Hi,
Here’s a condensation of what I believe regarding reality:
Objective Reality
1. Consider an apple sitting on a table: We see a smooth, round, red object, a texture, a form, and a color. However, the apple consists of molecules formed from atoms such as carbon, hydrogen; atoms are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons; and protons and neutrons are made up of quarks.
2. But we don’t see that hierarchy of matter; we see a smooth three dimensional red form that we recognize as an apple. What we see is the light that is reflected from the skin molecules of the apple in the form of photons of a particular wavelength.
3. When light from the apple enters our eyes the photons are focused by the lens on the retina at the back of the eye where specific neurons are excited and send electric impulses along optic nerves to the various parts of the brain.
4. In the brain, specific groups of neuronal circuits are excited and we “perceive” an image of the smooth, three dimensional, red form that we recognize as an apple. The question is: which is real, the configuration of quarks and electrons sitting on the table that we “see” or the image of a smooth 3-D red object that we “perceive”? Of course, both exist and are therefore both are real.
5. It is evident that these two aspects of reality, although existing in radically different ways, are intimately connected. The ordered arrangement of quarks and electrons is manifested as the form of the apple, but not the redness. The quarks are objectively real but the redness is not. What we mean by objective reality is essentially nothing but configurations of material elements, quarks and electrons, that exist outside our mind. Objective reality is external and discrete.
Subjective Reality
1. The redness doesn’t inhere in the apple; but rather is associated with the nature (wave length) of the photons reflected from the skin of the apple. Photons are not red, nor does the redness arise in the eye, which brings us to the neurons in the brain.
2. Neurons merge redness with the form of the apple in the mind, but material neurons do not create redness or any other qualia. Neurons are discrete (digital) and redness is continuous (analog). Redness emerges in the mind that is coterminous with, but separate from the neuronal circuits of the brain. The mind is not the brain.
3. There must be a second element, a spiritual element, that is an essential part of the mind, that provides the source of the redness and all other qualia. The mind is associated with the spiritual component in which all mental objects such as percepts, qualia, concepts, feelings and meanings are stored as a perceptual memory and are "brought to mind’ by the excitation of specific referent synapses in the neuronal material memory.
4. The mental objects stored in perceptual memory have the characteristic of continuity, the neurons in the brain that form the material memory are discrete.
5. The specific mechanism that allows us to perceive an image of a red apple is not known (the mind/body problem) to science. The mental objects that are associated with the perceptual memory component of the mind are formless and create another level of reality, subjective reality, the kaleidoscope of mental objects that creates the world as we experience it. Subjective reality is internal and continuous.
Rational Reality
1. An important part of the recognition of the red object sitting on the table is the symbol, in this case, the word ‘apple’ that we associate with the percept stored in the perceptual memory. The mind can be defined as a combination of the language instinct residing in the neuronal circuits of the brain, the material memory, and the perceptual memory that is formed in the spiritual substance.
2. Symbols are essential to the working of the mind. They consist primarily of words and numbers, both written and spoken; but also include signals, pictures, and music. Symbols define another aspect of reality called rational reality.
3. Rational reality exists internally within an individual mind, but unlike subjective reality that stores continuous mental objects in perceptual memory, rational reality is associated with the discrete symbols in the neuronal circuits of the brain that form the material memory and evoke the associated meaning and percepts stored in the perceptual memory. Rational reality is internal and discrete.
4. Rational reality is communicative in that it provides a means for sharing with other minds the mental objects stored in the perceptual memory.
Transcendental Reality
1. Finally, we recognize certain words to be associated with experiences that do not fit nicely with the other three levels of reality already mentioned, words such as beauty, truth, and justice.
2. Beauty exists! We cannot sense or measure beauty. We cannot feel beauty. We cannot imagine beauty. We can sense, measure, and feel things that are beautiful, but not the intrinsic beauty of the thing.
3. Beauty is one of those uniquely human experiences that transcend the objective, subjective, and rational. It resides with other concepts such as truth and justice at a higher level of existence. Beauty, truth, and justice exist outside the individual mind but can evoke feelings without form, we say such feelings exist in a fourth level of reality, a transcendental level… Transcendental reality is external and continuous.
Yppop
