An Essay looking at Perception

Essay by benedictbridgeHigh School, 10th gradeB, October 2006

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The mind's perception of what it sees is in accordance with what we have been taught, for example if we are brought up in the knowledge that the sky is blue and that that is what blue looks like then that is what we will believe, what we should be doing is questioning the origin of this knowledge, "seeing is believing" this phrase undermines perception.

The bat's perception of the world is almost solely based on sound. Its perception is centred on ultrasonic waves that can detect movement and objects. The mind in humans seems to categorize things as wavelengths then encode them into colour and shapes. The sensation of seeing is different from the others because the brain finds it convenient to use models in the mind to represent the outside world. There is a theory that talks about 5 children facing a wall, who are chained and tied up so that they cannot move, these children have been there their whole lives and they know nothing else; raised up behind them is a bridge and raised up further and further back is a light or fire; now people walk across the bridge carrying objects shaped like animals and these images are reflected down onto a wall and the children see these things and believe them to be real, it is exactly the same with what the world is today, and is the same with bats perception of the world, its limited senses mean that is might be seeing things differently but real to it, but the senses it has to a much greater power than ours could be perceiving things far beyond our comprehension.

In theory the bat and the human see the same; the male bat sees a female bat in bright red, the...