It’s hard to remember that the only thing that’s “real” are our experiences and not the things we think we’re experiencing. Our brains are so good at thinking in terms of a supposed external reality that it becomes difficult to remember that everything we know about some such external reality is yet more of the map. The territory that we explore is not physical reality, but our experiences. We may postulate and have high confidence that physical reality is the thing we’re experiencing, but it’s not the absolute truth we’re able to tap into when we simply notice what our senses are reporting prior to interpretation.
Memories of experiences, sure, but at some point this map and territory metaphor breaks down. At what point does something enter the map as it progresses through your nervous system? I’m not sure we can cut a clean divide. So I gloss a bit here because zoomed out enough the distinction is obvious and meaningful but zoomed in it becomes a source of confusion.
The clean divide is at the point of the maximum zoom out—you can be sure that universe exist. Anything else is uncertain, including any sensations. The destinction between senses and theories is meaningful, but is not fundamental.
It’s hard to remember that the only thing that’s “real” are our experiences and not the things we think we’re experiencing. Our brains are so good at thinking in terms of a supposed external reality that it becomes difficult to remember that everything we know about some such external reality is yet more of the map. The territory that we explore is not physical reality, but our experiences. We may postulate and have high confidence that physical reality is the thing we’re experiencing, but it’s not the absolute truth we’re able to tap into when we simply notice what our senses are reporting prior to interpretation.
Any specific experiences are also a map—you can’t be sure what you saw a nanosecond ago.
Memories of experiences, sure, but at some point this map and territory metaphor breaks down. At what point does something enter the map as it progresses through your nervous system? I’m not sure we can cut a clean divide. So I gloss a bit here because zoomed out enough the distinction is obvious and meaningful but zoomed in it becomes a source of confusion.
The clean divide is at the point of the maximum zoom out—you can be sure that universe exist. Anything else is uncertain, including any sensations. The destinction between senses and theories is meaningful, but is not fundamental.
What’s this universe you speak of?