Chapter 1

Absolute and perceived realities

Many actors and actresses, who have played a nasty character in a television series, have commented on the fact they often encounter people in the street who berate them for their character's behavior on screen. What goes on in the mind of these viewers? Somehow, the fictitional characters they see on their screens have become part of their reality.

It seems very odd for people to do this, but is it so different from the way we accept into our own reality the characters we see in news programs or in documentaries? Most of us have never visited the Sahara desert in Africa, yet, we know it is there and, having seen views of it in movies and on television, can form a clear picture in our minds as to what it is like. As we go about our daily lives we see places and communicate with people. Information and impressions go into our memories to become part of our conception of reality.

So, what is reality? The simple answer is that reality is what is happening in the world. But, is this a useful definition? Nobody knows what is happening in the whole of the world. Most people are unaware of even of what goes on in their own locality. And, what isn't known cannot be part of a person's conception of reality.

We have friends, relatives and business acqaintancies. These are part of our reality. But, are they part of the reality of an eskimo living in the icy wastes of the artic circle? We see an old man wearily walking in the rain. He is part of our reality but is of very little importance. But, to his wife at home, to his children and his grandchildren he is a significant part of theirs. The politics of a Goverment are part of our reality, but depending upon whether we are rich or poor ,the reality can have quite different meanings.

With a little thought, it soon becomes clear that reality is subjective: it can appear quite differently to different people. It is a mental conceptualization, a representation of the world that is formed in individual minds as a result of learning and experience. This is a limited and personal conception of reality, which is called: 'perceived reality'.

The concept of perceived reality

Despite the commonsense knowledge that everyone views the world differently, most people have in their minds the idea that the world they live in is a single, absolute reality. In a fundamental sense this is perfectly true, but, has this absolute reality any direct effect on our lives? Reality is a concept of the human mind and no mind can ever conceive absolute reality.

This is of profound significance because the idea that there is an absolute reality, which is common to all, is simply an illusion. It exists only as an abstract concept that impacts on nobody's life. People are only aware of and are affected by the reality they can perceive.

This is not an easy idea to accept because it implies that we are not all living in the same world. We are each living in a unique, personal world that has been created in our minds. There may be many common features in these personal worlds but no world is identical.

This calls into question what it means to be content, happy or successful. These are states of mind that are related to a perceived existence in a perceived reality. But, if perceived reality is an individual cognitive structure in our own heads, happiness and succes are relative only to what kind of reality our brain has created for us.

This draws the conclusion that contentment, happiness and success isn't so much about what you do in a theoretical absolute reality, but what you do in the reality that exists only in your mind. If your brain has created a difficult, competitive reality, where it is hard to be happy, content and successful then you'll likely to have a miserable life. If this perceived reality is an easy place to be happy, content and successful, then its likely that you will have an enjoyable life.

But, it is within everybody's power to change the reality within their head, to make it easier to be happy, content and successful.

Ever wondered why having riches doesn't guarantee happiness? This is the reason why.

Dealing with the world within our heads

It should be blindingly obvious, but few people seem to appreciate that we are never dealing with or reacting to the real world. We are only ever dealing with a representation of the real world as it has been built into our brains as a result of living.

Dealing with the world requires massive information processing, involving the constant referencing of information we have learned about the objects we encounter. We cannot do this with the world directly, we have to do it indirectly, via bundles of neurons that represent the objects we deal with in the world, together with all the information we need to know them.

For example, we may feel we are communicating directly with real people when we hold conversations. But we are not. We are communicating with cognitive models of them that reside within the artificial world that is in our heads. We talk to these models, not to any reality.

When we talk to one of these models, it triggeres a series of nerves and muscles that transmit sounds that contain the conversational information to the outside world. There, the sounds are picked up by the human whose internal representation we are speaking to. This human's brain then translates these sounds into a language the human uses to communicate with a representation of us that he or she carries in his or her brain.

