Inside my skull lately I’ve been pondering exactly what the world looks like outside my skull. Pose that question to a person on the street and they’d probably think it’s a crazy question. “Well just open your eyes and look!”, they might reply. But that’s the point, looking doesn’t answer the question. All that reveals is what the world looks like INSIDE my skull… or your skull, or any skull. No one has ever seen the world any other way.
Right now, you are looking at a computer screen. The image of the screen you see is actually a creation of your brain. I won’t repeat the process – electromagnetic energy in the form of photons hitting the retina, yada yada – because you’re probably familiar with that bit of biochemical info. There is actually – and this is an interesting realization – cranial bone between the image you see inside your brain, and the actual computer screen outside your skull.
But for a moment let’s ask, what does the image on your screen look like before it races up the neural network of your computer to paint the image you view on the screen? What does it look like in its “raw” form?
It doesn’t look like anything. It’s just information. It’s digital ones and zeros – offs and ons. If it’s stored on a magnetic hard drive it’s simply potentially magnetized (or not) locations on a spinning metallic disc. On a DVD or CD – nothing more than microscopic dimples in shiny foil.
Well maybe that’s what the world looks like outside our skulls – nothing! It’s just information. We are points of consciousness processing bits of information from which we create reality in all of its vivid colors, sounds, smells and physical sensations.
Plato surmised as much and used shadows cast on the wall of a cave as a metaphor. He wasn’t blessed to have the even more convincing analogical examples of virtual reality computer games, in which simulated worlds can exist within simulated worlds. Or movies like Avatar and The Matrix. Movies that may be closer to reality – whatever that is – than the man on the street could possibly imagine.