Reality? #2 Our focus determines our reality....

Hi world,

By now you'll likely have read my breakdown of the "reality concept" from Nigel Warburton's book "Philosophy, the basics"

If not have a peak here... 

So, given I'd been thinking about that stuff a while, a conversation I've had recently popped back into my head, or specifically comment from it. 

"...Ok, so you're a trans woman, but in your previous life you acted like a man and you're (still) interested in bloke stuff..." 

It's a fair point. I like motors, a tuned V8 will make me weaker at the knees than most things in life, (and if its an RB series straight six.. I'm putty in ya hands.. ) I like geeky gamer shit, guitars, loud music, riding bikes, fixing bikes, and messing around with spanners and fire pits. 

But under it all was this issue of gender dysphoria. I'm not a particularly "camp" individual...(although I was once accused of being so, but that's a story for a another day) So where does it all the "bloke shit" fit in? and more to the point where does it all manifest from? 

Cause, effect? 

Well. Growing up I really didn't have much of a handle on gender stuff, however I was a curious kid blessed with some intellect of sorts. "Dad how does that work"  "Mum what does this do?"  "but Miss what does that mean?" were comments often heard from me...I'm sure I drove people nuts. I read lots, lapped up the stories of CS lewis, Timothy Zahn, and more factual historical books on things like the falklands war etc with equal abandon. 

I just got on with the business of being me, and of having an interest in the world around me. The old man was a truck mechanic, so it follows i might pick that up, yet mum's a gardening type and I can't grow anything... 

Perhaps societal expectations and assumptions might play a little here... "Son spends time with Dad in garage" is a well known and well worn outcome of a father son relationship after all. But I wasn't pushed into it. And I remember - indeed I'm often reminded by - my daughter of when she did the same.."daddy what does that bit do?" whilst pointing at the fan in the sports car's engine bay...

For a teenaged girl she probably knows more than the average kid about what happens under the bonnet of a motor... why? because she was curious.. and her Daddy made it cool..and took time to teach her  stuff, just like mine did. Mum often says to me: If I'm interested in a subject it gets 110%...if not.. 0% So it's extremely unlikely that young me was coerced into something as part of any gender profiling kinda deal.

There's evidence out there from the like of Simone de Beauvior about the performative elements of  human gender, which may be at issue here. Yet performative implies perception on the part of the  viewer, thus in the act of "doing" a meaning is ascribed to the doing of an action by the viewer not just the performer. 

Consider that if a natal female had similar or identical interests to me, then they would not be viewed as "a man". More likely they would be viewed as a woman with atypical interests when one looks at  the stereotypical models of gender behaviours. Similarly a natal male into "Girly stuff" 

So the interests and activities argument alone doesn't stack up to disprove, or indeed prove, a trans gender identity, but in this case that wasn't the intention of the original comment. It came from (or at least i think it did) a place of wanting to understand the process of forming identity....

How do we humans form our identities? 

It's been said that "you", your personality and learned behaviours etc are the sum total of the five most influential people in your life. Usually those you spend the most time with. 

Because I was perceived as a boy, I spent most of my time with boys, and my family, who again perceived me as a boy. Girls wouldn't look the side I was on cos boys were yucky, and geeky awkward boys with glasses and zero charisma were just icky... so .. yup .. pretty much a girl free environment. 

There were certain lessons that I learnt from the authority figures in my life at that point that I now no longer believe are true. Yet back then, because they came from a place of perceived authority I took those lessons on board.. believing that they must be right simply because of my faith in where they had come from. 

As we grow, our social circle and sphere of influence increases and we learn stuff, some of which is contradictory to prior information, from other sources. We form our own opinions & beliefs and as a result we become independent, thinking, adult humans beings....yeah scary shit huh? 

Yeah yeah I hear  ya say...but opinion doesn't equal identity...so what is it? 

