Reality and the soul - Does this make sense to you?

[Rebelde para Siempre]

For all we know, this world may be a dream. This reality may not be the real or only one. It's all a matter of perception. Prove to me that this is the sole reality when our brain simply interprets it in our way. This is only our world. Therefore, a person under the influence of psychoactive drugs, or undergoing sensory deprivation is simply experiencing their own version of reality, a reality which is just as real as this world. Their own world, with it's own unique sights, smells and sounds.

Even the body we inhabit may simply be a piece of lifeless flesh if our conciousness didn't exist. Actually, the only thing we are sure exists concretely is our conciousness. Is this the soul? Our conciousness doesn't exist in the form of matter, but we still know it exists. Maybe this is the only thing which truly exists; the universe, our senses, they all only exist within the mind and soul.

[BOZG]

That's music to my ears RPS. That's pretty much exactly what I believe.

[Rebelde para Siempre]

Good, I thought I was going crazy for a moment.

[Pete]

AHHH! We were talking about taht on Chit Chat last night! I am with you two!

Sometimes I startthinking that no one else exists. I it is just me, and everyone else is a figment of my imagination, or this is just a dream and I will never wake up while I still breath. I don't want to wake up.

[redstar2000]

Solipsism (Latin: solus alone + ipse self)

1. The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified.

2. The theory or view that the self is the only reality.

(dictionary.com)

Have you also considered the "brain-in-a-vat" hypothesis? A "mad scientist" has discovered how to keep a human brain alive in the laboratory container...with carefully measured and located electric currents, he stimulates the brain in such a way as to accurately reproduce the sensations of the real world. There is no way for the helpless brain to know that it is actually living in a jar and not in the world it perceives.

Folks do think of the oddest things.

:cool:

[Blibblob]

I shall say it again for no reason. Perspective, reality, morality, right, wrong, it is all shit. There is no absolute, you are a monkey, and will always be a stupid monkey.

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

Quote: from CrazyPete on 12:20 pm on Mar. 2, 2003
AHHH! We were talking about taht on Chit Chat last night! I am with you two!

Sometimes I startthinking that no one else exists. I it is just me, and everyone else is a figment of my imagination, or this is just a dream and I will never wake up while I still breath. I don't want to wake up.


Ahhhhh, I sometimes have the same experience.

Thinking is this all real?

[mentalbunny]

This is familiar ground, my sister is a solipsist, except she believes in a few other individuals like her girlfriend and my brother, but that's about it.

It's a bit like Descartes, cogito ergo sum, there's no proof for anyone else and you can't prove to someone else that you exist. I feel like that sometimes, bu I just ignore it and then the problem goes away (think Wittgenstein, but maybe it's someone else), a bit like the free-will/determinism question.

[canikickit]

For all we know, this world may be a dream. This reality may not be the real or only one. It's all a matter of perception. Prove to me that this is the sole reality when our brain simply interprets it in our way. This is only our world. Therefore, a person under the influence of psychoactive drugs, or undergoing sensory deprivation is simply experiencing their own version of reality, a reality which is just as real as this world. Their own world, with it's own unique sights, smells and sounds.

It's true, but it's no big deal. So what? If your brain is sitting in a jar somewhere; this is the only reality you know. It is no less real than the reality which you percieve to be real. You are only defined by what you smelltouchtasteseehear, and if you are in actuality not experiencing those things it doesn't matter, because you sure as hell think you are. It doesn't make a difference.

[canikickit]

I should add, that when your brain is dragged out of the jar, it will make a difference, but until that day...

[Pete]

Or the colour theory. I see a different spectrum than everybody else!

[mentalbunny]

Some people may consider this whole topic irrelevant, but I would like to say something before someone says something of that sort:

If you have considered the possibility of the brain-in-a-jar theory or something like that then you are in a way slightly prepared for the possibility that one day reality will be nothing like you imagine it to be now.

I was having a discussion with an aquaintance of mine who is a Christian with pretty fundamental beliefs and she could not grasp what I was saying. She was saying that if I sat down on a chair then I was having faith in that chair's existence, but I explained that that was not the case, and I was perfectly prepared for the chair to be a figment of my imagination, because there is a chance, however small, that everything and everyone is a figment of my imgaination.

