Here's something I've been working on lately. Comments welcome.

We believe many things, some true, some not. Philosopher René Decartes searched for “bedrock,” for a self-evident belief that could not be doubted or denied. He found that belief, famously, in the statement “I think therefore I am.” Descartes’s statement is not above criticism. In particular, the first word (“I”) seems to assume the conclusion (“I am”). Let’s investigate the “I”.

We’ll imagine a person as having four parts: body, emotion, mind, and consciousness. With this picture, consciousness is that which is aware of our physical senses (touch, taste, hearing, seeing, smelling), our emotional sensations, and our thoughts.

Our physical senses report on what we are encountering “out there” in the physical world. We are walking and see a tree. The tree was there before we encountered it. Unless we’re hallucinating, we are experiencing a pre-existent reality, i.e., the tree.

We can think of mind and emotions in the same way. Imagine the “mindscape” where all possible thoughts already exist. When we have a thought, we are experiencing a pre-existent thought, just like we experience a pre-existent tree. We usually don’t think of thoughts this way but I don’t see any logical problem with this view. So, when we experience a thought, we “see” the thought in the mindscape, where it existed before we encountered it. With this way of thinking, Einstein didn’t invent the theory of relativity; he found it in the mindscape, where it has been all along. His mind explored the mindscape and discovered (not invented) the theory of relativity. Most mathematicians has a a similar view of math (i.e., Mathematical Platonism); they believe they discover mathematics truths rather than inventing them.

We can think of emotions in the same way. All emotions already exist in the “emotescape.” When we experience joy or fear we are experiencing something pre-existent, something which lives in the emotescape, just as the pre-existing tree exists in the landscape.

So, to our usual five senses, we can add the sense of emotion and the sense of thought, giving us seven senses in all: touch, taste, hearing, seeing, smelling, “heart” (which feels emotion), and mind. (If we possess other senses (e.g., ESP), they wouldn’t alter the argument significantly.)

But if the seven senses are all we possess, how to we experience a tree? Without a special tree-sensing sense, how can we experience a tree? The answer is we don’t directly experience a tree. Rather, the tree is a theoretical construct.

What is a theoretical construct? It’s something our mind creates to explain what we experience. As a simple illustration, we hear a knock at the door and a familiar voice, so we think our friend Pete is there. But all we’ve experience is two sounds: the knock and the voice. The thought of Pete at the door is a theoretical construct. It’s something we create to explain the sounds we’ve heard. (Note: to be consistent, we shouldn’t say “our mind creates” but “our mind finds an idea in the mindscape.” For simplicity, we’ll continue using the usual way of speaking about the mind creating ideas.)

We see patches of brown and green. The brown feels rough; the green is smooth. Our mind decides we are experience a tree. We believe the tree exists in the landscape but we do not directly experience the tree because our seven senses limit what we can directly experience. The tree is a theoretical construct; it exists in our minds, which is not to deny that something out there is behind the phenomena we experience as a tree.)

If we limit ourselves to the seven senses, then almost all of our experiences are experience of theoretical constructs, of things we create in our mind. The idea is not a new one. Philosophers long ago created the “brain in a vat” thought experiment where someone is fed sense inputs so that they experience a seemingly exterior world. (The “brain in a vat” idea is the premise of the movie “The Matrix.”)

So, we usually experience a mental picture of the world, a picture created when our mind processes physical sensations. There’s a wonderful optical illusion that drives the point home: Adelson’s Checker-Shadow Illusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Checker_shadow_illusion.svg

The squared labeled A and B are the same color! (I had to print the image and cut out the two squares to convince myself. Try it.) If we merely saw what our eyes saw, the squares would look the same. But our mind processes the picture, automatically takes light and shadow into consideration, and creates a picture of reality. In this case, an untrue picture.

Our mind’s automatic processing is, of course, a wonderful evolutionary advantage. For survival, seeing some orange, black, and white stripes is far inferior to seeing a tiger. But we have no tiger-sensing sense. There is only one thing we can see: light.

Per the philosopher Immanuel Kant, we experience only phenomena, i.e., how things appear to us. We never experience noumena, i.e., the “thing-in-itself.” We experience appearance not reality. For example, imagine a wooden table. I see the table as having one color; a color-blind person may see it as having another color. And an alien sensitive to radiation in the radio, infrared, ultraviolet, and/or X-ray regions of the electromagnetic would see the table quite differently. Or not at all. Or as a translucent object. Neither human or alien can experience the “real table,” only its varying manifestations.

Based on the somewhat meager input of our five physical senses, our mind creates the physical world in which we live. We experience phenomena, but reality, the “thing-in-itself” lies beyond our five senses—if it exists at all. Famously, philosopher George Berkeley denied there was anything material, anything beyond experience. Berkeley believed that objects are only a collection of “ideas” (by which he seems to have meant “sensations”) and ideas depend on a mind to exist. Just as the sensation of a headache cannot exist without a mind to experience it, Berkeley held that objects only exist while they are perceived.

But things seem to exist even when we don’t perceive them. Light a candle, leave the room, wait, and when you return the candle will have burnt out, indicating it was burning even when you were not perceiving it. Berkeley explained that God is the source of our ideas and God ensures that our ideas are consistent. In essence, Berkeley saw a person as a brain in a vat with God controlling the input.

So, we possess seven senses, senses apparently stimulated by three external worlds: a physical world (landscape), an emotional world (emotescape), and a mental world (mindscape). We directly experience thought, emotion, and the five physical senses. Anything more is a theoretical construct, something our own mind creates. If we take a naturalistic approach, like Kant, we call the exterior thing stimulating our senses the “thing-in-itself”. If we take a supernaturalistic approach, like Berkeley, we call the exterior thing stimulating our senses “God.”

Berkeley’s approach is harmonious with religions which picture God as a creator separate from his creation. In this view, all we can experience are phenomena; we have no natural access to the noumena, to THAT which lies beyond.

The situation with Kant’s approach is different. Consider the chair. I can see/hear/touch/taste/smell sensations for which I believe the chair to be responsible, but I can never experience the “chair-in-itself”, never the “real” chair, the chair as it is irrespective how it impacts the senses of me or anyone else. At first sight, Kant’s “thing-in-itself” is an inaccessible as Berkeley’s God. But consider that to someone else, say, to Pete, I am a thing-in-itself. There is a side of me which exists irrespective of how anyone experiences me. It’s irrespective of how I experience myself. (This approach is harmonious with religions which picture God as immanent in creation, which picture us as images of God.)

“I experience myself”? What can that mean? We’ve seen that the seven senses give us messages from noumena, the outside world. But messages need a receiver. I receive the messages. If I am a “thing-in-itself” then I am noumena. How do I come to experience the noumena which is I? Obviously, by attenuating concern, by withdrawing attention, from the seven senses, and turning that attention inward. Meditation, in other words. Not the type of meditation that has imagery (“Imagine yourself in a cool forest, near a running stream”). Rather, the type of meditation where you aim for a detachment from bodily, emotional, and mental sensations. Where you passively watch your thoughts. Where you’re sitting on a mountain top watching the clouds of sensations drift slowly away. As sensations lessen, you experience yourself as noumena, as the thing-in-itself, as the real.

You’ve followed a way to reality.