THE WORLD OF PERCEPTIONS

     We Can Never Reach The Original Of The World That Occurs Within Our Brain


     As has been demonstrated here, everything that we live through, see, hear and feel in our life occurs within the brain. For example, someone who looks out of the window while sitting on an armchair feels the hardness of the armchair and the slipperiness of the fabric in his brain. The smell of the coffee coming from the kitchen occurs in the mind, not in the kitchen some distance away. The view of the sea, birds and trees he sees from the window are all images formed in the brain. The friend who is serving the coffee, and the taste of the coffee also exist in the brain.

A person who is observing a particular view supposes that he is watching the view before his eyes. However, that view actually forms in the center of vision at the back of the brain. The pertinent question is this: who is that takes pleasure from watching this view, if it cannot be the brain, which is made of lipid and protein?

     In short, someone sitting in his living room and looking out of the window is in reality looking at his living room, and the view seen from the window on a screen in his brain. What a human being would refer to as "my life" is a collection of all perceptions being put together in a meaningful way and watched from a screen in the brain, and one can never come out of one's brain.

     We can never know the true nature of the original of the material world outside the brain. We cannot know, whether or not the original, for example the green of a leaf, is as we perceive it. Likewise, we can never find out if a dessert is really sweet or whether that is just how our brain perceives it to be.

     Anyone who considers this will clearly see the truth. One such person, George Berkeley, expresses this truth in his work A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge:     

By sight I have the ideas of light and colours, with their several degrees and variations. By touch I perceive hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance... Smelling furnishes me with odours; the palate with tastes; and hearing conveys sounds... And as several of these are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple; other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things...12

     The truth Berkeley expresses in these words is this: We define an object by interpreting different sensations that are experienced in the brain. As is the case in this example, the taste and smell of an apple, its hardness and roundness and those sensations related with the other qualities of it are perceived as a whole by our brain and we perceive this whole as the apple. However, we can never actually deal with the original of the apple, only our perception of it. What we can see, smell, taste, touch or hear are only the copies within the brain.

     When we consider all that has been discussed up to this point, the truth will be revealed in all clarity. For example:

     o If we can see a street full of colorful lights and all the colors with their own brilliant shadings inside the brain where there is no actual light, then we are seeing copies of the notice boards, lights, streetlights and the headlamps of cars which are produced from the electric signals within the brain.
     o Since no sound can enter the brain, we can never hear the original of the voices of loved ones. We hear only copies.
     o We cannot feel the cool of the sea, the warmth of the sun - we only feel the copies of them in our brains.
     o In the same way, nobody has been able to taste the original of mint. The taste someone would sense as mint is only a perception which occurs in the brain. This is because the person cannot touch the original of the mint, see the original of the mint or smell or taste the original of the mint.

     In conclusion, throughout our lives we live with copy-perceptions which are shown to us. However, these copies are so realistic that we never realize that they are copies. For example, lift your head and have a look around the room. You see that you are in a room full of furniture. When you touch the arms of the armchair in which you are sitting, you feel the hardness of it as if you are really touching the original of it. The reality of these images shown to you, and the excellent artistry in the creation of these images are sufficient to convince you and billions of other people that the images are "material". Even though most people have read that every sensation relating to the world is formed in their brains, since it is taught in high school biology classes, the images are so convincing that they have difficulty believing that these images are only fantasies in their brain. The reason for this is that each image is created very realistically and perfected to an art.

     Some people accept that images occur in the brain, yet they claim that the originals of the images are external. But they can never prove this, because nobody has been able to move out of the perceptions that exist in the brain. Everybody lives in the cell that is in the brain, and no one can experience anything except that which is shown by his perceptions. Consequently, one can never know what happens outside of his perceptions. Thus to say "there are originals outside" would in fact be an unjustified presupposition, because there is nothing that could be held up as evidence. Furthermore, even if there are originals outside, these "originals" will again be seen in the brain, meaning that the observer would deal with the images formed in his or her brain. Consequently such claims are unsupportable because people are unable to reach the "material equivalents" which they suppose to exist.

     We should also emphasize that scientific or technological development cannot change anything, as every scientific discovery or technological invention occurs in the minds of people, and consequently is of no help to people in reaching the outside world.     