Sorry for the ramblings, but I hope I've made my point.

[Pete]

You have mentalbunny.

The internet does not really exist. It is just the firing of electrons in proper order and it appearing on a screen with lights in the back. Wierd isn't it? This is probaly justl ike the stock market, no one understands it but a lot of people use it. Or maybe since everything else is static, the internet is the only thing that is concrete that we can look at. Sort of like the Matrix. Our life rifht now is alot of "I' and "O"'s but the real world is inside the computer, and the computer screen is just a way of looking into the real world (on the other side if you are in that world you can look through a screen at this world). I hope that made sense. Think the Matrixa nd read again if it didn't.

[CheViveToday]

Or the colour theory. I see a different spectrum than everybody else!

When you tell me that something is red, I agree. However I'm really seeing green, but red to me means the color green. Oh no, my brain...is being...pulled from...the jar.....

[Pete]

Yes that is exactly it!!

I have a theory that everyone has the same favourite colour. It is universal to all humans, but since we see them as different words (like my red and your blue) we think we have different favourite colours, while we really have the same one!

[CheViveToday]

Very interesting. This stuff is pretty freaky. What is so damn cool about these theories is that humans will always be wondering about them, becuase they're impossible to prove or disprove.

[Umoja]

I've thought of that theory to, but I guess I've rationalized it away. Three people all see a chair and agree it's a chair, although the other two people could have been thought up by the other two, they reach a consensus on what the chair is. Two of the people see the other, and agree what they look like. Later the person who was looked at sees themselves, and look the same, and even without seeing themselves would have looked the same..... I guess thats the way I see it, even though the Brain-in-the-jar theory still works.

[Pete]

Another question. What langauge do you think in? I think that has to do alot with how you understand the world, as each langauge has evolved with different ideals of the different cultures that created them.

ENGLISH.

[canikickit]

I can distinctly say that I think in English, but a friend of mine says he doesn't know what language he thinks in. He was raised speaking two languages, and is unable to determine which he thinks in.

This is quite an alien concept for me, I form sentences and phrases in my thoughts, which are obviously in English. I don't know whether he is unable to distinguish because his brain is very primitive and he doesn't actually have reasoning or rational thoughts or if it is because he has two native tongues.


I have a theory that everyone has the same favourite colour. It is universal to all humans, but since we see them as different words

What do you mean? If I see a colour, let's say a red car, it is quite distinct from a blue car.

I don't know what you mean, I don't even have a favourite colour. But there are different colours.

Perhaps it is some sort of abstract theory where you actually mean personalities instead of colours.

I disagree with you all, by the way.

[Pete]

I mean that each eye percieves everything differently. What I see as 'brown' you may see as my 'green' but we both call it 'brown' because we were raised to do so.

[CheViveToday]

Canikickit, what language does your friend dream in?

I've spoken English all my life, therefore that is what I have always thought and dreamed in. However I've been taking Spanish class all through highschool, and I'm now in Spanish IV. I've noticed that some Spanish words have creeped into my thoughts and dreams as of late.

[Umoja]

I've read confessions of people who've learned Esperanto, and they claimed that they started to dream in Esperanto. The bilingual people I know usually say they either think in English, or that they just think.... I better become fluent in Esperanto so I can find out.

[mentalbunny]

I do occasionally think in french, german or nothing, but usually it's english.

I'd like to know if people think in sounds, pictures or words? I think in a bit of each.

[Pete]

I think in pictures, except when I get theoritical then it is a mix of words and pictures, french and english but mostly english. I write to put my thoughts into words.

[Blibblob]

Another thing that relates to what ive heard here.

The "Allegory of the Cave by Plato". Reality is what you see, not exactly what it is. You cant describe to somebody what they dont know. Another book relating to this is Giver by Lois Lowry. If somebody sees only black and white, how can you explain the colour red to them?

[Pete]

The Allegory of the Cave. I remember watching a video on that in Ancient Civ. Class last year. It was talking about how to explain to a slave that it is possible to work and get paid for it, instead of punished for not working hard enough. But the slaves where looking at the shadow of a man being whipped on the cave wall and hearing his screams. They could not believe that rewards even existed. They got frightened and worked harder in fear of punishment. And then they had the same lecture while eating fruit a week or so later and then they worked even harder in hopes of more fruit!

