc. We learn to use the major (necessary) muscles when we're younguns, and that's why we don't think about using them -- we already have the muscle memory...

"Out there there is no light and no colour, there are only electro-magnetic waves; out there there is no sound and no music, there are only periodic variations of the air pressure; out there there is no heat and no cold, there are only moving molecules with more or less mean kinetic energy, and so on..."

Save that electro-magnetic waves ARE colours, and that sound and music ARE periodic variations of air pressure. The beauty of words is that they can describe abstract concepts rather than simply tangible objects or physical phenomena. And we can describe various 'periodic variations of air pressure' as cries for help, moans of pleasure, Beethoven's fifth, or a train passing by on the tracks down the street. And they aren't mutually exclusive. Anyone who tries to dumb things down to the simple most basic things are ignoring the human experience, as it is, and trying to over-simplify life to observed phenomena outside of the person who is observing and perceiving what they are observing.

As Niels Bohr said, "No phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon" meaning that the act of observing a phenomenon changes something into nothing. We cannot discuss waves of light without discussing colour, because through our perception we come to further understanding of the phenomena.

First of all, I could always argue that you don't know thatfor a fact until you actually open me up and check it for yourself, but that would be a bit silly, I'll grant you that.

What I meant was that, what if the actual image that your brain forms of green depends on a much complicated process than you think? It's entirely possible that each brain being different and functioning differently, the number of synapses involved of the intensity of the signals would change the actual image projected in your brain. This is so subjective it is really impossible to know. Like pain: how do you know that the way you perceive pain is the same way I feel about it? Perhaps you live with a constant level of pain I would find unbearable but don't notice because you've been like this since birth?

To give an analogy, it's like hearing the word "dog". We can both communicate using that word. But the pictures, sounds, smells etc we associate with the word "dog" are probably quite different, so the image that forms in your mind when I say "dog" is most likely pretty different from the image that forms in my brain, although there are similarities. For instance, whatever image you form in your mind when you think "green", a mix of what you call blue and what you call yellow will always be it. But if you have a lot of imagination, you can probably think of a world where what I call a circle could look to me like what you call a square, if our perceptions are bent in completely different ways. I believe the human brain is complex enought to defy accurate predictions for a long time...

Except that you're making a mistake here. You're using language to describe a concept in which you ignore language. Language is created to describe what it is that we 'image' in our brains to use your terminology. If the descriptions and words were not consistent with our views of the world, then we'd create new words to describe how we saw things. And if everyone had these vastly different perceptions, we would be incapable of communication.

For instance, in your pain example, I could be living with pain that you never understand. Yet if that were the case, then were we to both break an arm, since my pain would be worse than the pain of your broken arm, and I still feel pain from the broken arm on top of that, either the pain of the broken arm is comparatively stronger to my base level of pain in roughly the same proportion as your base is to your broken arm. And so we can both describe the pain of a broken arm as 'painful' regardless of what this abstract 'base level' of pain is that you claim is higher for me than you.

And you know what? I wouldn't even know if my pain WERE higher at the start, because there is no grounds for comparison, as I will never be anyone else. And this seems to be what you're getting out -- that we can't prove what's in someone else's head. And you're right, we can't, but believing that it's not roughly the same (read: close enough for government work) is madness, because we can communicate based on common bonds which given a diversity of experience of tangible 'reality' as programmed into our brains, we wouldn't be able to do.

People who think THAT differently have a label attached to them -- insane. They can't communicate with us because their reality is 'warped' or different in some way, and we can't figure out how to communicate with them despite no inherent difference in brain chemistry or whatnot that we know of.

So if you want to say that the reality of the insane is just as 'legitimate' as our reality, then go ahead, but you're going to have a tough road ahead of you. The fact is that the insane don't seem to process reality in an equal-but-different way so much as in the INCORRECT way, which is why they run into so much trouble. If you want to argue that the way the majority of us view reality is incorrect, again, feel free, but considering that the insane suffer from an incredible difficulty to socialize themselves and function normally/survive without help, you'd have a lot of explaining to do in regards to WHY you believe that.

Reality is reality. And we don't know if it's equivalent to other people's or not. That's why we use language to discuss it, to write about it. That's why so many philosophers write about the problems of existence, and whether or not it exists. But the kicker of it all is that we can effectively communicate about it. While Heidegger is a bitch to read, we can understand him if we try. His concepts aren't foreign to us even if they present a perspective that we have never considered. Ditto with most philosophers.

Isn't the fact that we can understand them proof that there is some sort of common sense of reality for all of us? That there's some sort of common perception of the human experience? We may not each exist individually or at all, but our PERCEPTIONS as whatever we are are very damned close. And that has to count for something.

It ain't about perceiving colour or not, it ain't about relative pain or not, it's about the fact that we can discuss these things with abstract words and effectively communicate thoughts. Argue as you may, but all you'll accomplish is driving yourself insane, because any attempt to actually convince yourself of what you're arguing will make communication ineffective and useless, and therefore pointless.

And who wants that?

[Snake eyeS]

Could someone or something switch us off? Could it possibly be true that our world is just a computer program, or a hologram, or a dream? Although it's about the weirdest thing you could think of, there are some tantalizing clues this might indeed be the case. The stuff we call 'reality' simply isn’t very real after all.

Welcome to the outskirts of reality. Welcome to the place where theoretical physics and philosophy meet, and where religion and science loose their meaning. Better fasten your mental seatbelts. What we’re about to tell you is just too weird. Too mind-boggling. And quite disturbing, really.

Here we go: the place we call reality may not be real at all. It may look real, and feel real, and smell real. But if you know where to look, and you look real close, you can see the cracks. Just like a Hollywood actor that suddenly realizes he's not surrounded by real buildings -- but by props made of cardboard paper.

If that sounds like lame science fiction; I agree. Indeed, we’ve all seen The Matrix. But could such a thing be conceivable? Could it be true? Are we really here? Or are we, as one reader of Exit Mundi suggested, only a computer simulation, run by an alien race?

Perhaps the simulation is getting boring, and the guy running the program is about to switch it off. We’d see some kind of huge ‘game over’-sign, and that would be it. One moment, we’re here. And the next – we aren’t.

If you’re easily disturbed, or prone to paranoia, better stop reading now. You may not like the answers to questions like these. What you are about to read may change the way you see things -- forever.


Why is the Universe Fine-Tuned?



First, there’s a very, VERY weird thing about the place we live in – something so weird and profound it sends shivers down your spine. For in fact, the Universe seems to be ‘fine-tuned’ to make life possible!

It has to do with the stuff most people find boring in school: the laws of physics. Ultimately, all of these laws are founded upon the ‘physical constants’. Such as the force of gravity, the ‘strong force’ that glues atomic nuclei together and the electromagnetic force, the driving hand behind stuff like lightning and computers. But why do these fundamental ‘presets’ have the values they have? Why aren’t they a little bigger, or smaller?

The British cosmologist Fred Hoyle was the first to realise this is no coincidence. A very peculiar thing about the fundamental constants is that they appear to have exactly the right values. If they were slightly smaller or bigger, atoms, stars, planets and people simply wouldn’t exist!

Take the strong force inside atomic nuclei. If the force were just slightly stronger, it would boost up the burning of stars so much, that they would explode only seconds after they were formed. We wouldn’t have a sun – or even a planet. If on the other hand the force were a tad weaker, it would be too weak to hold together elements like the heavy hydrogen isotope deuterium. Stars wouldn’t light up. And we wouldn’t be here either.

