Individual Reality and Murder

An individuals Perception seems to be a cognitive process based upon information provided by our sensory organs. These organs detect temporal and spacial changes in physical characteristics of our environment and the objects within it. With touch and taste, it is necessary to be in direct contact with the object: is it more or less supple than our bodies, does it increase or decrease the temperature of our bodies, is it sharper or duller than our bodies?

It is not necessary to be in direct contact with an object perceive it. We see (eyes), hear (ears), smell (nose) or detect heat (skin) from the distant objects. Light and sound are distorted or generated by the distant object and these secondary effects are transmitted to us and detected by our senses.

Some people maintain that there is another perceptual process: spirit.  I do not know other peoples minds and bodies so I will not dispute the point. There may well be something called spirit to which I am blind and others are not; I can only work with what is available to me. Other people may indeed have perceptions that I do not have. Some people can see color, others do not. An interesting point here: people that perceive color have been able to convince those that do not, that color exists and it is not a figment of imagination; it is real. However, people that perceive spirituality have not been able to convince others of its existence. Spirituality is a perception of certain individuals and not others. These impulses from our sensory organs are the totality of what we experience. These are the basis of everything that is the human experience.

Our bodies, minds and spirit (if that exists) do more than just react to this information, our bodies remember the reactions that our bodies  had to the stimulus, when it happened, which side of our bodies experienced the sensation. That is our bodies register the relationship of the physical properties to our bodies but we also register the order in which the events occurred. We have therefore have stored the information that would needs to compute rates  of change with respect to space and time. Our bodies are bicameral and each side registers the effect of the object. This gives us the first derivative with respect to space. This, combined with time, gives our bodies the second derivatives of the perceptions with respect to time and space as well. The object is hotter on the right side of our bodies than on the left side, for example. The light arrived before the sound. Our bodies record this information in such a way that when all the individual cells containing the information have been replaced with new fresh cells, the information is not lost; the new cell builds the old information into the new structure. Perhaps in the same way that the replacement of a scar cell knows that it is not to be a regular cell, It copies the structure of the scar cell.

Our unconscious brains attempt to build a relationship between these different memories of events. Our brains link the information collected together in addition to remembering the events and the order in which they occurred. When multiple sensory events happen at the same time or in close proximity;  we see our hand move into the flame and at the same time that it enters we feel intense pain. There is now an association between flames and damage to our body. Our bodies record all the senses at the same time so if another event occurs at the same time, for instance a lightning strike in close proximity the brain will integrate that information as well. Was it the flame or the lightning bolt that caused the intense burning sensation in the hand. This is a flagrant example. The body felt the heat rise as the hand drew nearer so there is a much tighter association with the flame. However the scream of pain and the lightning bolt happened concurrently. Did we cause the lightning bolt? Could this be the result of a strong expression of pain and emotion? The brain must decide this as well. All this thought process is totally unconscious. Sometimes it makes mistakes.

There are physical differences in the appearance of people and in their internal organs. Some cannot eat certain foods, or see color or hear. There are differences in the way people 'feel' emotions as well. Hormonal levels change from individual to individual. This is measurable and the effects of this are observable. Some people feel fear more than others, and love and empathy. People do not sexually excite by the same people. Some prefer members of their own sex, some do not. It is not important whether these feelings are physical or cultural. It is the way that it is; it is reality for that individual.  The point is that our perceptions of the world are not the same from person to person. Individual Reality is unique for each human.

The brain is a physical organ as well and it has variations in structure and chemistry from person to person. That being said, there is no reason to believe that people think and process information in the same way. I do not perceive numbers, for example the way that  Daniel Tammet  does.  This has been disputed but I fail to see how even a cursory look at the different conclusions people reach when looking at the same data does not demonstrate the point definitively. Of course, that is the way that I see it. Others will dispute my observation and attribute the differences to other causes. Frankly, that does nothing but substantiate my hypothesis. In addition to individual reality being different, people also have different ways of thinking about their Individual Realities and different ways of constructing their ideas about their Individual Reality. Our thoughts seem to be fractal in nature.