[Krobanikov]

Platos Allegory of the Cave relates how that people are enslaved to mere shadows cast on the walls of a cave which they perceive as reality.Today these shadows are cast by means of the media,television,movies,music,etc,and people are as much slaves in this modern age,no,I would say that the enslavement is far greater.
Plato envisioned one making his way out of this cave into the light of true reality by which he recognizes at last that all men are held captive to the vain imaginations of others and thus being enlightened the man chooses to return and redeem his fellows.This is the idea of the philosopher king,an enlightened monarch.
One may read countless volumes concerning the cause of mans misfortune and misery but at the end of the day one is cast down only by the power of his own mind and likewise his liberation can only come by freeing the mind of all the prejudice and fear that has been implanted from the first moment that a human being is old enough to absorb and assimulate information,or in such case misinformation.
As for the idea of soul,this is merely all that goes into the constitution of ones very being,his hopes,dreams,loves,dislikes,etc ... it can be said that soul is nothing more than raw emotions.It is good to have goals but it is equally important that such goals do not look toward ones advancement at the expense of others,and greater still is the goal of advancing humanity as a whole,for such an idea elevates the singular soul along with all those he reaches out to touch and in this no one need ever fear nor dread the idea of being alone.

(Edited by Krobanikov at 12:45 am on Mar. 4, 2003)

[Pete]

Yes that is it. The light in the cave. No one dared move towrads the light though. They were held in fear of their own minds. They did not dare step from where they where seated.

Welcome and thank you comrade!

[Blibblob]

Perfect. Couldnt have said it better myself. Actually, definatly couldnt have. AHHH!, I SUCK!

[mentalbunny]

This thread is awesome, thanks for starting it, whoever started it, sorry i can't remember!

Well I'd add something but it looks like it's pretty much all been said and I'm tired but thought I'd let you knwo that I really appreciate all this wonderful thinking.

[Pete]

This music keeps my mind in a straight line. As well as my diving into US government files for Norm. AHH MY BRAIN. I had this thought today. Let me retrieve if from creativity land.

I create my own pain. I can force my self to hurt so much with my mind that I cry. I don't do it often, but I have before. I don't mean to any time soon. Mind over Matter.

A communist doesn't have to be materialist.

[CheViveToday]

The mind creates pain all the time. People who are addicted to pain-killers begin to hurt when they haven't had any in a while. It's not because they're injured or have any other reason to be in pain, but their mind creates the pain so that it will recieve more pain-killers.

In fact one could argue that all pain is created in the mind. Even if you are actually physically injured, the impulses to feel pain come from your brain. Some people like buddhist monks I believe, have trained themselves to feel no pain. Mind over matter indeed.

When you said you could use your thoughts to make yourself hurt so much that you cried, did you mean like pain-hurt, or sad-hurt?

(Edited by CheViveToday at 11:36 pm on Mar. 6, 2003)

[Pete]

i can make my slef sad hurt toooooooooooo easily, but pain hurt i can do too. the more tired i am the better. i guess that is cause my mind is in a weaker state. i'm forgetting capitals this morning. not a good sign. not at all. my eye is involunatarily winking everyso often. wierd.

another mind over matter. From the Wheel of Time's books by Robert Jordan. The Aes Sedia and Asa'mon (im on Lord of Chaos so don't ruin what comes next) can ignore heat and temperature through how they concentrate...

[Rebelde para Siempre]

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/child11.htm

This recount by Albert Hoffman (a legend), proves I am right. LSD causes a different reality.

[mentalbunny]

Drugs are really weird, I don't want to go near anything that could have long term effects, I don't think I could cope, but it would be nice to live in a totally different world for a day, like one long weird acid trip.

So, do you people have souls? I know we had a thread on them a while back but I'd like to hear a more personal view. What is your soul made of, where do you find it? Or do you have something else like a spirit or a mind?

[Pete]

All beings have a spirit. Or atleast humans. An evolutionary advantadge of being able to connect to one another...like when you know what someone is going to say, or coincidence and stuff...not all the time only some.

The soul is how you are reborn...my ideas on this are farfetched...no grounds other then me trying to explain my connection to certain types of trees.

