(V.1) Humans are incapable of knowing reality direct
and can do so only indirectly through sensations that exist
only as illusions of reality in our mind by
way of perceptions of sensory information acquired
from our material environment.
As an example, consider the aspect of physical reality we perceive as
matter, say an apple. How do we know that it exists? We can never
touch the mass of the apple directly. We can only sense the
repulsive force of the electric fields of our hand and the apple when we pick
it up which we perceive in our mind as being
evidence of something possessing electromagnet fields in three-dimensional
space. The thing has the shape of an apple but is it an
apple or piece of wood shaped like an apple? We cannot directly see the
mass of the apple directly. We can only sense the light
reflected off it. If the light in the visible range of electromagnetic
radiation, we may perceive in our mind the
light reflected off it as being the image pattern we recognize as that as the
form of an apple. But is it an apple or a photograph of an apple off which the
light reflects? We hold the apple in our hand . We sense the
gravitational forces acting on it as its weight but not its mass. But is
the mass on which the gravity acts that of an apple or that of an orange? We
cannot sense mass directly. We cannot know directly
that an apple is an apple. We can only experience the sophistry of the illusion in
our mind of it being an apple having mass.
We can only sense what we perceive
to be apple having mass through the chemistry of our sensory cells
for taste, smell, touch and sight detect and our mind perceives to
be the taste, smell, weight and image of the apple. And, finally, we cannot
hear the apple directly. We can only sense the auditory
vibrations produced as the mass of the apple strikes on the floor and our mind perceives as
the sound of the mass of the apple sticking the floor. All we can know with
certainty is that mass requires forces acting upon it to produce
motion and that requires an expenditure of mechanically applied energy to be
converted in the kinetic energy of the resultant change in velocity and
location. Beyond that we haven’t a clue as to what mass is
or perhaps, to put it diametrically, these properties of reality are
mass itself or they are one and the same.
(V.2) Our consciousness is prone to false
representations of reality as a result of false
perceptions. Consider the case of two automobiles stopped at a
stoplight. Sudden you have the perception that you are
moving backwards away from the stoplight, and in a state of emotional panic
you press harder and harder on the brake peddle but to no avail. You eventually
gather enough visual sensory input realize that it is the
automobile beside you that is moving forward as you sit unmoved in your
automobile. In this case, your consciousness of the reality
of the situation is completely wrong and the error will continue to persist
until new sensory data can be processed in your brain to
correct the error incorporated into your state of consciousness. Reality itself
is not confused at all. To reality it is only a matter of
relativity. Viewed from the perspective of your automobile, the other
automobile is moving forward away from but viewed from the perspective of the
other automobile, you and your care are moving backwards, away from it. But nature could
care less because all that matters to nature is that a change
in distance between the two automobiles is increasing over some interval
of time as the result of application of force to the mass of one
or both automobiles in accordance with the laws of nature.
(V.3) Our perception of time is
particularly poor at accurately reflecting reality. Its aspect
related to corpus is entirely relativistic and the changes
in at are imperceptible to unus and our mind.
Indeed, the change is perceptible to another unus observing
us from a different frame of reference. What we can do is measure intervals
of time using material clocks. The sensory
data acquired in our brain results in the perception that
the hour hand of the clock has changed from 10:00 o’clock to 12
o’clock and that a time interval of 1 hours duration
has transpired. But take away the material clock and the perception of
the reality of that interval of time becomes
greatly distorted. The numerous biological clocks in our corpus serve
us well in enabling unconscious cause and effect
actions but are poor at measuring intervals of time.
We can count our heart beats which occur at somewhat uniform interval of
time but without reference to some standard of time measurement
the number counted have no meaning in terms of time. So we invent
a reference clock by counting “one thousand and one, one thousand and
two, one thousand and three …” in our “mind” with
each “one thousand and (number)” being the time it takes our brain
to process the “thought” producing the words “one thousand
and (number)” which we, in turn, take to be an approximation of the
“time interval” of one uniform “standard”
second. Difference in the actual time intervals between
beats of the heart and in the actual time intervals between
uniform “standard” second and the time interval required
for the brain to distort our perception of time when
the brain is used as the reference clock. Further the brain has no facility for
keeping track of the time interval beginning
and ending of events. Without reference to any clock at all, the mind has no
concept of time whatsoever. Our mind becomes,
as is said, “lost in time”. Indeed, the brain is a poor
clock.
(V.4) Awareness by way of sensory data is
our direct link with reality.
(V.5) Perception by way of awareness is
a once-removed illusion of reality.
(V.6) Consciousness by way of perception is
a twice-removed illusion of reality.
(V.7) Consciousness, perception and
awareness are all the children of the same sensory
data. That is to say, they are chain of cause-and-effect
phenomena resulting from the processing in the
brain of information acquired from the outside
world.
Consciousness, perception and awareness are
different relativistic perspectives of the same reality and
it is only the observation and mental processing of the same
sensory data by different physical parts of the brain that
creates the three different illusions of the same reality.
This corresponds in concept to the fact that quantum particles can exist
simultaneous as both particles and waves except in this case it is the
interpretation sensory data in our mind rather
than that of quantum particles. The mathematic and logic of this concept
are beyond the scope of this philosophy and whether this might be a
true quantum effect is subject to debate. But it does have the form of a
quantum effect and consciousness, perception and
awareness are all rooted in the same reality of
the physical world.
(V.8) We can never know reality itself. We can only know
the effects resulting from the cause that is
reality. And what effects we can know are
limited by biological senses to detect them. And the material realities
we can sense with our material
biological sensors are what we call matter,
energy and force. And what we think they might be is
pure sophistry.
(V) We can never know the true nature of reality. We can only biologically sense some of the effects of our experience in it. To think that we might truly know reality itself is pure sophistry.