Astonishingly, the same goes for all other constants. As the famous British astronomer Martin Rees put it: “Wherever we look, we see examples of fine-tuning. Most of the physical constants and the initial conditions of the Universe examined so far appear to be fine-tuned to some extent.”

That leaves us with a gnawing, unsettling question: Why? Why are all physical contants exactly the way they are? Every cosmologist agrees that this can hardly be a coincidence. So what, or who, set the rules?


Matter: Chunks Of Music?

Next, you should know the stuff our Universe is made of isn’t very real at all. Sure, you can feel the chair underneath you, and see the monitor in front of you. But what we feel and touch and see in everyday life is actually a manifestation of some deeper, completely different kind of underlying reality.

One way to explore what matter is, is to take it apart. First, you’ll find tiny chunks of matter that are called molecules. Then, if you take the molecules apart, you’ll find the atoms the molecules are made of. And then, if you take apart the atoms, you’ll see it’s made of a nucleus, surrounded by a cloud of electrons. And what if you take apart that nucleus? You’ll be in for a big surprise. For inside an atom’s nucleus, reality as we know it actually ceases to exist.

An atom’s nucleus is made of tiny entities we call ‘particles’. But that’s just for lack of a better word. When you say ‘particles’, you think of little balls. But in quantum physics, there’s no such thing as solid `balls’ you can touch or see.

In fact, ‘particles’ like quarks, electrons and photons are so incredibly and utterly different from everything we know of, our language lacks the words to describe them. Particles can be in two places at the same time, and behave both like a wave and a tiny chunk of matter, depending on what you do with them. Particles can pop in and out of existence from nowhere. And ‘grabbing’ them is impossible: it is simply not possible to both know where a particle is and how fast it moves about.

But still, a particle has to be something, right?

That’s why more and more physicists turn to `string theory’. In string theory, matter is ultimately made of extremely small elastic circles, called strings. These strings vibrate. But not like anything we know: the strings vibrate in at least ten dimensions! Our particles are the vibrations of the strings. They are the music the strings make.

The Universe: Bubbles Of What?


Okay, hold that thought: matter is ultimately the manifestation of something else.

Gladly, there are also things that are normal. Take the Universe. Again, it is something we think we know. The Universe is that big black thing with all the lights in it over your head. Perhaps you’ve even heard it’s expanding: first, there was a kind of blast (called the ‘Big Bang’), and from that moment on, the Universe grew bigger and bigger.

But hold it right there. Once more, the real story is far stranger than that. For starters, the Universe has no ‘outside’. To ask what is ‘outside’ the Universe is a meaningless question – it would be like asking what continent lies ‘outside’ our planet. ‘Outside’ the Universe there are no dimensions, and there is no time. The Universe is best seen as an expanding bubble of dimensions in a sea of nothingness – although ‘nothing’ isn’t really a word you can use to describe what is ‘outside’ the Universe.

It is extremely difficult to fully comprehend what that means. According to one theory, there are many dimensional bubbles like the one we live in. Our Universe could be the result of two of such bubbles – or ‘planes’ – colliding. And wait, now you’re doing it again: you’re picturing a place with bubbles floating around. But there’s no such thing as a ‘place’. Instead, the other Universes should be wrapped up within our own reality, remember?

An even more bizarre theory has it the place we call the Universe is actually best compared with a hologram. Our Universe could be some kind of optical illusion, the result of several dimensions resonating.

And it goes even further. For in fact, it could actually be possible to create a Universe! Basically, the only thing you’d have to do is squeeze a huge amount of energy together into a very dense, small spot. This would lead to a Big Bang, the theories predict. We wouldn’t see it happening: the Big Bang would create a new dimensional bubble, far beyond reach of our own bubble.

OK, let’s pause for a second. Just think about it. Is it possible that our reality is actually made by some other civilisation, in some other Universe? It would explain why the fundamental constants are fine-tuned…


And You? How Real Is Your Mind?



So, to wrap things up: we live in a place that’s not really a ‘place’, we’re made of stuff that’s not really ‘stuff’ and what we see is only a small part of what’s really there. Matter, time, dimensions, the Universe – it’s all lucid, unreal. And to make things even more bizarre, for some reason, our Universe is exactly preset to make our existence possible. Pretty confusing, don't you think?

Gladly, you can cling to this one security: that you are here. No matter how weird the stuff around you is, you are definitely for real. No need to explain: you just know you are.

But do you really?

Let’s do an experiment. Speak out your name over and over and over and over again. After a while, you’ll notice something weird. Your name will begin to sound strange. It’s no longer something that is you – your name is just a word, a random sequence of syllables and sounds that other people utter when they want to catch your attention. If your parents had given you another name, you would listen to another sequence of sounds.

The same happens when you look in the mirror. Stare at your own face long enough, and you’ll suddenly realize it’s just another face. The face in the mirror is, of course, yours. But after a while, it won’t feel like that anymore. The face you see could be anybody's.

Most neuroscientists agree the same applies for your consciousness. The thing you call your ‘self’ is most likely an illusion, created by your brain. Your brain gives you vision, sound, speech, feelings, and thoughts. When you add all these things up, you’ll have some overall feeling of awareness you call your consciousness. But still, your brain is the thing running it. Your feeling of ‘self’ is best compared to a software program running. It looks very real – but it isn’t.

Of course, most people believe there is something like a ‘soul’ or a ‘spirit’ living inside of you. But when it comes down to facts, there just isn’t any evidence for that. Every thought you have, every move you make, every emotion you feel - it’s just brain, brain, brain.

There are actually experiments that prove it. When you disturb your brain in a certain way, your feeling of ‘self’ can get detached from your brain. Suddenly, it will feel as if ‘you’ are not inside your body anymore. You experience what is known as an ‘out of body experience’, or a ‘near death experience’.

But you don’t have to be nearly dead to feel it. The sensation can easily be created in a laboratory, by placing a helmet with rotating magnetic fields on your head. The magnetic field acts like a ‘jam signal’ on your brain. Suddenly, you'll feel like you're floating outside your body. But you aren’t. It’s just your brain going confused.

And you don't really need a helmet to do the trick. Visiting a place where the movement of the Earth's crust generates magnetic fields can give you the experience. Being in a situation where your brain doesn't get enough oxygen sometimes does it. Certain brain operations bring out the experience. Meditation and intensive prayer can generate it.

In fact, exactly this is why some people see ghosts, or Maria, or feel like they are visited by aliens. It is an incredible weird experience to be ‘outside of your brain’. Your brain will try to make sense of it. Immediately, the rational part of your brain will come up with an ‘explanation’ for the experience. You will sense a ‘presence’ near you. If you’re religious, you might see Maria, or Jesus. If you believe in UFOs, your brain might tell you you’re visited by aliens. If you believe in ghosts, you’ll feel the presence of a ghost of a dead person. But in reality, it’s your own feeling of self you’re experiencing.

So... Are We A Game Of Sims?

So there you are. You’re just a walking piece of matter that’s pretending to be someone. But in reality, things like matter, or self, or the Universe, or time, or dimensions are all illusions. Everything we see and everything we feel are, in fact, the manifestations of some underlying reality.

That leaves you with an unsettling question: what exactly is that reality?

