Here is an idea I just thought of, and it makes sense to me. Try to disprove it, because I would be interested to see a flaw in my logic. The world you live in is independent of the world each other individual lives in. When you see "three fingers" how many fingers do you actually see? You were taught by someone that a certain amount of fingers should be associated with the number "three." But what if you see a different vision when someone holds up three fingers? What I mean by this is what if I went into your head and looked from your vision. What I saw from your point of view is two fingers. Because you see differently than me, and so you were taught to correlate "three" with a different sight than I was. So basically, what I think is that for all we know, everyone views the world completely differently. We were taught to assosciate our different sights with words, yet these sights are not necessarily all the same. The idea could also apply to colors, or anything else. Would there be a way to test this? or is there a flaw in my logic?
The only flaw I could see is not really a flaw at all. It's that you are communicating with us about this idea looking for our validation. Are we not you, the individual?
What do you mean by this? Yeah man, it kind of scared me to think that maybe nothing we see is absolute.
He means that if we all see the world differently than you, then there is no way for us to confirm whether you are right or wrong because we could only see "our world" and not "yours." But like you said, someone taught you "3." Someone taught me "3." And now we all agree there are three posters in this thread... "the proof is in the pudding."
Hahaha yeah, I thought about this a long time ago. What if we agreed that the layout of this forum was green, but in reality it was black? Can we see anything as what it is after we are told what it isn't? Delusion is so powerful.
If our senses converge on reality, I think that's the best we can do, and I'm fine with that until something disproves it otherwise. The best we have is communication and review of each other's claims and actions. You can take your view a step further and say that you are the only consciousness that exists, and everyone else are just figments of your imagination. This is called solipsism, we generally entertain this thought in the youth of our philosophical pondering. But surely, no one takes a person who makes this claim seriously. Can we prove that we are not just figments of your imagination? Certainly we can't ever prove such a claim. But we are comfortable with the idea that this is almost certainly not the case. Ask yourself why that is the case.
I've thought about this too, but only for colors. With different amounts of fingers, we can count the fingers, and I'm fairly certain we all have the same concept of numbers. With colors, however, we're the only ones who can ever see from our field of vision. I've often thought that whats blue to me might easily be red to someone else, although I do think it is highly unlikely.
Don't worry, I'll take care of that one. You'll still give him the black eye and stuff, but I'll let my existence take care of it for you.
Is it really that unlikely? I mean there are a lot of colorblind guys, and doctors do not know these dudes are colorblind upon birth. They can only find out they are colorblind through a test of vision. So what if there was a similar "colorswitch" problem with your vision? But that would be impossible to test for without discovering a new method of testing.
I'm slowly believing that there are different planes of existence. I have a friend who is into DMT, and he said that when smoking DMT you get taken into different levels of life. Everything on this world is a breathing, living creature with a soul: Every tree, blade of grass, bug, fish, rock even, everything you can think of. People usually think that is crazy because from almost everything we're ever taught and told, these are just things that we use or consume. Well, as an adult, I am beginning to think for myself and listen to other sources of information, and I believe that everything communicates. Like the movie, The Happening, they say the plants communicate with each other.. I think its true! Plants and animals and rocks, maybe the wind, are all on a different plane of existence, and therefore are "in tune" with one another and able to communicate. I believe long ago, people were once on this same level of existence and able to communicate more easily with nature. There were no distractions of the city, television, crappy jobs, and other technology. People were more true with the Earth and its inhabitants, their minds more free and open. We are an animal of this planet like the rest. I believe we were created just as equally has everything else, so we (deep down) have the ability to talk to nature. Today, we have lost that. Today, we even make fun of the idea, that's how narrow minded we have become. Anyways, my DMT friend said that when you travel to these different planes (usually with the help of DMT), you can then communicate with these beings, in my opinion, our long lost brothers and sisters. So its kind of like another world within a world that we ignore. ANNND, i watched the Matrix for the first time, haha, that blew my mind. Maybe I am a robot. I'm just a program that thinks I'm a free-thinker. *sigh* Forever trapped and used.