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January 2nd, 2009 by Sean Are We Real?

If all my decisions can be traced back to the automated processing of my subconscious… do I ever make real decisions?

Why do I even exist? Why am I even aware of this moment?

Evolution, psychology, sociology, chemistry, physics… these disciplines outline a very clear message. I can see the fear laced beneath the surface of the scientist’s dissertation. The message is that we don’t exist. Everything has been accounted for. We know who, what, when, where, how.

It’s not that I don’t see beauty in this system… I see amazing beauty. Numbers can do amazing things; I get it. But they’re still just numbers.

…

Here’s a fun exercise: identify something you feel is sacred. Maybe God, or music, or poetry, or a religious text, or reproduction, or relationships, or family, or perpetual motion, or secret government, or morality, or correctness, or cleanliness, or technology, or whatever. Then, immerse yourself in it, and learn and experience everything about it. Push yourself to the very brink. Do not deny yourself any piece of relevance.

What will you learn? The object itself was never sacred. It’s perceived sacred-ness was a projection from the inner workings of your own mind. There is no such thing as “sacred”. It’s just your mind.

Everywhere I look, all I see is mind. This computer is mind. This music is mind. This air. These feelings. I cannot escape mind.

I know I am not mind… but I can’t not use mind in order to search for myself. And I can’t not use mind to express this.

The point is this:

Mind is not real. By extension, reality is not real. I’ve been chasing my shadow, for a glimpse of my face. Is Nothing worthwhile? Will Nothing satisfy my thirst for existence?

Ramblings.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 6:09 am and is filed under Note to Self, Subconscious. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

### 15 Responses to “Are We Real?”

1. MagicDick Says:
   January 2nd, 2009 at 2:29 pm

   What someone defines as sacred is completely subjective. We use words to give meaning to what we see and feel. But we each see and feel different things. So even with your simple exercise, my idea of the word “sacred” could lead me to a different conclusion. Even the most precise wording cannot avoid the ambiguity of words and meaning. So exploring the sacredness of an object in any context seems like a waste of time…

   The mind is very subjective. Even if the world we live in is objective, everything gets distorted the moment we try to perceive it. There’s no avoiding the mind. I guess it’s just a part of our humanity.

   Those are some interesting ideas. But I’m not sure what you mean by “real”.

2. Psikillion Says:
   January 2nd, 2009 at 3:04 pm

   Maybe everything has already been “laid in stone” and our “choices” have already been made for us. The “choices” seem like you are actually deciding what you do with your life in order to make you think that you are in control.

   Maybe we are “soul”s thus why our minds can not describe it.

   I see one problem about your exercise, and that is you cannot truly know everything about God. He is indescribable.

   As men we need these “sacred” things (or some of them at least) in order to keep our lives intact.

3. PotentiaL Says:
   January 2nd, 2009 at 8:06 pm

   Apologies about the length.

   I believe this is a nature of consciousness question, relating to your last post regarding Uncertainty Vs. Determinism although presented in different context.

   So what is consciousness? How can you determine that *you* are in fact existing and perceiving REAL things?

   Answering this question poses a big problem. A prerequisite for an accurate description of a system is that the observer must place his or herself outside that system. This means existing outside our own universe looking back in is the only was to gain accurate knowledge of what is actually taking place.

   But lets explore consciousness in a quantum context and see if it is not possible to satisfy that requirement and thus deem our observations legitimate.

   I don’t wish to delve into a lengthy explanation of quantum physics but what follows will be infinitely easier to understand with some quantum background. If you should find yourself confused, go get some background and things will begin to make more sense.

   The brain is as extraordinarily complex as it is efficient. You would be hard pressed to find another system that can control such mass and allow such processing capabilities with only the tiniest inklings of electrical signals. These characteristics create the perfect environment for quantum effects to manifest, and are in turn amplified by the brains immense organizational powers i.e the ability to visualize 3D objects, predict trajectories, etc.

   Before going further, let me propose my interpretation of quantum superposition. Superposition indicates that a particle is existing in all of its possible states simultaneously. I (and I am certainly not alone in this proposition) propose that a particle in superposition is existing this way because of its ties to other universes. That’s right, I believe in the multiverse.