The truth is: we don’t know. Could be almost anything, really. A dream, even. Or a simulation. Or a kind of computer game, an advanced kind of Civilization or Sims. There’s no way of knowing if there’s someone or something pushing the buttons. There’s no way of knowing if there isn’t, either.

And then, there’s this other thing most theorists agree on: our reality could suddenly end. Our universe could fold up. The dimensions we live in could be wrapped up. The very fabric of our physical world could be disrupted by some unprecedented, weird physical event. From one second to the other, our reality would no longer be there. Sounds like fun, right?

But then again, why bother? For that’s the deeper consequence of these things. If there is no such thing as a place we call Earth, we needn’t really worry about its end. Would the characters of a Sims-game feel sad or disappointed when you turned off the computer? Or would the people you dream of at night mind if you wake up? You guessed it: they probably wouldn't. What isn’t really there, doesn’t really end.

That being said, there’s only one small problem. You see: you have to be a good philosopher to really feel it that way!

shamelessly stolen from this site (http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm)

[Kustom]

snip

And this seems to be what you're getting out -- that we can't prove what's in someone else's head. And you're right, we can't, but believing that it's not roughly the same (read: close enough for government work) is madness, because we can communicate based on common bonds which given a diversity of experience of tangible 'reality' as programmed into our brains, we wouldn't be able to do.

snip


Wow, good job, you just made me feel guilty for having you write 6 whole paragraphs... In fact, my only point was that just because our eyes are wired the same way, our brain does not necessarily process the information in the exact same way. As you put it, "we can't prove what's in someone else's head". Now, that's absolutely all there was to it, and it wasn't much of a point to start with, just a counter-argument to Piccolonamek's comment.

But bear with me. In fact, I believe, and I wrote it earlier in the thread, that it actually doesn't matter a pair of dingo's kidneys what "image" you project in your mind, since you don't and can't project it in other people's mind... So as long as people understand each other when they use the concept of "green", and agree on what object is green or isn't, who cares if they each have their own perception of it? You can ponder it for days, it won't matter. There was a vice in the logic of the original post, and I was only building up on it for fun. I don't take seriously the idea that life is all a dream, because as long as I don't wake up, it doesn't matter AT ALL. If I do wake up, I'll start thinking seriously about it, but for now I can't be bothered.

And there's more. As a matter of fact, like I stated before, I tend not to believe theories that require insane complex hypothesis rather than simple ones, because as long as the predictions you make have the same accuracy, it's always scientifically better to follow the simple theory. So I definitely have a sense that you do, in fact, see the color "green" close enought to the way I see it, and that you are not a mindless bot that haunts the OP9 website and controls the mind of Az, with no other knowledge of color than what you digested from wikipedia. Until I see evidence to the contrary.
This stuff about colors used to bother me when I was 13 and thought Stephen Hawkins was cool. Shortly thereafter I realised it was all pointless, because i'd never know and shouldn't care, and that I would never get any girls with quotes from "a short history of time", so I moved on.

[RDClip]

Save that Nietzsche pretty muched crushed that by pointing out that 'cogito' (I think) presupposes the existence of 'I' because it's phrased in the first person. Of course I exist of I am already proven to be thinking. It could just as easily have been "There is thought, therefore I exist" which would be entirely inconclusive, but without involving a logical fallacy.

There is no proof that we exist, and one of the results of Nietzsche's statement was the rise of the Existentialist movement...
True, I presuppose my own existence with the use of those word. However, in this discussion, the term 'we' really shouldn't be used as it suggests more than oneself. On Descartes Cogito, it only suggest that I exist, not you, not my neighbour, not my dog or whatever else.

I have no proof I exist, but I have more idea of feeling that I exist than the opposite case. Even though I lack the proof I would still infer that percieving one's own mind is at least a sign of one's own existence.


And so, the world and al existence as we know it could be an illusion, a grand hoax, an experiment or nothing but a program. Seems logical for those who believe in a higher power, this could be their answer.

[Kustom]

Save that Nietzsche pretty muched crushed that by pointing out that 'cogito' (I think) presupposes the existence of 'I' because it's phrased in the first person. Of course I exist of I am already proven to be thinking. It could just as easily have been "There is thought, therefore I exist" which would be entirely inconclusive, but without involving a logical fallacy.


Nope, it is in fact entirely conclusive and the way Nietzsche rephrases it is valid too if you understand what Descartes means.
At this point of his thinking, Descartes is not trying to prove "I", he's defining it. This is the first and most important definition of any system of metaphysics.
Descartes DOES NOT presuppose anything about "I", no more than a scientist presupposes anything about "x" when he defines it in an equation.
There are plenty of ways to rephrase Descartes so that people understand him better; he never said that "Cogito ergo Sum" was stand alone, it is not a conclusion, but a definition.

"I think therefore I am" is exactly the same as:
"Something thinks, therefore something is"

or better yet:
"thought happens, therefore thought is"

which really means "thought is, therefore thought is"

So in its simplest expression:
"thought is"

Thought is, there is a subject out there that is thought, and this subject shall be called "I", for lack of a better word. You could as well call it "X" or "God" or "the-thing-that-crawled-into-consciousness", "I" is just shorter and more understood by most people.

Is "I" a separate subject from the "act of thinking" in Descartes' definition? Ab-so-lu-te-ly NOT. What is "I" besides thought? In Descartes' definition, they are one and the same.

Keep in mind the experiment that Descartes is in the process of doing, when he is making this definition. He stripped himself of everything that cannot be held for certain and ended up with only one hard fact: thought. At this point of his experiment, he ruled out the certainty of God, there are no such things as the universe, reality, people, or French and Latin grammar. There is no "you".

The "I" in Descartes proposition is an entirely new concept he is introducing, it is NOT "I" as opposed to "you", "they" or "it".

Attacking Descartes for the use of "I" is as absurd as stopping a mathematician in the middle of an equation by yelling: "You are full of shit! Why should this number you don't know be called "x"? It could as well be "n" or "y" or "z" or "glurk"!", and feeling a smart ass about it.

Somehow, a lot of people don't read Descartes or voluntarily misread him, and don't understand the difference between "I think therefore I am" and "I am therefore I think", which Descartes never said no matter how much spin you wanna put on his words.

In so many words, the result of Desscartes experiment is that there is something out there, thinking, that he shall call "I" but this is really irrelevant to the validity of his proposition. "I" doesn't matter, what matters is the verb: "am/is". The Latin version illustrates this perfectly by dropping the pronouns altogether: the verb is what is important. Something is. Even if you think "Nothing is" and only that, this thought that "Nothing is" still exists somewhere, therefore it's NOT nothing.

There is no getting around this. No metaphysical system can ever exist without the subject, ever. What Descartes said will remain true, not I, not you, not Nietzsche can invalidate it. Now you can rant all you want about how Descartes should have worded his proposition differently, nevertheless he was the first to make this basic principle known, that the only fact everything else is based on is that there is a subject. Maybe Descartes should have worded his proposition differently; or maybe people should try to understand his point by reading him and not spin his words to make themselves look smart. It's always been fashionable for would-be philosophers to reject Descartes for shock value, but you'll have to do much better than Nietzsche if you want to prove him wrong.

