WEEK 2: SEEING AND PERCEPTION

We use our senses everyday to help us understand the true nature of things. Without our senses we are disconnected form the external world, only by relying on our senses, we are able to live in the world filled with uncertainties. All this while, most people including myself believe that our senses is adequete enough to give us truth. The purpose of writing this journal is to know whether my senses will always give me truth or whether my senses in particular my sight is giving me lies.

James Garvey in his book titled the twenty greatest philosophy books stated Philosopher Rene Descartes defined perception as the interpertation of the sensations produced by sensory information through our senses where the eyes act as a medium for presenting sensory ideas to the mind, and the mind then perceives these sensory ideas and makes a judgment about it.(Garvey,2006).

In order to understand more about perception, we need to see a contradicting point of view from the intellegent rationalist philosophers who argue that reason is the source of knowledge instead of senses. Rationalist question the reliability of our senses. One of the famous 17th century rationalist philosopher, In the book by D.W Hamalyn called the pelican history of western philosophy, explained that Rene Descartes argue that we are sujected to illusion in our perception of external world as our senses can deceived us. (Hamalyn,1987). In the meditation of the first philosophy, he introduced the method of doubt where he doubted  everything that he can doubt including the knowledge he acquire through his senses. The only thing that he cannot doubt is his own existence, where he quoted " I think, therefore, I exist".

visual communication specialist took Rene Descartes idea from his method of doubt. They question the reliability of their senses on understanding and analyzing visual world around them. The world of visual communication leads us to doubt our own senses by accepting the possiblility that our senses can sometimes deceive us. The basic idea of philosophy that has now became an asset to visual communication speacialist and as well as media students, which separates us from normal people who view what they see as the “unquestionable truth”.

This is the duck-rabbit illusion.

One might say that it is a duck, and another might say that this is a rabbit. It confuse us whether it is a rabbit or a duck when our own sight itself creates curiosity. Doesn’t this proof that our sight can be deceiving. If our sight is already doubted about the knowledge of a certain image doesn’t this makes confusion or uncertanties to our perception?

This picture act as an optical illusion to question the reliability of our sight. The complexity of the image distort one’s perception. Even when our sight show us the same image doesn’t mean that we will have the same perception. It shows that it is our own mind that determines one’s perception not our eyes. Thus, our percetion is untrustworthy when the information from our sight is rather ambigouous. The foundation of perception is therefore came from an unstable ground of a decieving sense of sight.

 

                                                                     Nostalgia

In the journal of Nostalgia: content, Triggers, Function: Journal of personality and social psychology, stated that in 1979, Davis defined nostalgia as “a positively toned evocation of a lived past” and argue that nostalgic experience is infused with imputations of past beauty, pleasure, joy, satisfaction, goodness, happiness and love. The feeling is never infused with sentiments that we commonly think as negative. (Wildsht,Sidekides,Arnt,Routledge, 2006).

This picture fit the concept of nostalgia because the image portrayed the ideologies of serenity, peaceful and the beauty of kampong Ayer.  Nevertheless this picture can enhance everybody’s memory of an irredeemably lost past life. There is nothing in this picture that indicates any sign of negative ideologies. Where are the bad things?

The houses on fire, the water as a disposed system, the garbage floating on water. All this negative ideologies are completely vanished from the picture.

Nostalgia lies in everybody’s memory as an illusion of a perfect past lived away from negativity, but does nostalgia really shows a whole truth?

It is our own conscious mind that manipulates us to see only one side of truth. Our sight and perception tell us a record of error. Because of that, we are blinded by what we perceive through nostalgia.

                                                              Visual manipulation

This picture is taken from the website, which shows a representation of UBD classroom.

By focusing in the discourse of UBD classroom  in this picture, the ideology presented by this image are:

1)      Facilitated

2)      Comfortable

This is representation of UBD classroom on the website. Instantly when we see picture, we never question what we see. In the case of this picture, it seems like negativity and positivity of a certain subject is impossible to coexist. Only a positive ideologies are represented, Is this the portrayal of the whole truth about the classroom? Where is the negative point of views?  Why can’t we see it in the picture?

A visual image that reflect a negative ideologies are eliminated in order to brainwash us to see what they want us to see. By giving the images of positivity, it restricts viewers to seek for the truth.

Information like this are ommited

Stephen Law, creates a new version of Descartes argument from the philosophy of mind where in his book titled philosophy gym stated that:

The brain in a vat hypothesis suggested  that , "your brain is removed and plugged into a computer running a virtual earth program. The computer is so sophisticated that the experiences it generates are indistinguishable from those you would have if what you experience was real. What you see mimic the real world". (Law, 2003).

Doesn’t this shows that the brain in a vat hypothesis is indeed exist in reality, doesn’t this clearly shows that mainstream media such as photography and advertisement act like a supercomputer, creating an illusion that can alter our sight and perception. There is powerful being out there who is intelligent enough to deceive us, creating a virtual world around us. People who are in the position of dominant power are able to shape or design our perception by using mass media. We are being fooled all this time into believing the world of illusion that is created for us, the world of visual manipulation. We are made to believe on what they want us to we see through visual manipulation.

Philosophers have given visual communication professionals to view seeing and perception as a questionable truth. Rene Descartes has indeed shows us that it is very important to have doubt on what we see, because only by having doubt we eliminate false knowledge, and only when we doubted what we see, we are no longer being deceived by our own mind or by someone who is powerful enough to change our perception. By questioning our sight, we are no longer blinded by what we see and only then we shall know whether our senses give us truth.

References:

Garvey, James. (2006).The twenty Greatest Philosophy Books. . Continun International  Publishing Group. London.

Hamalyn, D.W. (1987).The pelican history of western philosophy.  Penguin group.London

Law,Stephen.(2003).Philosophy gym.  Headline book publishing. London

Wildshut, Tim. Sidekides, Constantine. Arnt, Jamie. Routledge, Clay.(2006). Nostalgia: Content, Triggers, Function: Journal of personality and social psychology. 91(5), 7.