Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Relative Reality...

Taken forward from a previous discussion...

Real, is just a word. But what is real? How do you know that what you think is real is just something that has been preceived as real and is actually not?

Look at the mirror. What do you see? An image of yourself right? But is it just so simple? Is the mirror showing you just what you are or are you perceiving the image in the mirror as something you recognize? As something you know? What if the mirror just shows you something that you cannot perceive and what you see is just how your brain, based on the available information, decides to interpret it? Imagine looking at something that you do not know what is? How do you decide then? Say, a baby looks at the mirror and sees something? It cannot interpret it as something that is in its knowledge, simply because the knowledge it has is limited at that point. So it looks for explanations. And the closest to what it can be, based on logic and reasoning, is that what it is can be explained by someone who already knows this phenomenon. And so it is interpreted as a "Reflection of self".

The fundamental interpretation here is but flawed. No one actually knows what the mirror does? People just interpret it based on logic and reasoning. And that logic and reasoning comes from information acquired by someone who has encountered this phenomenon already. What if someone were to see something other than themselves in the mirror? What then? It seems hard to believe that this can happen, but is it not already? Is it not actually happening?

We have senses that have evolved over the ages. These senses define how we perceive the world around us. What if tommorrow, someone with a hightened sense, discovers that what our feeble senses pereceive is not actually the correct intertpretation. It is flawed. Just like our eyes can see the stars, but that does not mean that the universe is just that. It just means that our senses are limited in their capability to interpret information. And that if the senses were augmented in some way, there is not telling how the workd would look like?

So again, what is real?

1 comment:

SEV said...

'Real' is as you define it. You want to think that the earth is flat, and chinese look like flat spiders; then that is how it is. There is no 'absolute real'.. its always relative. You can see 5 wiggly appendages, or one whole hand. It is irrelevant that it may be a life eating monster in reality..
Why going schizo ?