[RDClip]

There is no getting around this. No metaphysical system can ever exist without the subject, ever. What Descartes said will remain true, not I, not you, not Nietzsche can invalidate it. Now you can rant all you want about how Descartes should have worded his proposition differently, nevertheless he was the first to make this basic principle known, that the only fact everything else is based on is that there is a subject. Maybe Descartes should have worded his proposition differently; or maybe people should try to understand his point by reading him and not spin his words to make themselves look smart. It's always been fashionable for would-be philosophers to reject Descartes for shock value, but you'll have to do much better than Nietzsche if you want to prove him wrong.
Just to clarify, Descartes didn't invent the idea. It was originally the idea of Augustine in the Middle-Ages.

[Pierrot le Fou]

"I think therefore I am" is exactly the same as:
"Something thinks, therefore something is"

or better yet:
"thought happens, therefore thought is"

which really means "thought is, therefore thought is"

So in its simplest expression:
"thought is"

I hope you see the silliness of your linguistic analysis here... You go from the actor being 'I', to the actor being 'something', to having no actor and having 'thought' just becoming an occurrence rather than an action performed by someone, and then to a self-proving statement 'thought is therefore thought is' which isn't a proof, but an assumption, and then state in two paragraphs down: He stripped himself of everything that cannot be held for certain and ended up with only one hard fact: thought.

A fact that has to be assumed? That doesn't seem too factual to me... Let's see what Nietzsche is actually talking about...

Do you know Latin Kustom? Maybe a Romance language (French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese)? Because there is a common theme to all of them -- pronouns are implied in verb conjugation.

The statement cogito is a first-person action of thinking, which implies the existence of I which is the subject and therefore the actor. To have it imply that I am, the existence of I is not logically sound. And that's exactly what Nietzsche says:

When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, "I think," I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove; for example, that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an "ego," and, finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking - that I know what thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps "willing" or "feeling"? In short, the assertion "I think" assumes that I compare my state at the present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is; on account of this retrospective connection with further "knowledge," it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for me.

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Part 1, On the Prejudices of Philosophers

Source: Public Appeal (http://www.publicappeal.org/library/nietzsche/Nietzsche_beyond_good_and_evil/bge_ch1_on_the_prejudices_of_philosophers.htm)

If we want to make this a mathematical proof, which as Descartes as a mathematician should concede to, we would write it as the following:

Definitions
T = thought
I = I

Assumptions
T -> I (thought implies the existence of I)
T (thought exists)

Therefore
I

The problem is that there is no proof that thought requires the existence of an I, or that as Nietzsche says, that it is unsound to suggest that thought exists on the basis of self-analysis of other personal states which cannot be in any way objectively proven. The statement 'I think, therefore I am' is NOT the same 'as there is thought, therefore something is' because of the presumption of an ego, of a self, inherent in the word cogito.

Nietzsche was a linguist by trade, and the whole point was that he was showing how through language, Descartes pulled a fast one on the world by creating a self-fulfilling prophecy through a logical fallacy.

Attacking Descartes for the use of "I" is as absurd as stopping a mathematician in the middle of an equation by yelling: "You are full of shit! Why should this number you don't know be called "x"? It could as well be "n" or "y" or "z" or "glurk"!", and feeling a smart ass about it.

Save that there is a huge difference here. Math is based on different axioms -- unproveable assumptions that they base all further conclusions on. As they tend to work well, we get workable high-level math, but that doesn't mean we can ever prove that those fundamental theorems are correct.

Godel in his Incompleteness theorem so eloquently proved that any mathematical system complex enough to do arithmetic will have truths that cannot be proved within the system, and untruths that cannot be disproved. This is one of the huge revolutions in mathematics during the past century.

The point is that mathematicians never PROVE that their premises are true, just as Descartes can't prove that his premises are true, and since his premises require him to assume the truth of the conclusion, he can't prove the conclusion.

That's what Nietzsche is saying. That's what I'm saying. And the reason we don't get on the case of mathematicians for using X is because they assume and define X based on those assumptions, and don't use the assumption of X to prove the existence of X, but rather a different conclusion using the premises.

There is no getting around this. No metaphysical system can ever exist without the subject, ever. What Descartes said will remain true, not I, not you, not Nietzsche can invalidate it. Now you can rant all you want about how Descartes should have worded his proposition differently, nevertheless he was the first to make this basic principle known, that the only fact everything else is based on is that there is a subject. Maybe Descartes should have worded his proposition differently; or maybe people should try to understand his point by reading him and not spin his words to make themselves look smart. It's always been fashionable for would-be philosophers to reject Descartes for shock value, but you'll have to do much better than Nietzsche if you want to prove him wrong.

Well, it's funny to me that you state this, considering the slew of existentialist philosophers from Nietzsche, through Derrida, Sartre, Wittgenstein, etc. who all have made very successful careers philosophizing about our existence without the fundamental assumption that we exist, and instead discussing existence with the base premise that we cannot prove that we exist.

Descartes' conclusion -- that I exists may be correct. But his attempt to prove it is irrevocably flawed. And nothing YOU can do can change that.

[Kustom]

The point is that mathematicians never PROVE that their premises are true, just as Descartes can't prove that his premises are true, and since his premises require him to assume the truth of the conclusion, he can't prove the conclusion.


Descartes does not try to prove anything mind you. "I think therefore I am" is nothing but his premise. And it isn't flawed because "I" occurs twice. It's like saying "Apples are red, therefore apples have a property we shall call "color"".
It is not a conjunction fallacy.

The meaning of all of this is that without such a premise no metaphysical system can exist. The fundamental assumption that "we" exist is not Descartes's. He didn't say anything about proving the existence of ego: he said that there has to be a subject in metaphysics, or if you will an object that metaphysics study. This subject/action/object is a form of conciousness that is there and that he decides to call "I", without assuming such a thing as "ego" exists because he already ruled out that any distinction between ego and the rest of the universe can be held certain.

It doesn't contradict Descartes if you say: "ego doesn't exist", or "thinking doesn't happen" because when you do, something, somewhere, is doing something, and we shall call that something "I", or what it's doing "thinking", but it's only a label and does not presuppose anything, because all presuppositions have been ruled out. It doesn't even presuppose that the subject "I" and the action"think" are separate. Nietzsche's reply to Descartes only make sense if you think Descartes has a hidden agenda trying to prove other things about "I" than the fact that it is, for instance that he means that "I" is different from "it" (that what is implied by "ego") or "thinking" is different from "willing", etc. But it's not his point at all. He never made those claims, and further, the Latin version that blurs I and think in one word "cogito" show that it is really the same thing. The subject can be the same as the action and/or the object in Descartes' proposition. Sure, he never proved that such distinctions between subject/action/object were founded, and never meant to.

Descartes is not out to prove the existence of "I", and that's why it's nasty that people only repeat "I think therefore I am" stand-alone without explaining the context and precise meaning of the words he uses. Descartes only proves that no matter how you look at things, if there are gonna be metaphysics you have to start from the premise that there is a subject/action/object out there. The only valid challenge to Descartes is building a system that uses NOTHING as a premise. This is not even the same as building a system on the proposition: "nothing exist", because this proposition would then exist first, so why not call it "I", for lack of a better word?

For instance, saying this: "we cannot prove that we exist" requires you defining "we" in the first place, and "to prove" means that there has to be some things that "are" and some that "aren't". You need a premise too. You don't have to agree on what words Descartes use, but his logic cannot be challenged because no metaphysical system can exist without a premise that something is. It is entirely unfair to suggest that to him, "I" is fundamentally different from the act of thinking or from "it", or that "thinking" is fundamentally different from anything else like "feeling".

