No, you didn't. You didn't because that is actually impossible. If you want to read about how the brain fools us into thinking things that are not real are real, you can check out the links I posted previously in the thread to the
Neurologica Blog, or you could read any number of great books on psychology or neuroscience and/or reason, I'd recommend:
How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallacy of Human Reason in Everyday Life or Carl Sagan's
The Demon Haunted World.
What? You presume to tell me that I cannot perceive the difference between what I know to be the dreaming state and the waking state? Your declaration is false, because you do not know me and my mind, and what they are capable of. It's like telling me that the blueberry pie I smelled coming from the kitchen where I knew my girlfriend to be baking was just my expectation of a blueberry pie and that my senses were conjuring up an hallucination to fulfill my expectations. Bullocks.
Why, you might as well go the distance and tell me that my perception of TBBS is a complete illusion and that everything I read is my own expectation of it and that nobody else sees the text that I see.
I presume nothing, everything I've said is based in fact. I understand that this is an extremely difficult concept to wrap one's head around; not only is the underlying neuroscience difficult in itself, but the reality is so different from what it appears to be that it can be hard to accept on an intellectual level, and what this implies about ourselves is very frightening to some people, and so can be hard to accept on an emotional level. As an analogy, imagine what it must have been like when the microscope was invented, and all of the sudden you were supposed to accept that there was a whole other world, too small for us to see -- it must have blown a lot of people's minds! Anyway, as you appear to have not clicked the links to the reading I suggested, I would be happy to explain some of the fundamental facts to the best of my ability, but first, I need to note the logical fallacy you committed: the false continuum. Recognizing that our personal experience of reality is inherently subjective does not imply that there is no objective reality. The trendy postmodern ideology that reality itself is subjective is quite the opposite of what I am saying, best illustrated by looking at the extreme school of thought: a solipsist would say that your mind is the only thing you can really know, the reality is that your mind with all certainty cannot be known.
Let me note one last thing before I begin: as bizarre or counter-intuitive as some of the concepts that I'm about to discuss may seem, none of these are unproved, untested, fringe, or bizarre hypotheses -- this is actually all fairly basic brain science with decades of enduring and substancial quality evidence to back it up.
Your logical fallacy was a common one, and it, along with the other common logical fallacies, are part of the reason we cannot trust our own perceptions. I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: our brains function under a general rule of Get It Mostly Right Most of the Time. This is good enough for everyday living, but it is not good enough when it comes to making higher-order judgements about the nature of reality.
First, let's look at perception: I've already discussed this in this very thread, but I guess you missed it. To give the very simplified explanation of function, when you perceive something, let's say by seeing it, it is not as simple as just looking out the window of your eyes and getting an exact image of the world. Your eye, remarkable organ though it is, receives an upside-down, messy image. That imperfect image is then translated to nerve signals which are sent to the brain. The brain then decodes the signals and reconstructs them into images we can understand, but the signals are so imperfect that the brain has to rely on tricks like pattern-seeking and even just making data up to give us a complete picture. What's more, information can be lost or jumbled at any point during the process. The image you see is not in your eye, it is in your brain, and it is a construction based on data. This is exactly why we can picture things in our heads that we're not actually looking at, or imagine things that we've never actually seen, or have visuals in our dreams -- this is the brain performing this image-constructing function without any input data from the senses. It is also why damage to the occipital lobes can cause blindness when the individual's eyes can be functioning perfectly.
Here is Richard Weisman's super fun Color-Changing Card Trick, a great example of how imperfect your perceptions are:
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voAntzB7EwE[/yt]
Everything you see, hear, smell, etc, is a reconstruction of reality by the brain. For an everyday example of how inaccurate our senses are you can look at any optical illusion or watch any magician. These tricks exploit the imperfection of our senses, and the gimmicks the brain uses to try to make up for them. This rule of Get It Mostly Right Most of the Time, is the 1st major reason you cannot aways tell the difference between sleeping and waking, or know for sure if something you saw was actually there, etc. (As an aside, there is a special part of your brain responsible for reality-testing, making sure what you are experiencing actually makes sense. This function appears to be inactive when we are asleep, which is why we can have such fantastical dreams and not realize that they make no sense until we wake. In schizophrenics, there are marked structural differences in the reality-checking part of the brain as compared to healthy individuals. This function can also be impaired pharmacologically.)
The second major reason is the natural fallaciousness of human reason, which is partly informed by the Get It Mostly Right rule, and partly informed by brain anatomy. So, let's look at the anatomy. Your brain is made up of the brainstem, which is where a lot of the most basic functions (breathing, sleep-wake cycle, etc) are controlled; the cerebellum, which functions almost as it's own self-contained brain, and controls motor coordination; the diencephalon, which includes the hypothalamus, thalamus, and other structures and functions as a relay between the cortex and sensory input/output, as well as dealing with hormones; and finally, the telencephalon, which is where our smarts are. The telencephalon contains the cerebrum, which is the most evolved part of our brains, and where the highest-order thinking occurs. The basic problem with human reasoning comes from the fact that our brilliantly complex cerebrum spends most of its time rationalizing the activity in the more primitive parts of the brain. This leads to logical fallacies, which
everyone, irrelevant of intelligence, education, or experience, make
all the time.
Some logical fallacies, like
post hoc ergo propter hoc (literally, "after this therefore because of this"), the idea that because B followed A, A must have caused B, happen every day, and it is easy to see both why they are an approximation of good reasoning (again, the Get It Mostly Right rule), and yet in reality very bad reasoning. Other logical fallacies, like the False Continuum, can be a little trickier to spot.
Here is a list of 20 common logical fallacies, just familiarizing yourself with these will help you recognize when your brain is fooling you. Though all are relevant to this discussion, I'd primarily suggest noting Confirmation Bias, Confusing Correlation and Causation, Argument Ad Ignorantum (which is a real biggie in this thread), and Confusing the Unexplained with the Unexplainable (another biggie here).
Finally, the third major cause is that memories are imperfect. They are not only inaccurate on the outset, but every time we think of them they change, they can fade, they can merge with other memories, they can be
stolen from other people, or they can even be made up completely. Every one of these things has been proved.
Here is a study showing how easy it is to create false memories, for example.
Again, I'd highly recommend Dr Novella's blog, as one of it's primary focuses is explaining how neurology (his profession) causes the thinking problems that are the natural state of affairs. Here is his entry on
why anecdotal evidence is "worse than worthless", Phil Plait's blog,
"Bad Astronomy" is also an excellent resource, along with P.Z. Myer's blog,
Pharyngula. The Sagan book I linked to,
The Demon Haunted World is another great place to start!