     The views of renowned philosophers like B. Russell and L. Wittgenstein on this subject are as follows:

     For instance, whether a lemon truly exists or not and how it came to exist cannot be questioned or investigated. A lemon consists merely of a taste sensed by the tongue, an odour sensed by the nose, a colour and shape sensed by the eye; and only these features of it can be subject to examination and assessment. Science can never know the physical world. 13

     Philosopher G. Berkeley clearly expressed that our perceptions exist only in our minds and that we would be mistaken in automatically assuming that they exist in the outside world:

     We believe in the existence of objects just because we see and touch them, and they are reflected to us by our perceptions. However, our perceptions are only ideas in our mind. Thus, objects we captivate by perceptions are nothing but ideas, and these ideas are essentially in nowhere but our mind… Since all these exist only in the mind, then it means that we are beguiled by deceptions when we imagine the universe and things to have an existence outside the mind. So, none of the surrounding things have an existence out of our mind. 14

     In addition, it is of no importance for people whether something which a person cannot reach, see or touch, exists or not, because regardless of whether or not there is a material world, a human being only watches the world of perceptions in his brain. A person can never come across the true original of a material. Furthermore it is enough for everyone to see the copy. For example, someone who wanders around a garden with colorful flowers is not seeing the original of the garden, but the copy of it in his brain. However, this copy of the garden is so realistic that everyone receives some pleasure from the garden, as if it were real when in fact it is imaginary. Billions of people, right up until the present day, have assumed that they have been seeing the original of everything. Consequently, there is no reason for people to be interested in the "outside".

A person driving a car believes that the road and the trees he is driving past are far away from him. However, everything he sees is actually on a single plane in his brain just as in a photograph.

     The Sense Of Distance Is Also A Perception That Occurs In The Brain

     Imagine a crowd on a street, with shops, buildings, cars, horns honking… When you look at this picture it appears to be real. That is why most people cannot understand that the picture they see is produced in their brain, and mistakenly suppose that all of it is real. The picture has been created so perfectly that it is impossible to understand that the image that they perceive as real is not the original of the outside world, but only a copied image which exists in the mind.

    The elements which make a picture so convincing and impressive are distance, depth, color, shade and light. These materials are used with such perfection that they become a three-dimensional, colorful and vivid image inside the brain. When an infinite amount of detail is added to the picture a whole new world emerges that, without realization, we assume is real for all life, although we only interpret it in our mind.

     Imagine now that you are driving a car. The steering wheel is at arms length from you and there is a set of traffic lights about 100 m (or 300 ft) in front of you. The car in front of you is about 10 m (30 ft) away, while there are mountains on the horizon, which, according to your estimation, would be many kilometers (miles) away in the distance. However, all of these estimations are wrong. Neither the car nor the mountains are as far away as you would assume. In fact, the entire picture, as on a movie reel, exists on a two dimensional frame, on only one surface within the brain. The images reflected to the eye are two-dimensional, like those on a TV screen. In such circumstances, how can a perception of depth and distance occur?

     What is referred to as a sense of distance is a way of seeing three-dimensionally. The elements causing the effects of distance and depth in images are perspective, shade and motion. The form of perception called spatial perception by optical science is provided by highly complicated systems. This system can be explained simply in this way: The sight which reaches the eye is two dimensional. That is to say, it has measures of height and width. The senses of depth and distance result from the fact that two eyes see two different images at the same time. The image that reaches each of our eyes differs from the other in terms of the angle and light. The brain assembles these two different images to form our sense of depth and distance.

In this picture, the line in the back appears twice the size of the line at the front. However, in reality both of the lines are the same size. As we can see from this example, the use of lines, perspective, the light and shadow cause people to observe the same objects differently. In fact, all of these objects are viewed in a single place, in the visual center of the brain.

     
We can perform an experiment to understand this better. First, extend your right arm in front of you and hold up your index finger. Now focus on this finger while closing your left eye first and then your right eye. Because two different visions come to each eye, you will see the finger move slightly to one side. Now open both of your eyes and while continuing to focus on your right index finger, move your left index finger as close to your eye as you can. You will notice that the closest finger will have created two images. This is because now a different depth has formed in the closer finger from that in the farther finger. If you open and close your eyes one by one, you will see that the finger located nearer your eye will appear to move more than the finger which is further away. This is due to the increasing difference in the views appearing in each eye.