And your will is your survival instict

That is the mental capacity of humans

[Rebelde para Siempre]

Yes, I recently read a book on reincarnation that convinced me that there probably is such a thing as a 'soul'.

The soul is the energy which gives things life or is actually the essence of life itself, without this energy the body is just a mass of dead matter, like a stone.

Your thoughts, ideas and memories have no actual physical manifestation yet we know they exist. Try to explain to me what a memory is made of? It can't be done. Your ideals, and everything in the mind exists somewhere beyond the realm of physical matter. This is probably what the soul actually is.

Therefore, the soul is simply a form of unkown and undefinable energy (to us anyway), I'm not sure if the soul passes between bodies at death or whether it simply leaves the body, and returns to the ether once the shell (the body) can no longer be sustained.

Everytime I look at things I believe I am more and more right. The mind is concrete and absolute, we know it exists. Everything else however is a different story...

[honest intellectual]

Here's something I wrote when I was bored:

Renee Descarted rightly said that we can know the world only through our senses. However, he went further, saying that our senses give us an inaccurate picture of tje real world. This, of course, assumes that there is such a thing as the 'real world'. For if we know the world only by our perception of it, why should we think that that something exists beyond or beneath what we perceive? As the world can be known and experienced only by our perception, it must therefore, to us at least, exist only in our perception. If there is a 'real world', one which differs from our perception, it can never be known to us and it can never affect us in any way; it is of absolutely no relevance to us. The only world that can exist, the only way anything can exist to a person, is through perception.

------------Dreams-----------
The sort of misperceptions of which Descartes spoke are either differences between the 'real world' and what our senses tell us, or else differences between what our senses tell us and what our brain tells us our senses are telling us. (Most of these misperceptions can be correcte by the brain e.g. "These cows are small, but the ones out there are far away.")
When we dream, our sensory organs tell us nearly nothin, yet our brain is telling us that we are sensing all sorts of things. We perceive without sensing. It is the ultimate in Cartesian trickery. But if something can have existence in our perception of it and only in our perception of it, then anything we perceive is effectively real and anything we think we experience, we do experience. Dreams, as the Australian Aborigines believed, are just as real as waking life.

[Umoja]

Soul is just something we don't understand yet. I'm sure eventually we'll be able to actually prove it's real scientific existence......

[DeadBoss]

Hey this discussion of yours is a real fine one. I'm almost thinking I should not join in in case I destroy it. But what the heck I may do so as well.

Nothing is forever we all line once and our every day is unique as every dawn is as such and we ought to respect that and live as if it is the last one we experience, as if it is the last breath we take.. seize the day is the motto I have in mind and those mad American-Indians..

And sure believing that the soul energy or whatever you want to call it survives our death is a notion not abstract but well grounded (e.g. memories of the universal subconscious as psychologists tend to call it, or the matrix as the flick-maniacs know it, provide a sort of justification).. But try not thinking that all these are of one kind for everything changes all the time and these who believe in the spirit they often forget that you cannot own it

[Pete]

As I said, I believe it is an evolutionary benifit. We developed in communities, so we developed slowly developed to read other's mind waves, and then to share one. Each person has many, but I feel we all share atleast one.

Descartes was a smart man. I haven't read far into him as I wish to, but I respect his work on the scientific method.

There was a study done on nuns a few years back. When they prayed a certain part of their brain began becoming increasingly active in unision. Talking to God through brain waves? Or just a wierd phenomon? I wish I kept the article. I was in the Toronto star, front page I believe ummm November 2002.

[Pete]

*BUMP and some new stuff*

Right now I am talking to a girl at one of my other sites about why we are outcasts in our towns. She says she can see energy between people, sense them coming, and feel spirits. I can saw that I once ahd a waking dream where I almost touched the fabric of society and ended up having to stay near the toilet all night incase I threw up. Or can tell when somethings will happen. I aslo get dreams that I remember clearly and come true. Proephtic in away. Or certain aspects of them do. This girl says she gets the same, except sometimes the opposites come true as well. It is weird, the mind is, but I believe in this as being possible and existing. I can be perfectly comfortable somenights going anywhere in the dark and other days in the light i will refuse to enter the brightest portion of my house because of fear of what is in there, although I can see nothing. Aswell Churches make me so fucking scared, I swear something will stabe me in the back.

