Understand the statement Essays

Understand the statement Essays Understand the statement Essay Understand the statement Essay In order to fully understand this statement, it is necessary to comprehend the key terms and what is actually meant by them. It is clear that the statement consists of a problem and a solution. The problem is finding out how things really are, and the only solution is to understand the filters through which one perceives the world. Starting off, it is important to clarify the key terms. It is interesting to research on the term really in this context. Real is a term, which can is different for everybody.This is exactly what the statement says: Every person perceives the world differently because of their individual filters, and that is why reality is different for everyone. Concluding, it is practically impossible to understand how things really are, because they will always be different to others. One of the most vital filters to be considered would be the way we receive information through our senses, and through which we receive it. Since we have several senses that sense different things (light, sound, smell, surface), we receive different information from each to create a general image of reality.All our senses have specific functions, and all of these are limited. An eye, for example, can sense light which has reflected from objects. It cannot see radio waves, which may be there a swell. Also it is not possible for the eyes to obtain information from areas which are not being looked at. The eyes have a specific field of view which cannot be altered. For most people the visual sense is the most important one because of various things, such as: orientation, emotions conveyed by sight, etc. It is clear that the same limitation rules apply for all our other sense as well.For the sense of sound, we can only receive sounds, which are in our spectrum. For taste, some things can not be tasted because our taste sensor cannot read them. For the sense of touch we can only feel things, which are big enough for our sensory receptors to read them. For example, microscopic bacteria could never be identified as microscopic bacteria by a human being. The sense of smell is directly connected to our sense of taste, so the same rules apply. We can not smell radio waves for example. Simply using our senses, there is no way to perceive, and therefore no way to know everything that is around us.Concluding from this it is virtually impossible for a human to perceive the entire world. Not only can we not know everything, but we can also know things differently from others. Concerned with just senses, people may sense things differently from others due to either a loss of an entire sense, which would make the human prone to extraordinary development and use of the other senses, or a sense of one human may be naturally or trained to be stronger and more sensitive to the information it is trying to receive.For example, people who are either blind or have a very bad eyesight (and cannot compensate this with technology), have to develop their other sense because they have gained responsibility for certain things (e. g. Orientation). Our brain is what processes the information that is given through the senses and then combined with other filters; values, conclusions, expectation, etc. are made. Even if each sense on every human was equally efficient, the difference in values, beliefs, experiences, etc.is what makes the difference in perception. For example: two people see, hear, feel and smell exactly the same thing, but yet they both react entirely differently to it. One person may be very familiar with the object, the other may have never seen, felt, heard, or smelled before. Relating to this, sensing new things is what makes a humans expiriences and lifetime. This is why it can be very easily observed how a human developes through his/her life, from the earliest age onwards.Theoretically, if humans did not age or forget, which is a malfunction or inefficiency in the human brain, a person would continuously collect and gather information, and then process it through filters in the brain for ever. Concerning filters language is probably the best example of this. All over the world, thousands of different languages are spoken. And since knowledge and perception is very much based upon identifications and descriptions of things, language is a key factor to perception. Very commonly it has happened that languages developed according to the environment people lived in, and what things their culture was exposed to.It is said that if there is no word or description for something, it is not percieved or its presence is not recognized. Because of this people that speak the same language can percieve and identify things or understand certain concepts that other languages would not be able to. All languages developed words that are significant to them and which resemble things that are of importance. A very famous and popular example would be the Inuit eskimo culture, which have more than a dozen words to describe different types of snow.A person from a developed european country would not notice or recognise these difference in snow because there are no words to describe them. The same would be the case on the other hand, where western people have many terms for different currencies and values of money, for example. For the Inuit eskimo, money might be very irrelevant and unimportant, and therefore he would not easily see any differences in banknotes, etc. Language is also very important because it is a vital method of communication, so that it is possible to express ones way of percieving the world.When a sense sends information to the brain for processing, the brain attaches various things to the information, such as: emotions, values, beliefs, etc. A very simple example would be a person who develops emotions and feelings for a member of the opposite sex. The perception of the person may be entirely different to another persons, even though the sensory information was the same. Basically, it is possible to say that the information gathered keeps getting things such as the previous attached to it. One could imagine it as a progressive ladder, with different stations where various things become added to the original information.This is called the ladder of inference. In order to prove that the statement is true, one needs to take all the above factors into consideration, and understand how all these things (eg. Perception) actually work. In order to find out how things really are one must understand the filters through which we perceive the world is actually not entirely possible, it is partially possible because things may be real for one person, and the filters through which the person percieves the world can also be understood.However, it is very difficult to explain and describe the word reality. There are two sides to debate about this. One is that reality exists no matter what, and people move around in it adapting to it and doing what is possible for them. The other is that reality is different for every single one of us, and everything revolves around us. It is certainly very relative, but the topic is very difficult to debate about. We must realise that everyone percieves the world differently because of the filters that the original information from senses is sent through to be processed further.If everybody had the same filters, then it might be possible to live in one reality and to understand eachother at all times. Since this is not the case, and filters are developed throughout ones life, it is impossible to find out how things really are, because things may be entirely different for somebody else. On the other hand, it is possible to understand each individuals perception of the world by understanding their filters.