Solving For eXistence: Part 2

An Interactive World

Last time, we looked at how our assumptions about the world might be wrong and lead us to false conclusions. One of the implications we discovered was that thought/consciousness behaves like a pre-physical substance rather than an incidental action caused by the brain.

This time, we look at whether the idea of consciousness being independent of the brain actually holds up to real-world observations. Buckle up, because this one comes with a twist.

Traditionally, we think of ourselves as free agents within a freestanding environment. We look at the outside environment as something separate from us and operating objectively. But when we understand consciousness as pre-physical, it ceases to be an emergent element derived from physical existence. Instead, it presents as something outside the physical environment that gets introduced into the physical environment by the actions of our brain. It is this specific action—us bringing our pre-physical thoughts out into the physical world around us—which makes the modern world what it is. And since any thought we ever have becomes personalized by virtue of us having it, every thought is automatically subjective.

This is how our presence in the world impacts the world. The only way we can operate within the world is subjectively, and our subjectivity imposes itself on the objective world around us.

When we learn to see how our personal presence in the world impacts the outside world, suddenly we realize how the objective background (what we call nature) is directly modified by consciousness. Subjective reality imposes itself upon objective reality and modifies it.

Objective reality is pristine. It exists in the same way a videogame exists. The game presents an environment even before the player begins. The environment is there, ready to be engaged with. But once the player starts playing, their actions modify it. An example would be choosing a moral character instead of an immoral one. The game will function differently for a moral character than it does for an immoral character. A moral character might experience a brighter, more colorful environment with friendly or cooperative inhabitants to interact with. An immoral character might experience a dark or dreary environment with characters who act dangerously or who function as victims. That is the character’s subjectivity modifying the objective reality within the game.

Once the objective game environment gets acted upon by subjective agents (characters), it no longer qualifies as objective reality. it becomes an experience. For humans, all experiences are subjective.

When we take the time to observe our own reality with this kind of clarity, we immediately notice this dynamic at work. I can illustrate it nicely through my friend Dan.

Dan
It would be inaccurate for someone to tell Dan that his bible-based faith in god is misplaced. The reality presented in the bible is strikingly different from the reality we inhabit today, so it can be ‘debunked’ from today’s perspective. But Dan isn’t living an objective experience of life. His world revolves around trusting what the bible has taught him rather than trusting what his own fallible mind tells him. His mind, after all, has on occasion told him to jump from the high scaffoldings he used to work on. He never did, but mainly because he came to realize his own mind was untrustworthy. Therefore, he actually requires an external barometer of what’s reasonable. The bible provides that for him. And it does it well enough that he’s evolved into an excellent person because of it.

The fact that he’s now an indispensable member of his community doesn’t just apply to him personally. His excellence extends to his neighborhood, which he tends to as if it’s all his own yard. He clears away ground debris and brush that would cause wildfires, chops and hauls away dead trees, checks on community equipment that frequently leaks flammable fluids, repairs fallen signage, brings firewood and kindling to members of the neighborhood who can’t do it for themselves, and other such things. He cares for a neighborhood that would otherwise have to pay people to do that work or go without having it done. And most important of all, Dan doesn’t need to be asked. He takes personal responsibility. Nobody ever asks him to fix anything. He just does it.

This subjective reality of his blossoms outward to enrich and encourage the lives of everyone in his neighborhood. They all benefit from him being a firm believer in biblical god, even though biblical god can be objectively debunked.

It’s worth mentioning that Dan wasn’t anything like this before he came to the bible. He was more of a wild child from the sixties who ultimately found god later in life. It is directly his lived experience of biblical foundations that makes Dan the deeply helpful man his neighborhood knows him to be. His subjective reality projects itself outward upon objective reality in an impactful way that actually changes reality for the people around him. This impact makes it a real thing, subjective though it might seem. Dan’s subjective reality becomes real in the outer world because of its subjectivity, not in spite of it. And in fact, this is true for each of us. The world and reality itself are different because of our participation in it.

A case of mistaken identity
This means when science studies outer reality, it’s only getting the objective piece of the puzzle. Science has no insight into the subjective piece of existence that each one of us lives in. That aspect of life lies outside science’s charter. It can’t go there. And yet, the subjective side of life is more real to us than the objective side. Not a single one of us lives in the objective side. We can look around and see it, but the instant we interact with it, it gets absorbed by our subjectivity and changed by it.

This is what Dan and his neighborhood experience. It’s what you and I experience. It’s what the human condition is made of. But science is unaware of it. All science sees is the backdrop; the game environment without the gameplay.

