I'm sure at some point most people will end up questioning whether they really experience the exact same reality as everyone else. I know I have and still do to this day.
When I was young, maybe seven or eight, I used to think that I was in some sort of elaborate test. I thought it was vaguely possible that everybody I had ever met was an android of some sort and I was being monitored by aliens/real human beings and one day the great illusory curtain would be drawn aside and I would be able to join the really real world. Obviously I thought all that with much smaller words - I wasn't even ten yet after all.
Today I guess I'm slightly less paranoid - I've seen enough people accidently bleed to set aside my 'android' fantasies. But sometimes I still wonder whether my reality is actually the same reality others percieve. Now this goes a little deeper than mere differences in points of view - and I have my doubts about whether I can explain it with any clarity, but I'll give it a go.
The kind of social disphagia I can imagine is probably most simply explained through 'primary colour' perception. Imagine, if you will, that you were born seeing the colour red as others would see the colour blue and vice versa. Now obviously your world would look entirely different when compared to anyone elses - your sky would probably be a shade of red for a start and when you bled (thus proving your non-android status) the colour that would ooze forth would be what we imagine to be blue. All the shades and hues would be affected and your whole world would be a psychadelic miasma of abberant colours.
The funny thing is that if this were so - it's highly probable that no one would really notice. We have a commonality of language that allows us to refer to the same objects, colours or properties objectively. When we're growing up we learn that the colour of the sky is blue - regardless of what we percieve. Thus, although you are seeing what others believe to be red - you will always call it blue because you assume that the colour you see is the same colour everyone else calls blue. All the secondary colours would be similarly shifted but because each hue is refered to through objective experience - it would seem that we were all seeing the same colours, even if we weren't.
As I said, that's the most simple example and I hope it was easy enough to grasp because the following is going to run counter intuitively - like leaping salmon of truth deperately swimming against the raging currents of reality.
What if other forms of perception were likewise affected? What if you experienced any one sense in a completely different way? Say you actually experienced sound as others percieve light: To you a symphony would actually look like a sprawling mass of colours. An explosion would sound like a flash of vermillion. Because the same commonality of language still applies (a 'bang' is a 'bang' no matter how it is seen OR heard) then it is possible that no one would ever know they weren't experiencing things exactly the same way as everyone else.
Now you're probably thinking that ears are designed to hear and eyes are designed to see - we all have near enough the same equipment so it follows that we all see and hear in much the same way. That is indeed true - the equipment is of similar make and model and seemingly similar design. But all this equipment does is capture light and sound and send it as electrochemical signals through to the brain.
While it is being transported, occular signals and aural signals are pretty much exactly the same - it is only when they get to the relevant sections of the brain that they are disseminated and interpreted into actual sensory perception. All the equipment does is convert light, sound, heat, smell, texture and taste into data which is fed into the central processing unit/nervous system for mental rendering. And it is only when this rendering is being done that we finally experience the universe around us.
I guess what I'm saying is: what if the rendering equipment worked completely differently for each individual? What if the raw data of the universe is experienced arbitrarily by every single person. The data is the same and the language being used to describe the data is also the same - so we would never really know that another mind views the world in a completely alien format.
There are already cases of synesthesia - where those afflicted will see noises and taste colours. What if this weren't a mere nueral miscommunication? What if this were just a peek at how others might be experencing the world?
The kind of social disphagia I can imagine is probably most simply explained through 'primary colour' perception. Imagine, if you will, that you were born seeing the colour red as others would see the colour blue and vice versa. Now obviously your world would look entirely different when compared to anyone elses - your sky would probably be a shade of red for a start and when you bled (thus proving your non-android status) the colour that would ooze forth would be what we imagine to be blue. All the shades and hues would be affected and your whole world would be a psychadelic miasma of abberant colours.
The funny thing is that if this were so - it's highly probable that no one would really notice. We have a commonality of language that allows us to refer to the same objects, colours or properties objectively. When we're growing up we learn that the colour of the sky is blue - regardless of what we percieve. Thus, although you are seeing what others believe to be red - you will always call it blue because you assume that the colour you see is the same colour everyone else calls blue. All the secondary colours would be similarly shifted but because each hue is refered to through objective experience - it would seem that we were all seeing the same colours, even if we weren't.
As I said, that's the most simple example and I hope it was easy enough to grasp because the following is going to run counter intuitively - like leaping salmon of truth deperately swimming against the raging currents of reality.
What if other forms of perception were likewise affected? What if you experienced any one sense in a completely different way? Say you actually experienced sound as others percieve light: To you a symphony would actually look like a sprawling mass of colours. An explosion would sound like a flash of vermillion. Because the same commonality of language still applies (a 'bang' is a 'bang' no matter how it is seen OR heard) then it is possible that no one would ever know they weren't experiencing things exactly the same way as everyone else.
Now you're probably thinking that ears are designed to hear and eyes are designed to see - we all have near enough the same equipment so it follows that we all see and hear in much the same way. That is indeed true - the equipment is of similar make and model and seemingly similar design. But all this equipment does is capture light and sound and send it as electrochemical signals through to the brain.
While it is being transported, occular signals and aural signals are pretty much exactly the same - it is only when they get to the relevant sections of the brain that they are disseminated and interpreted into actual sensory perception. All the equipment does is convert light, sound, heat, smell, texture and taste into data which is fed into the central processing unit/nervous system for mental rendering. And it is only when this rendering is being done that we finally experience the universe around us.
I guess what I'm saying is: what if the rendering equipment worked completely differently for each individual? What if the raw data of the universe is experienced arbitrarily by every single person. The data is the same and the language being used to describe the data is also the same - so we would never really know that another mind views the world in a completely alien format.
There are already cases of synesthesia - where those afflicted will see noises and taste colours. What if this weren't a mere nueral miscommunication? What if this were just a peek at how others might be experencing the world?
Did you understand any of that? Did you not understand and do you think I'm crazy? Did you understand and do you think I'm crazy?
What colour is the sky on your planet... or how does it taste?
What colour is the sky on your planet... or how does it taste?
