Is the world around us real or is it
just an illusion?
We experience the world through our
senses. We see, smell, hear, touch and taste. On the basis of all
these sense perceptions our brain makes us see a three dimensional
world around us (including ourselves) with all of its different characteristics, for example- the color red, an ice cube, the hard
surface of a table, a song, etc. To put it in simple words, our
senses bring a lot of data to our brain, which analyses it and
creates an experience for us.
There are two questions that arise
here and baffle us.
- Can our senses detect everything in this world? That is, do they bring all the data that there is to our brain?
- Does our brain form a true picture of the world from the data that it receives from our senses?
Now, some may attack the very point I
have taken for granted and argue that the brain does not only work
upon the data brought in by senses but can also think on its own and
provide us with an experience not derived from our sense perception.
In the category of such experiences they would put mathematics and
such abstract concepts. To them I would ask to imagine a world where
there is an organism that lives inside water and can't move. It can
see only water around it. There are no other organisms. Let us call
this organism Pappu. Pappu lives only on the oxygen that's present
inside water. It continuously takes in water, uses the oxygen and
gives out remaining water. Now, can Pappu ever form a concept of
counting? Can it ever know what it is like to see 1, 2 or 3 objects?
It can't. Your pet dog can differentiate between 1 and 2. You can
count infinitely. It is because you have experienced the world in way
completely different from Pappu. You can only think of things made up
of concepts that you have experienced. In brief, you cannot go beyond
your sense perception of the world. In fact there is a very simple
thing that you can do that proves that your imagination is limited to
the experiences created by your sense perception – Try to think of
a colour you have never seen. Can you do that?
To illustrate my point more, lets do an
experiment. Think of an imaginary creature that you have never seen
or know of. What mental image did you form? You probably imagined a
kind of creature they show as aliens on TV. You probably thought of
two big eys, a green coloured skin, tiny legs, big ears or may be
something completely different. Whatever you imagined, you must have
most probably thought of it in these terms, namely eyes, ears, limbs,
colour of its skin, sound that it produces, etc. Now forget about all
your previous concepts of limbs and try to imagine a body part that
the creature uses for locomotion but that's completely different from
any kind of limb that you have ever seen. It is not even a
combination of limbs of two or more different creatures that you know
of. Can you do that? I bet you can't.
If you think you can, think again. You are definitely forming an
image derived from something that you have already experienced. It is
always like that about everything. Our imagination consists of things
that we have experienced through our senses. It might form
new entities by combining different forms that we already know of but
it is essentially formed out of our previous experiences.
So now, I have given you enough proof
to be sure of the fact that our brain can work only on data that it
receives from our senses. So the objection to my assumption is
invalid.
We move ahead to the first question. In
middle school science we are taught that we can visually perceive a
limited range of electromagnetic radiation. What if we could see
colours beyond red and violet? Our world would have been completely
different. We can hear sounds having frequency from 20Hz to 20,000Hz.
What if we could hear sounds with lower and higher frequencies
respectively? Our senses are limited in their powers and can only
obtain a limited range of data from the outside world. This proves
that there is whole world out there that we simply can't perceive
through our limited senses. Certain technological achievements can
aid in overcoming this shortcoming but they will always be that-aids.
They will never give us a first hand experience of that hidden world.
Now the second question. The answer is
obvious. Our brain has a lot of shortcomings and many a times it is
not even sure of how to arrange the data that it receives. A very
simple example can be a Necker Cube. Perhaps Gestalt figures provide
a more interesting example. We see that our brain is confused. It is
not perfect. We can't be sure of whether it is providing us with the
right analysis of the data that it receives. Our experience of the
world is formed in our brain and our brain might very possibly be
deceiving us. A very interesting article to read about how our brain arranges the data it receives in a particular fashion and can do so in infinitely many other fashions is can be read here.
So now what are we left with? A
collection of senses that are limited in their powers and can only
present our brain with a very small part of the world that actually
exists. And as if this is not a problem enough, our brain cannot even
form a true picture of that very small part of the world with the
help of the limited data presented to it by our senses.
Have you started feeling hopeless?
There is still more to come. Suppose that our brain is very mischievous and deceives us into believing that there is a world outside.
Suppose the experience of perceiving something is not a real
experience but only some electrical signals travelling through the
neurons in our brain and creating an illusion of some real
perception. For example, think about you looking at this screen. Are
you really looking at this screen or is it merely an illusion created
in your brain by some electrical signals and chemical reactions? In
fact, is even the act of thinking about this illusion an illusion?
Now, you should have a reason to believe that our experience of the world around us is only an illusion. It is
like a dream. We can't be too sure of whatever we see, hear or feel.
