Got carried away because I got to writing about consciousness. It's a fascinating subject, and I don't think I've ever fully written about some of my philosophical curiosities about what consciousness is in any serious form, though I might have jotted down a couple quick sketches of ideas a while back.
In any case, Oscar Wilde obliged.
Aphorism 57
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Oscar Wilde
Interpretation
I believe in the immensity of the unknown.
What exists is orders of magnitude greater than what we perceive to exist. This remains true if we cut down the sheer volume of the cosmos by focusing only on the things which have value to us (i.e. those that impact our lives).
I am often fascinated by the amount of unknown information that exists in the world. I'm not sure if this is something that is regular, or if there's something in me that pushes me toward this. A large part of it is probably down to the fact that I grew up playing video games all the time, and while the games I played were quite complex they were still only knowable.
It terrifies me to think that I do not know what is in other peoples' heads. That's a bit of a strong wording, since it falsely implies that I form some distrust of others or have a phobia.
Rather, I think it's a form of encounter with the sublime. I realize that those around me have things going on internally that are inscrutable to me, even with conversation. I'm not the most socially aware, though I'm not particularly bad at it (I like to describe myself as average in this way, as I am in many things), and while I can catch on-to things when they're obvious I don't have any Sherlock-esque mind-reading or subconscious body language mastery.
However, while this will sometimes consume my thoughts, I find it more interesting to see what we know.
I've read a few interesting things about consciousness, and all that I really know about it is that it's quite an incredible thing.
One of two things in particular that I've thought a lot about is the classical philosophical question of similarity in perception: that is to say, the question of whether everyone perceives in universally similar ways.
For instance, if the sky is blue to you and blue to me, is the sensation that we get in our eyes the same essential blue, or does each person's particular perception of it form based on a different conscious structure? It may seem self-evident that all people perceive similarly (since, after all, we can universally represent these concepts barring some barriers in communication), but on the other hand it may simply be that everyone has fundamentally similar responses to the same stimuli but the actual conscious representation of that stimulus is different.
The other is the accuracy of consciousness. How well do we actually perceive our world?
If I see a snake, is my perception shaped by something biological, or is it a strictly absolute perception? The same caveats as above apply (e.g. we can represent a snake in pictures), but again the nature of consciousness itself may play tricks upon us.
I also get to thinking about physics. What are the odds that there are whole phenomenological structures that underlie the fabric of reality that we simply cannot attune ourselves to? Things like time, for instance, are nearly there (since we perceive time only from a particular point at any moment) , but what is to say that there aren't other systems and rules that we simply will never know because we aren't the sort of being to interact with them?
We know that the brain is full of cheap hacks and tricks; this is why I see flickers of my cat, who has been deceased for over a month now, in the corner of my eye when I begin to move around. My brain is reminding me to look for the cat lest I trip over her (she was quite fond of causing such accidents, though she usually came out on the worse end of such exchanges), and still expects to see her despite her absence (and the conscious permanence of it, since I held her cold body in my hands). Years of life with her are not easily overwritten by the conscious over-mind.
Another thing that I have questions about is dreams.
There's a phenomenon with dreams where the dreamer sees the future, or things that they will only see in the future.
There are three possible responses to this:
- These people are credible, and they have seen through time.
- These people are frauds, and they are delusional or trying out a con.
- These people are experiencing a phenomenon from the intersection of the conscious and unconscious mind.
Of these three, I am predisposed to the third option, at least in the majority of cases.
My skepticism prevents me from fully ruling out the first. Just as it does not prescribe me to believe such accounts, I cannot reject them without examination. The only absolutes I hold faith in are moral absolutes, and since I believe in an omnipotent God there's no reason why one couldn't get a vision of the future (assuming God chooses to grant it), though I haven't necessarily believed in any particular case I've seen.
The second is the cynical view. It may be true that some people who believe themselves to see the future are delusional, and that some are charlatans claiming to be true believers. However, the knowledge that this is a possibility should not be transferred into an absolute, and delusions are only delusional if evidence exists to the contrary; it is possible that someone believes themselves to have seen the future but has no evidence to the contrary and therefore is perfectly logical in their beliefs, which doesn't meet the standards for a delusion. In our enlightenment we would frown on this, but I still think that it's possible.
Carl Jung recounts an event where he was waiting for a book on alchemy and he saw symbols from the book in his dreams before it arrived. He claims to have had no prior exposure to these symbols, and that on multiple occasions similar events occurred.
Now, I'm not a believer in the paranormal (see my skeptical position above), and I don't think that Jung is necessarily much of one either (though he certainly is a little New-Agey at times), but I think that this is perhaps an example of an intersection of psychological elements.
If we go on the theory that consciousness is a black box; it takes stimuli that are not necessarily known and produces results that may not actually resemble the original stimuli, things that are perceived in dreams may actually be capable of coming true in real life. The memory and perception of the dream will then switch over to match the phenomena as it is observed in consciousness (altered memory being irreversible and effectively as good as the stimulus being altered), or the stimulus will be altered to match the subconscious perceptions from dreams.
