Is perception reliable? Yes and no. Yes in the way that we depend on our senses, touch, taste, smell, hear and sight to understand the rest of the world and how it effects us. For example, how can we know that fire is bad if we can’t feel that its hot and gets hotter as we move closer to it. We use our senses to learn more than we use our brain to learn, in my opinion. In class, we listen to the teacher and watch the powerpoint. Outside of school, we hear music and we remember the lyrics and we touch objects to know what it’s shape is. Our brain is just the machine that converts one sense to another. How do I know one object is shaped like that and feels like that without seeing it? I can deduce from what I see everyday in real life. I see that the object looks rough or has an indentation and this is how when I touch it, I know that it is a certain object.

Having said that, what about a person with synesthesia. Synesthesiats are people that have the condition where they mix up senses. They can taste colours or hear a shirt etc.. So if our sense perception is what connects us to the rest of the work and what keeps us from dangers as shown in the video last week with the picture of the bear then what about these people, how would this condition affect their perception of the world. So in that sense, our senses are not reliable.

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1 comment to Perception

  • Jennifer

    I see.. I still think our senses are reliable, but what you’ve said about synesthesia is rly interesting.
    In Korean poem, there’s this technique in ‘Imagery’ where you can express an image with mixed-up sense, like: ‘sweet smell of the grass’, ‘I cried coldly like an autumn night’. In real life, mixing up sense is quite dangerous..then are the people who eats chalks, soaps also have this symptom as well? But in literary sense I think it makes our imagination more wider and allow us to really view the poen using every senses that we have.

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