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Perception, an in depth analysis of the different Theories of Perception by Leading Philosophers and said implications

In terms of perception, most people have a basic view which is that everything is as it exactly is and ever can be, but is this view the best one? Can we know anything? What possible effects and loopholes could said theories have, what problems are caused by these theories in terms of the workings of modern society? This is what I will try and analyse, and this I will do by saying all about the theories that are:

First up though, is the theory of naïve realism. Don't think this is anything new to anyone, or anything new to you reading this essay/rambling piece of work, as all it means is that everyone perceives everything the same, and all qualities are in the object. For example, a naïve realist would say (even though very few of these actually are philosophers) that the sky is blue, chocolate tastes nice and that everyone will always perceive every possible thing the exact same way, and everyone will see the sky as blue and smell everything the same etc…

Now, this is pretty much what 99.999% of all living people on earth believe and generally keep believing through the entirety of their existence, and the reasoning can generally be summed up in two words:

'It works'.

This is because while it has huge amounts of flaws, and in my opinion has caused much harm, arguments, wars and crimes, it does tend to work in general everyday life, often a little better than representative realism does and a kind of lot better than the theories about the physical world not existing. And yes, it is also generally used because for the first thing, most people either don't know about or have no interest in philosophical theories, and partly because group 'truths' generally support it to an extent (I am 100% sure you will get many more people saying the sky is blue than green).

However, it is not regarded as a logical theory by philosophers, and very few philosophers can, have or will try and defend it. Why? Because there are no real working arguments about WHY it can be true that do not lead in a complete circle. Why? Because put bluntly, you will never be able to back up this theory with complete certainty because the only existence you can think from is yourself, the only evidence you have is through your own perception. Yes, while you can sort of defend it by saying that many people seem to perceive the same, you cannot check by having part of your mind leave the other half and go into someone elses mind, and check through their senses. For all you know, everyone else could see the sky as bright pink, and their hearing distorts your word of blue into pink, and you can never prove this statement right or wrong.

Plus, there is a very major issue that people do NOT see everything in the world the exact same way as everyone else. Think of the blind people learning to see, or those with colour blindness, or those who are short/long sighted, or even supposedly insane. They all perceive things at least partly different, and because the theory literally is about such things as colour being in the object, you can clearly say many such cases would seem to suggest otherwise. A colour blind person does not see exactly the same as a non colour blind person, a person going on deaf does not hear exactly the same as someone with 'perfect' hearing. Note the quotes, as who is to say those people are the ones who have said conditions? How do we know that the supposedly 'normal' people don't have some mass condition which means they see certain, or even all colours wrong, or hear things wrong?

Representative realism on the other hand, sees things in a slightly different way, from a slightly different perspective. With this theory, there is a gap between our perception of the world and between the actual object. There is a still a real world out there, just that we do not perceive it directly, and all we perceive is the sense data, Because of this, not all qualities are in the object. Size and shape are. Weight generally is. But not colour, not sound, not smell. And certainly not other such opinion based things. This means that it certainly does cover problems with naïve realism such as colour blindness and such, and actually does work to a good extent because it also goes on the idea there is actually a world out there, which means you can generally also use this is in the real world, just not being very popular with the majority for saying almost random things they may consider false, such as grass being blue because you believe colour is in the mind.

Also, through this theory, we do not have any form of direct perception. This is because we only perceive the sense data of the object which is a temporary thing in our minds, and not the object. This is a pretty much supported thing from some scientific knowledge though, as our perception of the sun is actually about eight minutes old (yes, if the sun got destroyed it would take eight minutes to realise it) and even more so when it comes to stars, as many of which can be seen are actually long extinct, and have died possible thousands of years ago.

The gap and said stuff is also backed by the simple empirical evidence of distance, as when something gets closer, it seems to get bigger in size, and when something is getting further away, it seems to get smaller (hence why the final battle in Yoshi's Island had Bowser getting massive when he reached the screen).

And of course, optical illusions do back this theory, as people often see these in differing ways, such as how some people see a vase while others see two faces in a very popular example. If we all perceived it the same, as naïve realists would have us think, we would quite literally only see one possibility.

However, no theory is without weakness, and a weakness here is where said sense data exists, as there is no real, provable answer in this said respect. Plus, there is the minor matter from idealist and sceptic theories that we cannot know if any said object exists.