Believe if you wish...Pete

[CheViveToday]

Just so you know, you are fucking insane. :) :) :)

[Pete]

This is my dream that I have been getting for aslong as I can remember (well the whole msg i sent her)

is it possible to explain?? i have a recurring dream where i am on a platform of a tower with this one girl and as ive been getting older she has too, i have the vivid picture in my mind right now

The sky is dark, ask black as a silent day
A cloudless sky with the galaxy devouring itself
Standing on the outstretched hand of a tall tower
Touching the sky itself
To my side is a girl, a young woman, a friend, a lover
She looks to me and smiles calmy
The sky shakes and falls

We race down the stairs
Two by two
Screaming as the tower sinksinto the sea beneath
Darkness consumes us

I awake in a house with her
We step out side and are in a cavern
Violent shackings like the earth is screaming at me
Tossed aside, she bends down to pick a flower
I scream for her to stop
As she picks the flowers she smiles and at me I fall forever never die
As a boudler crushes her head......

now i kinda want to puke, but i can't describe the image well enough...her hair is lightest brown, witht he same colour eyes. a round/yet long face, and a semi-athlete's build....her eyes give me a loving chill...i can just see myself falling now...i m stopping this msg...

[Rebelde para Siempre]

CrazyPete,

I like the way you think. ;)

[mentalbunny]

Wow, intense! I just get random dreams which are usually pretty cool but sometimes I wake up in a really bad mood. Dreams are stange things, people think prophetic dreams and deja vu are caused by the brain remembering things in the wrong order, everything has already happened, we just don't know it has kinda thing. Quite freaky!

[Pete]

Hahah especially the sick dream eh?

[Palmares]

Descartes was alright, but he contradicted himself.

Many of you appear to be referring to some of his 'demon theory' or whatever it was called.

Like many other philosophers, he could only prove something existed (or is thinking), but not what it really was.

It would be more accurate as "I think, therefore something is."

We cannot prove anything definitively.

[Umoja]

Wasn't it Pythagoras who created the Scientific method?

[Pete]

The Modern one was created by Dante and Bacon. Combining *forgets the word* General-Specific and Specific-General

[honest intellectual]

Quote: from Umoja on 2:10 am on Mar. 3, 2003
I've read confessions of people who've learned Esperanto, and they claimed that they started to dream in Esperanto. The bilingual people I know usually say they either think in English, or that they just think.... I better become fluent in Esperanto so I can find out.
Mi hablas Esperanto sed mi no ajn songas esperante - although I have dreamed in Irish and French

By the way - on the subject of the immortality of the soul:
We don't know anything about the soul, so we can't say if it's immortal or not. However, we know about other things (human life, animal life, the Earth, stars, galaxies, the universe) and nothing is immortal. It therefore seems unlikely that the soul is

[YerbaMateJ]

Forget the soul. I want some soul food. That is what you can shove in my brain jar.

Some greens--- red beans and rice--- bbq ribs, mac & cheese...

[Pete]

A paragraph combining Descartes and Plato

The Undeliable Truth

A simple calculation of what I do not know for sure leaves me with a startling fact, all I know, and can prove beyond any possible doubt, is that I exist. Plato and Descartes both showed the limits of the human mind to see truth in our world. The allegory of the cave, as shown by Plato, states that the reality is confined by what I can percieve. How do I know that the authority figure I see standing in a press room is real? Everything could just be shadows projected on to the wall of a cave. Nothing is certain past that I am real, and am seeing something. Descartes expanded this idea, which can be best described as the mind in a jar theory, and said the immortal words: "Cognito ergo sum." (I think, therefore I am). The human mind knows that it exists, because it can think. By thinking I come into contact with myself, which is concrete. Everything that I percieve, though, could just be the result of a controlled firing of electrons at my brain by a mad scientist. There is no way that I can prove this theory incorrect, and therefore it could be true. On the other hand, what I perceive may be real and true. Since I cannot be sure, I must concede that I know niether as a solid fact, yet I still can prove I exist by thinking these thoughts. No matter how I look at this world, I will always come face to face with one indeliable truth. I am real.