Assumptions

We take a lot for granted. Our perceptions are key to us in determining the 'facts' of our universe. Any good scientist will tell you that you can't 'prove' anything, but even they have to make assumptions in order to function in life... those assumptions being called theories or principles. Not taking these things (what we see, hear, feel, taste, smell) for granted would be like trying to build a house on invisible jell-o... (I just wanted to say invisible jell-o because it popped into my head).

So, because I like floating houses, I feel the constant need to question my senses and assumptions. I still just do it for fun, and of course make the same assumptions everyone else does on a daily basis. I just like to talk to myself (in my head... haven't resorted to doing it aloud yet), and this is one of my favorites to ponder.

Everything we sense is simply an impulse in our brains. We assume that that impulse is based on an external physical stimuli (like a photon hitting a receptor in our eye or a sound wave hitting our ear-drum), and further assume that stimuli to have come from a source, which becomes the thing or scenario we observed. That is a lot of steps to assume. Previous to the scientific understanding of those components, we just assumed that our senses were accurate without even understanding what they were or how they worked.

Dreams happen directly within our brain, but we assign them less validity because they don't come from an external source... even though the external sources actually require two more 'un-provable' levels of assumption in order to occur. I'm not saying that they are more valid or important, but I think it's kind of interesting that we put more faith on something with more un-provable components. I think the main issue with dreams is their lack of logical progression... probably a bigger undermining of trust in them comes from that. I know mine don't make much sense so it wouldn't make a lot of sense to rely on them for any consistent understanding of the world. However, as discussed in the last random babble session, many people do base their entire lives on a belief or belief system that is 'un-provable' and the scientists of the world discredit that because it doesn't have 'observable evidence'... even though observable evidence is based on it's own assumptions.

Of course, dreams and belief systems are both generally based on external stimuli as well. Very few, if any, people actually invent their own belief systems internally, and dreams almost always consist of imagery/sounds/ideas that we have encountered through our senses. I believe in utero babies dream... which is interesting. They do have some sound stimuli I believe, but I'll have to look that up. Makes you wonder what they would dream about.

Then there is the other big assumption we make... logic. For the life of me, I have tried constantly to think of a world without logic and have never been able to do it. The problem is that logic is time. Time is the dictator of cause and effect. Cause and effect is essentially logic (extrapolated to a great degree in it's full textbook development). We can't escape time and therefore can't escape logic. The only way I have ever come close to conceptualizing a logic-less universe is when imagining the idea of an existence not confined to linear time. Of course, that's pretty much impossible to really conceptualize, but it FEELS like that would lead to an non-logical interpretation of the universe (if indeed the 'universe' could even be defined in that existence).

Don't get me wrong... there is a LOT of evidence that both logic and our senses are reality. Pretty much every person alive is constantly adding to that body of evidence and further establishing our belief in it. However, there are many things we 'observe' that are actually misinterpreted because of the limits of our perception. We only know this because we have done complex experiments in which we observed the same issues in a different way and discovered the 'truth'. Who is to say we won't find another way to look at every aspect of our existence at some point in time? Basically it creates an eternal level of question-ability.
In addition, the only way we 'prove' something is to observe it, so all proof (other than the philosophical proof that we exist) is based on the assumption of the accuracy or truth of our perceptions. You can't use evidence based on an assumption to prove an assumption.

I will be the first to admit that this entire passage is practically (as in, "from a practical view") useless, but I wanted to write something ;)