Phenomenalism is another relatively popular theory, and this is the belief that no objects actually exist, but everything known to us is actually just sense data which the mind can construct into an object. It solves the problem of people perceiving different, which must be admitted as it is up to the individual to construct the sense data to form said object.

However, the weaknesses here do involve some great problems faced by this theory, and one is that while the idea of no object may be semi plausible, it leaves the problem of the inefficiency of the world if this is how it worked. Why? Because you would have to construct every object you perceived from sense data, which would mean your brain would require a lot of activity just to see, say a cat in the middle of a room, and even more just to create the room for what you think is an object to be in. This would require a ton of brain activity for even the simplest objects, and if it was true, which is unknown, would mean our brains would probably need to be more powerful than even some of the high end technically computers which at the moment are having enough trouble trying to construct a simple 3D object in Virtual Reality code.

Another problem is the blurred line between the imagination and dreams and the real world, seeing as there is a lot of sense data in the mind but no actual object, and because with this theory the real world is pretty much the exact same, there is no way to know whether you are dreaming or awake with phenomenalism. Of course, idealism and other sceptic theories also have this oddity as your thoughts and what people call reality (remember, we can not be 100% sure it even exists) are pretty much impossible to determine apart. You can also not really list sense data without referring to objects, so there is that minor flaw (seriously, describe this data without referring to supposed real world shapes and objects, it's harder than it looks). However, this flaw may not really be a flaw, as you cannot describe the sense data you might have in your imagination either, and that's not really dependant on Phenomenalism to be true. Either way, there are flaws.

The other problem posed is that people do seem to come up with the same objects. Yes, technically they could invent anything in the world to be anywhere if this was true, but you don't see many people perceiving a famous statue as one of a cat, or of a desk being a tree, do you? Well, not the vast majority.

On the more extreme hand are the sceptic theories. Which in order range from idealism (which can be quite low end) to solipsism which is the belief nothing exists except your mind and the whole universe and everything in it is a creation of your subconscious.

Firstly, idealism. This belief, which has two different branches depending on either religious belief or a more, no answer atheist view, is that there is not a physical world. Instead, every object in all of supposed existence is just an idea, that there is no material reality as so called said, and we only have an idea of anything. This can be a very good thing, as in the non religious part of this theory there is no correct or incorrect status for anything. The theory allows for people to see and perceive things very differently, and in the particular, non religious part, even accept that there is no insanity, no incorrect knowledge and that anyone and everyone is just as right as anyone else. Plus, it also goes with the idea that no normal being can have a God's eye view of reality, that no one can be outside their own mind. Is this idea of no one being wrong, insane/mad or ill because everything is possibly truth a good thing? Who knows, just that I assume it's not very popular against leaders/government systems.

However, this belief cannot ever be without flaws, one of these being that it does not cohere with our everyday experiences in our everyday lives. You could never exit the room you were born in if you believed this from that age, as you could kind of doubt the doors existence and such. And I am pretty sure you cannot just imagine the idea of a floor in front of you, and walk straight off a building roof aiming to walk over everything.

It also poses a problem when other people are in the picture, and even ends up being blurred with solipsism. If people are just ideas, then you have ended up with the idea of no other inhabitants of the universe, and everyone only being ideas in your mind, hence either solipsism or total scepticism. If you don't think they are ideas, you would then be believing some kind of object exists outside your mind.

These are not a problem in Berkeley's version of idealism, because to this version, everything is as it is because God is perceiving it. However, this opens another kettle of fish, because if you take away God, the theory does generally fall apart, and you are back to the other form of idealism (actually, this philosopher actually tried to use this version to prove God exists, and I don't know if this would count as sufficient proof).

But idealism is not the most extreme form of scepticism, and the ones beyond this are unlike anything most people have ever considered thinking about or criticising. This is a range of views from the local scepticism based ideas, which is doubting based on a specific subject, such as computers, or art, or videogames, and total scepticism, which is full out doubting of everything and anything. As in, doubting so far you wonder whether we are in the Matrix or dreaming our entire existence.

And yes, a lot would say Descartes was a sceptic because he doubted all his opinions about the world to an extreme effect, doubting what was known as fact, senses and everything else, eventually coming to what many consider a totally true statement, which was 'I think therefore I am', which was that because he could think, he knew he must exist to think. But he was still not the most extreme sceptic, because he did eventually have to come up with this theory about God existing and mathematics and logic being true to actually even hope to get any knowledge, which some may say wasn't too philosophical.

