Questioning the fabric of reality | philosophy
I started with the journey of writing articles as my 2020 new year resolution, publishing one article every month. Yes, it’s September 2020 already and I screwed up with August month’s, and here I am publishing it now.
Now its time for some introspection and questioning one’s existence.
What is the meaning of life?
Disclaimer: You will find the zero answers to any of the questions here, but will make you ask more questions.
Existential question all of us might have asked at some point in life is either the most profound questions of human existence or nothing more than a lame question.
Mostly we ask these question when trapped in a job we hate, lost a loved one, breakups or when making an important decision in life.
It questions our ability to get out of ourself and see our life from outside and see the wider picture. Humans possess self-awareness and can take an observational, self-reflective viewpoint on our lives.
We look into the sky and wonder how small and fleeting creatures like ourselves fit in the grand scheme of things, within vast space and time.
Meaning of life can hold multiple subjective answers, purposes, duties, pleasures etc. depending on your belief system and background with no absolute real answer. Maybe because there exists no absolute reality.
Or maybe you can end the question with :
You live because you’re born. That’s It.
Or you may believe there is a purpose for everything.
Then you should believe everything is already planned and free will doesn’t exist?
So does Free will exist?
We feel free and assume everything we decide is under our control and it’s our decision.
Let’s say you had an egg for breakfast, you say it was fully your decision. You could have had bread. But if I had known everything to know about your preference, background and environment. Your choice to eat egg can be determined. Therefore, what we are asking is simply whether our choices are determined.
Libertarian Free Will -
We all agree given a choice A and B. Then selection is solely based on my will.
Because I certainly made the choice. At any moment you could decide to stop reading this blog because that’s your choice. We feel good to have choices.
Now then we also agree, everything that is happening in the natural world has a cause and effect. If a ball is flying in air then somebody must have hit it.
That is for the cause “ball flying” there was the event “hitting the ball”
Determinism — everything that had happened must be because of a past event which can’t be changed.
So the choice you took was because of an event in past. So everything happening now is because of something that happened in past.
You choose to eat an egg for breakfast today (event), then there must be a cause for it. So because of that cause, the event of eating egg occurred.
The cause may be your environment, genetic or any factor. So every event is caused by a cause in past.
Confused? Everything going above the head? Well, some question is just like that!
So by this logic, if you knew the cause then you can predict the event right?
That is you can predict the future? In physis knowing the position and velocity of object you can know its future (position).
Welcome HEISENBERG PRINCIPLE:
You can’t know the exact position and velocity of an object.
But why?
Because of everything in the universe act as both particle and wave at the same time. Now that’s another rabbit hole, a story for another day.
So we are back to confused. To avoid all the confusion you may also choose to believe, everything is part of gods plan. Almighty GOD?
So does GOD exist?
Simply put we can’t know. Both atheists and believers are wrong in their proclamations. We do not know enough about the inner workings of the universe to make any sort of grand claim about the nature of reality.
If the universe runs autonomously by science then what about the grand designer who set the whole thing in motion?
The famous question
WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING
Atheist |
why does nature exist and not nothing? Because big-bang happened.
Why did big-bang happen? How everything came to existence from nothing?
Believer |
why does nature exist and not nothing? Because God created it.
Then who created God? He was always there!
Then why can’t the universe be just there? (no need for creation)
You can debate all day. But the truth is NOBODY KNOWS FOR SURE.
And it’s highly unlikely god (if exist) is anything like we defined by our imagination. Or perhaps we live in the simulation set by another being (not omnipotent god) something which has more control over the fabric of reality and universe.
So without god, the concept of hell and heaven won’t exist. So when we die, that’s it? We are indeed just mortal bodies? GAME OVER?
What about my consciousness?
“Almost everything you can say about consciousness is kind of BS
The only way to describe it is in terms of what it is and what it’s not”
-Joseph LeDoux
Consciousness is confusing for scientists because it doesn’t fit into scientific explanations of the world… while physics explains how chemistry works, and chemistry explains how biology works, and biology explains how psychology works, consciousness doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere.
Consciousness is objective. By definition it means “to be aware and responsive of one’s surroundings; awake.”
Being conscious allows us to experience, but is our experience reality?
The grass is green, the tree is tall is it an objective reality?
Hypothetical question
1. Let’s say a creature come into existence with no senses (touch, smell, vision, taste, sound). It is unaware of the so-called absolute truth ‘grass is green’. So people may agree creature is not conscious. Just because the Creature cannot currently perceive and define something to itself, does not mean it doesn’t still objectively exist.
2. Now, let’s say that Creature has one sense that allows it to be aware of its surroundings (enough for its survival), but with it remains unaware that the grass is green. In this occasion, is the Creature still “unconscious”, or does it just experience “reality” on a different level of “conscious” than we can understand? we are simply on different levels of consciousness compared to the creature. True when While we can perceive the world in ways that the Creature cannot, the Creature perceives the world in ways that we cannot.
3. Finally, let’s say that the Creature had five senses we know and separate senses. The Creature is now not only aware of the objective truths of “the grass is green” but it’s aware of things that we, as beings with only five senses, are not aware of. In this occasion, the Creature is now truly at a “higher state of consciousness” (“more awake”) than a human being. However, this does not mean human beings are unconscious entirely, this just means that human beings are on a certain level of consciousness (awareness) that is lower than that of the Creatures. They are only “asleep” to the Creature’s reality, and beyond. Just because humans cannot currently perceive and define something to itself, does not mean it doesn’t still objectively exist.
So there may be other things to “the grass is green” which we cant comprehend.
So then can we call something real just because we perceive it as reality?
