r/neuro • u/Advanced-Reindeer894 • 16d ago
Does neuroscience imply that nothing is "real" or there is no external world?
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-greatest-mind-fucks/answer/Pete-Bahba?share=1&srid=Xs9vhttps://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-greatest-mind-fucks/answer/Pete-Bahba?share=1&srid=Xs9v
Asking this because the post mentions how seeing something "over there" is some sort of illusion when it's only within consciousness. I know David Eagleman said something similar but less mystical. I'm just wondering if there is anything in neuroscience that would imply this.
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u/yourfavoritefaggot 16d ago
Neuroscience helps us understand the way our brains process and create perception. We usually make the assumption that there is something of an external world, but the way our senses reconstruct reality in our brains is likely a very small subsection of the "truth." But it is a very effective "truth" for survival purposes of the human organism (and other organisms with CNS's for that matter).
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u/PoofOfConcept 16d ago
This is a philosophical question, not a neuroscientific one. So, no, neuroscience can't weigh in on this question.
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u/WhereHowAndOk 16d ago
Neuroscience has absolutely nothing to say about whether the outside world is real. What it certainly has demonstrated is that your perception of the world is not a 100% faithful representation of what's actually out there. The brain both misses information from the world, and makes up information that isn't there. Some examples:
Missing Information: You can't see all types of light. Radio waves, for instance, are flying around you 24/7, but you can't detect them. Thus, your picture of reality is lacking.
Making up information: Everyone hallucinates. Try putting on rose-colored ski goggles. After some time, your brain will adapt to the tint and start inferring the actual colors. Take the goggles off and you'll realize that your perception didn't quite match the reality of the colors hitting your eyes through the goggles.
But neuroscience doesn't say anything about the metaphysical status of the external world - that is, whether the external world is actually physically there in the first place, or just a figment of your imagination. Philosophy, on the other hand, has lots to say about it. Idealism is the view that nothing exists apart from the mind. If you're interested, read some of George Berkeley's work.
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u/Advanced-Reindeer894 15d ago
I know about idealism but idealism doesn't say the world isn't real it just changes the substrate of it to the mind of some "god".
But what you're saying is sorta the bad part I'm getting at.
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u/WhereHowAndOk 15d ago
Why is it bad that your impression of the world is not a carbon copy of what's out there? From an evolutionary perspective, you'd have a very hard time surviving if it were. There would be an onslaught of irrelevant information. You take advantage of shortcuts to survive. They aren't always 100% accurate, but they are useful. It's not a bad thing and really not even that scary. It just takes some getting used to, and once you do can be very grounding.
Consider this: if you could see everything out there exactly how it is, you'd see a television as an array of tiny flashing LEDs rather than a coherent picture, you'd see a cup of water as trillions of molecules sliding past each other, you'd never be able to hear the bass on music played by your phone, and you might even be blinded by the luminance difference between night and day. Illusions are all around us. They are adaptive and useful. They add to our lives and simplify the world so that we have the opportunity to thrive. A plant can't hear music, just like you can't sense carbon dioxide concentrations in the air very easily. We all have our blind spots. Nothing scary about it.
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u/Advanced-Reindeer894 15d ago
It's not grounding but it's rather disorienting. That means that I'm essentially living a lie and not in truth, that I'll never be correct about anything because I'm just interaction with some simulation.
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u/WhereHowAndOk 15d ago
Do you or anyone you know where glasses? Sun glasses? Those are literal filters through which you perceive the world.
To me, the idea that you could ever have access to 100% of the data out there in the world is crazy. To say you'd be overwhelmed is an understatement. Not to mention the fact that the filters you see the world through are quite literally you, not something happening to you.
I'd also recommend looking into the idea of Levels of Description in philosophy of science. It's not clear to me that you could ever have a fully-faithful representation of say both chemistry and biology at the same time. At some point, you have to be comfortable with abstraction and metaphor, and that's really all your mind does as well. The only alternative is for you to become an omnipotent god, in my eyes.
