Page 50 - Matter: The Other Name for Illusion

We can never know the true nature of the original of the material world
outside the brain. We cannot know, whether or not the original, for example the
green of a leaf, is as we perceive it. Likewise, we can never find out if a dessert
is really sweet or whether that is just how our brain perceives it to be. Imagine,
for example, a landscape you have seen before. That landscape is not in front

of you, but you are seeing it in your brain. The science writer Rita Carter says:
Whenever we recall a given object, face or scene, we do not get an exact
reproduction but rather an interpretation, a newly reconstructed version
of the original… Although they may appear to be good replicas, they are
often inaccurate or incomplete. 12
The same thing applies to the time when you look at a landscape. There is

in fact no difference between your imagining a landscape from a distance and
seeing it close up. Therefore, when you look at a view you are actually seeing
a version constructed in the brain, not the original.
Anyone who considers this will clearly see the truth. One such person,
George Berkeley, expresses this truth in his work A Treatise Concerning the
Principles of Human Knowledge:
By sight I have the ideas of light and colours, with their several degrees
and variations. By touch I perceive hard and soft, heat and cold, motion
and resistance... Smelling furnishes me with odours; the palate with tastes;
and hearing conveys sounds... And as several of these are observed to
accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be
reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell,
figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted
one distinct thing, signified by the name apple; other collections of ideas
constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things... 13

The truth Berkeley expresses in these words is this: We define an object by
interpreting different sensations that are experienced in the brain. As is the case
in this example, the taste and smell of an apple, its hardness and roundness
and those sensations related with the other qualities of it are perceived as a

whole by our brain and we perceive this whole as the apple. However, we can
never actually deal with the original of the apple, only our perception of it.
What we can see, smell, taste, touch or hear are only the copies within the
brain.
When we consider all that has been discussed up to this point, the truth
will be revealed in all clarity. For example:

48 MATTER: THE OTHER NAME FOR ILLUSION