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Question: How can we know we see the same things!?
How can we verify that what different people see is the same thing!?
Is it possible that we're all seeing different things (colors, shapes, etc) but all think they are the same things because we all agree on what they are!?
Example: I look at an apple and see red!. I may see a different color than you, but we both call it red!.
I have to ask because my mother was told by an art teacher that she could never see the world properly since she had astigmatism and that warps visual perception!. I have it too!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Perception does vary person to person but there is a doable way to test if your perception is reasonably close visually to others!. Have someone put an image on the computer!. Then have them change the image digitally (such as delete pieces, change the color palate, enlarge/shrink the image,etc) and see if you can pick out the original and the changes of the manipulated versions!. If you can describe the changes accurately, it implies with good reliability that the observers started with the same perceived image!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
We all see (hear, smell, taste, touch) things differently, cos no 2 peoples eyes, (ears etc) brains work in EXACTLY the same way, but the differences are (usually) miniscule, so we can (usually) agreeWww@QuestionHome@Com
Your art teacher is "full of it!."
We all percieve the world through our own set of "filters!." Some of them are physical, such as with various kinds of vision impairment, while may more perceptions are based on a cultural bias!.
To some, a bowl of fruit represents a colorful pleasing arrangement, suitible for a still life painting!. For someone else, the same bowl of fruit couldn't anything else but a couple of days (or more!) of life giving nourishment!. For some people, the sight of a Humvee vehicle means orgasmic off road power and status!. For someone else, it represents a shameful waste of technology, steel and precious fuel!.
But, back to your original point!. NONE of us "see" the same thing!. When we think of visually perceiving something, lets say a flower, we really don't "see" it!. Light comes down from the sun, some reflecting off of the flower and reaches our eyes!. At this point, it is, already, NOT the flower, but a set of photons of a certain wavelength, bouncing off of some receptor ends at the back of our eyballs!. (upside down!) The actual flower is yards away!.
Still, for the sake of argument, we can accept that this reflection of light is what our sense of "vision" means!. Yet, once these photons hit the receptors, visible light has not more part in our visual sense!. The receptors in our retina respond by creating an entirely different set of signals that travel, via our optic nerve, to the brain!. The brain, then, recieves these signals and have to make sense of them!. Some of these signals have to be "read" and understood to mean the wavelength of "green!." Others have to be translated into "yellow," and so on!. Then these different sets of "color" have to be assembled into a visual concept that represents a "flower against a bacground!." PLUS, for it to make sense to us, the upside down image that reaches our eyes has to be inverted right side up!."
You are EXACTLY right in your idea that what you "see," that is, what your brain translates as "green," may be what my eyes "see" as "purple!." But, since we've all been taught, since childhood that a flower stem is "green," you and I, both call that color we "see," by the name of "green!." The thing is, it really doesn't matter what the brain recieves via the optic nerves!. We ALL call that part of the flower, the stem, green!. It may be red, orange or vibrating puce to others, but we NAME it "green!."
So, we never actually see, hear, feel, taste or smell anything!. It is our brain that translates the myriad of signals carried by our nerves into what we call our senses!.
Your art teacher has the ego to pronounce that he or she is the only one in the world to be able to "see the world properly!." That means that her "filters" are working, even harder, to label and name her perceptions than most of the rest of us, who are content to let the world "be" and flow around us, in it's "proper" context!.
I think that it is that art teacher, that isn't seeing the world properly!.Www@QuestionHome@Com