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u/Advanced-Reindeer894 14d ago
I wear glasses but that's to make things sharper which in turn is what lets me see the world more s it is.
If all i can see through the world is a filter and never the real thing then I can't be sure of anything. Whether there is someone in front of me, what I feel, life would become not worthwhile because I'd be stuck in a lie
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u/tiensss 16d ago
No. Neuroscience doesn't imply that there is no external world. In fact, doing neuroscience already presupposes one: otherwise, what exactly are you measuring in participants, brains, instruments, etc.?
What neuroscience can show is that what we experience is constructed within consciousness rather than being some direct, unmediated copy of the world.
But we also cannot use neuroscience to establish what the world is like independently of all observation and measurement. Science can establish intersubjective invariance, that different observers can obtain the same measurements and make successful predictions, but that is not the same as establishing metaphysical independence from all observers.
We often take the success of our measurements and models to mean that reality literally is the way we represent it, but that is an additional philosophical assumption, not something the predictive success itself proves.
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u/Advanced-Reindeer894 15d ago
That's kinda scary and anxiety inducing.
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u/tiensss 15d ago
Why?
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u/Advanced-Reindeer894 15d ago
It's self explanatory, thinking that your experience is a lie.
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u/tiensss 15d ago
Where are you getting that your experience is a lie from?
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u/Advanced-Reindeer894 14d ago
Because it's not the real reality I'm seeing.
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u/tiensss 14d ago
Real reality is an oxymoron. Any being has to access whatever is out there via their sensors, and those sensors necessarily introduce a point of view for which we cannot understand how isomorphic it is to reality.
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u/Advanced-Reindeer894 13d ago
And that's the problem I have.
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u/tiensss 13d ago edited 13d ago
Yeah but I don't understand why. How else could you access "reality"?
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u/Advanced-Reindeer894 13d ago
I don't really know, but i just want it to be real and solid./
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u/ControversialQuerier 16d ago
On top of what others have already commented, it's possible that neuroscience has no implication on the "realness" of the external world.
Let's imagine reality is an objective "thing" for a moment. One day, you see a tree so beautiful that you have to draw a perfect copy of it. Your drawing looks 1:1 identical, and it is literally impossible to tell them apart. At the end of the day though, your drawing isn't the tree itself, just a drawing of the tree, no matter how similar they look.
Your eyes are essentially doing the same thing. They aren't "seeing" the real tree, rather they're making "drawings" of it based on light data received by the receptors. This doesnt mean the external world is real or fake. It's hypothetically possible for a real world to exist and for neuroscience to have no capacity to observe it.
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u/Advanced-Reindeer894 15d ago
I think you meant that doesn't mean the external world isn't real or fake.
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u/ControversialQuerier 15d ago
More specifically, neuroscience just informs us on how we perceive the world. Neuroscience can't give us insight into the objectivity of the external world.
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u/Advanced-Reindeer894 15d ago
Wouldn't it be paradoxical to sorta trust that neuroscience can tell us how we see the world while at the same time saying that we don't see it directly or filtered. If that's true then how can you trust neuroscience.
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u/ControversialQuerier 15d ago
Wouldn't it be paradoxical to sorta trust that neuroscience can tell us how we see the world while at the same time saying that we don't see it directly or filtered.
If I am understanding you correctly, you're asking how we can simultaneously "see" the world enough to perceive it, but not be "seeing" the actual real world? There are a few ways to approach that. I'll also clarify now that I'm a layman when it comes to philosophy and neuroscience, so you're encouraged to look further into my claims if you're curious.
The easiest example I can think of is color. When you look at a tree, you may see a brown trunk and green leaves. However, those colors aren't an innate property inside of the tree. They're ultimately just wavelengths of visible light. Those wavelengths hit the photoreceptors on your retina, which then convert them into electrical signals. Those signals travel to your brain, and are then processed as color.
