Perception And Sense Perception

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Sense perception is one of our ways of knowing which is critical to our understanding of the world around us. The above quote by William Blake emphasizes how our perception can be easily altered and unclear to us. Blake’s comment was popular in his day and in ours, giving its name to one of the most celebrated rock groups in the world, The Doors. This prescribed title involves what we consider to be the “truth” and our five windows to the world, sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing inform us constantly about our environment and our accurate perceptions of it. One of the knowledge issues of this prompt is whether or not we can assume everyone has the same concept of “truth”. For the purposes of this paper we will focus on truth being “reality” and what actually exists in our external worlds. It has been observed and measured by the natural sciences that our end- organs (ears, nose, tongue, eyes, and neuron-receptors) are at best imprecise links to the outside world. This can be demonstrated by our limited efficiency using sight alone. It has been recorded that of the total light spectrum from micro waves to macro waves, humans can only detect a narrow band of waves in the mid region known to be the color spectrum. This small section of total light waves constitutes only 10% of the broader expanse of waves. Assuming that human beings are seeing only this limited amount of reflected light from objects and must make inferences about the outer world, it can be logically stated that our input of information about that world is truly incomplete. This can be further illustrated by our inability to detect radio waves which are passing through our bodies and homes continuously. A radio receptor found in the simplest radio devices, have... ... middle of paper ... ...yet the truth is that it all in the end was a lie to merely cheat us out of our money. This form of subterfuge is ancient and goes back to the beginnings of time when people’s greed and their creativity combined to mislead others for an evil purpose. Today the commercial, consumer mentality is being bombarded with advertisements of products which claim to have certain properties. We must use good judgment in finding the truth in all of these created perceptions. In conclusion, our sensory perception is our only input to external worlds which we must attempt to thrive in successfully. Understanding that our five senses are critical to this, we must acknowledge misconceptions and untruths are frequently made. In a world of Photoshop and Reality TV which in essence is not real, it is our duty to ourselves to seek out the “truth” as best we can. Bibliography

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