Can we be objective when it comes to the experiences we are each having?

[tld]

Throughout my long life I have accepted as fact the existence of a 3-D material world more or less identical to the world I am currently experiencing and which is common to each of us. Years ago, when I was actively involved in the brain sciences, I felt that I and others were being objective in the research we were doing and that brain activity could, or at least at some time in the future would, explain all behavior, human and otherwise. During this time I knew intellectually that each of us has our own subjective reality (our private world), but this has not changed the previously described fact of a common material reality as I am currently experiencing it.

 

As I have considered this fact over the past few years, I have been unable to come up with a satisfactory material explanation of how I am having this experience of a 3-D material world that appears to be common to each of us. The usual explanation that it is our brain that is producing our conscious experience seems to be more a hope, or belief, rather than a useful explanation. At the very most, the brain is creating a representation of unknown fidelity and not transmitting things-as-they-are, which is my experience. At the very least, the brain may have nothing to do with my conscious experience. In other words, if we each have our own subjective reality, and our brain is part of that subjective reality (our conscious experience), how can our brain be the cause of this experience? Do we each have two brains, an objective brain and a subjective brain?

 

It appear to me that what we consider objective is actually subjective consensus. I have a subjective experience and you have a similar subjective experience, we communicate our experiences to each other, and from this conclude that what we experience must have an objective existence outside our common subjective experience. This is one possibility, but it is also possible that we are having common subjective experiences without there being any outside, physical source for these experiences. Which raises the question, can we have the subjective experience of a material world without there actually being an objective physical, material world to cause this experience? Our dreams and hypnosis, as well as some paranormal events, suggest that this might be a possibility.

 

I originally presented this topic as a thread on a particular religious (Mormon) forum, and am interested in responses from those of you with a wider variety of interests. Where am I wrong in the observations I have made and conclusions I have reached?

 

Tom

Edited January 21, 2015 by tld

[Delta1212]

Your brain is just as part of the objective world as everything else part of the objective world, and your subjective experience of interacting with your brain (and other people's brains) is just as much a part of your subjective world as everything else.

 

It's not really all that complicated.

[tld]

Your brain is just as part of the objective world as everything else part of the objective world, and your subjective experience of interacting with your brain (and other people's brains) is just as much a part of your subjective world as everything else.

 

It's not really all that complicated.

What do you mean by the objective world? Is it something that exists outside of subjective experience or is it, as I suggested, subjective consensus? If the former, how can we know what is and what is not a part of the objective world if all we know is what we experience subjectively? There is still the question of how it is we seem to be experiencing a noumenal world (things-as-they-are), when the most that we can expect, if our experience results from brain function, is a phenomenal world. Is what we are experiencing an illusion?

Edited January 22, 2015 by tld

[Delta1212]

The world is what it is regardless of what any group of people believes it to be. And no, there's no way for you to ever directively experience objective reality outside of your subjective reconstruction of it.

[tld]

The world is what it is regardless of what any group of people believes it to be. And no, there's no way for you to ever directively experience objective reality outside of your subjective reconstruction of it.

I guess on the one hand we can say: "What you and I and everyone else is experiencing is the world as it is. What is the problem?" Generally there is no problem. We live our lives accepting this as our reality. It is only when we start questioning how it is that we are having this experience that we find that we have no real answer. As far as we know, we cannot experience an objective physical world directly, and yet we seem to be experiencing it directly. Is what we are experiencing an illusion or is it possible that we can have the conscious experience of a physical world separate from any necessary existence of a physical world (including sensory receptors) outside of our conscious experience? Or maybe some other possibility.

[cladking]

The answer lies in the mechanism of thought. I can't say much about it but will say that this mechanism is shared by all and is the root of most all of our understanding. It is difficult to see from our perspective. We share far more than our subjective experience as we share the cause of our experience.

 

Remember our scientific knowledge excludes this experience and it excludes reality except as reality affects experiment.

[TheDivineFool]

Hi tld. I had similar thoughts but they lacked the clarity of yours.

 

While such questioning is very interesting, I'll present you a perspective that is not so approving of such types of inquiry.

 

Occam's razor, the scientific principle that discourages unnecessarily complicating hypotheses would condemn these questions as they definitely introduce complexities. Do you think that these complexities are necessary. Yes, a scientific take on the matter. Your valued opinion?

 

Also, as others have said, we don't have a method to determine the answer to this question? Does that diminish the importance of the question? In a way it does, as we will never be able to confirm its truth and all that follows from it. Yet, philosophy is not actually bothered about this since if we pick up the thread of this inquiry and follow it reveals a lot about things like truth, human perspective, nature of reality, etc.

[Mr. Laymen]

I think that there is a way to think about the concept of "nothingness" and it's potential abstract relationship with logic and math that promotes this concept. Where although "nothing" may not be real in any physical sense, the concept may reflect objective expressions of reality, just as some maths and logic's may tend to do.

 

If "Nothing" is interpreted as "Objective", and everything else is subjective, perhaps our nature is all an expression of something similar to, "dividing-by-zero". For each bit of information evolved from the infinitely recursive function of dividing-by-zero... there is a potential subjective perspective. These bits or perspectives relate to one another upon the substrate of each relationship and nothingness, where each relationship is a unique reflection of other relationships among other relate-able information.

 

Perhaps the result is an infinitely expanding and forming of relative complexities that include us in some potentially infinite sea of information that's also... of nothing at the core.