We can make very sure that the world we experience is not just a figment of our imagination when we bang our toe on the table leg, burn our hand in the fire, or bruise ourselves after falling down the stairs. We will feel pain and it is not all in our imagination. It hurts, and rightly so, because our nerves are sending signals to our brains. We can see the black and blue bruising. It is tender to the touch, especially when we forget about it and bang ourselves again.
On the other hand, imagination is the process of making something up that never happened. The fall did happen. We did get hurt. We might even have broken a bone. We are not making this up. No one is sharing this imagining with us either. We are the only ones feeling our specific pain. We are the ones who need to get that broken bone reset.
But what I would say is that the world we experience, may be and can be, a shared misperception. For example, the earth looked flat to people before global navigation began and proved this flatness not to be true. Yes, it looked flat but that was due to our ignorance and to our limited visual perception.
Another shared perception that is not true is that we are seeing the stars just as they are now. In reality, it has taken so many millions of light years for some stars to be visible to us, they have already died and all that is left is their glow in the night sky. One more example of shared false perceptions is that the sun “sinks” in the west and “rises” in the east. Of course, we know now that the earth’s rotation causes this visual phenomenon and no active sinking and rising is going on.
Imagination is making things up that don’t exist and never have. The universe and you exist. You are not making it up. But how you perceive the universe and all of physical reality can be highly flawed, faulty, and based on ignorance. A whole culture and planet can share these misperceptions and take them to be the truth, when they are false.
On the other hand, imagination is the process of making something up that never happened. The fall did happen. We did get hurt. We might even have broken a bone. We are not making this up. No one is sharing this imagining with us either. We are the only ones feeling our specific pain. We are the ones who need to get that broken bone reset.
But what I would say is that the world we experience, may be and can be, a shared misperception. For example, the earth looked flat to people before global navigation began and proved this flatness not to be true. Yes, it looked flat but that was due to our ignorance and to our limited visual perception.
Another shared perception that is not true is that we are seeing the stars just as they are now. In reality, it has taken so many millions of light years for some stars to be visible to us, they have already died and all that is left is their glow in the night sky. One more example of shared false perceptions is that the sun “sinks” in the west and “rises” in the east. Of course, we know now that the earth’s rotation causes this visual phenomenon and no active sinking and rising is going on.
Imagination is making things up that don’t exist and never have. The universe and you exist. You are not making it up. But how you perceive the universe and all of physical reality can be highly flawed, faulty, and based on ignorance. A whole culture and planet can share these misperceptions and take them to be the truth, when they are false.
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