Monomorphic

Philosophers have long debated whether we can perceive reality in an objective manner, or if there is a multitude of subjective perceptions. I am not qualified to enter this debate on an academic level, but I will offer some thoughts from my current vantage point.

Sensory impressions can probably be said to be objective. I have no reason to contest this. Probably, there’s a certain genetic variation in how sensitive our sensory organs are, e.g. degrees of color blindness or sensitivity to high frequencies, but this can be compensated for technologically; with hearing aids, microscopes and various kinds of sensors we can expand our sensory range far beyond what we are born with.

It’s quite likely that when me and my friend look at an object, we will notice different things about it and walk away with different first impressions. If they contradict each other, we return to the object and try to establish who was right. So these contradictions can be resolved by going back to the source.

We tell ourselves narratives about what we observe. Most abstractions are such narratives. For instance, I have never seen a perfect circle or a perfect line, since such things don’t exist, but I have seen very good approximations of such things in the world. Only by going up extremely close can I see that my perception was an approximation. But even though I know this, I will remember my perceptions in terms of these approximations since it’s the only practical thing to do. However, I can still “go back to the source” and establish the validity of my impression.

So with first hand perceptions, and with concepts that are built from compounded first hand perceptions, there’s nothing really contradicting an objective reality or suggesting that such a reality wouldn’t exist. But many objects of vital importance in society revolve around narratives that can not conveniently be examined in terms of first hand sensory impressions. Objects such as impressions of people, political platforms and ideologies, appreciation of art (which, even though it can be reduced to sensory impressions, seems supremely hard to explain in terms of it), and so on. For this reason, I think that the narratives that are most likely to be told in these fields form a subjective reality that is highly unlikely to be disproven or reduced to sensory impressions. By the very nature of these, precise communication between spectators is impossible and people are likely to carry wildly contradictory stories in their heads.

And in such a world, whether or not we can agree on the objectivity of basic sensory impressions, subjective impressions (narratives that will not be deconstructed or falsified readily) will carry great importance. In fact, we have a basic drive to construct these narratives in order to deal with the complexity of everything we perceive. This might change if we in the future can create a perfect mathematical model of the human mind. In this case, maybe some problematic items such as appreciation of art or the meaning of an ideology might be reduced to an objective and verifiable-from-sensory-impressions concept.

It would be interesting to explore the grayzone between concepts that we easily perceive objectively and concepts that we easily perceive subjectively. Are there ideas whose validity can be reduced to sensory impressions, but only with great effort, so that people do not usually do so?

(This post is partly inspired by recent posts by Carl Svanberg, who blogs about objectivism in Swedish. My philosophical views are still in development, and I don’t want to side with one -ism camp or the other as of yet.)

In the Japanese summer, minor cockroach infestations are common. Every pharmacy makes a fortune selling a wide variety of cockroach repellents, traps and poisons.

Cockroaches are interesting from an evolutionary point of view. They are inherently passive and defensive in their approach to life. When danger threatens, they run to the darkest possible place. They seem to  eat whatever is left over by larger animals. It is sometimes said that they would be the only species to survive nuclear fallout. But it turns out other insects, like the fruit fly, have a much higher radiation resistance.

Maybe cockroaches have some similarities with mold, then. Possessing minimal initiative, they are like a chemical reaction of nature that sets in wherever there is some energy gain to be had by consuming and breaking down some leftovers. Their boundary can be pushed away, but banishing them from the surface of the earth would be an impossible feat (and probably undesirable).

Sometimes it is suggested that these days, there is an ecosystem of ideas – “memetics”. Surely, in this ecosystem too, there are large and small “animals”. Animals that feed selectively, and animals that eat just about anything (that is, ideas that can take root in just about any sort of mind). Animals that take initiative and seek to change their environment, and animals that only react, only defend, only hide in the dark.

In daily life, we must be careful so as to not fall prey to the small ideas that hide in the dark. Seek out the large beasts, and hunt them in the light of day.