In fact, studies have shown that there is an intimate relationship between the world we perceive and the conceptual categories encoded in the language we speak. We don't perceive a purely objective world out there, but one subliminally pre-partitioned and pre-interpreted according to culture-bound categories. For instance, "color words in a given language shape human perception of color." A brain imaging study suggests that language processing areas are directly involved even in the simplest discriminations of basic colors. Moreover, this kind of "categorical perception is a phenomenon that has been reported not only for color, but for other perceptual continua, such as phonemes, musical tones and facial expressions." In an important sense, we see what our unexamined cultural categories teach us to see, which may help explain why every generation is so confident in their own worldview. Allow me to elaborate.
Comment: Indeed, there seem to be several layers of perception, each built on top of the other. For instance, there is conscious perception (which Alfred Whitehead called 'perception in the mode of symbolic reference', because of the memories and concepts involved, which Kastrup references above). That is built on what might be called basic sensation ('perception in the mode of presentational immediacy'), which are the 'pure' sense data before they are interpreted by reference to symbols. That's where thinkers like Descartes and Locke stopped. Whitehead added a third, more fundamental type: perception in the mode of causal efficacy, the direct experience of causation, without reference to the specifics of sense data or the concepts with which those data are interpreted.
The conceptual-ladenness of perception isn't a new insight. Back in 1957, philosopher Owen Barfield wrote:
"I do not perceive any thing with my sense-organs alone.... Thus, I may say, loosely, that I 'hear a thrush singing.' But in strict truth all that I ever merely 'hear' - all that I ever hear simply by virtue of having ears - is sound. When I 'hear a thrush singing,' I am hearing ... with all sorts of other things like mental habits, memory, imagination, feeling and ... will." (Saving the Appearances)As argued by philosopher Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, science itself falls prey to this inherent subjectivity of perception. Defining a "paradigm" as an "implicit body of intertwined theoretical and methodological belief," he wrote:
"something like a paradigm is prerequisite to perception itself. What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see. In the absence of such training there can only be, in William James's phrase, 'a bloomin' buzzin' confusion.'"Hence, because we perceive and experiment on things and events partly defined by an implicit paradigm, these things and events tend to confirm, by construction, the paradigm. No wonder then that we are so confident today that nature consists of arrangements of matter/energy outside and independent of mind.
Yet, as Kuhn pointed out, when enough "anomalies" - empirically undeniable observations that cannot be accommodated by the reigning belief system - accumulate over time and reach critical mass, paradigms change. We may be close to one such a defining moment today, as an increasing body of evidence from quantum mechanics (QM) renders the current paradigm untenable.
Indeed, according to the current paradigm, the properties of an object should exist and have definite values even when the object is not being observed: the moon should exist and have whatever weight, shape, size and color it has even when nobody is looking at it. Moreover, a mere act of observation should not change the values of these properties. Operationally, all this is captured in the notion of "non-contextuality": the outcome of an observation should not depend on the way other, separate but simultaneous observations are performed. After all, what I perceive when I look at the night sky should not depend on the way other people look at the night sky along with me, for the properties of the night sky uncovered by my observation should not depend on theirs.
Comment: And that seems to be the way the world works, at least on the macro level.
The problem is that, according to QM, the outcome of an observation can depend on the way another, separate but simultaneous, observation is performed. This happens with so-called "quantum entanglement" and it contradicts the current paradigm in an important sense, as discussed above. Although Einstein argued in 1935 that the contradiction arose merely because QM is incomplete, John Bell proved mathematically, in 1964, that the predictions of QM regarding entanglement cannot be accounted for by Einstein's alleged incompleteness.
So to salvage the current paradigm there is an important sense in which one has to reject the predictions of QM regarding entanglement. Yet, since Alain Aspect's seminal experiments in 1981-82, these predictions have been repeatedly confirmed, with potential experimental loopholes closed one by one. 1998 was a particularly fruitful year, with two remarkable experiments performed in Switzerland and Austria. In 2011and 2015, new experiments again challenged non-contextuality. Commenting on this, physicist Anton Zeilinger has been quoted as saying that "there is no sense in assuming that what we do not measure [that is, observe] about a system has [an independent] reality." Finally, Dutch researchers successfully performed a test closing all remaining potential loopholes, which was considered by Nature the "toughest test yet."
The only alternative left for those holding on to the current paradigm is to postulate some form of non-locality: nature must have - or so they speculate - observation-independent hidden properties, entirely missed by QM, which are "smeared out" across spacetime. It is this allegedly omnipresent, invisible but objective background that supposedly orchestrates entanglement from "behind the scenes."
It turns out, however, that some predictions of QM are incompatible with non-contextuality even for a large and important class of non-local theories. Experimental results reported in 2007 and 2010 have confirmed these predictions. To reconcile these results with the current paradigm would require a profoundly counterintuitive redefinition of what we call "objectivity." And since contemporary culture has come to associate objectivity with reality itself, the science press felt compelled to report on this by pronouncing, "Quantum physics says goodbye to reality."
