Am i or is the world?

[Madis]

A few days ago i had gotten to the middle of Kafka's "The process"(or something like that...don't know how it is in english).I was feeling a bit odd and then wrote an e-mail answering a friend's mail about shamans and such. As the writing advanced the weird feeling got stronger and i realized i don't actually know wether i exist or the universe exists, carrying me along. I thought like: when i percieve the physical universe around me, it takes form inside my mind. So there is no way for a being with a capability to think to perceive the world objectively. Only dead objects can perceive the world. Therefore the following thoughts popped into my mind: that i either am not and the universe creates my illusion of being or i am and the universe is not. Or both i and the universe are, but one and the other are completely unable to objectively perceive the other's existance. Like...i ain't high or nothing, just a bit confused. Can anyone share their wisdom so i may know more?

[thumontico]

I've never read Kafka, so I can't relate specifically. If it is an illusion, live your illusion. There is nothing we can say for sure, but if I agree something is there, and others do, it is likely for all intensive purposes, that it is real enough to consider its actual existence. It is as real as anything else, as it is your only model to work from, or to form perceptions upon. If you seek escape from this illusion, I would like to know how to go about that. Or what you seek upon expulsion.

[Madis]

I don't actually mean the world around me is an illusion, for an illusion requires some outside force to form in my mind. What i mean is that the wold itself, as it is, is completely out of perception for any thinking creature and therefore you cannot say it exists. When i see a flower i see it as red, but red is nothing by the terms of the universe. Then i may the wavelength of the light the flower reflects is something, but wavelength is once again something completely humanly subjective. And it goes on like this, untuil we get so far from the original concept of a flower, it means nothing to an average human. But we can never acchieve true understanding, either. So we can never say if the world really exists.

[thumontico]

Any being with the capability of sense percieve, conceptual thought is not required. All animals sense or percieve things in some way.

An illusion exists only in your mind. It is a creation of your mind, formed apart, yet sometimes coniciding with your perceptions. But in the end an illusion is a result of your mind, not external stimuli directly.

The wavelength is not subjective, it is objective, as is the flower. How you percieve that wavelength or the flower is subjective.

Light hits the flower, all but the blue wavelength is absorbed, so because of the chemicals in the petal blue color is reflected at my eye, which goes through my pupil, inverted, hits my retna, and neurotransmitters transduct the imagine in my mind. So what I see is 'blue', a color blind person may see 'yellow'. Perception can be agreed to be a completely subjective evaluation.

Because my perception is subjective it does not mean the flower does not exist. It has to. The flower exists in your mind, but it existed first in itself. The flower is a flower in reality or the world. The flower is a flower in your mind, but it also exists in itself.

Perhaps I exist only in my mind. That is, perhaps I exist as this body I am currently percieving or something else completely devoid of any similarities, what I am seeing is a product of my mind. My body is laying paralyzed on a bed (or anything you could imagine) and what I am percieving right now is strictly in my mind, I am not typing, but I am imagining I am typing. So what option does that leave me? Do I want to try to escape this supposed bondage? I suppose I would, if I had real reason to believe such a thing. But I could not, because assuming someone has the ability to control my mind, and wishes to keep me in bondage, could easily manipulate it so as to inhibit me from escaping.

So I find the arguement that I don't really exist a waste of time. Because I clearly exist enough or on some plane of consciousness to be typing right now. I to myself exist, I am typing this and submiting it and then 'you' read it. Whether 'you' are actually another being or another consciousness I can't really know for sure. Perhaps Madis is a product of my mind, but that product is as real as anything else. I ask the question what is real? I say it is what I am percieving, whether it exist objectively, or whether any other conciousnesss can percieve it or not, it exists for me and that is all I have. So, I exist, which is all I can ask myself of.

