Tuesday, December 21, 2004

   Perception and reality.
Well, todays entry is inspired by a chat convo I had with someone one day. I have since determined that I do not like chat debates. I swear this guy could type twice as fast as I could, and I'm a 65 WMPer.

Anyway, I'm sure we've all heard the cliche of "Reality is only how you see it.". But is it really? Personally, I didn't think so. I mean, the whole thing to me sounds like what a couple of joveniles would bicker about. "Oh, you can't go to the center of the Earth! It's too hot!" "Yeah I can. You only think it's too hot, but I know it isn't." "But everyone says it's too hot!" "No they don't! You think everyone says it's too hot when it isn't!". Put in a few more intellectually sounding words and you have the modern concept that many people have today about reality.

Many people think that what is real is only real to them and no one else. People usually justify their stance by a bunch of "what if" falacies full of fabricated result. All to often people say "Oh! The matrix is possible this way!" and usually use it to bail out of a corner in a debate to try to justify their view, saying that other people can't percieve the fact and twist a philosophers statements to suit whatever their need is. This annoys me, to see a large sum of people in a room IRL or digital saying "Oh. This person might be here. I may only be percieving a person here", arresting reality in its tracks so they can wonder and fantasize about the universe.

In this chat convo of which I were to try to justify my views against someone who almost exclusively used "what if" statements and denyed ever doing it, I was able to set one thing to a believer of this... childs philosophy as fact. That is that there IS a reality. The definitions of reality and perception are as follows respectively:

Reality:
The quality or state of being actual or true.
2. One, such as a person, an entity, or an event, that is actual: “the weight of history and political realities” (Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.).
3. The totality of all things possessing actuality, existence, or essence.
4. That which exists objectively and in fact: Your observations do not seem to be about reality.


1. The process, act, or faculty of perceiving.
2. The effect or product of perceiving.
3. Psychology.
a. Recognition and interpretation of sensory stimuli based chiefly on memory.
b. The neurological processes by which such recognition and interpretation are effected.

4.
a. Insight, intuition, or knowledge gained by perceiving.
b. The capacity for such insight.

The thing about perception is that there has to be reality for someone to percieve it. I have to write this article in order for someone to read it. The "0"s and "1"s that are used to form a source coding which is used to transfer a series of keystrokes onto a memory bank that is then accessed by a program that tells a magnet which bends light into shapes and colors onto a screen to form a certain shape, which is THEN sent to a server which collects the data then arranges it into an area that can be accessed when the series of cells made from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and about 20 traces of elements move in such a fashion that it presses a bunch of keys that send an electrical signal, once again repeating the beginning of the process, into program which is then sent to see if there is a location on the net that matches the desired one.

One can only go so far in wondering saying that "Oh! Maybe the world around you doesn't have those laws, and you just see it that way". As to quote a very famous quote: "I think, therefore, I am." Without there being reality, or fact, I cannot percieve it. I cannot be there to percieve it. But I am, or if you don't believe I exist as an actual person, YOU are there to percieve it. So there must be something there, and thus there is reality. And there are going to be many things in this reality, such as physics and laws, and enough to make up the complexity which is what we think and feel.

"But CS, what if your wrong?". I hate "what if"s, but this one actually holds some stance. You see, I cannot be wrong. For all I am is a mere shell, made of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, chlorine, sodium, iron, mercury (though I don't want that one there), nickle, and many other elements. An element is a substance that is made up of only one type of atom. Simply put: We're all rocks! Good ole rocks. Something I have yet to see anyone have the audacity or arrogance to do is walk out into the street, pick up a rock, and fight to the death of their moral standards of life that the rock is wrong in some fashion. It cannot be wrong, for it isn't conveying any sort of thought. It is a series of elements that are bounded together by the physics of this universe. It isn't animate. It isn't saying anything, It isn't conveying any thought, and it doesn't even have the intelligence to know how to, or if it were. It is just there. Since all animals and people are is rocks, we cannot be wrong.

But what is wrong then? We know of this existance of fact, but then there is something we call fiction, now isn't there? Is the ink on the wooden pages of a Mother Goose book wrong? No. I'ts bunch of rocks arranged together (when I say "rock" I mean inanimate elements for all those of you who like literal terms). So what could be fiction about it? Answer: thoughts. Not as in eletrical impulses and chemicals that are firing through the brain to react with other rocks, the thought of it all. An idea. An essence of thought that is somehow passed from one rock to another into some sort of being that is animate amongst all the rocks in the world. THAT is what can be wrong, the 2 of you who visit my site. What is wrong, anyway? Answer: What isn't right. If it isn't coinciding with what reality is (which we all know there IS a reality), then it is fiction and thus is wrong. Wrong in it's intentions? That's a whole other article.