The tension between the anomalies and the current paradigm can only be tolerated by ignoring the anomalies. This has been possible so far because the anomalies are only observed in laboratories. Yet we know that they are there, for their existence has been confirmed beyond reasonable doubt. Therefore, when we believe that we see objects and events outside and independent of mind, we are wrong in at least some essential sense. A new paradigm is needed to accommodate and make sense of the anomalies; one wherein mind itself is understood to be the essence - cognitively but also physically - of what we perceive when we look at the world around ourselves.
Bernardo Kastrup has a Ph.D. in computer engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology and specializations in artificial intelligence and reconfigurable computing. He has worked as a scientist in some of the world's foremost research laboratories, including the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories. Bernardo has authored many academic papers and books on philosophy and science. His most recent book is "The Idea of the World: A multi-disciplinary argument for the mental nature of reality," based on rigorous analytic argument and empirical evidence. For more information, freely downloadable papers, videos, etc., please visit www.bernardokastrup.com.
This presupposes that we or something we assign to ourself is already thinking reality.
Although we may refine this to 'modelling' reality.
We clearly react and interact through the model as if it is reality and not a model of reality.
This of course can be related to the first of the ten Commandments if God is Reality and image or model, symbol or idol of God/Reality is given priority of worth-ship.
Who is it that thinks to make image of reality and claim it as their own?
Is it in turn made by (defined in the terms) of what it sought to impose?
'Re thinking reality' is re-cognising what we are, what thinking is, and what reality is relative to what it has become accepted and believed to be. But it isn't Reality that changes - so much as our perspective.
The unfolding of perspective is a development of consciousness through its results in experience.
The idea that we are ascending from ignorance to enlightenment is of course likely to confuse the two when enlightened understanding is equated with technologies of manipulation and control.
Our 'subjective mind' is a creative result of object-modelling 'reality' in an attempt to control or have power over it, and thereby be-living, suffering or surviving in terms of accepted and assigned meanings of order over chaos. It is therefore a split mind that extends the idea of the split as its self-reality and justification for existence. Action and reaction of subjected objects reflect a fundamental conflict because Mind is Fundamental or Foundational. An oppositional mind is without foundation in truth - and yet can be given to truth rather than used against it. The polarised conflict of opposition is the effective block to relational awareness or communication. It is thus the 'tool' by which a limiting and controlling consciousness is generated, idolised and sacrificed to.
Subjectivity is inherently exclusive to objects that are designated not-self, as outside or apart from self - with this self-sense centred upon the personal sense of control that is associated with both judgement of reality, and operating or surviving under the laws and limitations that those judgements extend or give rise to. 'As ye judged - so are ye judged' - is then justice in terms of giving and receiving or sowing and reaping and in modern terms as 'garbage in; garbage out'.
But to understand this at the level of function of Mind (rather than thinking about it) is to recognize this IS the function of Mind - and the appearance of 'other levels' is a creation or construct within Mind. Not a separate 'mind' assigned to an organism, but as Mind function of creation through idea (of separateness) that we conceive and perceive as separately living entities - more or less like our self(of imaged definition).
Mind opens and Is the gift of shared reflection and experience through idea that never leaves Mind because there is no 'other' nor separation from any object, focus, beholding or embrace of Mind in regard to any or all of its 'effects'. But judgement rejects and self-conflict projects and denies as if to get rid of. This effects a lens of fearful mis-interpretation of a Creation we can no longer recognize ourself one with. It effects a fear of truth in defending a lie or self-invested illusion.
The idea of a split mind is the idea of creating unlike our Creator/Creation - or in the light of the above - unlike the nature and function of true creation - which is never coercive upon its own and cannot BE out of accord with itself and Be Itself. A mis-creative assertion is both out of accord with reality and coercive in the need to defend itself against exposure or serious challenge. It is its own 'reality-experience' but founded on a false foundation - defended and protected as true.
The nature of mind is more akin to resonant frequency communication or synchrony. With the 'local or private' mind operating within dissonance that effectively blocks, filters and distorts the Universal 'Field' Communion to a feared denial of private possession and control that then 'survives' against astronomically overwhelming conditions that are 'mapped out' to a temporal focus of physical existence. Though never does Mind cease being Itself in any tangibility or visibility of idea-experience - or better idea-intimacy, because true idea is an extension of the one in the many as a direct and timeless knowing that we have no capacity to 'objectify' or model - but can allow our 'model' and its developed abilities or consciousness to be repurposed to unified, reintegrative and healing recognition.
But this is not the work of all the kings horses and all the kings men (thinking the problem to apply or enforce a solution). Rather a release of the mind of the problem to the realigning and reintegrating of a 'Field of knowing' - which is already the movement of recognition and extension within us - but covered or distorted by blocks or defences that are our responsibility to release by no longer hiding and protecting them. (denial and projection).