Reality - “it feels so real”, “it is obviously real” - we all hear of it but hardly think of it deeply. But wait! The real world to us is merely brought to us by our senses, right? The flower we see in the garden is only an interpretation of the sensory receptors in our eyes, processed by our brains. The smell of it, the sounds of birds all are brought to us by our senses. Thus we interpret the world using our senses. Then, the world that we perceive is merely the overall sum of all these interpretations.
Does that mean that the world is all there in our brains? Or maybe the reality exists but what we perceive as “our reality” is merely just a small part of it? (Phaneron)
Let’s begin with senses first. We have the standard five senses that we know of (sight, smell, touch, sound, taste); but in addition to these, we have many other(2) like proprioception (the sense of space), kinesthetic sense, nociception (pain) and many more. They bring to our brains the signals from the outer world and our brain processes the signals to give us a feeling for the sense. And as we all know, these senses are not accurate. Optical illusions, the hotness-coldness experiment we did in our schools to get a sense of what temperature is provide a glimpse of how wrong these senses can go. Moreover, we also know that we don’t sense everything out there. Our eyes can detect only a small spectrum of the electromagnetic radiation (visible light), our ears can hear just those sounds lying in the frequency range of 20 - 20000 Hz. Thus clearly we cannot perceive the world merely with our senses. The reality for me then is just a small part of what exists and what can be sensed by my senses.
Now the question that arises is: Is my reality the same as yours?
As we discussed earlier, we perceive only a small part of the world. And we very well know that the senses of all animals have evolved over the years to fit their needs. The dogs and whales can thus smell more distinctly than we could. Therefore a garbage pile would smell filthy to you and me, but there would be many odors for the dog to sniff there. The reality for dog and us is different! Strange right?
What about within humans? Do all humans perceive the world in the same way? People with color-blindness cannot distinguish between green and red. Born blind people cannot see at all. World to them is brought to their minds by auditory, olfactory, tactile and other senses. Similarly, born deaf humans cannot hear the sounds of the chirping birds at all. Then indeed “my reality” is different from yours? Yes, provided either you or I have some problem with our senses. But what about people that have all their senses intact since birth? The problem now grows difficult. There isn’t a satisfying answer to this question.
The human brain as we discussed processes the information from the external world to give us a sense of “our reality”. However, the very connections in the brain are determined genetically and modified by learning. Thus naturally my red may differ from your red. By red, I don’t mean the property the red color has got: like it’s wavelength. That can be checked by inserting electrodes in the retina. Instead, what I mean is the meaning that you and I associate with this red: my feeling for red. How do I know that what rose means to me is the same as what rose means to you? We have now landed in the difficult problem of Consciousness. With the search of science still going on to understand consciousness, we don’t yet have an answer to our question. Here I would like to point out that I haven't even touched an even more difficult problem of “Does the world at all exist outside our brains?” probably because it’s easier and better to believe that the world exists.
Though it is not clear if my world - my reality - is different from your world but now I know that it is at least different from that of the birds that I heard chirping. It is just surprising to me how the same world, the same nature could mean so differently to different life forms. Truly mesmerizing! The world is indeed beautiful! Probably we may never know what exactly is absolute reality. But my reality - my world - is astounding: with my friends, my family and myself in it.
References:
- Is Anything Real? Vsauce
- What is Reality - The Human Brain (Documentary)
- Wikipedia
- Britannica
- In Search of Memory, Eric Kandel
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