When the other person replies, they are replying to the bundles of neurons that are carrying detailed information about us: their internal model of us. This reply is transmitted as sound waves that we pick up and translate into a message that is conveyed to us by the model of that other person in our brain.

It has to be like this. Communication between people cannot be direct because of the need to access so much additional information when out brain is interpreting the information contained in sounds. For example, if somebody asks you to lend them some money, you don't make the decision as to whether of not to lend them the money on the basis of what you see and hear. You'll have a representation of that person in your mind that would include everything you know about that person. It is to this internal representation that you will give an answer; not to the flesh and blood object that is emitting sounds and reflecting light from its body that is being picked up by the sensors in our eyes.

Think about a telephone conversation. You are not talking to the telephone. You are talking to the mental image you hold in your mind of the person at the other end of the line.

Are you convinced that the world you are dealing with is not the real world, but only a model of the world you carry around in your head? Probably not, so it may take a lengthy bit of explaining, which we will have to take in gradual stages.

A robot's view of the world

The human brain is far too complex an organ to begin an explanation by considering what happen's there. So, let's start by considering a brain that is far less mysterious: the brain of a robot.

Let's think about how an artificial representation of the world might be built into the brain of a robot. Then we'll see can see how how this robot might deal with the world and then compare this to way we, as humans, deal with the world.

At the current rate of technological progress, it isn't too hard to imagine that at some future time we'll be able to create intelligent robots that come close to emulating humans.

These robots would 'see' the world through some arrangement of digital cameras. They would have an artificial skin, covered with pressure pads, to allow them to 'feel' objects. They would have sound sensors that allow then to 'listen' to sound. They would have gas analysers to give them a sense of smell and a chemical analyser to give them a sense of 'taste'. Already, we are seeing these kind of features built into robots sent to the moon.

All the signals from these sensors would feed into a central computer. This computer would perform functions similar to those the brain performs for humans. It would create an internal representation of the world, based upon the information it was receiving from the sensors. This would allow the robot to know how its external world is arranged. The computer would categorize each object in this world, listing all the separate features and characteristcs. This the robot would have to do, because there would be no other way for it to interact intelligently with an external environment.

If the robot were designed to be able to communicate intelligently with humans, it would have to have internal representations of them also. It would need to be able to store details about them, together with assessments of their characters and their relationships within a community.

An intelligent robot would have to have programs that could analyze what is happening in the outsicde world. These programs could not be applied directly to the real world, they would have to be applied to the internal representation of it in the computer memory.

An intelligent robot should also be able to make judgements based upon anticipation and future expectations. To do this it would have to have programs that could visualize what would happen if there were changes in the external world. As any change in the external world would be detected by the robot through its sensors, the robot would have to have a way of duplicating its internal representation of the world and feeding modified sesor signals to it to be able to see what effects they have. Obviously, the accuracy of such judgements would be determined by the accuracy of the internal representation.

It becomes obvious that however advanced the design of the robot might be, it cannot ever be arranged to interact intelligently with the real world without reference to the representation of the world that has been built into its computer memory. Everything the robot knows about the world is there. Anything that isn't stored there, the robot has no knowledge of so cannot be used by the robot for judgement, decision making or or action. Everything the robot does or says will have to be based upon this internal representation, so effectly, the robot will not be interacting with the real world at all. Effectively, it will be interacting only with the represeantation of the real world it has stored in its memory.

Now consider how humans differ from this robot. Will they be interacting with a real world or the representation of the world they have stored in their memories?

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Assuming that this robot computer brain was sufficiently advanced to allow us to have a conversation with the robot, how could we explain to the robot that its internal representation of the world wasn't the real world but only a representation of it created by the programs built into its computer memory?

To the robot, this internal representation would be the only world it would know. It wouldn't be able to conceive of a world outside of this, unless it was provided with suitable cognitive models .

