BLob

Absolute Certainty

If there is one thing about which we can all be absolutely 100% certain, it is that there is nothing about which we can ever be 100% certain.

 

Except for that! šŸ˜‰

Uncertainty

 

This is because we cannot state with 100% certainty that we even exist in some wider ‘reality’ that is outside of our own consciousness, nor that anything we think we are aware of as existing in it does either!

We may, for example, simply spend all our time in a hyper-realistic seeming dream, in which we also dream that we have less ‘real’ dreams from which we then ‘wake up’ back to the ever-present dream state in which only our awareness exists. Other beings and things we imagine exist in our dream of reality with us might have no more substance than those with which we all experience as seeing in our own dream states.

Another complication and cause for less than certainty is the fact that what we see, hear, touch, smell, taste and ‘feel’ is generally not a 100% complete representation of everything that is ‘out there’. Our brain, as amazingly good at collecting data as it is, simply cannot fully receive, analyse and process all there is to process and still keep functioning well enough to enable us to do other stuff – like breathing for example – and so it ‘cheats’, or compromises; sometimes just a little, sometimes quite a lot, depending. Our brain takes short cuts and can give us more of it’s impression of what it thinks is out there rather than a full picture of what may actually be ‘out there’. (Or is it really?) šŸ˜‰

Reality-Check-Ahead

This necessarily means that there are (at least*) two kinds of reality: the one each one of us perceives as being real and the one that actually IS real (Or is it??) The two are rarely, if ever, in 100% agreement, we simply choose to ignore or overlook any little inconvenient differences, if we even notice them at all.

Basically, our brains have finite capacities while the Universe and all it has in it that we observe is much bigger and more complex than our brain has so far developed to handle.

It must be a pretty good cheater however, having managed to get us to where we all are this point in our lives. Of course, that view might depend upon how well you think we as a species, or you as a person, are doing so far? šŸ™‚

So, although it is impossible to be 100% certain of all but one thing (see above) – do we really need to be, or can 99% (or 90%, 75%, 51%?) be good enough for most of us much of the time?

It’s up to each one of us to decide for ourselves just how ‘accurate’ we need to be in our ‘certainty’ but it would do us all a lot of good if we could remember at all times, that however right we think we are, we probably see less of a situation than there actually is to see and that missing bit may end up being quite important to our choice of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ in the final analysis.

 

There is always a degree of uncertainty in any certainty! (Except that One!) šŸ˜‰

Care to share your thoughts?

 

* I will refrain from mentioning the ever increasingly realistic ‘Virtual Reality’ at this time. šŸ™‚

20 comments

  7. I read one time that our brain “filters” our reality for us, but a lower invertebrate, like an octopus, for example, doesn’t have such filters. Who experiences the universe as it really is, then – us or octopuses?

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    • How our brains let us see ‘Reality’ is really a very complex thing. We can only normally only recall seeing what we are consciously aware of having seen – what we pay attention to. But what we pay attention to is only a portion of what we actually see, and/or hear and/or feel etc. Further, what we actually ‘see’ is but a small portion of all that there is to see and experience ‘out there’. And added to that is how our brains, over time, learn to determine and decide what we pay most attention to – we can have either a ‘selected blindness’ or ‘filtering/colouring’ of things to better fit with what we believe is, or should, exist in that outside world.

      An octopus, or anything else with a brain would not have our human filtering/determining’ system, but instead would have it’s own way of ‘looking’ at the world and so even if looking at exactly the same thing as us would be very unlikely to ‘see’ it as being in exactly the same way.

      So is Reality what actually ‘Is’? Or is it what we see? Or what the Octopus sees? Or what a bird sees??

      How can we ever be certain of a Reality that looks differently depending upon who is doing the seeing? šŸ˜‰

      As i said in the post though, we may only need a degree of certainty of what is considered ‘real’ for us to manage as a species – we may not ever have to agree 100% all of the time to make progress/live effectively.

      Life on Earth, in this body, was not intended to be ‘perfect’!

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