http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/science/20/questioning_perceptual_blindness.html

Mind and thoughts create the world Thoughts arise in the mind, and we become aware of them. The same thoughts tend to arise time and again. If we let this process continue, it goes on incessantly. These thoughts make us expect, behave, talk and act in a certain personalized way, and thus cause the people we come in contact with, to treat us and relate to us in a certain manner. We usually continue with the same way of thinking, and live the same kind of life each day, whether we like it or not. These thoughts shape our circumstances and relationships. It is like watching the same movie repeatedly. If we want to watch a different movie, we have to change the reel or cassette. This happens by changing our thoughts. This is how creative visualization works, and there is nothing supernatural about this. The world we experience and the life we live, are the reflections of our thoughts. The mind creates a world of illusion. By changing our thoughts, we change the illusion and experience a different reality. We do not create a world, only an illusion that looks real. No unusual power is involved here. We are living in Maya and are changing the Maya. When we are able to still the mind and the senses, our consciousness seems to shift into a new dimension. Actually, it is there all the time, only that the mind makes us think otherwise. When there are no thoughts in the mind, the world we know and believe is real, loses its reality. We become conscious of the world beyond the mind and illusions. http://www.successconsciousness.com/index_000014.htm One day I will conquer your amazing questions. Not, I think the answer you were looking for, but fascinating none the less. Please read the complete article.

I just find it interesting that "philosophers" and politicians are always killed first when the masses finally decide to overrun a country. maybe they just talk to much but actually add no value.

Without delving deeply into either philosophy or religion, let me post a short opinion in very simple terms. Our perceptions come directly from our senses, a product of things we see, hear, smell, feel or taste and the manner in which our brain interprets those inputs. Of course, we also know that the human brain is capable of gross deception, and oft times invents things to suit particular circumstances in which we find ourselves. Some call it imagination, others faith, others still will deny it altogether. It has always been my belief that one's perceptions (real or imagined) are the basis of what we describe as reality and that we live in a reality that is entirely of our own creation. My reality is not the same as yours, because my perceptions are not the same as yours, and that is why we differ in our values, priorities, opinions and outlook on life and the world.

Sorry, I didn't read/consider all your warnings. I am just leaping in, boots n all, as is my way. Short n sweet this time, very unusual. The senses (sight / hearing / taste / touch / what else?) I would think have a great deal to do with our reality. They were given to us as one of the tools to negotiate this world/creation (for better or for worse) and would have an effect at every turn on our reality. Reference: The Moi University of Life.

Sorry, I am too stupid to answer this question, save that an English bloke once said, "There are more things under the canopy of Heaven... " , but I heaven a clue. Perhaps our perceptions and realities are limited by our senses, but we also have imaginations, which generally are governed by our conception of reality. Our reality is governed by what we consider to be logical, but some thinkers go outside the box to investigate the illogical. As for religion, Woody Allen said something about God proving his existence by depositing 10 million dollars in Allen's Swiss Banking account. Oops, over the 1000 words, Sorry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo&noredirect=1 WATCH THE CLIP & THEN READ THE REST OF THIS ANSWER! The Invisible Gorilla, takes everything we think we know about perception & flips it on it's head, by adding another dimension. How we perceive is partly based on societal conditioning & partly by our interaction with the world. The most interesting thing in your link, wasn't Cook or Magellan's confusion at the native reaction, but the very last paragraph. The natives could've been any single one of us, caught in the routine of our everyday life. If we concentrate fully at the task at hand (whatever we are doing that society says we should do), it leaves very little room for our brains to receive new data from our environments. Senses also fall into learned behaviour. If you think about how a toddler of child interacts with the world, (the curiosity, awe, etc., when they see, hear, feel, taste, smell something completely new) their brains take in far more than an adult in their presence. But, as we age, & the familiarity of the senses leads to conditioning, & the more conditioned we become, the less new sensory data is processed by our brains, as is apparent in the 'tastes like chicken' description, for all exotic meat products. In other words, our brains get so used to classification according to boxes, that when something new or exotic is sensed, our conditioning leads to the attempt to rationalise the 'new' into an existing box in our brain. So Jericho, might have been the first real earthquake that had to be explained in Xtianity, but the success of Xtianity is linked to it's borrowing (stealing) of traditions & myths from the more ancient religions prior to it. So, the earthquake wouldn't have been completely new for those early Xtians either, but could be rationalised or boxed in by other myths & legends of the time. At the time, everything that couldn't be explained was rationalised under 'it was God's work', so your earthquake theory definitely has merit, but, also remember that a lot was exaggerated or flat out stolen from other cultures too e.g. hell & Hades; Easter & Ishtar, Jesus & Krishna or Horus - all themes almost exact to religions far older than Xtianity. Yet, Christianity is reality to billions, because it is perceived to be the truth, it's indoctrinated, as with every other religion from very early ages. In effect, my senses & perception, while real to me, isn't often based on fact or reality of another person.

OK, I won't answer.

Honey if you're lookin' for intelligent life here on AIT you're dumber than you look. Say hi to Lucy...

in one of plato's works he had a theory about prisoners that had been chained to posts and forced to stare at a wall all their lives, with a bright fire behind them night and day with people forming shadows in the shape of animals and other objects. now when the people where finally let go and shown what it was that made up the shadows they wouldn't believe what the were seeing was real because they had only ever seen the shadows. this experiment was only theoretical ofcourse, but id buy that it would go exactly as hypothesised.

Source: Plato's Allegory of the Cave

Oh my gawd your posts are longer than Kaksak's!!!

Do me a favour, read the following capitalised sentence once, at normal pace, and as you read it, count the number of times the letter F appears in the sentence. FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS. Re-read the sentence and count again, you should be finding six, but most people upon first reading it, only find three. Because our brains perceive the F in the word "of" as a "v"... Our senses play a far smaller role in our reality than our belief. Your belief becomes your perception, and your perception becomes your reality. Hence faith being believing in something in the absence of proof. Or, on the contrary, as per your 'invisible ship' link: faith is also the disbelief in something patently true, even if presented with irrefutable sensory evidence. What does it all mean? That there could be UFO's hovering unseen in the sky? Or simply that reality is as much a construct of my psyche as belief?

Source: By the way, what is this.. err.. reality, of which you speak?

This question is far too complex to begin to answer here. It breaks down into two essential questions, one neuroscientific: how and why do our physical senses mediate our access to, and understanding of, everything exterior to us; and the other epistemological, viz. how do we know what we know after we've analysed the physical data provided by our senses? I would give you a few links but you seem to distrust Wikipedia, given your response to my opinion on Ron Paul (with helpful link included). So, google "epiphenomenalism" and "philosophy of mind" (Wikipedia's entry is a fucking great for beginners) for a quick overview. If you're able to concentrate long enough to cope with a book, buy Davis Eagleman's 'Icognito - The Secret Lives of the Brain'. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/30/incognito-secret-brain-david-eagleman-review Very accessible, but it's not as simple as the Fortean times, which appears to be your thing. I would also highly recommend Daniel Dennett's 'Consciousness Explained' but it's really not for beginners or dilettantes. Kathryn Schulz's 'Being Wrong - Adventures in the Margin of Error' is also a good place to begin. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/19/being-wrong-kathryn-schulz-review As for your bringing the issue of God into the question - let's learn to walk before we try to run, eh?