A crappy illustration of my theory of perceived dream precognition. Pardon my handwriting. The first is supposed to illustrate a remembered dream being transformed so that the memory , the second the inverse and less likely case that a dream shapes later perceptions of reality.
This could be disproven by a number of tests, like the transfer of one of these dream stimuli to a concrete form before the actual event that the dreamer claims occurred in their dreams before it happened in reality, but I have never seen a credible example of this in my readings or studies. Esoteric accounts, like those cited by the people who claim that Nostradamus had prophetic visions, are unconvincing to me because they do not withstand Occam's razor.
How perceived dream precognition could be proved to be something other a product of memory revision, though not necessarily ruled out as an unconscious process being mistaken for something else. Pardon my handwriting. I think in the future I will use vector graphics instead of my pen.
The problem with this is that the accurate representation of something within a dream that would be satisfactory as a proper proof of precognition would be too difficult for most people to execute. If we could actually see into dreams it would become a trivial thing to prove, but this is subject to the other issues with consciousness.
Another issue is that the brain is a prediction engine. Dreams can predict something without having absolute foreknowledge of the future; if you know that someone is sick, you may dream of their death without being certain of it, but having enough evidence for an unconscious anxiety to become concrete and break into your psyche.
There's also a chance that something that someone thinks they don't know and have never been exposed to has actually crossed their path before; Jung had possibly witnessed some of the symbols of alchemy in art or literature before he had actually received the book, and had dreamed of unfamiliar symbols that he subconsciously knew to be related to alchemy, which just so happened to also be within the contents of the book.
In the end, I suppose it doesn't matter in practice (this is the answer to most philosophical questions), but it sure is a fascinating point of study.
In any case, I think that Oscar Wilde is making a point about consciousness being a great mystery, I agree with him entirely, and I can certainly ramble and lose track of my point quite a bit.
Resolution
Don't take observations for granted.
Don't worry about what lies behind the veil, take in what I see and understand that.
Stay curious, but don't let it get in the way of my life.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://blog.homoeoteleuton.com/reflections-on-aphorisms-34/
Congratulations @kwilley!
Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following category:
So true.
There is immense that is unknown, I believe Aliens do exist and they are here on earth somewhere. They visit earth time to time. Maybe we do not know where and when, or maybe the government knows of the weird stuff and hides it. Zombie exists too, not that the virus will spread like in movies but they do exist. And there is so much we don't know from what goes on in a human mind to what I am actually thinking right now.
When you say this:
Has it ever happened to you - You are somewhere doing something and you feel you have seen this moment before, like this moment has came to your brain before it happened?
It happens with me and with some people I know.
I believe the universe exists inside me. From where I sit right now, infinity extends in all the directions, therefore I am the source of everything I see. From where you sit, infinity extends in all directions as well. I have a alive ball inside me which I call universe - in it exists past, present and future all together. There are a pictures that I have seen and I know will come true in future.
I have a picture in my head where I am standing there and my father is there clicking a photograph but I could not see my mother in it. So not sure where she is that time in future. Scares me a little.
But it happens I see flashes and then they do come true in future.
I tend to be skeptical about any particular interpretation of the unknown. Just because I can't see something is neither proof nor disproof of its existence, but the important thing is acknowledging that there are limits to what we can know.
I've had feelings of deja vu in many occasions. There are times when I can't tell whether or not it's really based on anything, and other times when there are moments where there definitely is some intense connection between prior perception and the current.
My personal theory is that the nature of consciousness includes elements that lie outside the physical world we can perceive. It makes sense given what we know about the cosmos that a system within a system cannot represent that system perfectly, but only through simplification and abstraction. What the nature of this intangible element is falls outside my knowledge, and I don't know that I'm within my rights to guess at it.
Dreams are a hidden issue for me, there are many theories about these in which I do not know what to believe, today I dreamed of unknown people having a hard time, in my life I had seen those people, I do not know why I dream of people I've never seen, good or bad things happen to him, but I do not even remember their faces well to know who they are. At the end of the day, it was interesting to read this article, it opened my mind a little more
One of the theories regarding dreams in general is that they're part of the unconscious reaching out to us. I tend to buy into this, though I'm not certain that it's applicable to every dream.
What I've found is that dreams often are symbolic if you don't know the people or situations clearly. I find myself prone to animal symbolism in my dreams (especially cats and birds, though sometimes also dogs and wolves), as well as place symbolism.
To take a stab at the unknown people in hard situations motif, I have had similar dreams. In my case, I found that it was at a time in my life where I was going through a certain personal crisis. I was a young college student and my father had lost his job; I was grappling with whether I would continue my studies, putting my family in debt (which violates my convictions) but doing what my father wanted me to do, or to leave school and try to work. At the time, I had the dream and variations upon it quite frequently for a couple months, at which point my father had found a job and the crisis ended.
I now believe that the dream was supposed to be a sort of message to myself from my subconscious: life is hard, and it happens to everyone. Rather than sinking into a depressive and indecisive state, I should have firmly committed to one path or the other and annihilated regrets by accepting all the consequences and benefits of the road I followed.
