Monday, 21 October 2013

Is seeing believing?

Is seeing believing? This question is a tough one to answer, however it depends on the individual. Seeing is a way of humans to interpret their surroundings making it one of the most important senses. Though sight is one of the most important sense, whatever we see is not always true, however in some circumstances, people refer to sight as a way of believing, when one says, "That's a lie, show me!" This statement explains how an individual does not believe what another individual has said, and asks to see it so he can guarantee it is in fact true. On the other hand, our eyes deceive us as well. If you have ever seen magic in real life, or an optical illusion, this is a way of our eyes trying to make out what has happened, and the result is an illusion. Many magicians depend on the audiences sight to deceive them, in order to make the magic trick work, however, behind every magic trick there is a secret, but at the time, our eyes see this trick, try to make sense of it and we see it as a trick, where as it is our eyes deceiving us. Recently, i came to know about the McGurk effect, in which, a man, produces the sound "Buh". Our eyes see his mouth movement and tell us that this man is infact saying "Buh". Then, the man changed his facial expression while saying the word, our eyes interpreted the mans face and it seemed like the man was saying "Vuh", but he was still saying "Buh". This occurred because our eyes saw the change in facial expression and thought it was a different word. This shows us that sight can be a way of believing, however, it may not be the best way.

1 comment:

  1. What are the implications of your reasoning in terms of knowledge acquisition?

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