It all comes down to this: Descartes proposition is not a conclusion, it's a definition. The use of "therefore" and of verbs that conjugate is certainly confusing; Descartes was no linguist. Nevertheless I don't see why Descartes would have had to make up a whole new language with specific grammar rules, while he can still get his point accross saying "Cogito ergo Sum" if you are willing to think about it fairly.

[Pierrot le Fou]

Descartes was discussing the senses, and how they deceive, and if they deceive, what if anything we can be assured of. And his whole statement was in order to prove that he exists, if only as thought, because he can be assured of thought, and can be assured that through that thought he exists. You state that this was his premise -- that he exists as thought -- and that this wasn't a conclusion he sought out to prove. Yet the whole point is that he is stating as fact that because he thinks, he exists in thought, though his senses may deceive him about everything else.

You're speaking about his philosophy from the perspective of someone who has been educated in the age of the existentialists, where these discussions are relatively commonplace, and the discipline of philosophy has been drastically changed by the post-modern movement.

Descartes was not the first existentialist. He wasn't trying to state that we do not exist -- his whole argument in cogito ergo sum is that we DO exist -- but rather to further clarify his stance that the senses deceive while thought does not. The question of existence being proveable or not never occurred to him, only how we should define existence of ourselves. His theory was that we should define our existence in terms of our thoughts, rather than in what we perceive.

And that's all well and good, but it ain't what you seem to be arguing.

[Kustom]

Descartes was not the first existentialist. He wasn't trying to state that we do not exist -- his whole argument in cogito ergo sum is that we DO exist -- but rather to further clarify his stance that the senses deceive while thought does not. The question of existence being proveable or not never occurred to him, only how we should define existence of ourselves. His theory was that we should define our existence in terms of our thoughts, rather than in what we perceive.


I would argue that Descartes is in fact the pioneer of modern metaphysics, and that existentialism is based on his thinking, even if it is sometimes through reaction. He did talk about how the existence of oneself should be defined, however he didn't make any of the assumptions that you blame him for. Later, as philosophies based on Cartesian metaphysics developped, other philosophers concurred and a lot of bullshit was written; but it wasn't Descartes original point. Even if Descartes himself had said more far-fetched theories in later years, it wouldn't prove the "cogito ergo sum" definition wrong.

Descartes was onto something, and if he hadn't explained it existentialism wouldn't be. Sure, he might not have been far enought into the analysis of what he had found, or erred into irrelevance some times. It's everyone's job to expand on his findings and expose the wrong conclusions he might have drawn; but the premise is still right.

So yes, you can definitely trash "cogito ergo sum" as a way to prove the superiority of thought over matter, or of "ego" over the rest. It doesn't make it less useful a premise to build one's metaphysical system upon. You can also rephrase it to your liking.

[Pierrot le Fou]

I think that we're either entirely missing each other, or I don't have the foggiest idea what you're trying to say.

Descartes wrote a lot about how the senses deceive, and the superiority of thought -- especially rational thought. One of the results of his line of reasoning and his philosophy was the statement cogito ergo sum. That statement was intended to be, in many ways, the ultimate sum of his belief that the senses deceive, and the power of rationality -- that while the senses may deceive, that thoughts cannot. Therefore we should look to our thoughts to define ourselves.

The problem that Nietzsche had with that argument was that Descartes assumed the existence of a self to think in the first place, which he defines himself around. And while he is talking in the slight abstract, there is little doubt from my reading (and many others) of Descartes that he was applying this to himself and to the self. He assumed the existence of a self as a premise, and sought to define the self through that assumption. And that's what I think you're trying to get at -- that the self is an axiom, and he moves on from there.

And yes, the reaction to that axiom is pretty significant, because it questions the axiom and created an entirely new branch of philosophy based on the discussion of that axiom and the consequences that extend from questioning that axiom. The problem lies in that he draws self-proving and utterly useless results from the statement, since the existence of a self when presupposing a self is, well, pointless. What is more useful, for the time, and what he was trying to get at, was that thought is more important than physical senses and observations -- that rationality triumphs over perception -- which is an entirely different can of worms.

So while he was focusing on the latter, the people in this thread -- yourself included -- seem to have taken the former to be commentary on existentialism (the topic of this thread) despite being entirely divorced from existentialism as we know it.

And that's what I'm objecting to -- the application of Descartes in a discussion of existentialism. It's been done twice in this thread, and I quoted both in my original post. Descartes wasn't talking about whether or not we exist, whether or not this is a dream, whether or not our original state is entirely different, and whether or not we view green as a different colour or not. He's arguing for the deception of the senses for everyone equally, and the value of the self being rational thought.

Make more sense?

[Guess]

This is a difficult question to answer, so I don't bother too. I don't know if I truly exist or not, but i do know that when i cut myself it hurts like hell. That, to me is proof that I'm a "something" regardless of whether I truly exist or not.

I personally think that "life is but a dream" is a good philosophy to keep us in check. There are many things that i want to accomplish in life, goals that I want to achieve, if i fail at achieving something I just tell myself that "life is nothing but a dream" and sometimes i just have to take it easy and not be too hard on myself. Afterall, when I die, what difference does any of it make. Even if it does make a difference, i wouldn't really know.

So instead of looking at the scientific aspect, i lean more towards the philosophical aspect about reality and life. Not being a scientist or anything, I find it more useful to look at it that way.

[Kustom]

Snip

And that's what I'm objecting to -- the application of Descartes in a discussion of existentialism. It's been done twice in this thread, and I quoted both in my original post. Descartes wasn't talking about whether or not we exist, whether or not this is a dream, whether or not our original state is entirely different, and whether or not we view green as a different colour or not. He's arguing for the deception of the senses for everyone equally, and the value of the self being rational thought.

Make more sense?

Yes, it does.

I wasn't the one who brought Descartes in the argument, and in fact I don't see much relevance in bringing him up either; I was reacting to what you said about Nieztsche "crushing" cogito ergo sum. I think the statement still retain its usefulness for the reasons I gave above. It definitely doesn't prove the existence of self, but it is nonetheless useful as a cornerstone of metaphysics, provided you do not read more into the statement than what it is: a mere definition. Perhaps I'm giving too much credit to Descartes for stumbling upon this, since he did seem to fall into the fallacy of proclaiming the superiority of reason over feelings. His mistake is then to differentiate between thinking and feeling or between the self and the other, without defining them. It does not lie with the "cogito ergo sum" premise.

I think the statement "cogito ergo sum" makes sense, with or without Descartes. As we say, "ne jetez pas le bebe avec l'eau du bain" (don't throw the baby away with the bath water). That said, it was a thread hijack and bears no relation to the original topic of life being a dream, which was merely intellectual onanism in the first place.

Let's be friends. :o

[Pierrot le Fou]

No, you're right, the original post did, and you brought up Descartes in your first post, and then LJustus did on page two. So you're going to have to forgive me for attributing a reference to Descartes and his philosophy to 'I think therefore I am' when I read it. And Nietzsche DID crush cogito ergo sum in reference to a proof of existence, which is what the thread is about, eh?

[Kustom]

Ahem. You're right, I did bring the word cartesianism up, because this word is really quite common in French and I was not thinking in English at the time. I meant to talk about reasonable doubt or some other English phrase that eludes me. I should have re-read the thread to put your comment in context, my bad. The way it was written, I was talking about not complicating the theory further than need be, nothing relating to proving the existence of self.