   Now lets present a scenario. The electrons of a neurological signal are in superposition, their orbits exist in a cloud of probability incorporating every possible future outcome all of which will very soon be played out in another universe, save one for our own universe.

   The signal is recognized as such by our brain, say it is a signal sent from the visual cortex carrying information about what our eyeballs are picking up. When processed the wavefuctions of each electrons superposition collapse to form a definitive signal, they do this in our universe as well as their counterparts in all other universes. Our brains do some insanely quick calculations and place an image of what it was we saw in our heads.

   So what happened? What does this mean? Well for starters we successfully satisfy our original problem of needing information from outside our own universe in order to legitimize our perceptions. The very nature of a wavefunction collapse facilitates this information exchange that we required. Secondly however, we also learned something about our own perception of reality. What we perceive is slightly different than what is actually there.
   Quite possibly, the wavefunction collapses of the electrons containing the data about the location of an object were collectively processed to perceive the object a tenth of a millimeter from where it actually existed. In NO universe was the needle perceived exactly how it existed, that perfection is saved for platonic forms (some would call this perfection “God”, but as to the nature of this perfection; I politely suggest looking to eastern religion). And by this logic, I agree with your statement that all men strive for a sense of that sacred platonic perfection; the closer the better. Even though our perception is not perfect, they can be said to incorporate data from outside our own universe thus giving us the ability to deem them real.

   This in turn poses a new question of whether we have any control over the wavefunction collapses going on in our heads. Can these probabilities (Alas, our behavior is not pre-determined) be somehow manipulated by our own brains? This is a question that neurologist may one day be able to answer, but judging by my experiences with synchronicities as well as other psi phenomenon, I would venture to guess that we have that ability.

   ~PotentiaL

4. Sean Says:
   January 2nd, 2009 at 8:17 pm

   Thank you PotentiaL.

5. Bohman Says:
   January 2nd, 2009 at 9:49 pm

   Interesting… you may have already, but I suggest you check out: The Power of Now byt Eckhart Tolle. It’s a great book and you may find answers to some of your questions there.

   “I know I am not mind… but I can’t not use mind in order to search for myself.” I agree there. It’s a weird paradox for the conceptual mind. If we are to go beyond the mind, how do we do so without using the mind?…

6. anisus Says:
   January 6th, 2009 at 8:16 pm

   I think Eckhart Tolle derives a lot of his beliefs from Zen Buddhism as well.

   I don’t practice Zen but what you propose Sean, reminds me of something I read a long time ago about the nature of existence and overcoming our need to give a name to the existence of everything and ourselves. We give names to things in order to make sense of our reality, this is essential, but it creates a barrier to actual reality. There is a reality outside of our minds. It is the names and ideas we place on things that turn what is immeasurable (perhaps even sacred) in this life into something our feeble minds can measure. If I tell you to think of the sunset, you automatically know what I’m talking about. Now think about that same sunset without a name. Without past knowledge or any previous awareness of what you are seeing. Just see it for what it is and not what your mind has made of it. Seperate the need to know into just “it”. It’s almost impossible of course, but it can be done. This is where enlightenment begins. this is where I believe true reality lies and where I’m guessing Zen masters have found true existence, the one outside the mind.

   There is the mind, and the world that can only be seen by the mind, and then the world our mind fails to see because of it’s desire to name and know. It’s rational to conlude that since life itself can only occur if you are alive, and if you are alive that automatically means your mind is what is percieving life, so therefore there is no escape from that which is the vehicle of our very existence. But that conclusion in itself is a rational/logical/expression of the mind, not the true expression of your existence, only the thoughts that your mind can comprehend. If I was to not think of apples, does that mean they do not exist? If I think of something I feel is sacred, but the object itself does not have any real sacred intrisic properties other than the ones I give it in my own mind does that mean it is not sacred?
   “The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth” This is what Taoists teach. The idea is that there is a life eternal outside our minds. Although we feel we can never escape it, this may be false. There is a true existence and I think this is what people have been searching for for millenia thus creating religions, maybe perversions of this one true search.