Dolphins or Lovers

Dolphins or Lovers by artist Sandro del Prete is seen differently by children and by adults. The children see dolphins swimming in the bottle (or so I have been told) and the adults see a man and woman embracing (or so I have been told). This, if true, would illustrate that people's interpretation of their reality changes as we get older. That is to say what the subconscious brain presents the conscious mind changes. The data may remain the same but what we perceive changes.

The Dancer

The Dancer illustrates that different people perceive reality differently. The dancer spins clockwise for some individuals and for others she spins counter-clockwise. Personally, I can reverse the spin at will although, the more I look at it, the more difficult this becomes. My brain has its preference. I have seen blogs where people accuse others of lying when they indicate that the dancer spins differently than they perceive. Both perceptions of reality are, of course, wrong. There is no dancer, they are shades of gray on a flat surface and what is interpreted as a dancer is not spinning at all. This is a series of images projected on a two dimensional surface; nothing is spinning. Our brains have manufactured something useful but something that is not part of any objective reality. It is not at all clear that a mouse will interpret the figure as a dancing anything.

Shades of Gray

A powerful illustration that our conscious perceptions can be incorrect can be seen in Shades-of-Gray. The gray color at the top looks darker than the gray color on the bottom of the figure; they look strikingly different but they are not. The gray at the top is exactly the same shade of gray as that on the bottom. I have personally had arguments where people refuse to believe that they are the same color. When I have suggested how to test this, they have refused. Why bother? Any idiot can see straight off that they are two completely different colors; it would be a waste of time, a fools mission. Even very simple testing has been refused. When suggest looking at the code that produces the colors to see if the computer has been asked to create the same shades, that too is rejected.

The point is that some people actually define reality to be their Individual Reality and their perceptions may not be questioned; their perceptions are reality. When measurements suggest differently, it is because someone is attempting to trick them. These are people that live in their own world and do not believe that any other exists; all other people live in this same exact reality. Not perceiving what they perceive is an indication that one is of low intelligence, uninformed, misinformed, deceptive (lying), and/or evil, in that order. I am an evil person in some circles. The proof? The shades-of-gray example; it is the proof that I am actively attempting to confuse and deceive them. They can now dismiss everything else that I have to say without thinking about it. Yes, this is a true example. Interestingly enough, it is an example of bigotry and how that process works.

The brain (the unconscious part) presents the conscious mind a fully processed "image", in all the five senses, of what it has constructed when integrating the sensory input from memory. This model is not what the senses have experienced. It is an integrated interpretation of the memory of what the senses (including time) have registered. This model that has been presented to the conscious mind is what I call the Individual's Reality Model or just Individual Reality; it is often wrong as I have demonstrated.

Some people do not recognize any other reality. This is a mistake that causes a great deal of conflict in human society. Some people kill others based on their Individual Reality Model. I think that this might be because they do not understand how a person could not see what they see and believe the person to be lying in order to do them harm. The body is defending itself from what it perceives to be an malicious attacking organism. The organism is destroyed under the guise of ridding the world of evil.

Individual Reality can be fraught with so much psychosis that it is only proper and dignified to expose it to the world-at-large in very restricted and filtered pieces. Public conversations about religion, politics or sex have been discouraged for many thousands of years. Perhaps for good reasons. These subjects are the ones that socially responsible people avoid; at least that is a common message. Individual Reality is personal;  it comprises what an person experiences within their own body i.e. pain, joy, sadness, happiness, mental coherence, etc. Some people actually believe that their's is the only reality and will attempt to destroy different reality models that they feel are attacking theirs. People get worried enough that they physically kill their "adversary"; this is, in fact, very common.

People that accept their unconscious brain's model of reality (Individual Reality) as 'real' or as 'truth' can be very dangerous people. It is at this point that the brain will actually start making things up and filtering out information. The brain will present things to the conscious mind that never happened and it will ignore things that did happen; this is the definition of belief. It is the basis of bigotry and racism. This is how the unconscious brain rationalizes murder, intellectual and physical.