Besides, I beg to differ, Nietzsche didn't "crush cogito ergo sum in reference to existence" (of a subject), but in reference to existence of self as a separate entity from the universe or of the act of thinking. If Nietzsche was out to prove that nothing exists, not even the thought that "nothing exists", he would be in no end of shit, starting by applying the linguistic argument to himself.

Re-reading it, RDClip's original post doesn't contain a fallacy in reference to the "I think, therefore I am" comment, since he disconnects his comment from knowing that "anything other than me exist". So, once again, if you agree that something exists, it might as well be called "I", as long as you do not claim to draw a line between "I" and "you/it". You can describe it as thinking or feeling or a mystical consciousness and still call it "I", it's not problematic.

[Pierrot le Fou]

I truly don't believe that Nietzsche was out to prove that nothing existed, but that's another discussion.

[Ichisan]

When you think about it logically, the question becomes rather silly. It would be fairly easy to prove scientifically that the other person's retinas and visual cortex process visual sensory information in the same way yours does. After all, we're all the same species.


No, the question was how you know that anyone else sees the same colours as you, and you're missing the point. The colours you see are constructs. Our brains receive visual sensory information and process it in identical ways, as you say, but the process has a result, which is the visual construct we rely on as a model of the universe. It's necessary that the model correspond to reality, so that x wavelength always corresponds to 'red' and y wavelength always corresponds to 'blue', for instance, but it doesn't matter how we subjectively see each colour.

If it helps, think about how a bat perceives the world with echolocation. It uses sound to construct a model of the universe, and no matter how well we understand the processes going on in its brain, we don't know what it's like to actually perceive (feels/looks/sounds? we don't have an equivalent) through echolocation.

Your blue could look the same to you as my red looks to me and we'd never know because there would be no confusion in the language and no difference in the information processes. Or your blue could look like nothing I will ever experience. Colours are private.

Now I don't really believe this for a second but it's an interesting question. This is really a different question but I also think it's interesting that colours are vague concepts. For instance, where exactly does yellow stop and green begin? That has slightly different answers for different people and also for different cultures. Aren't the information processes in the brain the same for everyone (it would be interesting if they weren't)? Yet the names we give to colours necessarily can't correspond to exact wavelengths (who decides how many decimal places to measure a wavelength to before it's 'exact' anyway?) so colours are vague concepts. Perception depends a great deal on conception, so altering the label of a colour alters how we actually see it. If I call it yellow it looks like yellow; if green, green.

[Kustom]

I truly don't believe that Nietzsche was out to prove that nothing existed, but that's another discussion.

I know, I'm sure he wasn't. But that's what saying that he crushed "cogito ergo sum" as a proof of existence would imply.

Ichisan did a perfect job at explaining what my original point about color was, anyway. I'm willing to drop Descartes out of the thread altogether...

Back on topic:

Just because the input is the same doesn't mean the output is. The process each one of us undergoes depends a lot on the extremely complex particular network of organs, nerves and brain cells each of us has. It is not unreasonable to think that the structure of the entire network varies at least slightly from one individual to the other, especially at the brain stage. If you observe what particular brain cells light up when two people watch a green object, chances are the lit areas on both brains will imperfecly match. chances are even the particular nerves used would be slightly different. In fact, if the network is so complex, it might follow a patern akin to the chaos theory, and then a ridiculously small difference in how we're wired could mean massive changes in the output we form in our minds (or no difference at all).

To give a quick and dirty analogy, it's like taking a .jpg file and opening it with word or excel: it's the same file, the same original 0s and 1s, but what you see if you use those programs to open it is not the image, but a long list of gibberish. Now, if the only program I had on my computer were word, how could I know what the file looks like in excel? How would I know what the original picture was? If I was used to see every file through word, to my brain the gibberish would be the picture.

[Pierrot le Fou]

But ichisan, don't you see? If there is no way to know a difference, and no difference in the concepts or relative perceptions involved (for instance, 'blue' will always be 'darker' than 'yellow', otherwise communication, again, would break down), then there's no realistic difference that matters. And there's no way to know if there's a difference to begin with. So what's the point of discussing it to begin with? I mean what benefit can it bring?

It's a great thought experiment when you're discovering the realm of philosophy and relative perspective on your own, but when you're actually old enough to read and comprehend some basic and important philosophies, it's really a moot point. There is enough philosophy to debate in Plato's Republic alone to occupy a lifetime, and just about anyone with a high school level of English can parse through a translation, so why not read it rather than discuss a pointless unproveable, pretty-much undiscussable subject that comes down to, "But...WHAT IF!"

Kustom, Nietzsche, as I said, was a linguist. And as much as we think we know Descartes (and I honestly have read him having been a political philosophy major), he's been dissected through modern readings of him, rather than from the perspective of Nietzsche, who was the first truly post-modern philosopher. He has created so much of the beliefs that we hold in the philisophical realm today, or he has originated the discussion of, that I would argue he has a better perspective on what Descartes was talking about.

But even if we discard that, and to use the post-moderns, then how can we argue that Descartes -- a philosopher, logician, and mathematician -- would be so careless with his words that we have to read between the lines to get his point? That's something that I expect from Nietzsche, a linguist who was tearing apart the philosophers of the age of philosophy before him, and he did it quite well. But Descartes?

Again, it's another discussion, but I entirely understand what Nietzsche was saying; he's arguing what Descartes wrote -- not what people interpret Descartes to have meant -- because Descartes wasn't around to explain to him or us what he meant to write. And taken on its words, Nietzsche tears apart cogito ergo sum as an argument for the self, and the existence of the self. I think, therefore I am is formulated as a logical proof (if "I think" then "I am"), and I can't see how it could be regarded otherwise as written by a philosopher...

[Kustom]

But even if we discard that, and to use the post-moderns, then how can we argue that Descartes -- a philosopher, logician, and mathematician -- would be so careless with his words that we have to read between the lines to get his point? That's something that I expect from Nietzsche, a linguist who was tearing apart the philosophers of the age of philosophy before him, and he did it quite well. But Descartes?


Well, I tend to think it would be the other way around: Nietzsche was a linguist, so it's obvious he would put a lot of importance on the use of particular words or grammatical structures, perhaps even too much. On the other hand, is it really so unrealistic to think that Descartes, a mathematician whose writing style is not exactly flowery, didn't analyse the linguistic implications of his writing "I think therefore I am" in depth, in an age when linguistics did not even exist as a field of study? Suppose that he did mean what I think he meant, how would you rephrase it in Latin so that Nietzsche would feel happy? There is no way to use a verb without a subject in latin languages; except the infinitive which would be much more cryptic: "to think therefore to be"? I think the misleading word in Descartes' sentence is "therefore", not "I", but again there is no simple way to put it differently.

[Pierrot le Fou]

You state that 'thought' is the essence of self since the senses deceive. Or that 'thought' is the only non-deceptive sense. If that's what he was saying.

[Kustom]

Well, I don't believe thought and senses are necessarily different, perhaps unlike Descartes. All the signals that senses send translate as thoughts anyway, so senses are included in thought, not excluded. The opposite can be true, all thoughts can be senses, it depends how you wanna define "thought" and "senses".
Does that make sense?