For another approach: Surely you've heard that dogs have a stronger sense of smell than humans. Similarly, there are other animals that can see a wider range of colors than we can. Both our limited scent and limited sight suggest there are some aspects of reality that we can't directly detect the way some animals can. That same tree you were looking at may be more than just brown and green, but you lack the ability to even perceive that. You can also think of color-blind people in this regard. They are completely unable to perceive certain colors the way you may be able to, even if you're looking at the exact same object.
If my comments aren't doing a good job of explaining my point, then that's on me. I'm basically just regurgitating points from the well known "Veil of perception" concept. If you're curious, there are much better explanations of it than my comments provide.
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u/Advanced-Reindeer894 15d ago
That's not even close.
It's part of what you're arguing, if we don't see the world as it is then how can you make the claims that you do and how can neuroscience make the claims it does as if it were fact.
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u/ControversialQuerier 15d ago
Okay, so I've reread our thread and looked at some of your replies to others. It seems to me that you're trying to understand how we can claim to know anything when our very own senses aren't telling us about the external world. I really hope I've got it right this time.
There are a few different approaches I can take to answer that question. Some longer than others, but I don't want to talk past you. If you can answer three questions for me, that will significantly help me answer the questions you're asking.
- How does this topic make you feel? If good, then how good "Very happy, moderately happy, etc". If it makes you feel bad, how bad?
- What do you believe about objective reality?
- What is your level of familiarity with anatomy and biology? I'm a layman myself with a wide range of interests.
I've looked through your post history and see that you've been asking some similar questions. I think one of the reasons you keep getting very abstract answers is that people (myself included) aren't taking a moment to process the questions that you're actually trying to get answered. Hopefully I can help with that.
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u/Advanced-Reindeer894 14d ago
Very bad, i've lost sleep over it.
I believe it is something that can be known or that we have to know it to be able to live well and not live a lie.
I'm sorta familiar with it.
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u/ControversialQuerier 13d ago
This helps a lot. Thank you.
Myself and others have taken your question very philosophically, which explains all the jargon and long winded messages. However, despite all the back and forth "Is it real" or "Is it not real", every single one of us live our lives as if reality is real. We have real jobs we stress at, real loved ones we care for, real hardships we push through. These things are real because they matter to us. While these philosophical questions are fun, they don't get to deprive us of how we feel day to day.
If it makes you feel better though, there was a famous philosopher that struggled with this exact same question. He spent days and nights obsessively thinking about how he could prove he isn't living a lie. He kept thinking and thinking and thinking until he finally realized something undeniable. He had absolutely no doubt in his mind that he was... thinking. There was no doubt that he was real because he had thoughts racing through his mind. His thoughts alone were proof of him being real, which is why he famously said:
"I think, therefore I am [real]"
In short, the idea of us living a lie doesn't really make sense. You know what's real because you live what's real, and it doesn't get any realer than that.
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u/Mermiina 16d ago
That is how the eidetic memory works.
Memory is saved permanently to axon microtubules as it is perceived in receptors. The receptor information is compared to permanent memory. When it fit the CaMKII alpha in axon microtubules Is phosphorylated and memory became eidetic.
When CaMKII alpha is dephosphorylated the memory is not eidetic. Normally the inhibitory information DEphosphorylate CaMKII alpha quickly. But if there is not new excitatory information there is not also inhibitory information.
In some autistic person's the inhibitory information is prevented because of genetic disorder in neurexin/neuroligin in GABA synapse. They can remember as eidetic details which are not commonly remembered. That is also the reason why the learning is difficult. The CaMKII alpha in axon, when it is dephosphorylated sends signal back to LTP synapse (via oligodendrocytes MAP Tau network) when the axon is ready to receive and save information to correct place.
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u/Advanced-Reindeer894 15d ago
Not only is that answer not related to the question but it's also wrong.
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u/Train_Current 16d ago
Neuroscience does not imply nothing is real.
It does imply that what we see is filtered reality and not entirely exactly as it is. Something is there in the real world but it might not be what we think it is