Do we all experience the world in the same way??

[Kokuu]

Dear all

This is an interesting short article in The Guardian looking at perception and reality. The conclusions are certainly not something that would seem surprising to anyone versed in Buddhist thought:

Instead of context merely influencing the contents of perception, the idea here – which builds on the legacy of the great German polymath Hermann von Helmholtz – is that perceptual experience is built from the top down, with the incoming (bottom-up) sensory signals mostly fine-tuning the brain’s “best guesses” of what’s out there. In this view, the brain is continually making predictions about the causes of the sensory information it receives, and it uses that information to update its predictions. In other words, we live in a “controlled hallucination” that remains tied to reality by a dance of prediction and correction, but which is never identical to that reality.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/03/the-big-idea-do-we-all-experience-the-world-in-the-same-way

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-

[Jundo]

In other words, we live in a “controlled hallucination” that remains tied to reality by a dance of prediction and correction, but which is never identical to that reality.

And which is, as one might expect, quite inaccurate in many ways ... but ASTOUNDINGLY prescient and consistent in so many other way.

In other words, I might be wrong about tomorrow's weather, or what the cat or some politician might do next ...

... but I can be amazingly certain that, before my eyes, an elephant will not appear and do a hula dance on top of my thumb.

Gassho, J

stlah

[Wabo]

I really think that if we move away from philosophy and the "problem of the other", we will see that we perceive the world differently. There are people who have synesthesia, or vice versa, people suffering from color blindness. I think this is the best confirmation that even at the level of sensations we are different

Gassho
Wabo
ST

[Jundo]

I am also on the same page with cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman who asserts that, basically, the human experience of the world is very much like the little cartoon "files" on a computer desktop: There is actually no "file" there, but rather a created icon which represents processes, bits and bites under the computer hood. Likewise, there are no "trees" or "cans of soup" or "people," but rather mentally created names and images for some photosynthesizing structure and processes releasing photons which are registed as "green" by our eyes, a source of nutrition to feed our cells held in a structure of metal atoms which happens to taste like tomatoes (another mentally created name and taste for a certain chemical structure), and units of cells and sentience which we organize mentally as "mom" or "my friend Tom."

The world only seems to be real, and filled with trees, soup, Tom and mom because we only know it through our mental virtual summary. Furthermore, it is consistent across our cultures and the human species because we are all born with nearly identical human brain structures, tongues and other senses and are raised to share language whereby all us human beings are living in a kind of shared dream created mutually between all our ears (the cat likely does not know "tomato soup" or "Tom" in the same way we do, and an ant even less), although encountered a bit differently by each of us humans (my "mom" is not yours, I see the tree from a different angle, and I hate tomato soup while you might love it!).

This is all perfectly consistent with basic Buddhist teachings. A large facet of our practice is to see through the dream, as well as to live in and dream the dream well.



By the way, don't worry too much about this world being (as the Diamond Sutra says) like a "mirage" or a "dream" because Dogen (and many of the phenomenologist philosophers were in accord) said that it is a "real dream," a "painted rice cake" or mirage "flowers in the sky" that is our very real experience of rice cakes and flowers, and also Buddha and all reality in the guise of cakes and flowers ... so just enjoy your cake and appreciate the flowers.

Dr. Hoffman:

https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY

Gassho, J

stlah

sorry to run long

[Onkai]

That TED Talk was mind bending. It does bring me back to the paradoxes of our Zen tradition.

Gassho,
Onkai
Sat/lah

[Jundo]

Ah, I remembered the "painted rice cake" story from this week, from Sekishi about his mother-in-law. He said I could share it:

Mom was in hospital, away from her beloved cat at home. So, Sekishi and his wife bought mom a stuffed doll cat that looked just like her cat. At first, mom totally rejected it as not the real thing, pushed it away, said that it was not a cat or her cat. But, the next day when they came back, she was cuddling it, and it had become her cat in her mind, the real thing.

A painted rice cake had become real, and was satisfying hunger.



Here is longer Donald Hoffman for more mind bending ...

https://youtu.be/reYdQYZ9Rj4

Gassho, J

stlah

[michaelw]

Is there also a process of the brain receiving incoming data and sorting according to memory rather than realtime experience?
Thus an experience is compared to previous or similar experiences and judged or pre judged accordingly.

https://www.lionsroar.com/how-your-mind-works/

This currently works for me as a theory until I know better.

Gassho
Michael W

sat.

[Zenkon]

None of us experience it the same way. I cannot perceive the world through your eyes, your past experiences, your pre-conceptions, your biases.