Qualia - Everyone Sees The World Differently

in #philosophy6 years ago (edited)


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We experience the world and that is more than just processes in the brain, it is contents of consciousness. However, the subjective experience content of a mental state can neither be captured through measurements nor expressed through words. Everything feels different for everyone in a certain way when we experience something.

This is called Qualia. This can be well represented by the example of colors. An object is not objective. Blue color does not really exist in the world. The impression of color is actually created in the brain. And precisely because this is so, we could never be sure that your red is also my red.

Colors are created in the brain by different wavelengths of light. In childhood we learn which color has which name. We assign a certain name to a certain color experience.

But how should i know that your experience of red is the same as my experience of red? The answer is: not at all. That is impossible to know. We have no access to the experience of other people. We are actually completely alone in our perception of the world. The psyche of others is unattainable for us. And also the objective reality is unattainable for us. Something that is experienced as outside and independent of one is only as it is for one, because the brain makes it appear so. And one consideration we also have to draw attention to is that there may be no real look of things.

In order to have my sight, there must always be a looking one and he always sees with his subjective instruments, his senses.

In this picture you can only see black spots of different shapes and sizes, right?

But then, once you have seen this second picture here,

bild2.jpg

you suddenly recognize in the previous picture what it shows. The chaos of black spots suddenly becomes a meaningful structure. Only by the memory of the other picture.

And surely you also know the pictures in which two or more different things can be recognized. These pictures show you how subjective the things are. Everyone first sees something else, what his brain und subjetive view show him.
Although the outer stimuli of course do not change, our perception and our experience is different. Our brain creates our reality and only to this reality we have access.

We experience things outside of us, although they arise in us in our brains, for everyone different. It is not easy to become aware of this.

The question that arises naturally is, how does this experience arise?

Is it due to the complex arrangement of matter, i.e. a materialistic explanation?

Or is consciousness perhaps the basis for everything at all?

I'd like to know what you think about.


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I think about the candle/face illusion a lot.

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It's called a "rubin vase."

We are actually completely alone in our perception of the world.

I'll agree with you that our subconscious creates our perspective of the world. Coincidentally, I just left a response about your Alita review, and I feel that graphic novel really pushes into the subject of subconscious guiding people's personality and perspective of the world.

Though, I didn't know there was a word for this. Happy to add this word to my vocab. :)

animations are the better way of artistic expression, especially because there are no limits like in a live action movie.
If you like animation, science fiction and philosophy, then you have to watch Love, Death & Robots

What a coincidence (again): a friend introduced me to that show today. I saw the Zima Blue episode. It was quite thought-provoking and still visually dazzling.

I actually haven't seen the Alita animation, only read the graphic novel. But that medium too provides limitless means of expression. It is my first exposure to Japanese literature, so I was positively impressed with how the author had the audacity to coin answers for questions like the meaning of life or humanity. Questions that are merely presented--not answered--in most pieces.

if you liked Batlle Angel: Alita, then take a look at Appleseed or Ghost in the Shell. These are also very philosophical and profound mangas/animes.

Thank you for the suggestion. I just started with Death Note as a large number of friends recommended that.

Skimmed over Appleseed's concept, seems to have a lot of similarities with Battle Angel: Alita. I hope to look into this one soon. :)

Love, Death & Robots... highly recommended

@oendertuerk i was just scrolling down to get some good article and the main image of your article made me click over here and after reading it let me appreciate your thoughts and work dear.. Such a nice article. Its really true everyone has their own perspective and have different thought process as some one will see it 6 and the other will 9 so we should apreciate everyones thought and try to clear our thoughts so that we dont get confuse.. So in end big thanks for such a beautiful article keep.posting more=)

many thanks @drakoscliff and i am happy that i can touch and bring people to move with my words :)

We experience the world and that is more than just processes in the brain, it is contents of consciousness.

There is a direct correlation between brain processes and our first hand experience of the world. If your brain no process, you no experience. If your brain processes differently than it did a minute ago (say, with the help of some psychoactive substances or a really solid kick to the head), then your experience also changes.

Hell, you can verify this yourself without any drugs, swift kick, or special equipment. Just hold your breath until your brain is starved of oxygen enough that it can't process normally and stars will begin to appear.

There's no doubt that neural activity IS what we experience, that brain processes and our experience ARE one in the same.

However, the subjective experience content of a mental state can neither be captured through measurements nor expressed through words.

Scientists are now imaging what someone is experiencing from brain waves. I totally sh*t you not. So... yeah, it can be captured and shown using EEG.

*"When we see something, our brain creates a mental percept, which is essentially a mental impression of that thing. We were able to capture this percept using EEG to get a direct illustration of what's happening in the brain during this process," says Nemrodov. *

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180222145037.htm

Everything feels different for everyone in a certain way when we experience something.

