What do you think of this theory?

Question

When i woke up this morning i noticed the blinds and the curtains.Where they met ,the light coming through the blinds seemed to cause indentations in the curtain.It got me thinking that where these two objects met there was an optical illusion because of the light and maybe this could be applied to the world in general.Is it possible that everything we see around us,even ourselves,is one big optical illusion.Is this world,or even this universe just the result of where two things meet - like the blinds and curtains.Anyway i'll leave you lot to add,expand,disprove etc. this theory.
Happy new year!!

Answer 1

???? were you really awake?

Answer 2

If I remember my philosophy classes correctly, the 17th century French mathematician Rene Descartes already pondered upon that thing. Apparently so did the other philosophers of his time who were (academically) lumped into a group called the "rationalists".

These rationalists thought that our senses could very well deceive us. A classic example of that would be a railroad. It's an elementary fact that two parallel lines --- like those of a railroad --- could never meet, right? But why does it seem that they meet at a single point in the horizon? Today, we can say it's because of what we call perspective; today's mathematician would talk about non-Euclidean geometry (or whatever... I'm not a mathematician).

Another example is the way ships seem to sink below the horizon while we see it sailing farther away from where we stand.

Way earlier than Rene Descartes and his rationalist contemporaries, there was this famous Greek philosopher called Plato. If I remember my philosophical readings correctly, Plato said that the things that we see here --- even ourselves --- are just crude copies of the "original form". The exact word was actually "idea".

Furthermore, Plato had what some philosophers call "The Allegory of the Cave". My simplified version of the story is this:

There were people who have always lived inside this cave and they seemed to be content with seeing and watching the shadows inside that cave. There were shadows of animals, plants, themselves and others.

Then there was this Man who suddenly thought, "Where do all these shadows come from? There must be a source to all of these!" That Man told his idea to other people, but they only laughed and ridiculed him. These people thought that what they have always seen all their lives is true enough.

But the Man did not listen to the others and he sought for the source of the shadows. He turned his back from the walls of the cave and went to where he thought was the source. The Man saw a light coming from the other end of the cave and he went straight to that light. It was outside of the cave and there the Man saw the real things moving, casting their shadows on the walls of the cave.

Could we really be true or are we, and everything that we see, is just a pale imitation, a shadow, of what is True? Maybe... maybe not.

What we "see" --- and I use the word loosely --- is not necessarily what is and will always be. Then again, sometimes we just need to pinch ourselves to see if we are just dreaming or seeing illusions. Sometimes, we have to accept that our senses do have some flaws and limitations and the only way to know if everything is real or not is to approach the things that we don't understand with an understanding heart and an unbiased mind.

Just my idea. :-)

Answer 3

I have thought about that too. It could be, but it's quite difficult to understand that. If it's all an illusion, where does it start? What two (or more) objects are those that give birth to this illusion? What replaces the light in this illusion? It's not for our brain to understand. Well, it could be, if we used more than 10 % of our brain. Or maybe our Universe is only a bigger version of a molecule and it goes like that to infinity? Maybe we're part of some kind of bigger force, organism that we're not even aware of? And maybe there's "something" in our molecules and cells? There can be millions of theories. I guess we can only choose what to believe.

Answer 4

This is not a theory but a hypothesis.

Apart from that - interesting. However for there to be an optical illusion there needs to be a receiver that is mistaken. A more interesting one is that we are all just the characters in a gigantic computer game.

I suppose that the one some call god is the computer programmer.

Answer 5

Great example. -It IS a good question, and I hope you're assured by the fact that you're certainly not alone in this mode of thinking. To be sure, this question goes way, WAY back. Questioning reality is (I think), an absolutely ESSENTIAL step for the "rational creature in becoming ever-more rational".

Consider the first spear fisherman who quickly realized, -I'll wager- that the fish is not where it appears to be when it is seen in the water. (Due to light refraction). ...Our senses -all of them, (can) be deceived. BUT- overall, if our sense organs were not generally reliable, we would not be able to get from point 'A' to point 'B'! We must trust our senses. We must also admit that they are not infallible. Rational doubt is a strength, not a weakness.

This mode of questioning, if followed for long enough, (rationally), can lead to new truths, and if not 'truths', then certainly new perceptions. But I would warn against what many call 'armchair philosophy' --one must occasionally get out there and 'spear some fish' -so to speak.

Again, great example of human curiosity and questioning.