As for the input vs output thing, like you said it is useless to talk about it since it can't ever make any practical difference unless we learn to project our thoughts in somebody else's head. There are a lot of other useless topics out there though, so if you feel like masturbating intellectually you can always toy with the idea of different people having different perceptions of "color". It's probably no more useless than trying to convince hardcore christians on the forum that abortion or gay marriage are ok.

[Pierrot le Fou]

I'm talking about what Descartes was talking about -- he was trying to differentiate the physical world of the senses to the abstract world of thought. Wax is wax even if you put it next to a candle and melt -- despite all the physical properties that we can sense changing, we can still see it and understand it at wax, which is a credit to our thought -- not to our senses.

So what I'm saying is that he should have phrased cogito ergo sum as "Thoughts portray reality better than senses do" were that what he was trying to say. The fact that he didn't, and phrased it as a mathematical proof, tends to suggest that he truly believes that "I think therefore I am" is a true statement -- a proveable one -- stemming from his beliefs regarding the wax near a flame and other deceptions of the senses.

On colour, if you really do want to discuss it, then it's far more interesting to discuss why things look different under the influence of hallucinogens. A sleek car may look like a cat, though I know it isn't a cat, or a group of shadows or a wall may seem to 'breathe' even though they aren't actually moving. That would be a far more interesting discussion, because it discusses personal perception through the same eyes and brain, only under the influence of a powerful mind-altering substance...

And yes, arguing the original colour question is as useless as arguing for or against the existence of God.

[Kustom]

On colour, if you really do want to discuss it, then it's far more interesting to discuss why things look different under the influence of hallucinogens. A sleek car may look like a cat, though I know it isn't a cat, or a group of shadows or a wall may seem to 'breathe' even though they aren't actually moving. That would be a far more interesting discussion, because it discusses personal perception through the same eyes and brain, only under the influence of a powerful mind-altering substance...


It would be interesting, but I lack experience to know much about hallucinogens, having consumed only downers unless you count weed as an upper.

However, I did read Hunter Thompson quite extensively. Does that count?

I would tend to think hallucinogens work like dreams in a Freudian perspective, it just mixes our memories and blends them with reality, like cats and cars (maybe because the spelling is close?)... Can you see something that you cannot conceive on hallucinogens? Something that was never there before? That would be interesting.

There are arguments against the idea that our perceptions are far appart from the others'... One major hint that most people probably see reality the same way even though our brains are different, is that even if you suffer extensive brain (or nervous) damage in accidents, it doesn't change the way you see the color "green"... Like the guy who got a metal girder shot through his brain and somewhat survived... It completely changed his personality though.

[Pierrot le Fou]

Phineas Gage. I've seen the spike in a museum. Interesting as Hell says I...

And hallucinogens are definitely different for different people. It depends on how much you take, and what mindset you're in, and whether or not you simply count sensory input or also thought processes. I know I've spoken to people who aren't there, though it wasn't really an issue, and I got responses from the giant void I was talking to, or maybe thinking to, because whether or not I was actually speaking out loud is debateable.

I have tasted colours and smelled sights (it's called blending of senses), and seen patterns and sense in things that have no pattern or sense to speak of that I know about (namely waves, clouds, and other such natural objects).

The reason that cars seemed like cats to me wasn't because of the spelling, but because of the sleek look of the car, with the headlights as eyes of some sort. Hard to explain. It's impossible to describe what exactly a hallucinogenic trip is like because of the fact that you know that you're not seeing reality the same way, but the way it's different is in shades of reality shifting a bit towards disbelief.

You don't suddenly see a unicorn pop out of the woods when you're staring at a sandy beach, but it wouldn't be that odd to see a white horse jump out of the woods and think it was a unicorn for a moment. You have profound thoughts and insights on yourself, sensory experiences that can't be explained (complete and utter physical joy that is caused by a simple happy memory, or a smile), and other really fucked up stuff that just can't be explained away.

Some easier explanations:

http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/8-24/wonder.jpg

http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/8-24/a-hnd.jpg

The odd things about those pictures, especially the first one, is that just about anyone who has ever taken hallucinogens will understand it, and relate to it. It's uncanny.

Or here's a trip diary:
It was winter.
The air was cold and bitter while the wind added a sharp sting to it.
A girl I'll call Osiris had emerged from hiding. Osiris is a most reliable friend who has sold us the most wonderful psychedelics so everytime she calls about having something we jump. This time it was chocolates. We were excited as we remembered the last time chocolates had gone around, but Osiris was saying they were even more potent. I bought myself two as did my other friends K, J and J. As soon as we bought them we ate one each and wondered off to smoke some bud to calm any jitters. I'd say my trip started during that bowl. I remember the mushrooms coming alive and starting to crawl their way outward through my stomach lining and into my gut. I looked up at my friends and saw they too were beginning their journeys. After the bowl I was getting really antzy from the onset and we decided to return to K's and my dorm. The walk prooved to be more of a challenge than I thought it would be. We were all pretty out there and it was only 50 some minutes into the trip.

We made it back to K's room safely and settled in. We put a family guy on the computer and everyone just stared at it in awe. After that we just kinda sat and talked to each other, geeking out the whole time. i remember it being more of a bodybuzz at that point than anything else. I was only getting closed-eyed visuals at that point. All of us decided that we should think about taking the rest of what we had. I felt that another would send me over the deepend so I sold half of mine to J and we both ate our halves. The other J and K both decided that they wanted the full experience and consumed their second chocolates.

15 minutes later I was fully emerged in my first chocolate. J and J in a collective epiphany decided to return to their dorm and we wished them goodbye and watched them set off to their fates. A sea of particles had unveiled itself to me and a swam through it to K's computer. I turned on another family guy and K and I sunk into our chairs and started sharing what was going on. K said that he had lost touch with reality and that his room was now the only physical existence left. I was watching the walls breathe and decided that everything is alive. Once the second dose (for a total of 6grams approx?) made itself obvious I confided in K that I was farther than I had been in a long time. K said that he was over his head and that he wanted to be left alone. I obliged and floated to my room down the hall.

I openned the door to my room and recalled the phrase above the gates of hell in dante's inferno.
'abandon all hope ye who enter here'
I ignored the mindfart, walked in and shut the door behind me. I plugged in the red christmas lights that are strung all over my room. The warm glow gave the room an awkward but beautiful feeling, as though i were in the womb. I put Sigur Ros - () in the cd player and reclined onto my bed. I tried to meditate and release myself from any physical stresses and thoughts so i might fully emerse myself in the mushroom. My body spread itself over my bed like butter over toast. I felt my muscles relax and shut my eyes to feel out any knots in them.

Suddenly I emptied out of my body and tumbled into the spiritual world. I saw stars and a light and felt myself drawn up towards a pulsating entity. I opened my eyes and returned to my room. For the next hour or so I explored the depths of sigur ros and a beautiful Alex Grey painting called 'Wonder'. If you havent seen any alex grey i recomend looking into him. Anyway, as the salvador dali paintings on my wall started filling with blue flames licking at the white walls I decided to fall as far into my mind as i could. I shut my eyes again and once more tumbled away from reality. I tried to bury myself with thought. Each thought peeled away another layer of reality and finally i felt as though i reached some core. It came to me in an epiphany. I was free from the restrains of reality and found myself in a sort of free floating objective universe of math. I was being thrown around from idea to idea and spiralling down into the bottom of my psyche.

