Frank
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- Aug 4, 2003
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Before we begin, let's try NOT to mention The Matrix...
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Suspend reality and join the world’s philosophers in their contemplation of a very tricky problem indeed. Open your eyes and it feels as if our experience of vision and consciousness are continuous, complex, rich and colourful – thanks to some hard work put in by the brain. Actually, perhaps not. There are all sorts of gaps in our conscious experience which has prompted some to argue that we don’t actually see the world as it really is. Yes, seriously, could it all be a grand illusion? The conundrum of human consciousness strikes!
Five climbers make the last few steps to the top of a mountain peak. After a few minutes of relaxation while admiring the panorama around them, their guide asks them to look off into a particular coordinate on the horizon and report what they can see. All five, after peering for a few moments, state they can see nothing unusual except for some indistinct haze on the horizon.
The guide then produces a pair of high-powered binoculars from his backpack and invites the group to now look through them towards the same coordinate.
After all are finished, they report unanimously that they can now see an artist in the distance sitting an an easel painting a landscape.
Now it is nonsense to say the climbers themselves magically caused the artist to appear merely by their observance of her, as if she had not been there before. But what is accurate is to say they did bring the image of her into focus in their own minds both individually and collectively, and this image is what is quite commonly and rightfully called 'reality.' It is this, and only this, that should be meant by the phrase 'mind creating reality' - that is to say for an individual or a group only. For tell me, where else can reality exist if not only in the minds of single individuals or collectively so? Thin air? Of course though, often there is disagreement as to what constitutes reality, depending on how the QUANTUM CHOICES of evidence assembly that led to that view of reality, have proceeded. But thats another story.
But nobody could have intimated (before the climbers' looked) what lay at the scene of that particular coordinate, for what was in fact (just seconds earlier) the climbers' FUTURE, had not yet been established (by the sighting.) It might have been a man skipping a rope; a family sitting down to a barbecue - anything. Of course, the artist herself knew, and was aware of, her surroundings but that is subjective only. For YES, it is a subjective universe and this translates into the death-knell for a deterministic one and permits free will to be legitimately recognized, as it should. For a deterministic universe predicts a precise knowledge of the future, and that is not possible.
Now - was Descarte right?
Discuss!
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Suspend reality and join the world’s philosophers in their contemplation of a very tricky problem indeed. Open your eyes and it feels as if our experience of vision and consciousness are continuous, complex, rich and colourful – thanks to some hard work put in by the brain. Actually, perhaps not. There are all sorts of gaps in our conscious experience which has prompted some to argue that we don’t actually see the world as it really is. Yes, seriously, could it all be a grand illusion? The conundrum of human consciousness strikes!
Five climbers make the last few steps to the top of a mountain peak. After a few minutes of relaxation while admiring the panorama around them, their guide asks them to look off into a particular coordinate on the horizon and report what they can see. All five, after peering for a few moments, state they can see nothing unusual except for some indistinct haze on the horizon.
The guide then produces a pair of high-powered binoculars from his backpack and invites the group to now look through them towards the same coordinate.
After all are finished, they report unanimously that they can now see an artist in the distance sitting an an easel painting a landscape.
Now it is nonsense to say the climbers themselves magically caused the artist to appear merely by their observance of her, as if she had not been there before. But what is accurate is to say they did bring the image of her into focus in their own minds both individually and collectively, and this image is what is quite commonly and rightfully called 'reality.' It is this, and only this, that should be meant by the phrase 'mind creating reality' - that is to say for an individual or a group only. For tell me, where else can reality exist if not only in the minds of single individuals or collectively so? Thin air? Of course though, often there is disagreement as to what constitutes reality, depending on how the QUANTUM CHOICES of evidence assembly that led to that view of reality, have proceeded. But thats another story.
But nobody could have intimated (before the climbers' looked) what lay at the scene of that particular coordinate, for what was in fact (just seconds earlier) the climbers' FUTURE, had not yet been established (by the sighting.) It might have been a man skipping a rope; a family sitting down to a barbecue - anything. Of course, the artist herself knew, and was aware of, her surroundings but that is subjective only. For YES, it is a subjective universe and this translates into the death-knell for a deterministic one and permits free will to be legitimately recognized, as it should. For a deterministic universe predicts a precise knowledge of the future, and that is not possible.
Now - was Descarte right?
Discuss!
