The Mind's Eye Research Paper

How can we trust our senses to give us the truth? At first, this comes across as an odd question, because, how else do we process the outside world if not with our senses? Most animals, and even us humans rely on sense perception as a means of survival. Unfortunately, more often than not, our senses can easily be deceived. In the video “Mind’s Eye”, two little girls were playing in an average living room, but as the girls walked around the room, they would get bigger on the right side, and smaller on the left side. This was because the entire floor and furniture was distorted so that the right side was more elevated. Despite us knowing the truth, we could not get our minds to see the room clearly as it is. This example ties in with many optical illusions we saw; mainly the one where same colored dots seem to change color when surrounded by different colors. Despite us knowing that the dots are in fact the same shade of gray, they become lighter or darker when surrounded by other colors.
What is it then that affects our ability to see?
Most often, it can be argued that context is what affects our ability to see and process events. For example, in IB Psychology, we were studying witness cases, and how reliable their account actually is. After an experiment was performed on a group of classmates about a car crash, there was a broad spectrum of responses in terms of car color, car speed, and severity of the actual crash. This goes to show, that what we see, or more likely, remember, isn’t always reliable as we’re all looking at things from a different scope. Most of the times, it’s related to what we’re focused on. In the video “Whodunnit”, I was primarily focused on the plot of the story, so I did not notice 21 items in the room being changed. Depending on the things we give more importance to, our ability to notice and perceive
changes.
Truth can be defined as, “the property of being in accord with fact or reality.” However, even this can be broken down in an objective and a subjective truth. Objective truths and realities would be the sensation of heat or the math equation, “1+1=2”. We know all know touching a heated pan will burn our fingers. What makes this an objective reality though? Is it that it is universal? Perhaps objective realities can be defined as something everyone knows to be true or something entirely devoid of interpretation. Since our world isn’t comprised of objective truths, it might be safer to conclude that trusting our senses is generally a pathway to either erroneous truths or narrow scoped truths. Even though, our senses give us a good sense of fight or flight in terms of survival, it is best to be wary of the different interpretations that could be associated with what your “absolute truth” or “reality” is.

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