    While a three dimensional film is being made, this technique is used; Images shot from two different angles are placed on the same screen. The audience wears special glasses which have a color filter and polarize the light. The filters in the glasses filter out one of the two views, and the brain transforms these into one single three-dimensional image.

     The perception of depth in a retina with two dimensions is very similar to the technique used by artists to give the observer a feeling of depth in a picture with two dimensions. There are certain factors resulting in the feeling of depth, such as the placement of objects on top of one another, the atmosphere perspective, changes in texture, linear perspective, the dimensions, the height and the movement. For example the change of texture is very important in perceiving depth. For example, the ground that we walk on in a farm full of flowers is actually a tissue. The tissues closer to us are more detailed while the tissues further from us seem pale and harder to discern. Therefore, it is easier to estimate the distance of objects located on a tissue. Besides this, effects of shadow and light also contribute to the perception of a three-dimensional view.

     The reason we admire a picture made by a successful artist is the sense of depth and reality which are given to the picture, which is created by using the elements of shade and perspective

     Perspective results from the fact that distant objects appear smaller in proportion to those which are nearer, depending on the person who is looking at it. For example, when we look at a view, distant trees appear small, while those nearby appear large. Likewise, in a picture with a mountain in the background, the mountain is drawn smaller than the person in the foreground. In linear perspective, artists use parallel lines. For example, train tracks produce an effect of distance and depth by meeting with the horizon.

One of the significant elements which provides the feeling of depth is tissue differentiation. Tissues closer to us can be observed in detail while those further away appear less clearly. For example as we can observe from the picture on the side, a three dimensional tissue has been created on a paper with the feeling of depth, and which seems to be embossed due to the use of color, shadow and light. Even though all the dots are white in the above picture, they appear to be flashing in both black and white.

     The method that painters use in their paintings is also valid for the image that occurs in the brain. Depth, light and shade are produced by the same method in two dimensional space in the brain. The greater the amount of detail in the picture, the more realistic it appears and the more it deceives our senses. We behave as if there was real depth and distance, as if there was a third dimension.

CREATING A PICTURE WITH DEPTH ON A TWO DIMENSIONAL SURFACE

     However, all pictures are like a film square on a flat surface. The visual cortex in the brain is as small as a credit card! The distances, the images such as those of distant houses, stars in the sky, the moon, the sun, airplanes flying in the air, and birds - they are all crammed into this small space. That is to say, there is technically no distance between a glass that you can hold by extending your hand and an airplane that, if you looked up, you would understand to be thousands of kilometers above; all of them are on the single surface, that is, in the sense center of the brain.

     For example, a disappearing ship on the horizon is not actually miles away from you. The ship is in your brain. The window sill that you are looking at, a poplar tree in front of the window, the road in front of your house, the sea and the ship on the sea are all in the sight center of the brain, on a two dimensional surface. Just like a painter can represent the feeling of distance on a two dimensional canvas by using the proportions of size, elements of color, shade and light and perspective, so can the sense of distance also occur in the brain. In conclusion, the fact that we sense objects to be far away or nearby should not fool us, as distance is a sensation like all the others.

There is a very realistic depth in all of these pictures. A three-dimensional view with depth can be formed on a two-dimensional canvas by making use of shade, perspective and light. This element of realism can be increased depending on the ability of the painter. The same can be said for our own sight perception as well, as the vision that reaches the retina in fact exists in two dimensions. However, the images reaching each of our eyes become a single image, so that our brain perceives a three-dimensional image with depth.

12- George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710, Works of George Berkeley, vol. I, ed. A. Fraser, Oxford, 1871 p. 35-36
13- Orhan Hançerlioğlu, Düşünce Tarihi (History of Idea), Remzi Kitabevi, İstanbul: 1987, p.447
14- George Politzer, Principes Fondamentaux de Philosophie, Editions Sociales, Paris, 1954, pp. 38-39-44

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