   This probably wasn’t the road you were headed down and I’m sure you are speaking in terms of science, but I see your question as a somewhat spiritual one. I think the questions you pose become the kind that take people to the next level.

7. Psikillion Says:
   January 7th, 2009 at 5:14 pm

   So PotentiaL, what you are saying is the best way to do this is to use Philosophy?

8. Psikillion Says:
   January 7th, 2009 at 5:15 pm

   This as in understand whether things are real.

9. PotentiaL Says:
   January 8th, 2009 at 6:00 pm

   The concept is rooted in quantum physics. Since the act of observing is included in this theory as a determining factor for particle behavior, some philosophical conclusions can be drawn. New developments in science can give support for age old ideas such as platonic forms.

   Physics alone will not yield any answers, and philosophy is pure speculation. However, knit the two together and metaphysics is born. That is where I believe the answers exist.

10. Psikillion Says:
    January 8th, 2009 at 10:49 pm

    But metaphysics IS a branch of philosophy.

    Other wise I believe you, except I’ll probably have to real about quantum physics because I don’t really understand that subject to terribly well (even though a Computer Science major like me probably won’t need it).

11. kiepmad Says:
    January 9th, 2009 at 5:19 am

    anyway. I’m not real. I’m superreal.
    just don’t be paralized by all your thinking about reality. you might miss it…

12. Psikillion Says:
    January 9th, 2009 at 8:17 am

    It is funny because it looked like you threw words together, but you just so happened to form a word.

    I hope you enjoy being “An artistic and literary movement characterized by extreme realism.”

    Anyways lets continue on-topic.

13. PotentiaL Says:
    January 9th, 2009 at 8:04 pm

    “But metaphysics IS a branch of philosophy.”

    Semantics…

    My point is that philosophy needs no evidence to be philosophy. You asked if philosophy was the medium I was using to understand reality, the answer is no. If you remove science from my argument, it becomes a purely philosophical statement along the lines of “your experiences are random and imperfect because you exist outside of gods realm.” How do you give credit to a statement like that? You can’t… and it gives you no greater understanding of your own perceptions. You can use philosophy to speculate all day long, only when you add science into the equation can you create a substantial argument. It’s not philosophy, it’s not science, it’s (since we are on the subject throwing words together :D) philoscience!

    Look for books on the subject of phenomenology in the philosophy section at Barns and Noble. In the acknowledgments you will find many references to relativity, neuroscience, and quantum theory.

    Also, as a CS major, your ties to the future of Quantum Physics may be stronger that you think…

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer

    Today’s fastest supercomputers would take billions of years to do what would take a quantum computer a matter of months.

    As far as kiepmad’s statement, I argue the opposite. Paralyzed are those who fail to explore their own reality.

    How’s that for some good old fashioned ambiguous philosophy?

14. Psikillion Says:
    January 10th, 2009 at 12:41 am

    LOL

    Anyways I think I have a lot of stuff to get from Barnes & Noble. At the moment I have very little knowledge of Quantum Physics other than it has something to do with chaos, and it is a really advanced science (very smart people deal with Quantum Physics).

    Based on what I could understand we need a computer that operates on light itself (no electricity). We are heading in that direction, but we are still quite a ways yet to achieving that. It will be a great piece of technology when it works.

15. floslib Says:
    January 10th, 2009 at 5:53 pm

    If you’re looking for a book to get you started on quantum physics, I have two to recommend, but with a caveat: I haven’t read them yet.

    They are Feynman’s Thesis: A New Approach to Quantum Theory, and QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, both by Richard Feynman. Even though I haven’t read them yet, I’ve heard from other people that they tend to do a very good job of explaining quantum physics even to people without much background in physics. I mention this mainly since you seem slightly intimidated by the idea of quantum physics.

    I’m currently reading What Do You Care What Other People Think, which is more of an autobiography by Feynman, and he has a really cool style of explaining things and seemed to always be in the middle of something interesting. Combined with his writing style and what I’ve heard about the two books I mentioned above, I think it’s safe to recommend them as a starting point. If you want to be safe though, I do plan to buy and read those books as well once I’m done with the one I’m currently reading, and I can let you know what I think afterward if you’re interested.

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