In a similar way, we need special cognitive models to be able to understand that the way we are experiencing the world is not necessarily the world the way it really is. What we see as conscious reality is in fact simply a representation of the real world as it has been created in the brain. Although we think we are dealing with the real world, in fact we are dealing with a model of it as it can be represented by networks of neurons.

Not surprisingly, the internal representation of the world that people see as the real world might differ markedly, from one person to the next.

The concept of The Matrix

The popular movie "The Matrix" was based upon an interesting concept. It was set in some future time, when aliens had taken over the earth. These aliens had viewed the human race in much the same way as we view farm animals and agricultural plants: as life forms that can be harnessed to supply vital needs

Just as we keep animals in enclosures and plants neatly arranged in fields, the aliens in The Matrix had put humans into bottles that were neatly arranged in vast buildings. Life supporting nutrients were piped into these humans and the energy they produced was continuously being syphoned off for the benefit of the aliens. It sounds bizarre, but, in principle, it is no different from the way our civilization is set up for mass producing farm products.

Of interest here is the idea behind this movie: that the aliens could keep the humans happy, by programming into their brains an artificial reality. They did this by The humans were experiencing this artificial reality as if it were a real world, with their sensory organs suitably linked to the program so that felt they were really seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling.

To the humans in the bottles is wasn't an artificial world, it was a real world in which they could move around and interact with each other. As a closed system, they had no idea that there was another reality where they were actually living in a bottle.

The story line of the movie revolved around a few of the humans who'd escaped from their bottles and were fighting to release the human race from the alien control.

The matrix in today's world

This idea of an artificial reality being programmed into our brains would seem to be only a fanciful idea. But is it? What actually is the real world?

As technology advances to bring us new ways of examining matter, we are finding that reality actually consists of various forms of energy and radiation. The world we experience as reality is actually an artificial representation of this unimaginable complexity, constructed internally by the billions of neurons in our brains. In fact, how we are experiencing the world, isn't much different from the way the bottled humans in The Matrix were experiencing their world.

As more and more is discovered about the human brain, it is beginning to be realised that everyone has a completely different picture of the world. The human brain does not have a universal common structure, for every person it can be vastly different in size, shape and circuitry.

We know that sensory inputs to our brain, from our organs of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell, go to specific bundles of neurons for processing. These bundles of neuron are not identical in every human brain. They are not built according to a standard design as say an electrical circuit might be. They are formed by what is known as a stoatic process, where neurons are guided into position by chemical gradients and make contact according to probabilities rather than certainties. No two brains are the same, so it is impossible for everyone to view the world in an identical way.

The reason we think we see the same world is because we can comunicate and can come to agreements. If I look at a house and you look at a house, the electromagnetic radiation we call light is activating a uniquely different set of cells in each of our respective brains. Although the experience may be totally different, we can agree to mutually call these difference experiences by the same name: a house.

It is like this for every object we can see. The neurons activated by the electromagnet light waves refleted from the objects and impinging on the the cells in our eyes are quite different for every person. In short, nobody experiences the world in the same way.

Patterns of emotion

In a similar way, everyone has a unique way they experience emotions. Neural arrangement that give rise to emotions different from person to person. The message pathways are different. The chemical messenger molecules vary in density, so do the numbers and positions of the receptors that read and interpret these messages.

We think we have similar emotions only because we give an agreed name to what we experience in a give situation. This bears no relationship whatsoever as to how the emotions are felt or to their intensity..

This is readily apparent when differences in reactions to situations are noticed. Pain, pity, sorrow, shame, fear and every other emotion that elicits external signs can be seen to be different from one person to the next. This is entirely due to the fact that their brains are likely to be structurally different, the neurons connected differently and the messaging chemicals and receptors are different.

Communication

Because we can agree to associate specific sounds with the activities of bundles of neurons when we see objects or experience emotions we can give them names. Similarly, we can associate sounds with other neural activity that happens in the brain when we use reasoning and logic.