Total Scepticism has got it's strengths, such as how you can very much win any argument if you use this theory, simply because while you can ask for 100% concrete proof of anything, it is a heck of a lot more difficult to give this proof, even more so because at the very least it would have to be through pure logic and reason, using mathematics and the like rather than sense data, which would completely invalidate photo, video and audio evidence for anything.

However, taken too far, the pretty scary extreme can be found, which is solipsism, or the idea that nothing exists except your own experience, and your mental life is all that there is. In fact, this theory is also quite scary in that all other people, according to this theory are simply parts of your mental thoughts or subconscious, and do not exist. You have simply created whatever scenarios you are in, and are basically a God of your own mental experience.

But to finish off, I shall counter scepticism with some of the commonly used transcendental arguments, such as that of language. Because the sceptic, by saying language does not exist has to communicate this in a language to put the point across, hence it would prove the existence of language. This is quite logical, as to communicate, you need language generally, or something meant to be understood by other existing people, and language is for communication, you cannot have a private language for one person. Nor can you really have one not based off an existing language.

The other ones include those of not having experiences, as the problem here is that you have to be having an experience of you not having experiences.

And that of not holding beliefs, as that is also what scepticism is, a belief, not provably right or wrong by any definite measure. And this is true, we can't nor ever will be able to prove one of these perception theories is correct and the other theories are wrong. This is because of the usual God's Eye View problem which effects most beliefs for truth and knowledge.

And reasoning and logic not being trusted? Well, you have to trust these to argue they cannot be trusted. Seriously, in my own words:

'A true sceptic can never be a philosopher'

Because by claiming anything, they are proving many of these things, and defending the theory is in essence, actually attacking it. Seriously, figure this out quite carefully:

'Scepticism is the idea we cannot have knowledge, basically saying who knows to everyone and anyone'

To defend it, you would have to somewhat accept we can have knowledge, otherwise you would never be able to argue, as other people's ideas about what is supposedly knowledge is just as legitimate as your ideas.

Finally, there is the problem that these theories do not generally work that well in normal, supposedly every day life, as doubting everything will actually make it impossible to leave the room, or even try doing anything. You cannot really live like what many consider a normal human being totally doubting everything.

Am I saying that any of these theories is really good and the others are not? Am I saying that one is 100% provably wrong or right? Am I saying which one I prefer? No, all I doing in this piece of work is analysing and criticising theories of perception that have been created over the years, without coming to any real conclusion. Why not a conclusion? Because this perception thing has no correct answer, it has no provable facts or truth, and each of the theories can generally be used to defeat any other theory, to an extent. Some are better than others, some are more logical to the casual reader. But trying to change people's theories, beliefs and views in my opinion is the worst ignorance in all of this world.

Bonus: The Implications

The implications of these theories are simple. For naïve realism, the implication is generally the arguments and suffering in the world as people claim other people experience and perceive things the same way. This is simply a big problem, because people don't perceive things the exact same way, and the idea that they do led to the society where anyone deemed different to what was supposedly 'sane' was locked up, sent round the world in a ship, or put in an asylum for the public to watch, partly so people could think of themselves, because they were not in there, as sane, 'normal' beings.

For representative realism, things such as traffic lights may pose a huge problem. This is because colour is often used in public to symbolise things such as actions and what to do. Imagine what would happen if someone were to be a driver and they perceived red as green! And there is already problems of this happening with those who are colour blind attempting activities which require colour co ordination.

For idealism, no one being wrong means that no one can be insane, mad, a troll or a n00b. No one can be treated like this. This can be good, or in some cases, pretty bad. Oh, and idealism in what I consider my opinion, is a mild form of scepticism and can easily lead to solipsism when you encounter the problem of the possible existence of others.

And for scepticism, copyrights and trademark laws are pretty flawed, especially if you are a solipsist. Why? Because your mind has created the other individuals, the other individuals have created their so called 'copyrighted' or trademarked stuff, and because of the logic, this would mean you own the rights to everything and anything. There is also the minor implication of how you would technically be insane at all moments and times, as with no one else existing except for in your mind and mental state, then you can never do anything but think to yourself, create your own scenarios and such and talk to yourself. Plus, imagine the perpetual feeling of being alone at all times, never actually having any real, physical life forms to be friends with because your entire life is just a mental state.

These implications are only what would be a problem if any theories become widely used. They are what life is like, and what the effects could be on someone who takes up one theory in particular, as well as all the strange effects which these beliefs held by different people have, can and will cause. I have nothing else to say except that using