Colors feel like I'm really, really, really HIGH.

... we could never be sure that your red is also my red.

I understand now! That whole bit that doctors do to diagnose colorblindness is just new age hoooey! How could I have not seen it before! (massive sarcasm)

Colors are created in the brain by different wavelengths of light.

Yes, that's right, light shines directly into our brain. I need to rip out that whole bit about sense perception from my psychology 101 book. It's garbage, apparently.

But how should i know that your experience of red is the same as my experience of red? The answer is: not at all. That is impossible to know

Repeating this doesn't it make it any more true or profound. I've already pointed out two ways.

The psyche of others is unattainable for us.

Not entirely, as I've pointed out. Here's another reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_identification

Or maybe you're trying to point out that the human species aren't capable of telepathic mind reading. Oh, wait.... scientists are even doing that now.

https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-to-brain-mind-connection-lets-three-people-share-thoughts

The chaos of black spots suddenly becomes a meaningful structure. Only by the memory of the other picture.

You could perhaps have asked "do you see a mustachoid man in this seemingly random bit of dots?" At any rate, this is a classic example of perception, not consciousness. It's the sort of thing you see in psychology 101.

And surely you also know the pictures in which two or more different things can be recognized. These pictures show you how subjective the things are.

This isn't at all what those pictures demonstrate. They demonstrate two competing interpretations of the same image. Again, this is from the perception chapter of any psychology 101 book. If you mean, "this shows that your perceptions are the result of a perceptual process and thus bullshit to begin with", then I agree with you. Alas your first sentence :

We experience the world and that is more than just processes in the brain, it is contents of consciousness.

But I digress...

Our brain creates our reality and only to this reality we have access.

A++

We experience things outside of us, although they arise in us in our brains,

Dammit! You had it right! Now you introduce a hell of a contradiction.

I'll go ahead and give the spoiler. We don't experience anything "outside of us." It all happens in the brain. We experience something waaay down the pipeline from sensory nerves, but what comes through those pipelines are unprocessed (or at least, in the case of the optical nerve, underprocessed) neural impulses.

It is not easy to become aware of this.

It's not easy to become aware that you're reading neural impulses now, and not words.

The question that arises naturally is, how does this experience arise?

That would be the hard problem. Well, not really, you forgot something. I'll add it...

The question that arises naturally is, how does this experience arise from neural activity?

I will now answer your concluding questions:

Is it due to the complex arrangement of matter, i.e. a materialistic explanation?

Yes.

Or is consciousness perhaps the basis for everything at all?

Yes.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

@hardnell

wow... first of all, thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed comment and also for trying to answer some of my questions according to your point of view.

Well, your answers have made me wonder how you feel about the whole thing and I respect that you view a person's consciousness as a sequence and product of experience, of the brain. I know many who think that way. But personally I see it differently.

And yes, I know the attempts to measure human brainwaves and to reproduce them both visually and audioally. But what the program shows at the end is how the programmer sees things. My brainwaves will show the red what the programmer has programmed into the program as red. And so it is with many other things.

Which red is the truth now? Yours or mine? Does there even exist a red with a truth? It's the same with views and opinions. Which one of us is right? You with your opinion or I with mine? You see a 9 and think it's right and maybe the truth for you and I see a 6 and I think it's right for me and maybe its my truth.
You try to convince me of your opinion (your view = your truth = your reality) and I try to convince you of mine. (my view = my reality = my truth)

But I think that there is no ultimate truth. There are only views and everything is built on them ;)

In ref to both @oendertuerk and @hartnell, before venturing towards an ultimate truth, it needs to be precisely worded - reminds me of the computer in Hitchhiker's Guide. So, if all we experience is our mind, is there any state of mind that is universal, something we can all agree upon? This is not dissimilar to Descartes' meditation, although the answer is different.

There is a state of pure awareness (or consciousness) devoid of any other experience. It is the ground state of consciousness. We don't usually notice it as our attention tends to focus on the phenomena generated by the mind, be they deemed external or internal (the mind doesn't seem to care). It has various names, depending on the language of the texts, but the definitions show such words to be synonyms, and hence the experiences to be the same.

How can one experience a kind of stateless state? What is interesting is that the state has no phenomena that one can point to, and yet the memory of the state remains - it is not a memory-less sleep, it is a conscious state. Indeed, if I was more skillful, and diligent, I should be able to extend such periods of consciousness - so-called sleep yoga claims to have techniques to achieve this.

When one comes out of the pure state, there is an admixture of our standard conscious mental activity with the ground state still present. Mental activities appear with a certain detachment. Without practice, the ground state fades back into the background, yet can be accessed - and it will always be the same state.

And yet all are in a different state, in which each one moves his reality.
is the highest state the truth? who determines the truth?

