Seeing is Believing
For most people, sight is the most heavily relied on sense that is used. To read this you're using your eyes to send these words to your brain in order to process them. Humans take in an extraordinary amount of visual information each day. This is used consciously and unconsciously to make decisions that impact our lives. Often when we want to understand something our first instinct is to look at it. This could be an object, an animal, or perhaps another person. We observe traits of the thing we are looking at in order to better understand it. In her book Darśan, Diana Eck says "not only is seeing a form of 'touching', it is a form of knowing. ... We speak of 'seeing' the point of an argument, of 'insight' into an issue of complexity, of the 'vision' of people of wisdom"(Eck, 1998).
Often when we wish to express to someone that we understand something we will say "I see". Our society has widely revolved around seeing equaling the truth. To solve criminal cases, eyewitnesses are valued sources of information, and their information is typically valued above those who may have heard the crime or something relevant to the case. We have relied on sight for a long time. It is believed that our primate ancestors that still dwelled in trees, had better hearing and sense of smell than our current state, but they too relied on sight in order to locate food and avoid predators. Eventually our lifestyle somewhere along the evolutionary line deemed that keen hearing and smell was not necessary, but our powerful sense of sight remained. Humans can see a wide variety of colors and shades and we can focus finely on shapes. With this being our primary tool for perceiving in the world around us it's no wonder it became our primary tool for understanding the world around us. It isn't something one normally thinks about in their day to day life, but taking a moment to stop and ponder how you understand something you look at is intriguing. How much of your understanding is visually based compared to based on your other senses? Which sense do you go to first to understand something? Which sense provides you more information when trying to understand something?
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I think its extremely interesting that our society has equated seeing with truth. It makes me think about why we have not really thought about how we can be deceived by sight nearly as much as we have thought about being deceived by our other senses. With senses like touch and smell, there is an accepted level of uncertainty when it comes to how we understand these inputs that isn't present when we think about how we see things.
ReplyDeleteYes. I particularly liked that Professor Nelson called our attention to optical illusions. It's a reminder that though we rely on it heavily, seeing may be believing, but some of our sight-based beliefs are wrong.
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