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Conception and reality

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Awesomelyglorious
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21 Dec 2009, 9:34 pm

Our reality is not only perceived, but it is also a reality that we apply our conceptions to in order to understand it. This fact can actually be seen with optical illusions as there is nothing about reality that deceives us, but rather it is our brains that deceive us. The question that then emerges is how much our conceptions impact our reality. It seems by any account that the degree to which a conception impacts reality is actually highly significant, but how should this be considered?


By the way, to entertain you all, here is an optical illusion. The blue and the green spirals are actually the same color. No joke.
Image

(If you don't believe me, then check out the link: http://forgetomori.com/2009/science/bes ... this-year/ )



Sand
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21 Dec 2009, 9:45 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Our reality is not only perceived, but it is also a reality that we apply our conceptions to in order to understand it. This fact can actually be seen with optical illusions as there is nothing about reality that deceives us, but rather it is our brains that deceive us. The question that then emerges is how much our conceptions impact our reality. It seems by any account that the degree to which a conception impacts reality is actually highly significant, but how should this be considered?


By the way, to entertain you all, here is an optical illusion. The blue and the green spirals are actually the same color. No joke.
Image

(If you don't believe me, then check out the link: http://forgetomori.com/2009/science/bes ... this-year/ )


The concept that you differentiate between your brain and yourself probably requires further investigation.



Awesomelyglorious
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21 Dec 2009, 10:03 pm

Sand wrote:
The concept that you differentiate between your brain and yourself probably requires further investigation.

It is short-hand. We don't exist, but our brains do. :P The funny thing is that I am only half-way joking, as self-hood is a hard to define concept given how much of "ourselves" aren't "ours" in some sense or another.



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21 Dec 2009, 11:15 pm

Quite profound. Do you think that we all have a common mind like the super conscious theory of Jung? What is mind on the brain?


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Sand
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21 Dec 2009, 11:37 pm

That "we" don't exist is something else that doesn't ring true.



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21 Dec 2009, 11:43 pm

Truth is an emotion.


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Sand
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21 Dec 2009, 11:54 pm

Magnus wrote:
Truth is an emotion.


Which indicates why it's so difficult to convince people that much of religion is counter to reason and intelligence and not susceptible to logic.



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21 Dec 2009, 11:57 pm

Yeah, I guess so. Still, there is a perception that transcends reason.


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22 Dec 2009, 12:02 am

Magnus wrote:
Yeah, I guess so. Still, there is a perception that transcends reason.


Absolutely. I was scared of the dark as a kid and the experience of a brain scan evoked a huge claustrophobic response.



Magnus
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22 Dec 2009, 12:06 am

Did you have the brain scan?


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22 Dec 2009, 12:15 am

Magnus wrote:
Did you have the brain scan?


I gritted my teeth and dispelled the thought that a fire in the hospital would leave me helpless and tied down in that terrible tube. The piped in music helped me endure the half hour it took. But I doubt I could endure the depicted encoffination in the film "Avatar" where the subjects were encased in a box while their minds traveled the world in the brain of an alien. The film itself had wonderful effects but the plot was a mere update of the cattlemen cowboys despoiling the nature connected Indians. It was fun nevertheless. And for once the Indians won.



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22 Dec 2009, 12:19 am

Claustrophobia is a logical primordial fear.


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22 Dec 2009, 12:33 am

Magnus wrote:
Claustrophobia is a logical primordial fear.


Frankly I didn't find it particularly logical. I guess it has to do with the original urge to be born and to get out of the womb into a bit of fresh air. I have occasional dreams of being trapped in a crevasse while spelunking or drowning far below the surface of the sea as I desperately struggle to reach the surface before I have to inhale the deadly water. It's all the same horror.



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22 Dec 2009, 12:46 am

What we project on reality determines our experience of it. So I would go so far as to say that our conceptions become our reality. I think it's a line from 'Hamlet' that says: 'Nothing is either good or bad; but thinking makes it so'. Mind is the creator.


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22 Dec 2009, 12:55 am

SporadSpontan wrote:
What we project on reality determines our experience of it. So I would go so far as to say that our conceptions become our reality. I think it's a line from 'Hamlet' that says: 'Nothing is either good or bad; but thinking makes it so'. Mind is the creator.


Mind may be the creator but like any creator it has to work with stuff. The sculptor must deal with his/her ideas but also understand clay, plaster, stone and steel. The painter must deal with his/her memories and experience but also with line and color and shape. The poet must be driven by what is in the mind but also with language and the formalities of the discipline. As someone who deals with all these things I am fully aware that inspiration can come both from inner and outer disciplines and paradigms. It's not only the mind alone.



Awesomelyglorious
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22 Dec 2009, 1:01 am

Sand wrote:
That "we" don't exist is something else that doesn't ring true.

Well, let me put it this way. All theories of identity seem to kind of fail, and one of the best ideas I have heard to explain this is that this is only a pseudo-problem because identity is just a mental construct and not something objective. If identity is a mental construct then "we" as in our identities are not objective facts, but rather just mental constructs. So, our brains exist, but we don't have objective existence.