To give an analogy, a computer can run many programs, yet its kernel, the heart of the OS, is the same. It can even be thought of as the interface between machine and experience, between biology and experience, for us.

Truth? That depends on the question. The answers to many questions do not come in words but in experiences. Hence the fascination with things such as Zen koans, which make no sense unless you are inside having the experience.

I wanted to make it clear why I upvoted and make a comment on what appears to be a habit of yours that runs counter to it.

Truth? That depends on the question.

Brilliant! That's probably the most succinct, accurate and rational thing that any one of us have said on this post.

The answers to many questions do not come in words but in experiences. Hence the fascination with things such as Zen koans, which make no sense unless you are inside having the experience.

Why try to sound smart when what you've just said is actually really smart?

Boggles the mind.

@aakom

In ref to both @oendertuerk and @hartnell, before venturing towards an ultimate truth, it needs to be precisely worded - reminds me of the computer in Hitchhiker's Guide.

Two points for the HHGTG reference. I agree, it's a damn good idea to define the problem before attempting to solve it. With that said...

So, if all we experience is our mind, is there any state of mind that is universal, something we can all agree upon

Define mind.
Define state of mind.
Make sure to define them definitively. ;)

This is not dissimilar to Descartes' meditation, although the answer is different.

If you mean "Cognito, ergo sum" then that would be a statement, not a meditation. Sure, it's a statement that summarizes the conclusion of a long chain of thought but unless you know that chain of thought and how that conclusion was reached, then it's mmmm tricky. In other words, it's about as useful as 42 without the question.

There is a state of pure awareness (or consciousness) devoid of any other experience.

There is a BDSM squirrel that plays blackjack with it's friends deep in the forest of zanzabar. If you don't get my sarcasm, allow me translate: "Sure, if you say so."

It is the ground state of consciousness.

Uh huh. hmmm..... go on...

We don't usually notice it as our attention tends to focus on the phenomena generated by the mind, be they deemed external or internal (the mind doesn't seem to care).

Hmm. This is overly complex and getting pretentious.

It has various names, depending on the language of the texts, but the definitions show such words to be synonyms, and hence the experiences to be the same.

Full on pretentiousness achieved.

How can one experience a kind of stateless state?

One could imagine that a bullet to the head might do the trick.

Then again, I have to admit, that two other possibilities are possible here:

  1. "stateless state" is pseudo-profound bullshit.
  2. "stateless state" is something you don't really understand.

What is interesting is that the state has no phenomena that one can point to, and yet the memory of the state remains - it is not a memory-less sleep, it is a conscious state. Indeed, if I was more skillful, and diligent, I should be able to extend such periods of consciousness - so-called sleep yoga claims to have techniques to achieve this.

It seems to me that you're just aping understanding of what happens when you enter a state without ready associations to reference it by while in other states. I'm not sure where you get the idea that there's something called "sleep yoga", especially since sleep is a primary metaphor in esoteric schools. Waking consciousness is regarded as a form of sleep. The point is to wake the fuck up.

(15 minutes of research later)

Well dammit, my first impression in the above paragraph was wrong.

What you're talking about is "yoga nidra", which, from the very first sentence of the wikipedia article the plot thins considerably.

Yoga nidra (Sanskrit: योग निद्रा) or yogic sleep) is a state of consciousness between waking and sleeping, like the "going-to-sleep" stage, typically induced by a guided meditation.

In other words, it's hypnosis. Since a lot of people fear hypnosis, hypnotists (points to self[1]) have a practice of referring to a "talking induction" as "guided meditation." 'Cause that's what guided mediation is: an induction and reading of some kind of script to the hypnotee.

If you're really into this, you would do better to find some crazy local individual who geeks out on this sort of thing to hypnotize you or otherwise just to look into self-hypnosis. Better yet, learn hypnosis yourself. It's not that difficult and really really fun if you learn from the likes of Richard Bandler, Major Mark, and Ross Jeffries. Especially Ross Jeffries. :)

[1] This is a hypnotist joke you won't get. I've included it to entertain myself as the butt of the joke is myself. :)

You assume too much yet know so little.
So, tell me, what is the deepest possible state according to hypnosis and what does it feel like?
In your own words, of course, and from experience, if possible.

You assume too much yet know so little.

So, tell me,

Look, I was just giving you a heads up, and point out where there's some good fun the be had, you can take it or leave it. If you want to ignore it because you think you're somehow special, you're welcome to do that, too.

I'm a pragmatic guy.

what is the deepest possible state according to hypnosis and what does it feel like?

There's no such thing as "according to hypnosis." Hypnotism isn't some kind of authority that makes definitive statements about itself that all the little padowans must believe.

Using the "deep" metaphor to describe hypnosis is a pet peeve of many a hypnotist, so there's a clue for you right there.

In your own words, of course, and from experience, if possible.

I can't answer that, as asked. The best answer I can give is: hypnosis feels however the hypnotist wants it to feel.

@oendertwat (one good misspelling deserves another. :) )

wow... first of all, thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed comment and also for trying to answer some of my questions according to your point of view.

It's twat I do. You're welcome.

Well, your answers have made me wonder how you feel about the whole thing and I respect that you view a person's consciousness as a sequence and product of experience, of the brain.

Maybe I totally mucked it up, but that's not at all what I was saying.

My point was that experience (not consciousness) is a product of brain function. Is that clearer? The hard problem of consciousness isn't well named. It's precisely the hard problem of experience.

To summarize:

  1. We have experience.
  2. WTF?!?

Note the lack of the word "consciousness" in that summary. To be fair I think I did use the word "consciousness" out of convenience.

I know many who think that way. But personally I see it differently.

I honestly don't care how someone "sees" it (unless it's a personal issue.) I'm a pragmatist, so I kinda stick to the domain of demonstration and doing what works.

And yes, I know the attempts to measure human brainwaves and to reproduce them both visually and audioally.

That's not at all what said researchers are doing.

But what the program shows at the end is how the programmer sees things.

There's no "programmer" who decides what is seen in this case. Instead, machine learning is used to decode the brainwaves. At any rate, what's going on is like listening to the circuitry of a television to determine the picture that's being displayed on the TV.

My brainwaves will show the red what the programmer has programmed into the program as red. And so it is with many other things.

Actually, the color red is generated in an opponent process with the color green (cyan, really). It's hardwired into us as much as breathing. It exists both because of this process and because it's hardwired. You can experience this yourself by fatiguing one side or the other of the opponent process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent-process_theory

Don't take my word for it! See it for yourself!
http://www.animations.physics.unsw.edu.au/jw/light/complementary-colours.htm

Here is a really wild example of fatiguing an opponent process at work (I know it says "hypnotize yourself" but that's not really what's going on.):

Variations can exist in individual perception of colors, but not due to some "mystery of individual consciousness." This is well known and as I sarcastically pointed out, easy to test for. I'm sure you've seen these.

Which red is the truth now? Yours or mine? Does there even exist a red with a truth? It's the same with views and opinions. Which one of us is right? You with your opinion or I with mine? You see a 9 and think it's right and maybe the truth for you and I see a 6 and I think it's right for me and maybe its my truth.
You try to convince me of your opinion (your view = your truth = your reality) and I try to convince you of mine. (my view = my reality = my truth)

But I think that there is no ultimate truth. There are only views and everything is built on them ;)

No offense, but this can only come directly from the armchair. I'm not trying to convince you of "my opinion." The idea of some "ultimate truth" doesn't even register on my radar as anything worth considering.

I am describing things that can be directly demonstrated. From my first comment:

If your brain no process, you no experience. If your brain processes differently than it did a minute ago (say, with the help of some psychoactive substances or a really solid kick to the head), then your experience also changes.

Hell, you can verify this yourself without any drugs, swift kick, or special equipment. Just hold your breath until your brain is starved of oxygen enough that it can't process normally and stars will begin to appear.

Hi there.
Great post. It reminded me of a hay export company I used to work for here in Western Australia. Every year the managers and others would gather to grade the quality of the years hay. It would last a few days and they would look at, feel, smell and sometimes taste the hay. One of the most important aspects of the hay was it's colour. The greener the better. The funny thing was that everyone had a different definition of what good green looked like. Lots of arguments as you can imagine. I believe they now rely much more on laboratory analysis results which would make for a far less entertaining grading experience...... ;-)
Cheers.
BB

For everyone to see/experience the same thing would be really boring. Different views/experience makes life more interesting.

Got it!
But now I'm wondering, if our brain creates our own reality, how could you know that the drawing above means the same for you as for the author?

You see a big old man beetwen the lines... What if the drawer just saw a little mature guy? Or a women? How can you explain that my red is not the same as you red, if we see the same things?

Sometimes the life has just no meaning, it is what it is.

Thanks for your time 🤞

ty you for looking by @cuervonegro and also for looking by :)

please! more articles like this. <3

Hi, your article was interesting, Anyway i'm new on steemit. Nice to meet you!

ty @cryptocorn - welcome to steemit !
i am sure you will enjoy it here ! ;)

Nice write up

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I used to think about that all the time is my green the same as yours but now I think as our brains created equally (mean the brain itself and nerves system) most likely it's the same
Thanks for sharing

I love things like this! Nice one bro. I hope there are more articles like this.. :)

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Wow! Such a wonderful photography and very nice article . Really your photography is awesome. I like your post. Thank you for sharing with us..
Have a Great Day.💜👍👍👍

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