Suddenly it all just kinda stopped and I was in darkness. Slowly I became aware of a light gently growing. It started as hardly visible but became enormous with time. All of a sudden i realized that i was going to be swallowed by this light, but i was not afraid, rather i was looking forward to seeing what was on the other side. As I expected it grew and grew until i was encompassed in the warm glow. In the light patterns developed and evolved until a city emerged from the radiance. I stood on an alien street in some glowing symetrical reality. I wondered where the people who lived here were. But as I thought of that they too began emerging from the light. They were strange transdimensional beings that were basically undescribable. they spoke to me in a strange telepathic language and told me the essence of being. They were beings of a deeper order than us. We are the culmination of molecular patterns that have evolved from matter (they didnt tell me this, its just physics). We are carbon and other various elements that interact in such intricate patterns that we have developed a sense of individuality. They were beings of a subatomic level. They were not different than us, but they exist with us in another understanding of reality. I began to understand how existence is perspective and how i am an imagination of myself.

I drifted between these two realities all night. For a few hours I just laid on my bed and throbbed with the music. I have to say it was a beautiful experience, highlighted by expansions of knowledge and wonderful conversations with friends both real and not. I cried I laughed (alot) and yet, i found out the next day that my friend K had an even more powerful experience (but he got freaked).

[Kustom]

They were beings of a deeper order than us. We are the culmination of molecular patterns that have evolved from matter (they didnt tell me this, its just physics). We are carbon and other various elements that interact in such intricate patterns that we have developed a sense of individuality. They were beings of a subatomic level. They were not different than us, but they exist with us in another understanding of reality. I began to understand how existence is perspective and how i am an imagination of myself.


Interesting, it seems like you felt those beings existed outside of yourself, and didn't necessarily come from your mind...

Once I had a dream of the most peculiar kind. I was dreaming a normal dream I cannot remember, and suddenly I got overwhelmed with the consciousness of PURE, NASTY EVIL. An intent to murder, maim and destroy more intense than ANYTHING I could ever remember, a hatred unlike anything I have ever felt towards anybody. It totally freaked me out. I woke up covered with cold sweat and shaking.

Now, I really have to wonder: did this horrible inhumane feeling exist outside of me, or is it a part of me that surfaced in my dream, lying deep in my subconcious self? Both hypothesis and their implications scare the shit out of me.

Ever had a bad trip?

[Pierrot le Fou]

Yep. But not a hellishly bad trip. Just a not fun curl-in-a-ball-in-your-bed trip. And it passed, and I was better for it.

And the trip diary was NOT mine, just FYI. I haven't really recorded my trips. I remember them, but I don't really record them for posterity sake.

What I do have, however, is stream of consciousness writing from a trip on 4/21 in which I was waiting for the trip to die down while listening to music and typing with my eyes closed sprawled out on the ground... Here's what it said...

thinking insane thoughtws, dreaming the insane dreams. It's all here, I can feel my fingers typing away at my destiny, as if it were a tangible thing, but obviously it isn't, at it floats away for the world to see, untouched. it's my life, flowing away, like the tides, likje the cherry blossoms come to an end, nothing can be done to sanve thm now. they are done. it was their time.

i am able to type, through memory i suppose.

it seems almost surreal touching rhese keys, almost as if it were coming through a divine entity.
I can see the computer in my m ind, itu's a black square, rectangle, hovering over the reamins of all that I have. As the sound flows in with the ryhtm and the beat of the moment, of life which i need and may not have accepted.

like the stream of consciousness which flows through the eyes of man, the straights of gibraltar open up to the seas of my unspokedn consciousness. unmoving and uncaring as the world is, i have a choice, a chance.

i can continue to give yyo my story, interrupted only bty the gradual interruptions and beatings of other destines, of other people's stories waitng to be heard, to come out. my hands are falliable. they cannot ever be considered perfect. nobody's can.

we all make mistakes in life, some bigger than others. some of us learn from what we have done. some of us regreat what we have done. some of us run from what we have done. but the quintessential state of being is that of acceptance of the unqualified uncompromising acceptance of life and all that it entails. it's ups its downs, and everything in betweem.

the therapy of writing for me has been long lost to something, i don't know what.

the annals of time perhaps, with the music.

it feels so trapped,. so contrained, but yet it has the spirit, the longing, of desire, of freedom, just like we should.

every pieve of art, music, culinary, visual, anything -- it all contains that same primal essence, that thing that all art is trying not to reproduce, but to demonstrate -- life.

that is what we are all meant to experience, and some of us experience it better and clearer than others. and even within ourselves, sometimes ew have clearer times than others when we are experiencing life as a whole.

perhaps this my self-therapy to myself *obviously(.

I need to realize that life is not all about sitting back and coasting, or just rebelling purposelessly. I can make a difference, if not necessarily on a globbal scale, just to see the smiles of children versus the frowns of failed lessons. there is so much more to life than what I am living.

I want to see more.

IO want to experience more, feel more, and I feel somehow as if there is nothing left for me to see or experience here. I have mt comfortable life, and I do love seiko desperately, but I cannot neglect the fact that life here, as a whole, is not an uiltimately appealing endeavor. Life should be full of things other than what I am being provided with, and I don't know how to expain what that is or how exactly it is I should get it.

I am seeing a pulsing shimmering silk curtain in a translucent hue of pink that is gloving with the wind which isn't coming from any external source or moving the curtain in any way that is describable above the surface of the ocean.

The movement would be that of a jellyfish were they not distguisting foul creatures that live under the ocean and sting things constantly.

To live through life like a jellyfish I think is something that so many people want to do.

To live life as a passive predator. Not hunting out prey, but being strong enough to consume whatever comes your way. to have no definite need to go anywhere, and taking your time in going nowhere.

Life is free, life is open, we hould all take the opportunity to go somewhere...

Not, again, representative of all that a trip is, but indicative of some of the thought processes. Nothing about this was forced, edited, erased, or otherwise manipulated in any way. It was a person writing their thoughts under the influence of a powerful substance which alters the way you think and perceive reality. It wasn't at the peak, but then again I don't think i could have done much at the peak of that trip...

[Ichisan]

But ichisan, don't you see? If there is no way to know a difference, and no difference in the concepts or relative perceptions involved (for instance, 'blue' will always be 'darker' than 'yellow', otherwise communication, again, would break down), then there's no realistic difference that matters. And there's no way to know if there's a difference to begin with. So what's the point of discussing it to begin with? I mean what benefit can it bring?

Oh sure I agree. For practical purposes there is no difference. But I wouldn't say it doesn't matter. It matters that the colours we see are beautiful in themselves for if they were not our worlds would be impoverished. It matters that we understand it's possible for there to be things we can't really experience, understand, or know, and to take the perspective that gives us and feel a little humble from time to time.

But I suspect there's more to the subject and more to understand about what colours really are and what it really is to see a colour. It would be satisfying to understand well enough to prove (or disprove) that we see the same colours for instance. But thinking that hard about a subject seems like too much effort: there are too many practical things I have to be getting on with. Not kidding.

[Trump]

If you are discussing colors, you should get the input of someone who is colorblind. I am not, but my father is. When asked about how he sees red and green he says the differences in those colors are more like black and white TV. Oh, hard to explain... its like in black and white TV you could tell the difference in colors, but more because they have a slight different shade and reflectiveness and textures instead of actually appearing as different colors. My father also says the only way he can tell if a light is red or green is by the position of the light, not the color.

[Kustom]

snip


After reading your journal, I feel like maybe you could use some time out of Japan... ^^
So do I.