[randy]

so if i walk over and punch you in the head then didi really just do thjat ?

in this plane and space time ? or in another, or in several ?


what do you think ?

hehe

[Madis]

I am not saying there IS no world outside our mind. I am just saying it is impossible for any creature to confirm the existance of anything outside the thought of the moment. Therefore, while you read this i could just as well be created in your mind for the purpouse only of opening your eyes. Now this is mind fuck!
About the flower: i, too know a thing or too about physics. And yes, i know how we think the vision system works. But think now: the colour can be objectively(?) described by using the concept of "wavelength". Which concepts do we use to describe wavelength? We use the vectors of the magnetic and the electric field, and also length, or distance between two field-maximums. Let us leave aside the vectors and take distance. We are 3-dimensional beings and are uncapable of objectively percieving the 4-d time-space. For an example, if you smoke lots of grass, then the world around us slows down(if you try to keep watch on the clock), but in the greater perspective it speeds up(once was in a tent wit ppl and someone outside yelled cmon, uve been in there for 2 howers, and then, by my recon, five minutes later, they yelled we had been in there for three hours.). Now you may say we can use such objective means of measuring as clocks. This is where the special theory of relativity kicks in. The clocks cannot show the objective, the absolute time, because there is not one. And even as we take a look at the clock, our subjective minds can never to be trusted to give us the correct info.
But, hell, the point of existentialism is knowing the world is pointless and could therefore not exist, but still getting the best of it. So is there any point in wondering about the existance of the universe? NO. I just do it, because it's cool and keeps my mind open. It certainly is not a waste of time!

[thumontico]

Existence has no meaning, but that in no way means it does not exist. Meaning is not a necessary attribute for something to exists. I assume that what I am seeing and what is around me is actually there and that you are 'real' because that is what I percieve, whether its 'real' or not I can never know*. So I accept that uncertainty and go with probality and enjoy this perception of reality or illusion of reality as much as I can.

There is a cat, he has lived in a house with no windows for his entire life. He does not know there is something passed the doors that lead to the outside. We perhaps are the cat, but we have no real reason to believe there is something passed the door. Hope is not a reason, possibility does not induce reality.

*I accept that I very well may not exist, but in THIS existence in which I am 'conscious' and 'aware', I exist. I exist here, maybe it is not real, maybe I am part of something bigger and greater and all of that bullshit, but I exist and perform under such assumptions that what I percieve is accurate enough to the objective reality to consider it real enough to consider its actual existence.

[forest_pixie84]

The best thing i can say to you is that overall it's not to be questioned it's to be experienced.

why ask why? try bud dry...

[thecoyote]

Has anyone every read any Robert Anton Wilson? He had this idea that everything in the room or general space around you is contained within your head. Basically, all of you senses, everything you see feel hear taste and smell, are all inside of you skull. So really your actual skull is "outside" the room or the extent of your senses. Once you realize this, your "heads" become infinite, because then you percieve your head being outside of your perceptions, thats when its starts to make you crazy...

[darrellkitchen]

Im going to read this thread entirely, but I just want to respond to your original question with this ...


Emptiness is Form
Form is Emptiness

http://hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60532

Darrell

[darrellkitchen]

The wavelength is not subjective, it is objective, as is the flower.

How you percieve that wavelength or the flower is subjective.Question, Thumontico ...

If the wavelength or flower cannot be perceived then it cannot have existence. How then can we say that which does not exist is objective? If it can be perceived and that which can be perceived is subjective, then how can that which is subjective be objective?

What you're saying here is that which can be perceived is subjective. Yet, in order for it to exist so that we can call it objective then there has to be something there in which to perceive, or to be subjective.

That is, before we can call a wavelength a wavelength, or a flower a flower, don't we have to have a conscious perception of it in order to call wavelength "wavelength" or flower "flower"?

That being the case, then you're saying it is subject, yet not subjective but objective. So in essence you are saying it is both subjective and objective.

This is a contridiction in terms ... no?

Darrell

[thumontico]

The flower will still exist if you are not there to percieve it. You are not integral in the existence of the flower. The flower exists in itself.

I am not saying "that which can be perceived is subjective", I am saying that which IS percieved is subjective. Perception is subjective, but existence is objective.

