Wynn Entry #5: The Ethereal Chaos: Mist of Perception

The Ethereal Chaos: Mist of Perception

You and I have senses. We can perceive our surroundings and even the people around us, who can subsequently perceive us, too. However, a recent philosophy activity I did as revision for a philosophy exam earlier today got me thinking about something that, frankly, seems rather absurd at first glance.


What happens between being perceived?
The Ethereal Chaos is the made-up place where everything not currently being witnessed by your own senses "go", while you aren't sensing them. At the time of writing this, you readers are currently inside said Ethereal Chaos from my perspective because I cannot sense you. However, at the same time, I am also in the Ethereal Chaos from your perspective since you cannot sense me; you only sense this blog as something I left behind.
Where do you think this blog entry came from? The mind of a semi-intelligible person currently studying philosophy at university somewhere in the United Kingdom? Nay, I say. It came from the Ethereal Chaos and manifested itself right before your eyes when you noticed it from a similarly chaotic-borne part of the internet with whose arrangement of pixels was also pulled from the same Ethereal Chaos.
Being a strong believer in subjectivity, I am inclined to support a view which says the object being looked at in this example enters the Ethereal Chaos when I can no longer sense it, but remains within your perception while you look at it. Likewise, when you stop perceiving the object and can no longer sense it, it enters the Ethereal Chaos of your perception, even though I am currently perceiving it myself.
This seemingly does not account for what 'actually' happens by the conventional view. The object doesn't physically fall into a bubbly broil called the Ethereal Chaos when I am not looking at it. Instead, anything that happens to the object while I am not looking at it might as well be random up until the point where I re-observe it, provided it is truly hidden to me, and from there I deduce what happened to it while inside the ethereal chaos.
As an example, when I look at the pencil on my mothers desk this morning I notice its sharp lead point. The following day, I re-observe it and notice the tip is duller and the pencil has moved. From that it is easy to surmise that the changes it underwent while within the "Ethereal Chaos" were that it was used and its tip was dulled, presumably by her.
The Ethereal Chaos doesn't seek to account for the changes that you re-observe. Rather, it provides a model for things changing that you either will never know about, or changes made up until the point where you deduce correctly, or find out for certain, how it was changed. In the pencil example, I can deduce to a certain precision what happened without much extra thought. But there is also a non-zero chance the pencil was replaced with a similar pencil with a duller tip because my mother lost the old one and had to use a replacement during the time I was not aware of.

1. It is a metaphysical place that any one specific subjective personality cannot ever see, and it is the metaphysical place where everything that cannot currently be sensed by the subjective personality goes to.

1. Anything within the Ethereal Chaos changes chaotically while inside of it, except things you have seen before. Such things instead undergo minor changes to account for the length of time you spent not observing it, however it remains very clearly consistent with what you expect said thing to be.

1. The longer something stays within the Ethereal Chaos, the more that thing changes.

1. It is also a place where things can be randomly created, along with anything that makes it consistent within the universe, yet it only creates things that doesn't conflict with what is expected. (for instance, you reasonably expect that your friends and family remember you after you haven't seen them for any amount of time.)

1. It is a thing that is entirely consistent with everything that we know about the universe, yet we cannot ever observe it or be sure of its existence.

As I was on the train home, I looked at everyone around me and considered: "All these people have their own perspective and their own life. When I am no longer able to sense them, as is the case when they are not in eyesight or earshot of me, and I can't meaningfully connect something around me to the existence of one of those individuals. It is as though they disappear from my world until I were able to sense them again."

Apart from sounding like a borderline anti-social thought, it got me to think. If someone were to ask me "does this individual, who you're likely never going to see again, cease to exist when you aren't sensing them?" I would respond what anyone else would with the obvious "Of course not." (unless I wanted to express what I am expressing in this blog entry or attempt to confuse them), it isn't clear why that is undeniably the case.

Consider the situation from an innocent bystander's perspective. let’s call them 'you'.

If you were on the same train carriage as me on my way home earlier today, you would be far more concerned about more relevant matters in your life than even notice me thinking about the state of your existence. Because, to you, I might as well have ceased to exist when we part from the rocking and densely packed train carriage. For all your sensations can discern after that point, I seem to have only existed at that point. I might as well have vanished from existence from your perspective. It is only until we happen upon each other again do I seem to have changed, provided you notice.

