Reality Is Only Known Through Experience — SkimNews
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- The brain interprets the electrochemical signals produced when light hits the retina as sight; the article says there is no reason to assume that interpretation is definitive.
- Perception varies by organism: bats construct a world largely through echolocation, while birds and bees see wavelengths invisible to humans.
- A solid table feels solid even though atoms are almost empty space; electromagnetic forces and quantum effects, including the Pauli exclusion principle, stop a hand from passing through.
- A symphony separates physical cause from experienced effect: pressure waves are in the air, but sound arises when an auditory system interacts with them.
- Consciousness provides the route through which every known fact about reality reaches us; the article leaves open whether it emerges from physical brain processes or is fundamental to reality.
- Solipsism takes that limit to its extreme by treating the existence of experience as the only certainty, while the external world and other minds remain strong but inferential beliefs.
- Vincent Morrissey says mental and emotional states help make each person's sensory experience unique, then proposes an observer-imposed reality of force fields and transient states with no fixed boundaries.
Why it matters: The exchange changes the inquiry from identifying an observer-independent world to examining the machinery of perception. Because every reported color, sound and solid surface reaches us through experience, evidence for other minds and the external world remains inferential, leaving consciousness itself as the unresolved variable.
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