Well ok, opinion isn't identity, but it sure is part of it. How we think, how we perceive the world and our place in it is a huge deal as far as our self awareness and sense of self goes. Knowledge is the  key to unlocking those mental doors that in some people remain resolutely closed for life. Curiosity is the means by which we turn that key and open ourselves up to a world of unknown behind the door. Fear on the other hand is the one thing that can stay our hand at the point of turning... 

For me, knowledge and context of the jigsaw puzzle pieces that just didn't quite "fit" came during the  first year of nurse training. 

Once I'd lost the fear, or perhaps over came it, or maybe my curiosity was greater than the fear, I'm not sure even to this day, which one occured but once that happened I turned the key. What ultimately came through that door was ironically enough more "knowledge". Knowledge of the possibility and plausibility of something that I had both discounted and left unexamined for decades, based on an erroneous assumption that it wasn't possible. Why not? because of everything that is in the first 7 or so paragraphs of this piece. 

The line in the title of this piece comes from Star Wars: The phantom menace. Qui Gone Jin says to a  young Anakin Skywalker: 

Always remember: your focus determines your reality... 

Now, ok it precedes what many think is the worst line in the franchise, but it speaks of an essential truth. How many times have athletes use creative visualisation? Belief in the possible and a concerted  and defined effort to strive toward that goal. 

Once I knew where I was, and what I had. (gender dysphoria) I had to decide what to do about that knowledge. Where to place my focus and thus my reality. 

As a result my focus moved - in time - from being about outward things, acquisitions and the distractions of life to keep me entertained and busy. I'd spent so many years just putting on film after  film in that cinema of perception that I spoke of in my last blog, that I never noticed the seats, the lights, the screen or the "inside of my head" as it were. 

My focus shifted, for once, onto me. For the  first time i started to pay serious attention to my internal world. And whilst my interests and collection of films on that cinema screen didn't change, and probably won't... I'll be less restricted in the adding of new ones, since I've now changed the reel from 8mm Cinefilm, to an 8k Imax, and can see a damn sight more of "the world" as a result. 

Right I reckon that's enough deep and meaningful stuff for one day... time to put a film on... But which one.... hmmm 

It's all part of the plan... unless you step off the script... 

Till next time.. keep smiling, do what you do and just let life take care of the rest... 

Sarah 

xx

The basics of ... Reality and perception.

Hi.

It's been a while since I managed to get my nose back into Nigel Warburtons book, all about The basics of philosophy. 

I had a spare quiet sunny afternoon (or at least I think I did ) so I made a cuppa, and sat down to go through the next chapter, one I have been looking forward to for some time.

Appearance, Reality and Perception. 

How do we know something is real? How do we know it is not? How do we know what reality IS?
How do we know things? How do we know we know?

I know it's Saturday afternoon, and I'm sat at my desk and typing this article. I also know that if I move my chair will squeak.

I know it's Saturday because I checked the calendar. I know I'm sat here because my brain tells me through all my senses that I'm doing so, and I know that my chair will squeak because  I've experienced it doing so and remember that fact.

Or do I? what I actually have in all three cases are perceptions. How many times have you thought it was Saturday only to realise it wasn't.. and you've looked at the information wrongly? My brain could well be dreaming that I'm sat here.. and thus my perceptions of my activity is skewed. Plus, we all "know" memory isn't infallible...

So is "reality" simply a set of electrical signals, current or historical, interpreted by the brain?

Philosophers frame these arguments under a number of headings.

Common sense realism

In essence the simplest and most often seen "lay persons" interpretation of  perception. Things exist and we see them as they are, as a result of their existence. An objects existence does not depend on its being observed, thus if a tree falls in the woods and no one observes it fall, then the tree both exists and falls.

Representative realism

This is an extension of the common sense position whereby it takes into account the idea that what we "see" is merely a representation of the object, not the object itself. For example a stick in water that appears bent but isn't, or a hot road appearing to shimmer when in fact it isn't moving. This also takes into account differences in the viewers. For example if two people observe a dress, one person may see a blue dress, but the other being colour blind, may not. Thus "blue" isn't a mechanism or quality of the dress, but rather of the mechanism of its perception.