Dream interpretation is a tricky subject, and I'm not particularly gifted at it but I've had some experience and seen a lot of interpretations from people (actually, I'm in a bit of a stint where my current dreams are inscrutable to me right now, though I have had times when I am keenly aware of what my dreams mean). There are other issues that should be considered: Does a dream recur? Are you yourself in the dream? One of Jung's theories is that it is impossible to interpret a dream wrong; that is to say that if you come to a satisfying conclusion the dreams will stop, but if you don't and the dreams continue you will know that you are wrong. I don't know that I believe that wholeheartedly, but I've found it true that most of my stressful and undesirable recurring dreams end once they have been interpreted.
I highly recommend Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols (affiliate link) for dreams, since it includes not only Jung's work but also that of some of his followers and a lot of overviews of dream analysis as well as symbolism that is common in dreams. It's written for people with limited experience with depth psychology, but it's also got some deep elements to it. Just be forewarned that Jung's chapter is kind of dry, as Jung tends to be.
The Life Examined (affiliate link) is a bunch of case studies written up in detail. I think that Grosz is more accessible than Jung, but his book's also more expensive and doesn't have the advantage of multiple perspectives.
We can only know what we 'perceive'. That is one of the few true statements available to humans. Another would be to know we exist. Thanks to Descarte. I think, therefore I am. The next question. Do we believe what we sense, and in the case of dreams, think. My experience has taught be through the observation of others and at times myself, that our senses and minds are not so reliable, especially once memory gets involved. So who knows what portenious stock we should put into dreams. Some of them do indeed seem to carry message and seem to reach out beyond mind. But perhaps we are making that up and looking for the connections. Humans are programmed to look for connections and patterns through evolution.
Whatever the case, dreams and sleep are absolutely essential to proper functrion in the world. For sure the help to order and center the mind. So get your full.
I almost thought of talking about Descartes' demon during this, because the ergo cogitat sum is a pretty big and important step in the philosophical development of knowledge.
For me, what I find is that dreams are a great way of tapping into things that you wouldn't ever say, but which reflect your position. There are people, including Carl Jung, who I highly respect, who argue that it might even go a step beyond that, and I don't necessarily intend to contradict them, but I don't see any evidence to support that.
One of the things that I found interesting recently was an interview with the author of a book called The Flat Mind, in which there was a lengthy discussion of the unconscious (e.g. the work of depth psychologists like Jung and Freud), which the author vehemently denied could exist but also pointed out that there was a deep mire of forces and instincts that impact our conscious perceptions, which is basically what the whole notion of the unconscious and subconscious is.
I think that our brains are great at forming narratives (I see this trend coming together in my readings in various fields, from psychology and philosophy to economics and history), and the dream is a great way to get a glimpse at our brain trying to form narratives. What exactly it has at its disposal when it tries to do that is beyond me, but I will say that after I manage to interpret a dream (which is not terribly frequent, and most of my dreams have no perceptible meaning) I usually figure out a solution to a problem in my life. I wouldn't be surprised if it's something to do with the memory formation process and a sort of re-analysis of existing information, which we perceive consciously through a half-active system and therefore witness as a passenger rather than an agent.
Absolutely. My dreams are very strong in the narrative aspect and at times almost supply somthing akin to therapy. Good sleep is good mental health.
If nothing else, I find that getting enough sleep makes me less of a mess during the day. I went from working 70 hours a week quite frequently my first year teaching to 45 on average my second year, and it was amazing how much more productive I was with less time because I wasn't forcing myself out of rhythm to meet arbitrary goals.
I can relate on that one:)
This is a good leading principle. To put Wilde and Occam together, "the true mystery of the world is the visible when too many unnecessary assumption about things are made.
That's how gossiping spread, now in the form of fake news which of course are intentional and have a different purpose but it is amazing how in this day and age with so many technological devices that were supposed to sharpen our perception of the world, fix it for us to assess it objectively, etc, we can't still trust what is presented to us as unquestionable reality/truth.
We should remain skeptical, but we can't afford to waste time, energy and emotions on speculations that would lead us nowhere, unless we are artist and cannot part with imagination and creativity, the heart and soul of human innovation.
My general rule of thumb is to follow Montaigne's rule of thumb: If you don't have a reason to believe something, ignore it. You don't reject things, but you also don't cling to them either.
Too much of what people do revolves around partial perception being treated as fact. The majority of the information we surround ourselves with is only dubiously reliable, and even the good stuff requires more context than we typically can handle.
There's an expression that "perfect is the enemy of good", which is very much the case when trying to understand reality. If your goal is to achieve 100% accuracy and depth in thought, the only result is that you will sacrifice everything to get to a single epiphany (and even then there is no guarantee that the goal of one's inquiries will be achieved), and I think it's tragic that more people fall into this trap.
Hi kwilley,
Visit curiesteem.com or join the Curie Discord community to learn more.
Congratulations @kwilley! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!