Does Anything Exist Until We See It? | Unveiled

Does Anything Exist Until We See It?

How far do you trust your own senses? Are you 100% certain that what you see is actually what exists? The human brain is the most complex thing on the planet, but also one of the least understood… and as we learn more about our neural centre, human perception and the nature of reality, there are some suggestions that what we see might not be what’s really there. This is Unveiled and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; Does anything exist until we see it? Philosophers have debated the nature of reality and perception for millennia, with one branch of modern philosophy, metaphysics, focussing on two distinct questions; “What is there?” and “What is it like?” The idea is that if we can ever conclusively answer both of those questions, only then will we have a definitive answer to what reality really is. The problem is that it’s hard to do just that; to totally prove what’s real. In ethology, the study of animal behaviour, the word “umwelt” is key - taken to mean ;“the world as experienced by a particular organism”. It’s a crucial idea in philosophy and neurology, too… relating to how we can never know if we all see the same things in the same ways. On a basic level, one person’s interpretation of the colour “red” may actually be “green” for you, but there’s no way to test that such a difference exists. Every individual being’s experience rests on how every unique brain constructs and understands the world around it. That’s not to say that there isn’t some method we can look to, though… and science does help us to measure and quantify reality. Simple experiments can serve to highlight the differences in how we see things, such as the rabbit-duck experiment where subjects are shown an image that can be interpreted in two ways - as a rabbit, or a duck - and they’re almost always split on what they see first. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously used the image to explain two different ways that he believed human beings see, which he called; “seeing that,” and “seeing as” - with “seeing that” being what you’ve unquestionably seen, and “seeing as” being what you’ve interpreted despite multiple options. For cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman, though, the significance is greater still. Hoffman proposes that we never see (or in any way experience) reality as what it actually is, but rather as a set of delusions catered to ourselves which help us to survive. In this way we’re not seeing (or even feeling, smelling or hearing) what’s objectively real, more a series of shortcuts specifically created by our brains in order to give us the best chance of understanding and processing the information that’s put before us. Since reality is so hard to measure, then, can we ever know the truth? The murky world of quantum physics provides arguably the best scientific platform from which to pick it apart. Quantum physics is the study of the world at its smallest points, where the laws of nature break down and stop making any kind of sense. John Wheeler’s Delayed Choice Experiment, first proposed in the 1970s, provides one of our finest examples of how reality can change simply by viewing it. The experiment begins with the understanding that an atom of light can act as a wave or as a particle; but, at which point does it “choose” which form to take? To find out, researchers place a crossroads in the path of an atom of light, knowing that if it were a wave it could travel down both paths, but if it were a particle it would have to choose one direction or the other. The paths are then randomly reconnected, with some merging back together again and others not. It’s a complicated process but the crucial bit is that the experiment finds that an atom of light’s form is only determined once its destination (a merged or non-merged pathway) has been decided. The future dictates its past, meaning that the atom wasn’t in any form until it was measured. According to Andrew Truscott, one scientist to have conducted the test; “At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it.” It’s heavy science, but it also forces us to fundamentally rethink how we experience life. And there have been plenty of theories put forward as to why nature acts in this way. One idea is that we live in a simulation, a proposal gaining some traction in the scientific community with figures like Elon Musk and Neil deGrasse Tyson lending their support to it. For advocates, the atoms that make up our world could mirror the pixels used to build video games, while our genetic code is, well, just that - a code not unlike the data streams which pass through other digital technologies. In fact, in 2017, a team from the University of Washington showed that our actual DNA can even be infected with computer viruses, suggesting that both our make-up can be programmed and also that that program could be at risk of getting hacked! For some, another key indicator is how immersive and “life-like” our own simulations are becoming… the idea being that if video games are now so technologically advanced that they could soon be indistinguishable from reality, then what’s stopping us from already featuring in a sim that’s tantamount to real life? While it’s a much more hypothetical answer to today’s question, most games don’t load their entire maps all of the time, but rather only the areas that your character enters into. Match the same process to our own lives, and perhaps nothing exists outside of that which you’re immediately experiencing… Here’s where we begin to cross into another field of philosophy called Solipsism, which is the idea that your own mind is the only thing in the world we can know to exist. Rene Descartes famously said, “I think therefore I am.” To him, his “thinking” was the one part of reality that he could be absolutely sure was real - everything else in a person’s life might simply be imagination. In this way, people, places and things only come into play when you hear, see, or feel them through your senses - before then, they’re not there. Again, because everyone has a unique point of view, it’s another mind-bending theory that’s ultimately impossible to prove or disprove. We can, in a manner of speaking, disprove those senses, however…. Because, in some ways, your senses don’t actually exist. Sights, smells and sounds aren’t truly real - they’re just the product of your brain working out what to alert you to, and how specifically to convey that information. Your brain has never seen or heard the outside world because it’s encased within your skull. So, it uses various “tools” to detect the world around it - like eyes and ears - but those tools could well be faulty or deceptive. At its heart, our reality is more the result of electrical signals that course through our brains. Our experience is whatever our neurons tell us it is. And the world itself follows suit, but by swapping brain activity for basic atoms. Now, cars aren’t actually cars, for example; they’re just a bunch of different atoms sorted in a particular way. Yet we see “a car” because our brain forms that image. So, from some perspectives we can say that a car doesn’t exist until we see it, because it’s only atoms until we perceive it as a car - until we assume Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “seeing as” mode. There is no need for crisis just yet, though. Because none of this changes how or why we live our lives as we do. If we’re part of a simulation, then what difference does it really make? If atoms beyond our perception are capable of changing as soon as we glance away, then the human experience continues as it always has done regardless. Every time you look at something it’s going to be there. But, still, it’s an idea which pushes us into a total change of perspective. Perhaps the only things that exist right now are whatever it is we’re currently experiencing. Perhaps, even when we blink, everything else disappears… or there’s nothing behind you until you turn to look at it. Really, it doesn’t matter. Life goes on, and we should all try to enjoy the exciting uncertainty of it all.