And how it impacts our knowledge
One of the questions that I have struggled with for a long time is, how do we see things? Whenever I get together with my doctor friends, they provide an answer from the toolbox of their profession which is how the light enters the lens, forms an image on the retina and sends electrical signal to the brain through the optical nerve. But how does the brain form a perception of what it sees? That is where the conversation comes to a deadlock.
A philosophical answer will be that when we see an apple then the faculty of language i.e., naming things and our ability to store images work together to form perception of an idea that is an apple. But where do we store information in the body? Is it the brain? We have so far not been able to locate exactly where the memory is stored and how the brain processes that information as an organ. Scientists have found that long term memory is apparently stored throughout the brain because a group of neurons fire up when a similar object is seen. What does trigger all these neurons to fire up at the sight of an object when they are in a normal state before it? These are the questions that need to be answered before we can fully understand how we see things.
Perception is unique to each person because it emerges from their own consciousness. It is because of this reason it is difficult to develop an education curriculum that is suitable for all children. The first thing a child learns is to associate hand gestures with sounds and images. Remember the time when you pointed a finger to an object, let’s say a chair, and repeated 100 times the name of that object to help a child memorise it. But regardless of how many times you repeat the word, can a child perceive an object if it is not already available in his repertoire of memory? Chair is not just an object, it has associations with the environment around it. These associations cannot be formed without prior knowledge the child has about the object chair and the process of learning actually involves exploring these relationships between objects.
This is the dilemma of an autistic child that he cannot form these associations as naturally as compared to a child that does not have that condition. As the scientists suggest that particular neurons of brain light up when a person sees an object. Why would that happen in a child who has not seen that object unless there is already pre-existing information about the object in the consciousness? In other words the process of seeing enables to move it from unconscious to conscious state. Here I am proposing that consciousness is a priori while perception is built from it using the experience and history of the person. From this point of view all humans are born equal but embark on different paths of self-actualisation. The birth of a child is also the birth of a consciousness that embarks on its own unique journey of perceptions.
So let’s imagine a situation in which a child does not have the facility of a loving parent to guide him. In that environment when a child looks at a chair, what does he understands from it? Will the child grow up and discover that this object is used to sit on it or will he use it for some other purpose? Also will this child on his own associate a name to an object around him to develop the faculty of language without help from an outside agent? The perception of this child will be entirely different from a child that grew up with the help of parents and teachers. In a way we can say that this difference in perception based on environmental differences is the foundation stone of culture in human society. That does not mean that the intellect of the two children will be superior or inferior to each other but that they will have a different way of perceiving the realty around them.
Perception is not purely a rational event but has emotional component to it as well. This makes it challenging for communication of ideas using language through sensory methods of sound or written word. It is difficult to resolve this hurdle unless the absolute reality of the objects are conveyed to those involved in a communication.
Now imagine an animal, let’s say a dog that sees a chair. What happens in the animal’s consciousness? The mechanics are the same as humans i.e., rays of light forming an image on the retina and optical nerve sending signals to the brain. But that is where probably the similarity stops. We don’t know how dog names the object and uses its cognitive faculties to understand its association with other objects in the environment. Our knowledge of animal consciousness is very limited right now. But the notion that animals do not have intelligence is mistaken and slowly it is emerging that they do have it but we do not understand it yet.
Now let’s take another scenario in which an object is seen by both a human and an animal. Do they have the same perception of realty of the object? An absolute realty of an object should be same for all consciousness living in nature. The point is that our reliance on human consciousness alone is limiting our knowledge of the world around us. We need to find ways to understand animal consciousness and incorporate that in our perception of reality. That will help us have a better understanding of reality and help achieve our own self-actualisation.
