Does the nature of our sense organs authoritatively determine the nature of our ultimate reality?
Much of what human beings acquire from the world around us is perceived by our senses. They receive and, together with rationality, inevitably process and interpret every bit of information. Hence, most of our perception of the ultimately unattainable reality depends crucially on the nature of our sense organs, since they are the ones that essentially provide a channel of communication between our insides and the world outside. However, are the very nature of our senses and thus the process of perception the ones that authoritatively impose our intimate conception of the world?
Perception is a vital source of knowledge. Nonetheless, the ultimate consensus is that perception is not passive. It is due to this reason that it is said to be fallible. To begin with, perception is selective: we do not -and cannot- notice everything in a given environment. As human beings, we do not hear every existing sound nor do we see every light ray: if we did, our world would certainly be much noisier and perhaps much redder, since it would be in that way that we would perceive infrared rays.
Besides, each one of us selects different things, according to our degree of awareness, among other reasons. How often does it happen that we become aware of a given sound (the ticking of the alarm clock) at a certain time (two minutes before the dreadful alarm goes off!) even if it has always been there? Different perceptions of an object are a common generator of discussions among people, as when we can never come to an agreement on the colour of that skirt: is it navy blue or black? Though unconsciously, each one of us gives a specific status to certain things and thus selects them to be perceived, on the basis of our most developed sense. All together, if our sense organs were not, by nature, selective in the perception phenomena, our interpretation of our reality would be nothing of what it is today.
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Apart from this, we do not play a passive role when perceiving: the observer often causes an effect on the observed. This has negative repercussions in Social Sciences, as in Anthropology, for example: as human beings are self-conscious, we tend to change our behaviour when we know we are being observed. It may also represent a problem to an artist who wants to paint somebody’s portrait: that somebody’s pose will probably not be entirely natural; we all behave differently when we are alone. For this reason, we may never be sure of what the world is like independent of our perception of it.
Furthermore, perception contains an element of interpretation: we inevitably interpret the information we gain. Thus, perceiving is not only about observation but a complex process composed by sensation plus unavoidable interpretation. Moreover, as human beings are not purely rational, we cannot stop ourselves from including our values and judgments in our interpretations. This affects historical knowledge, for example: if History intends to be an objective study of the past, there must exist a line between fact and opinion, leaving all personal matters aside. In Psychology, a Social Science, psychologists must try to be as objective and subtle as possible with their interpretations. After all, their patients are often seeking help and may be deeply upset even by their own diagnosis. Due to these facts, perception loses any possibility of being infallible, for it can never guarantee absolute certainty.
The perception phenomenon is chiefly a direct reflection of our sense organs’ activity and of its interaction with our mind. If its nature were different and its flaws eradicated, our view of the world would be utterly different. Quoting William Blake, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is: infinite.”
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Sense organs are also characteristic and unique in each species. It is not surprising then that each species perceives the world differently. Flies’ eyes are partitioned in lots of smaller ones: imagine having to see your nasty little brother more than twenty times at the same time! Dogs have an almost infallible sense of smell whereas their sight is not as developed as humans’. In consequence, their lives are mostly ruled by odours, individualizing other beings and objects on the basis of what they smell like. Their sight, exclusively based on black, white and vague hues of gray, though of significance, does not seem to play such an important role in their everyday routines. From these facts it can be argued that the nature of our sense organs partially results from their adaptation to the environment in which we are immersed. Bats’ radar system, occupying the place of the sense of sight, definitely implies an exclusive perception of reality, particularly opposed to our addictive sense of sight, without which most of us could not cope. Different sense organs means different perceptions of the world; though I can almost say directly different worlds since, as we interpret what we perceive and thus can never see reality as an absolute, our own perception of it becomes our reality in itself.
Not withstanding, it is not necessary to move away from humanity into other “distant” species to find clear examples of how different sense organs imply different realities. Take the case of handicapped people as a great illustration: though often denied but without any offensive or upsetting implications, a blind person’s world little has to do with that of those gifted with the sense of vision. Cruelly as it sounds, how similar can a world void of sounds and music, as it is that of the deaf, be to that of notes and voices? Much quieter, surely, and perhaps a lot more peaceful. In the case of colour blind people, it is undoubtedly not the same to see a tree with green leaves and a brown trunk than to see one exactly the opposite. Still, it is important to mention that, as a result of the lack or deficiency of one sense, many disadvantaged people develop more another sense. In the case of blind people, not only is their world different because they do not see, but it is even more due to their increased ability of hearing. Summing up, people who, perhaps unfortunately, do not share the same sense organs or possess a differently developed one, do not share the same world, since, as the nature of their sense organs is different, so is their view of the world.
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Yet, the affection or inutilization of our sense organs is not always involuntary or inevitable: often human beings themselves seek to alter them, hence altering the reality they perceive. Such is the case of alcoholics and drug abusers who, by consuming a specific substance, modify the nature of their sense organs and thus perceive a different -and to a point wilder- view of reality. However, sometimes our sense organs do “run out of order” involuntarily. It is the case of delusions and hallucinations (the typical case of oasis in the middle of the desert) caused by a particular reason, a high fever perhaps. But even these distortions of our perception of reality signify a new conception of it, as Marguerite Yourcenar well says: “Without doubt he had a fever. But maybe having a fever allows you to see and understand that which is otherwise neither seen nor understood.” In this world of inexact and infinitely diverse interpretations, everything is valid.
To conclude, our world is fundamentally based on how we perceive things, being the nature of our sense organs the chief and essential determinant factor of the process. The world we perceive is majorly composed of what we chose it to be composed according to our hierarchy of senses: we unconsciously choose to select only certain things and involuntarily give them status, thus building a world of noticed and unnoticed selections. Our view of reality is narrowly bound to how our dominant sense -vision perhaps- perceives it and this is inevitably reflected in our everyday life: we recognize ourselves on the basis of what we look like not of how we smell! Still, this is mostly reflected in the astonishingly englobating structure we create to communicate our perceptions: our language. After all, nobody really tastes or touches what we mean, see what I am trying to say?
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Perhaps there is a sole and absolute reality, one that no human being has seen or will ever see for that matter; but as our senses vary, so do our perceptions and thus our interpretations of it. If our sense organs were different, our experience of the world would, as a rule, be different, because the nature of our sense organs affects and determines the very nature of our perceived world.
