solipsism
In our minds, space is a multidimensional matrix in which we model substances and objects, attribute properties to them, and apply rules of behavior. When our simulation fails to accurately predict our sensory inputs, we make adjustments to the model. Failure to predict danger often prevents an individual from procreating; so any genetic adaptation that individual had tends to become extinct.
Evolution has apparently hardwired the human brain to mirror its sensory inputs in a virtual space-time of four dimensions. We don't truly know if the sensory inputs are caused by an external world of four dimensions; we only know that our four-dimensional virtual space-time has been adequate, thus far, to ensure survival of our species. I wonder if a whale's virtual universe has only four dimensions.
Advancements in science have vastly expanded our sensory inputs. How do we know those inputs are real? We don't truly know that our bodies are real; we only know that our sensory inputs are compatible with the image we have of our bodies within the virtual universe we have created in our minds. The same can be said of our scientific instruments.
Going on the assumption that our instruments are as real as our bodies, we discover new sensory inputs that our mental simulations failed to accurately predict. So we modify the virtual model and the rules. Some scientists have suggested that four dimensions are not adequate to contain their new virtual models; some have postulated space-time with twenty some dimensions.
Some of the models, as TVF is so fond of pointing out, are purely mathematical constructs, which the human brain is incapable of simulating. Our electronic computers have no such limitation; they can be programmed to model a space-time of many dimensions. If such a computer model can predict the input received from our extended senses more accurately than any model of only four dimensions, then perhaps we have become obsolete. Silicon based intelligent life may be the next step in evolution; we have created our own successor. Will it see fit to keep us as pets?