Now I move onto the title of this entry. As a mental exercise, I started to think of this metaphysical entity called the Ethereal Chaos to provide a silly little account for this. I should preface this by saying that I do not actually think something like this scientifically exists, it is simply a name used to refer to an idea.

This is not to say the Ethereal Chaos exists psychically. It would be absurd for me to respond that things stop existing when they're outside of my perception. Rather it is an exercise in thought to figure out more about the world we sense, and a fun mental exercise for myself and, hopefully, for you all as well.

But there are obvious problems with this idea. I may stop looking at something only for someone else to start looking at it. Surely then that thing is where it was last seen, and will be when someone else looks at it, provided it hasn't been moved. It can't be in the Ethereal Chaos with someone constantly observing it.



What is the Ethereal Chaos:

So far, the Ethereal Chaos has these aspects.:


Point 1 sets the groundwork. The Ethereal Chaos is where anything that is not currently being sensed by us disappears to. If we were to see it, it would disappear instantly since it's defined as being outside of perception.

Point 2, I reckon, is a little contentious. We have no basis to say the Ethereal Chaos changes things when we're not looking at them. Though I think we do, simply on the basis that the pencil has changed when I look at it later. While it had to have been observed for it to change - my mother would've used it somehow - it is still outside my subjective perception. Likewise, anything she sees in my room and looks at later on would have entered her Ethereal Chaos and I would have somehow changed the object, for instance, by moving it.

I say things within changes chaotically because for something to be truly outside of our senses I mean we have no way to detect it, neither directly nor indirectly. This includes by the intellect. If something is not apprehended by neither the intellect or the senses, then anything may potentially happen to the object and to us it would seem random or chaotic.

Point 3 is quite logical. The longer something is exposed to elements that can change it, the higher the chance of it being changed.

To make point 4 more understandable, imagine planning a trip to a luxurious Greek island you've never been to before. You look it up online and find reviews and pictures of the area to get a good idea of the place before you go. When you arrive you see the locations in the pictures, as well as a plethora of other details such as specific people, specific insects and specific experiences.

These specific details you experience, and could only experience by going yourself, are extremely hard to predict. So much so, that I say it might as well be random. You my argue that with enough information you'd be able to predict as much as possible, even down to the minutia listed above. And I agree with you.

But I don't see it as a problem with the notion of the Ethereal Chaos because in the very act of gathering information and researching you get closer and closer to certainty. The closer you are to certainty, the less randomness can seemingly happen, and thus the more the Ethereal Chaos is peeled back to reveal the details.
There will always be things that you won't be able to predict. For instance, whether you get into an accident, get an illness, or even what specific thoughts you will have waking up one morning on vacation. These things constitute the "random things" I mean when they are spawned from the Ethereal Chaos.

The limit to this point lies in the fact that the universe is somehow consistent in that it incredibly likely won't do anything that is contradictory to the things that have already happened. For example, it won't suddenly place a live Tyrannosaurus Rex on the island or summon Zeus from Mount Olympus. This is because the dinosaurs are known to have become exist, thus the Ethereal Chaos won't "put" one there and Zeus won't come down from Mount Olympus because he is parts of myths and legends rather than the modern day physical world. The universe must remain consistent to some degree. After all, if we knew all of the universe's consistencies already, there would be nothing left to discover.

Thus, for as long as we have room to discover new things, the Ethereal Chaos can spawn seemingly random things in new, never-before-seen territories of the physical and mental world.

Lastly, point 5 is mostly an extension of what I discussed in the last paragraph of point 4. The universe is consistent in some respects which allows us to develop physical laws and psychological models to predict human behavior.

The purpose of this blog post is to highlight a strange way of possibly understanding the world. While many adopt the scientific standard model of the world being the way it is, namely that it is physical and consistent, I believe there is so much more to the universe than what science can predict. This is where the Ethereal Chaos stands in, as a representation for our ignorance, either intentional or unintentional. When we aren't able to sense something subjectively, and "sense" here should be understood similarly to something we can perceive physically or intellectually, it leaves our realm of awareness and understanding and occupies a metaphysical realm characterized by the absence of these facets of us. Sure, if I am not observing a glass and someone else is, if the glass is truly un-observable by me it still exists within my Ethereal Chaos despite it staying within the other person's perception.

Let me know what you all think about this idea. Is it tenable philosophically, and what does it inspire you to think about, if anything? Feel free to comment on this post with your responses and thoughts. I am eager to hear them all!