The question of what is, irrespective of my opinion, has been around for thousands of years. From Plato onwards, there has been a tradition of trying to look beneath the surface appearance of things, the shadows of one's own perceptual processes that seem to obscure the "pure" truth underneath.
It's the question that drives religion, science, art - even perception itself.
All these have as a foundation the rejection of the idea of just accepting what appears in front of one in favour of discerning some explanation that one can't directly see (or hear, or touch or smell or...).
Whether the universe is made up of spirits, beauty, matter/energy distributed through space/time or agents that benefit/threaten me, - all or none of the above - have we moved nearer an explanation, and anyway, why do we need one?
It almost seems as if we're hooked on "explanation" - we can't just accept the territory, we have to have a map.It's what perception is - at least, the kind of perception that mobile organisms have.
Oddly, we have to use perception to try to perceive past perception.
Doomed to fail, or doomed to succeed?
About Me
- Uno
- Permanently puzzled. I've called this "my perceptions" not out of some solipsistic belief that I'm the centre of the universe, but rather, it's where I have to start from.
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