THREE THEORIES OF REALITY (summary) + LINKING QUESTIONS

Scientific Realism ('atoms in the void')

• It is the belief that there is a different 'world' beyond our own reality. A sort of, "alternate reality". It's a mixture of common sense and scientific description. For example, the common sense understanding of a table is that it has extension and colour, but the scientific explanation is that it does not actually belong to that world (our perception) as it is "empty" in our perception as there are numerous electric changes rushing through it with great speed. 

Phenomenalism ('to be is to be perceived')

• It is based on empiricism, for the fact that phenomenalism states that all knowledge is based on experience. On basic terms, "matter is simple 'the permanent possibility of sensation'", and therefore is the complete opposite of scientific realism as it does not believe in independent realities. How? It offers a counterargument by saying that we cannot know what the world is like independent of our experience of it. 

Common-sense Realism ('what you see is what is there')

• It states that the way we view the world mirror the way the world is. However, this is the easier of the three theories to reject, as it has been determined that our sense-organs are not always trustworthy.

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Reason

In order to understand whether perception or reason is more reliable, one must first know the definition of knowledge – "the beliefs or opinions which are proven true with logical evidence and afterwards converted into knowledge". However, since this in my own opinion, I would have to say that reason is more reliable as perception is merely someone's point of view that is used as a process for people to accept reality. An example of this can be seen if a large amount of people might think art is beautiful whilst others may disagree and regard it as meaningless. So, whilst reason leads to one solution, perception leads to various ones that make the way we perceive the world confusing.

Emotion

This is a rather easy question to answer as (from personal experience) when you're in a good mood your perception of the world is less dark whilst, on bad days, it becomes difficult to look beyond what is in front of you. This change of perception is called the "broaden and build" theory of which states that when a person is happy their attention zooms out (paying attention to life as a whole), whilst a sad person will centre on specifics and blow them into unnecessarily large proportions. Furthermore, a good mood can alter your thought process to what is known as "cognitive control" of which your brain's ability will widen, allowing your perception of the world to go deeper than you normally would. 

Ethics

Similar to how emotion affects our perception, it tackles how a person's view of their surroundings is subjective to biases or experiences as everyone makes a conscious decision as to how they wish to interact with the world. Relating back to emotion, good people see the world in a more positive light than bad people as they choose to focus on the good. However, this can be argued as there are bad people in the world (i.e. Trump) that enjoys his life (either due to money, or his wife) and therefore makes bad decisions with his environment in a positive mood. So, this structure of "happy person-good decisions" is not necessarily true. However, relating back to Trump, due to his negative perceptions of the world (i.e. racism towards immigrants), most of his thoughts besides himself are probably negative. Due to this, good people (in their actions) do see the world differently, however this varies from person to person and cannot applied to everyone.

The Arts
By definition, the arts are a an expression of creativity and imagination in order to portray something in life as holding beauty/emotional power. For a long time, the arts has served as a tool to influence people whether it be their opinions on topics or their perception of the world as a whole. In terms of its affect on culture and society, the way in which an artistic piece is displayed can change opinions by instilling values and translating experiences through communicating its beliefs. In modern day art, it is used to voice the politically and/or socially disenfranchised. Therefore, with this much power of influence, can it not be said that art allows us to perceive the world differently? Take an artwork portraying our society as a chess game; this display automatically seeps thoughts into the observer's mind that they are living in a controlled system made with rules and regulations. This artwork is a comment on that, but the reaction from the audience can be particularly influential if shown to a child who's views are innocent. 

SENSE PERCEPTION 6. Optical illusions show how we see

About Beau Lotto

Beau Lotto is a neuroscientist who specializes in sense perception. He is also the founder of Lottolab, a studio that blends art and science to explore how we view and interact with the world. He also helped publish the first peer-reviewed scientific paper by school children.

Why is this talk worth watching?

Lotto’s visual illusions are – literally – unbelievable. They also demonstrate just how much our sensory knowledge depends on context, a key concept to grasp.

WOKs/AOKs

SENSE PERCEPTION, human sciences, language

Questions on the talk

1	What is BL’s key idea about sensory information?	BL talks about how we cannot trust what we see as the sensory information is not trustworthy as our minds are not developed enough to understand anything to its fullest extent. There is no inherent meaning in information, but its only what we do with it that matters. We see by learning to see.	4.15
2	So how do we see?	We see by learning to see. The brain evolved the mechanisms for finding patterns (relationships in information) and associating it with a behavioral meaning. An example of this can be found in letter strings in language.	4.35
3	How does changing the context change what we perceive in his illusions?	It means you could take two identical things, put each in either a light or dark surrounds, and the one on the dark surround looks lighter than the one on the light surround.	6.40
4	What is the significance of the optical illusions demonstrated by BL?	The brain evolved to see the world the way it was useful for the human race to see in the past.	11.40
5	How has BL extended the principles of what he does?	He did an experiment of which he translated light into sound, enabling people to hear their visual world, navigating the world using their ears. This was done in order to aid people with blind or hard-seeing people, but also to try and figure out how people make sense of their world. He also got a child to listen to an orchestra and paint it, as a way of trying to understand how we visually see sound.	12.15
6	What does BL say about our relationship with nature?	He states that we are defined by our environment and our interactions with it (our ecology). He then states that it is, “necessarily historical, empirical (observation), and relative”.	14.15

Related knowledge questions and discussion points

·       Can we trust our senses?

Basing the answer to his question off of BL’s talk, we cannot trust our senses because we do not fully understand the world we live in fully, meaning that our interaction with it cannot be fully understood as well. It truly relates to the last question, of which our relationship with nature comes from an interaction with it; it is empirical. To summarize, we were born with five senses given to us by nature in order to navigate through the world (i.e. sensing pain, temperature change, etc.…)

·       Is seeing believing?

Well, visual illusions can distort our perception so we can say that what we “see” is not what is physically there. An example of this can be seen when BL had conducted various experiments with color to the audience. However, an example of mine own is that in the optical illusion below, where the image itself is not animated yet it has movement that is caused by the specific placement of colors and shapes (i.e. small dots at the center create the illusion that the picture is farther away from us, whilst the edges do the opposite effect). Furthermore, belief of historical events, or meanings of certain things are made to demonstrate that visual belief is just an interpretation, not actual sight. It’s a confusing concept, but then again you have to ask yourself if blue is actually blue? We only know blue itself because we have classified it, and we choose to see it as blue.

·       What are implications of the flawed way in which we view the world?

This is a difficult question, because it asks to draw a conclusion as to what the effect of seeing a ‘flawed’ view of the world is. Of course, a significant disadvantage is that every human develops a certain distrust in their surroundings and therefore it can affect the psyche of the person in a negative way. For example, a person might have absolutely no faith in what is around them that they will (at least mentally) cease to find meaning in their life. As, our surroundings form experiences with our interactions with it, and so it waters our perception of life. Another implication is that we know less of our world, meaning that humans are limited to understanding our world from a perspective that is unbiased as our own personalities are shaped with the nature of which we were brought in, meaning that almost all decision is influenced by our emotions and rational way of thinking. Of course, these are merely guesses.