Both the objective aspect of life and the subjective aspect of life are real, but we make the mistake of thinking only the objective is real and the subjective is somehow all in our mind. It isn’t. It’s legitimately present—so intertwined with our experience of being alive that we don’t recognize it. We take it for granted and just assume that what we see going on around us is all part of the objective side of reality.

When we finally understand the subjective world is every bit as real as the objective world, we see why there are things about life that science is silent on. It can’t speak to what it can’t quantify, even if those things are actual.

Is god real? To Dan, god is so real that an entire neighborhood benefits from divine grace in the person of a community steward. We could dismiss this as Dan’s delusion, but are we correct, or is that just our bias clouding our understanding? Perhaps this is the way non-physical agents get things done...working through those who are willing.

We don’t know either way. Who among us has spiritual sight enough to see the mechanism? Nobody I know. The best we can do is guess, and guesses aren’t answers.

In the meantime, subjective reality has a far stronger impact on us than objective reality does. Instead of dismissing it as just a private, personalized experience of life, we need to acknowledge that it is actually the real-world part of life we experience and live in. If science isn’t able to verify it, we don’t simply write it off as fantasy; instead, we acknowledge that science has a limit to what it can address. If we reject this fact and constrain ourselves to only the objective state that science can quantify, we accidentally stunt ourselves and our search for understanding. Subjectivity is real even though science doesn’t know it’s there. That’s a ‘science’ problem, not an ‘us’ problem. We need a way to work with the reality we encounter, not naively insist that reality curb itself for our convenience.

This exact situation has already played out in the realm of medicine.

The placebo effect
Doctors are aware that the mind can directly impact the physiological state of a person’s body. This is often called mind over matter, but the understanding is backwards. Doctors are baffled and confused about how the mind can do this because they think of anything mental as merely a flight of fancy. They don’t consider it to have a direct, measurable impact upon the concrete world. To doctors, the concrete world is an independent, objective environment that exists of its own accord. So the idea that thoughts could have a measurable impact on it strikes them as irrational.

This is the fallout of a false premise.

When we recognize that objective reality gets modified by subjective reality, we understand how the mind can impact the condition of a person’s body. It appears to be a matter of focus. A person who believes they’ll be healed by pills might very well be healed even if the pills aren’t legitimate medication. The person’s subjective experience is one of belief, and the belief overrides and modifies objective reality.

This is what’s meant by ‘faith’. Faith is an operational term that describes force of belief. A weak force of belief means weak faith that doesn’t have enough power to assert itself over the objective reality. but when faith is strong enough, that force of belief will modify objective reality according to the belief.

The placebo effect has been observed by so many doctors that it’s been canonized into official medical knowledge even though we don’t understand it. Not everyone experiences it. It happens only when people generate enough potency of belief to experience it.

This is the realness of subjectivity in its purest form.

It appears that random thoughts don’t carry sufficient mental power behind them to actually change objective reality. Instead, only those thoughts that carry sufficient force of will make it out of the mind and into lived reality. Imagine if every little thought of ours actually materialized in real-time? The human race wouldn’t even survive the hour, let alone be around long enough to build civilizations. Requiring a certain threshold of potency is a useful safety mechanism to keep us safe from ourselves. Without that mechanism, existence would get out of hand instantly.

Random ideas come and go harmlessly because they aren’t dwelt upon with the necessary weight of intention. It is only deliberate, persistent intention that pushes a thought beyond the mind and into external reality.

The placebo effect is the result of a thought that’s backed by the full weight of of the thinker’s beliefs. That’s a lot of power, and it forces the thought to bear concrete fruit.

According to this, the things we legitimately believe or stubbornly care about get pride of place in our subjective reality, and that in turn impacts objective reality. The medical community has been forced to accept this truth about the world. Even though doctors don’t understand it, the placebo effect is acknowledged as real.

For us, this means force of belief (i.e., faith) operates at a pre-physical level and can directly impact hard matter and physical systems. People who experience the placebo effect don’t set out to force healing; it’s not something they consciously and deliberately bring forth from their brains. It’s just an automatic effect of pre-physical thought that is forceful enough to directly impact objective reality. The mechanism behind the placebo effect isn’t something science can quantify, but it is observed even without being understood.

This sounds remarkably like consciousness.

Next time, we’ll dismantle the assumptions and unconscious biases that block us from moving forward with this kind of paradigm shift. It’s high time we started moving forward. Don’t miss the bus.