hmmmm

How do you know the external world exists? My musings.

First, I have not researched this topic or what the philosophers views are on this. I have heard of this philosophical question, around 10 years ago. Taking the question at face value, I pondered.

First, why would one ask this question? What are they really asking? It sounds to me like: Can we believe what our senses and those of our machines and science percieves? Or is it all a figment of our imaginations and we're all really floating thoughts, making it all up?

I think of God first. Do these philosophers believe in God? If yes, then fine. What if they don't? What they're saying is I don't believe in God because my senses, machines, and science don't perceive God. In saying this they are saying they don't really believe their own philosophies. The philosophy is we can't believe our senses but saying I don't believe in God because I can't sense God says I believe my senses rather than the possibility of anything outside my senses. Hypocrisy.

On to other things.

I know that some people can't see. They are without the sense of sight. If I see something and they don't, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, rather that the blind person lacks the sense to perceive what exists.

What about when two people are at the same event, side by side, and if you ask each person to say what they experienced, it's different. Why? Is it because each was in a different dimension so saw a different event? I don't think so. Each second, billions (if not more, even much more) of bits of information enter our brain through our senses but our brain lacks the capacity to process all of it. So we make billions of conscious and unconscious decisions of what info is a keeper and what will be trashed. Two people will keep/trash different information at the same event. Not only that but we have varying backgrounds and experiences which causes us to interpret the very same information differently. Because of this, each person will have a different experience. If the experiences differ does it mean the event never happened? No. The event is true. Does the experience of one invalidate the experience of the other? No, rather the experiences put together are more apt to be accurate than one alone.

One critical thing here - sometimes we trash very important information key to correctly interpreting our experiences, like a colorblind person who because of their inability to receive the color signals would see the event as black and white. Our backgrounds and experiences can also tip our perception into misinterpreting events to where we believe what isn't true and put a spin on an event that doesn't exist.

If we perceive differently, the event still happened. If we perceive similarly, perhaps we kept nearly the same info and have similar backgrounds and experiences, and the event still happened. In my estimation, the external world exists, our senses are working fine. But on the other hand, just because we don't sense something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Instead perhaps we just lack the ability to sense and perceive it like the blind person mentioned earlier.

God cannot be perceived by our senses - only by our faith.

Does the external world exist? I say yes. To say no is to deny existence since we cannot separate ourselves from our senses. I've heard of sensory deprivation tanks. I think the brain deals with this through bringing up what was sensed before, like a dream.

We are who we are, and what is, is.

posted by Colleen @ 4:51 PM