Answer 6

This theory is valid for any consideration, but is it true, or false, cannot be decided. This might be true, and it can also be false, it can even be both true and false at the same time. For some one else might see all these things, if not entirely, then somewhat differently from you. We are alone in our experiencing of our world, especially when our experiences are direct, personal and subjective. For this reason we feel happy when we realize that what we learn to see thing indirectly, through each other; and we feel even more so when we are able to share with others what we have in our mind. The following is an extract from a paper on Locke regarding the matter of your question:

‘What is the nature of the world around us? What is the stuff the universe is made of? It was Locke’s idea that there is nothing in existence as innate ideas. The mind of child, he famously said, is a tabula rasa, a blank tablet or clean page to start with. He believes all objects are made of matter. But what is matter itself is impossible to say. Locke says it is ‘something’, but ‘I know not what.’ We only have ideas of what we perceive. We perceive lakes, trees, people, etc. In fact, what we literally perceive are ideas of blueness, wetness, leafiness, etc. but never matter itself. So we can, according to Locke’s theory, have no idea of it. And it gets worse.

Like Descartes, Locke believed in the Representative Theory of Perception: the theory that the mind does not directly perceive objects but rather it perceives representations, or ideas, of them. For instance, you do not listen to a CD, it is just that sound waves travel from your CD-player to your ear, then a message is sent into your brain and your mind perceives or decodes this message, and so on. This sounds like common sense, but is it literally true? There are two problems: (I) it sounds ridiculous to say that I have never heard a CD, or tasted a burger, or seen a football game, (ii) if all I ever perceive is the contents of my own mind, how do I know there is anything outside it?‘

If we try to find out what matter is, and therefore, what the universe is that is all made out of matter, then we are not exploring only the nature of matter but also the possibilities of an extra-human sensory system, aside our own, that would not be quite like us. Then we, at our best, most certainly would be trying to see through the eyes of God.

In my view, what is matter is exactly what it appears to be, as it appears to us. This might not be all about matter, and we might learn more things in the future about the nature of life, the universe and its matter but for the time being what we know should be sufficient for our needs of knowing. What this universe is beginning to appear to us, is exactly what it is as far as we know. And if we doubt the world in our experience, we doubt our own abilities to see, and therefore our own self. If this universe is an illusion then we is but a part of this illusion, and if all this is just an illusion then one illusion for another is each other’s reality. If we are real then this universe is real too, and if this universe is an unreal illusion of our mind then our reality is somewhere else, or so to speak we are realistically out of our own mind.

Answer 7

I suppose you are right. Seeing and feeling things sort of happens in our brains after lots of complex neuronal data sorting, so in a way we have no first hand contact with the world.
This is what made The Matrix such a cool film. I just wish the sequels hadn't made such a mess of it. I would have liked them to keeping on spinning out a world within a world within a world until my brain turned into jelly.

Answer 8

Chinese and French, time to add the Greeks of about 800 B.C. and a few science fiction writers. Is it possible? How would you prove it? Pretty deep thinking for first thing in the morning, and Happy New Year back at you.

Answer 9

No.
the world is real not an illusion. To test my answer: get someone to smash a brick into your head. Now get someone to smash a dream into your head. If you wish to avoid any further trips to the casualty department then it may pay to learn the simple difference between illusion and reality.

Answer 10

Happy New Year. The theory is spot on, only the mystical nature of the theory makes it difficult to comprehend. What we know as "life" is what we see and think about, and all that is an illusion... in that it is not permanent. If we use the concept of permanence as a base, then anything and everything that is subject to change is illusory. So, much of what we know is illusory, and the only thing that is actually Real is ones Soul, and that which sustains it.

But we are unable to "see" the Soul, or even the MIND. Both of these exist in vibrational realms that are too subtle for our physical senses to perceive. But some psychics can "see" aspects of the MIND... but not as we "think" of seeing. They can "sense" aspects of anothers MIND via empathic understanding via MIND-level communication.

We effectively teach our children to avoid this by teaching them to deny their intuition and use of their Right-hemispheres... in favor of the Left-hemisphere and "thinking".

Many young children can perceive these subtle realms of reality until they are "taught" to deny them by adults whose fear of the "Unknown" causes them to panic at the idea of a child perceiving something that to these adults is "Unknown"

Peace

Answer 11

Yes, it could very well be the case.

Many deep thinkers in the Far East say that our physical senses feed on an illusion, so there may be something to it.