How does one percieve, anyway? Perception is the reaction of many many rocks and electrical impulses that form fact-inspired picture to whatever is animate in this series of rocks. An occular nerve can only relay what is givin to it, and the brain can only percive what is givin to it. So there, by simple relation, only one thing which we can percieve: Reality. What we may think of it may be wrong, but what we are seeing, which is a bunch of rocks and stuff (I'll state now that energy can only be viewed when it reacts with it's enviroment in some way). Why would rocks, which cannot be wrong, somehow send rockular messages to this animate being that are incorrect? Answer: they don't. What we may think, which we may derive from fact, may be incorrect, but we can only percieve one thing: reality.

But what about dillusions and Hullucinations? Answer to that is very simple: They are thinking it. I have personally confirmed many times that a person who is intoxicated or under the influence of any sort of drug or alcohol is actually seeing reality as is. What they think, however, is horribly scewed. Their thoughts are being influenced by whatever rocks are in their body. So indeed you are still seeing reality as fact, but their thoughts, the only thing that CAN be wrong, is.

Scientists and psychologists have been able to determin nearly everything that makes a person insane or think differently. Chemical imbalances, psychological stimulous during the formation of the persons thoughts at an early age, and if they don't know exactly what it is at the moment they can figure out why, or have a good idea what causes it.

Simply put: people are reacting to only one thing: factual stimulous.

But what makes us right and them wrong: The answer for this has been concluded through the use of machinery, and a series of collaborations of both ideas and senses. Once in a study, they had a person who both thought he was insane and was psychologically dubbed insane listen to a steady series of beeps. Without telling the person, they suddenly changed the beeps to a different pitch and rhythem. The insane person didn't detect the change in the beeps (yes, there was a change in the beeps because walking rocks pressed rocks known as keys to tell a rock known as a computer to change how quickly and when a rock would move back and fourth to move rocks known as air.) There were factual reasons to this altered perception, and the psychological response to it which didn't collaborate with reality.

My best proof of this (of course many people reading the above paragraphs are "what if"ing the life out of me right now) is my very own vision. You see, I have vision that is worse than 20:100. Every color I see is the same. Every object I see is the same. The defect is that as light enters into the factual lens that bends the factual light into my factual receptors in my eye, which sends that image to my brain and all that good n' fun stuff. But alas, something is amiss. My vision blurs and blends objects together much quicker as distance increases between me and them than any other person. So, unless it is fact that an object blends together with everything around it (how in the world of physics it would), and as I get closer to them they clear up to become nearly normals as anyone else, my sensors are, as I shall say, altered to a certain point.

Very simple solution to this: Wear factual lenses that bende the light. These help me to see everything (which I would see as is in the first place) better. Nothing really changes other than that I can see it better.

Now my vision fits those of the other billions of people out there who, well ironically, have the same vision. I find it hard to think that it is coincidence that with some glasses the obviously factual mishape to my eyes. Now since everyone is now "what if"ing themselves away about how mabye I only percieve that everyone sees the same, people seem to forget about speach and sound. About reading and writing. Words form concepts and thoughts to us, and convey them to one another. You can arrange words in an infinite number of ways. They can convey, thus, limitless thoughts and ideas. My brain doesn't chose what it wants to hear. It choses what it wants to believe. What I hear is reaction to stimulous, and if someone disagrees with me, I MUST hear them. Nor did I assign any meanings to the words I use. The whole general thought is mine, but the word "mine" means something whether I like it or not.

What my vision cannot do is see things that aren't reality. I may look up at a chalkboard at in the middle of class and not be able to read what the messages say, but I can still see that there are messages there.

Then we have what I call a collaboration of senses. If an object is somewhere, you can all touch, taste, see, and feel it (you can only smell something if it is emitting chemicals detectable by the human nose). You can conclude that it is there. Through third party perspective, others can conclude it's there. Our senses can only do one thing: percieve fact. And if something is fact, all of your senses capable of detecting it will. Your senses either tell you something, or nothing. What they don't do is tell you differen tthings. If you smell something but don't see it, you senses conclude that you cannot see what is there, but you can smell it. I could make a whole other article on the collaboration of senses.


So thus, with this very long and full of spelling errors... whatever you could call it. Article seems to fit, I have concluded that what we see is fact, but what we think is not, that perception is perception, reality is realiy, and that thoughts are the only thing that can be wrong. So... feel free to add any comments.

(Edited and Proofread on December 26th).
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