Reality – it could vary from your mind alone as the entirety of all existence to you being the figment of someone else’s imagination. Without your five senses and brain thingy, you wouldn’t experience any reality at all. There are as many versions of reality as there are living things, up through and including ‘living’ machines – artificial intelligence (AI). But is there any reality at all in the absence of living things, including AI?
Continued from yesterday’s blog…
Personal Reality:
For all you know, you might actually be a multi-tentacled, slimy green blob-thing living on the Planet Zork and dreaming that you are a human living on Planet Earth and deriving near infinite amount of civic pride/satisfaction and/or orgasmic pleasure in paying your way (mainly via taxes and rates). Then again, maybe your really Triffid-like, living on some extra-solar hot Jupiter, hallucinating that you’re on Planet Zork and consequently dreaming of being a Planet Earth humanoid.
Well, maybe not. But be that as it may…
It’s probably impossible to ever know of experience absolute reality since everything external to us, in order to be experienced, has to be filtered and processed through a complex biochemical laboratory via our eyes, ears, skin, etc. hence via our nervous system up to the brain. Who really knows what kind of translation happens along the way or what’s lost (or wrongly gained) in translation. Our reality might be a total hash of actual reality! But, we do the best we can with what we get to work with.
We perceive the reality of the Universe (and its component parts) via our five senses – sight, sound, touch, taste and smell – and through instruments (technology) which, while extending the range of those senses, translate their measurements back into the range we can comprehend with our sensory apparatus. A radio telescope can see and record radio waves, but the (computer or paper) image spat out for our viewing is obviously in the visible light range to cater for our eyes. Ditto our radios translate radio waves we can’t see or hear into sound we can hear.
While there are probably differences in the perceptions of reality twixt males and females, it’s probably also true that these are so minor as to not be really worth elaborating on.
No two people ever experience seemingly identical things exactly down to the Nth degree. That is, you and I will not experience vision, hearing, taste, smell or touch in the precise same way. That’s quite apart from relativity theory which can illustrate these differences quite dramatically. No, even in our relativity-irrelevant day-to-day life and world, for example, what’s blue to someone might appear slightly blue-green to another; what’s a perfect C-note to one is ever so slightly sharp (#) to another; what’s a hot cup of coffee to one person is only very warm to another, even though the temperature is identical in both cases. Even two people tasting the same food will perceive things slightly differently.
Yet clearly the blue/blue-green color has one and only one specific wavelength; the note has one and only one frequency; and the hot/very warm cup of coffee really has just one uniform temperature. [Note that these differences have nothing to do with individual likes or dislikes – that’s a separate category of an even more personal ‘reality’ altogether.]
Speaking of temperature, differences in perception extends to instruments which augment our senses as well. We might be able to estimate temperature to within a degree or two. But even two seemingly identical thermometers will register ever so slight differences, perhaps to with 1/100th or 1/1000th of a degree, but differences nevertheless.
So what aspects of the Universe do we sense? Well, obviously things that are composed of matter and energy (which are two sides of the same coin). We can see matter and energy, we can hear energy, we can touch matter and experience its energy, and we can smell and taste matter.
Yet, those aspects are quite incomplete. Our sense of vision is useless over most of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our sense of hearing is adequate over only a relatively small range of frequencies or octaves.
Our reality, apart from vision and hearing is also confined to a relatively narrow range of temperatures, gravitational and magnetic fields, and chemical elements. But we don’t sense Earth’s magnetic field (though apparently some animals do), which is a tad strange since we can sense or feel the Earth’s gravitational field or force.
Our senses can’t see, hear, taste, touch or smell time, and time is a fundamental aspect to our existence and to the properties of our Universe. And if string or superstring theory is correct, then we exist in a ten or eleven dimensional Universe, yet we can’t see, hear taste, touch or smell them. An extra six or seven dimensions to our Universe is not trivial, yet we’re not equipped to experience them. That’s weird! We’ve no direct awareness of the quantum world. What would our reality be like at the atomic level or below? I don’t know, but it sure wouldn’t mirror the comfortable reality we deal with in the macroverse. Although the strong nuclear force holds together all the atomic nuclei in our bodies, we don’t feel or sense it, nor for that matter the weak nuclear force
There’s strong circumstantial evidence that parallel universes should exist, yet we’ve no apparent perception of these. We’ve no perception of what it would be like to experience reality inside a Black Hole, and for that matter, we’ve only an academic understanding of the reality of the interior of a stellar object, like our Sun, not a personal reality, or for that matter most of the environments in our Universe. Think of all those realities we’ve never experienced, and probably never can experience.
What else might we lack knowledge or perception of that’s not yet been dreamt of in our philosophy or science? I shudder to think of all that we’re missing!
Personal Reality from Two Points of View:
Let’s return to our favourite imaginary couple, Jane and Clive, one of which sees blue, hears a pure C-note and perceives coffee as hot; the other a shade of blue-green, hears C#, and perceives equally hot coffee as only very warm.
Jane is aware of the idea that matter is mostly empty space. Jane knows that neutrinos can pass through light-years of ‘solid’ lead unimpeded. “Why can’t I be like a neutrino and pass through ‘solid’ matter?” she asks. Jane, being a good experimental scientist, decides to personally experiment and test the idea. Both Jane and Clive look up a physics equation, F=ma (force equals mass times acceleration). They ponder this abstract representation linking force, mass and acceleration and how it could be translated into showing that matter was mainly empty space. Jane gets an idea of accelerating a mass (her fist) to provide a force against another mass (say a brick wall), expecting her fist mass and the other brick mass to intersect. [Boy is she going to be in for an unpleasant surprise.] Jane was aware of course that just leaning her hand on the wall wasn’t sufficient enough oomph – she needed more force. Anyway, Jane and Clive discuss this practical demonstration of Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall; Clive tries to talk her out of this experiment, but has to capitulate (a woman just has to have the last word) and just observes while a remote camera films the event for posterity.
So, we have Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall and Clive watches. We assume that Jane’s fist doesn’t pass harmlessly through the brick wall – empty space or no empty space. So Jane experiences the physical reality of intense pain; at best black and blue bruising; at worst, broken bones in her hand. Clive of course experiences no such pain (though he’d better show some sympathy or else he just might), but he certainly experiences the intense sound (scream) of Jane’s ‘ouch’!
So one definition of reality could be something along the line, and I’m sure Jane would now agree, is that reality is something that hits back when you hit it! Yet, there’s got to be more to reality than that.
Later on, we have Jane and Clive watch the film of Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall. Neither Jane nor Clive now experiences any actual pain, yet the mental reality of watching the film will trigger quite different memories in each of the two participants.
We have Jane and Clive just think about Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall; we have Jane and Clive dream about Jane slamming her fist in to a brick wall; we have Jane and Clive hallucinate (being somewhat under the influence) about Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall – these are all variations on the same theme.
If these mental processes (thinking, dreaming or hallucinating) happened before-the-fact that Jane slammed her fist into a brick wall then that’s going to produce quite a different mental image(s) than if these mental processes happened after-the-fact that Jane slammed her fist into a brick wall.
So you see, one scenario gives rise to many varieties of reality. There’s the abstract reality of the equation. There’s the mental reality of what might be. There’s the mental reality of what was. There’s the physical reality of Jane’s pain and Clive’s throbbing eardrum! There’s the reality of the film to remind them never to try this stunt again!
To be continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment