interpretation
of reality like others
all is subjective
This shading of different realities is only the start.
It gets more fascinating – and much weirder. It’s one thing to allow that there might be an alternative perspective on colour, but quite another to accept that colour doesn’t actually exist outside our brains.
Not only is there no colour, but there’s also no sound or taste or smell.
What we perceive as red, for example, is just radiating energy with a wavelength of around 650 nanometres.
There’s nothing intrinsically red about it; the redness is in our heads.
What we think of as sound is just pressure waves, while taste and smell are no more than different conformations of molecules.
Although our sense organs do a splendid job of detecting each of these, it’s the brain that construes them, converting them into a framework for us to understand that world.
Valuable though this framework is, it’s an interpretation of reality and, like all interpretations, it’s subjective.
From It takes all 53 of our senses to bring the drab external world to life by Ashley Ward in the Guardian on Feb. 26.
Ms. Ward writes:
Underlying all of this is the brain’s frantic efforts to build its internal model, even though the sensory information it needs to construct that model has been cut off.
The results are odd, though to some they can feel disturbingly real.
But what is reality, and, more generally, what does it mean to be alive?
I repeat, what is reality, and, more generally, what does it mean to be alive?
I am reminded of Mr. Sandburg and his poem happiness.
I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children and a keg of beer and an
accordion.
To paraphrase Big Bill, Methinks we think too much.
No Haiku For You 