Perception or Reality?
Maybe some of you (three) avid readers have had this conversation/argument. That perception frames an individual’s reality, or that reality is reality whether or not it is ever perceived for what it is.
I’ll try to be as fair to both sides as possible, so let’s start. The arguement for perception is this: perception is reality, meaning that how a person sees something is reality I.E. John Doe thinks that if a tree falls down in the forest and nobody’s there to hear it, it didn’t make a sound and for that matter it may have never fallen at all. Simply the fact that it wasn’t perceived by anyone means that it didn’t happen.
In contrast the realist believes that if a tree fell in the forest “of course it made a sound dumbass! physics proves that!” to which the perception promoter quips “they’ve only tested what they’ve seen, maybe if they could test an unperceived tree falling in the forest” Which would prompt reality man to reply “You’re such an idiot, how can they test something that is unperceived? you’d have to see and hear it to test that theory and if you do that you would be ruining the experiment because you’re there!” as you can see attempting to acquiesce either side would be moot, and both parties would be mooters! though mooters may or may not be a real word is beyond the point, I perceive it as a legitimate word, so it is.
So, perhaps this arguement is a bit more logical, one person sees the color red, but to them it appears the same color as another person sees blue, now the fact that they were told since preschool that the colors were the colors doesn’t change the fact that one person sees blue as someone else sees red, so that person’s perception would be different so their reality as it pertains to that color would be different. Or the realist would say that all eyes have the same optical receptors and that only if a person was color blind would someone see color in a different way than another because all humans have the same equipment.
Hasta (insert spanish words for whenever i seeya!)
February 3rd, 20086:09 am at
I used to think you were merely crazy, now I know you’re a complete whack-job… at least your progeny has plenty to look forward to o_O
February 3rd, 20088:11 pm at
“Perception is reality” is flawed, but so is “reality is reality without perception.” Without perception one cannot possibly determine what is real. So one man’s perception is his own reality, but if that man were to assume that his reality is the the only reality then that man is insane. So because there is more than one reality (based on more than one person having their “own” reality), it only makes sense that there is a total reality from which each person perceives their reality.
Take for instance a die, six sides with six different numbers on each side. Six people on each side of the die perceiving it will all say that it is a die. But each person will perceive a different number. Now if they all argue that the number on the die that they see is the only number on the die then any outside observer will notice that they are all right and wrong at the same time. Each person perceiving the die could listen to each of the 5 other people to come to the conclusion that there are in fact six different numbers on the same die and come to the understanding of a total reality instead of just believing that their own perception is the only reality.
QTF.