Part of Reality Cannot be Perceived

[GliderGuider]

26. Do I "surely" believe that such a thing as a misconception actually exists?

Last edited Sun Feb 5, 2012, 03:40 PM - Edit history (3)

No, actually I don't.

When a person has a conception - a thought, an idea, an interpretation of some perception - as far as I can tell it is always true to that person. It's based on their knowledge at the time, flavoured and coloured by their life experiences - the things they have been taught, and especially the ways they have learned to manage their feelings. They may suffer from insufficient information, or their experiences may have given them unhealthy patterns of interpretation or counterproductive emotional coping mechanisms, but from the viewpoint of the person having the conception, it is perfectly true - they could have no other conception under those circumstances.

Others may judge my ideas to be misconceptions, but those are their judgments, made from their point of view. Such judgments by others have nothing to do with the internal reality of my ideas.

On the other hand, I also think that every human idea is a misconception. That's because in the end none of us has a "true" conception of reality. Such a thing is literally impossible, because all of us filter external reality in many ways. First we filter it by passing it through sensory organs that have very limited bandwidth. Then it becomes nerve impulses that are prone to electro-chemical distortions. Then it somehow becomes an internal mental "image" by some poorly understood and potentially error-prone mechanism. That mental image is then acted on and modified by our internal algorithmic processes in conjunction with the contents of our memory - reason and logic combined with incomplete knowledge and those learned patterns and reflexive emotions I talked about above. Even worse, all this takes place in a brain that experiences a constant flux of perception- and judgment-altering hormones. In the face of all this, how valid is the judgment of misconception by others who only see limited external manifestations of that interpretive complex process?

From the internal point of view - the subjective, relative, personal view - there is no such thing as misconception. From the external point of view - the objective, impersonal absolute point of view - there is nothing but misconception.

We have complete freedom to bend ideas to our will. I agree that sitting with counter-intuitive insights is valuable, as is working to increase our ability to perceive reality in different ways. I don't agree that doing this will necessarily bring us closer to truth (IMO the existence of Truth is the main human misconception), and even the existence of structure as you define it is a human judgement. However, the effort to understand to reality more deeply will make us more flexible, increase our freedom of thought and our ability to cope with the vagaries of the world. And it's fun.

Assuming you're not too psychologically damaged, so long as you don't get stuck on some notion of absolute truth you'll be OK - no matter what or how you happen to think.