Filters Through Which one Perceives the World

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Filters Through Which one Perceives the World

I believe that we perceive and therefore know. We perceive through

emotions, language and reason. These are also known as the ways of

knowing. Thus, it is appropriate to use the Woolman’s twelve ways of

knowing to talk about perception. Reality is what we see, hear, smell,

touch, taste and feel. It is what we observe around us using our

senses and feelings. However, how do we know that we are really seeing

reality and not our perception or something that our brain can accept

and process?

There are colors that our eyes cannot see for example ultra-violet and

infrared-red. These colors are invisible to the human eye therefore we

cannot see them. What we perceive is a clean Singapore. How do we

actually know that Singapore is not littered with invisible rubbish?

Of course, there are special devices that allow us to see these two

colors and prove that there is no such rubbish. However, you can never

be sure that there are no other colors invisible to our naked eyes.

The things that we have always believed to be true, because we have

‘seen’ it with our own eyes may actually be non-existent so can we

trust our eyes?

Is what we see real? ‘My desk is in the study room’. This statement’s

so called ‘proof’ is based on ‘unproven’ premises and therefore

nothing is true and reality is not real. This is skepticism. When can

we be sure? We can only be sure when we begin with the simplest, most

basic premises which is certainly impossible to doubt. This can be

summed up into these three lines ‘what we see is not real’, ‘you

cannot be sure whether you are dreaming or not’, ‘there is only thing

that you can be certain of and that is your consciousness of your own

existence’. Xenophanes once said that we can always learn more than we

know, but we can never be sure that we have reached any final truth.

Thus is seeing really believing or believing is really seeing?

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