Idealism

This is again an extension of relative realism. Since all we "know" is based on internal representation of the outside world, one cannot prove the existence of the outside world since all proof would be via  the means of our own sense, and thus merely representative. This theory also leads to the idea that physical things only exist when being perceived. So our tree would not only fail to fall if no one were to see it, but would also fail to exist.

Phenomenalism 

John Stuart Mill was a phenomenalist. This is again an extension of the idealism theory, yet it argues that unobserved objects can exist since it is "possible" to observe them. Although it accounts for  the existance of unobserved objects in this way it still postulates that all experiences of our external world is indirect, via internal representations.

Causal realism

This would be one that the scientific amongst you would probably like the most since it takes the view that the purpose of perception is to navigate our external world therefore our external world must exist. (A philosophical argument for "evolution" or the "design argument" perhaps?) Our external environment has certain qualities that over time we as beings have become attuned to recognising and navigating through and around. It does reduce all perception to merely information gathering, but it remains at time of writing the most satisfactory account of perception. It differs from the common sense argument above in that it allows for those errors or shifts in perception and doesn't assume that what is being perceived is actually always "truth" in the same way.

Head hurting yet? or do you just think it is? 

So, what we really have here is a chicken and egg scenario. Every one of us can only perceive our external environment through our senses. They are the means by which we determine the world around us, and we can never view the world but through them. (Think of it as akin to being locked in a cinema, with the screen and speakers the only window the outside world)

Do we know what we don't know yet? 

Hundreds of years ago, due to lack of astrological knowledge, people would perhaps take things at "face value" The moon for instance, getting bigger through the seasons or when near the horizon, would probably be believed to actually "be" bigger, since there was no knowledge base to refute that argument and people could see that it certainly "looked bigger"

Here we have the paradox. It is only through what we "know" that we can question the "unknown". We now "know" about the moon, its orbit and the reasons why it appears larger or smaller. We "know" it doesn't actually change its physical size. But that knowledge has been acquired through the use of human senses and thus is open to interpretation. With that comes the realisation that those interpretations may be inaccurate.

If you've ever seen the film inception, you'll get the idea of a dream within a dream, or perhaps the matrix where humans are all living in a VR world of computer generation. Those might be extreme version of the hypothesis that everything we perceive might not actually be as it is. But they are perfect illustrations of that concept.

Of course if you'll indulge me in a little conjecture here in stretching things beyond the bounds of pure theory,  if one brings in another human quality - "emotion"- things can change once more. Why? well much like the colour blind example above it has more to do with the observer than the observed. How we perceive things is one question, how we interpret that perception is another, but they are of course linked

It's why certain songs will raise a smile or a tear, and certain words mean many many different things to different people. 

The songs don't change, but our perceptions of them and the meaning ascribed to them does. So, since everything we observe changes us, does that mean we can never observe the same thing twice in exactly the same way? Since we are never the same having observed it the first time?

Yeah, sure you're welcome, that conundrumn might keep ya awake at night.. assuming you're actually not already asleep that is..

But the point of that segway into emotion is to highlight that were there only a screen and the outside world "not real", then one would be heading toward solipsism, or a view that only one's own mind exists and is real. In which case why do we have emotion? Emotion exists to enable us to interact with others, ergo it's an evolutionary mechanism the existence of which proves the existence of others.

Any how verbose verbiage and vexatious vagaries of language aside, that's it in a nutshell. Reality is something we only ever perceive and thus we cannot be sure it is reality at all since the scientific method would be to observe it via two independent routes, which of course we cannot do.

What we can do however is to observe two or three variation of phenomena to prove or disprove theories around reality and our world at large.

But that I'll leave for the next chapter in Nigel's book, which happily enough is all about Science...

Sweet dreams!

Sarah