These are two seperate entities with no actual relation, therefore there is no contradiction. The objectivity of the flower can never be percieved, but that does not mean it does not exist. The flower exists objectively in itself, unreliant on external perception, but ALSO simultaneously it exists in subjective perceptions, SEPERATE.

[forest_pixie84]

Has anyone every read any Robert Anton Wilson? He had this idea that everything in the room or general space around you is contained within your head. Basically, all of you senses, everything you see feel hear taste and smell, are all inside of you skull. So really your actual skull is "outside" the room or the extent of your senses. Once you realize this, your "heads" become infinite, because then you percieve your head being outside of your perceptions, thats when its starts to make you crazy...
This reminds me of that opening scene of on the simpsons where after they sit on the couch the "camera" looking down on the scene pulls father and farther up from the scene looking down on the house, then the city then the earth, then the planet, then the galaxy, then molecules, then dna, then cells, then homer's hair. Then homer says: "whoooooaaa"

[darrellkitchen]

[Edit:]Im sure that most of you who have subscribed to this particular thread has received via e-mail my previous response ... I recant that response to say that the conversation is for naught. It serves no purpose other than to create strife and disharmony. It serves no purpse ...


It is not conducive to peace, it is not conducive to understanding ... only one persons right to believe what they want to believe and their need to impose it on others.

For that purpose, there will be no further discussion from me. Adieu !

[/Edit:]


Darrell

[mati]

Ideas are not necessarily identical with the perceptions on which they are based. On what impression is the idea that objects not perceived, exist? Identity is nothing more than the memory of perceptions. To be is to perceive. Our perceptions are what makes up our mind. But they are not identical with our objects.

[thumontico]

I agree mati, but

That is solipsism. While I am leaning towards this lately, it continues to be quite unverifiable.

You are thinking in strict egoism. The world exists without you. It does not exist for YOU without YOU, but still exists...supposedly

[mati]

All I have to go on are my perceptions. And even those do not necessarily correspond to their objects, so what can we go on? I am a solipsistical nihilist. Nothing exists, whether of ourslves, others, or nothing whatsoever(nagarjuna)

[StonerBill]

why should existance need meaning? meaning is a concept only percieved within human psychology, and absolutely nothing else in teh universe. This means that meaning is pointless in the subject of the existance of the universe; whether it means the universe in our head or a real universe outside of our minds

[Zion]

I know the world will be here after die, and before I was born. So, thats the world I enjoy, not the one I could try to create, thats called fantasy.

[Lights]

I don't actually mean the world around me is an illusion, for an illusion requires some outside force to form in my mind.
Why is that? What if you read a sign as, "Your mother fucks good." But it actually said, "Your mother tucks you in at night." It's the simple misreading of a sign. It's happened to all of us. The first phrase was an illusion, but it was an illusion created entirely by your mind. You are all you need to exist, and even that's not how you preceive it.

[Lights]

Also: How do you know the color you think of as pink is what other people see when they see pink? for all you know the color that pops to mind when someonesays pink is what someone else thinks of when someone says orange. you've both been told all your lives that the color is pink, so you have nothing to compare it to. You can never know if the other is seeing something different from you.

The lesson this was meant to teach is don't discuss it and don't worry about it.

[Madis]

This is the first time i'm visiting hippy.com in months:& and i'm really surprised and happy to see the thread has been continuing its existence somewhat independantly of mine. Actually i'd like to apologize if any of you wasted your time on this because i now see it is all in vain. I've done a lot of reading since posting this thread and lost all interest in the subject. Still, i do have an opinion on the matter just in case someone ever asked. I don't know if there exists any world outside my mind, but it seems best for me to believe so, because else i'd spend my life thinking about it, not living it. Anyway, i like it. Thanks everyone for replying, i'd like to close this thread.

[MrFantasy]

Ok. If you were dreaming that someone punched you in the face, did it really happen? Is the face yours or is the fist? Is both of them? Is the dream yours or itself's? Are you creating it or experiencing it?