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Jessica Varney's picture

More questions about eliminative reality

Submitted by Jessica Varney on Sun, 04/27/2008 - 9:42pm.
Like Zoe above me, I've been thinking about The Matrix for days. The line that first did it for me was when Morpheus says, "If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."

In trying to grapple with Professor Grobstein's suggestion of an eliminative reality, the best I've got is more questions. I found the idea of imaginating an eliminative reality interesting and challeging, so here's what I came up with:

If we were to somehow able to eliminate color and edges, then what would we be seeing at all? At best, maybe brightness (light intensity)? Going one step further, if we eliminated all forms of sensory input, would we wind up with pure "reality" or, as a consequence of terminating all forms of input into the nervous system, would the system just crash?

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