perception and idealism
Mr. Vieth is going to use this paper for a reading next year; i'm pretty proud of it.
Sensory Subjectivity
Perception cripples us. Everything we sense - every insight we gather into our outside world is taken through this incredibly subjective filter called perception. The outside world does not exist. All of a man’s incoming sensory information is a figment of his imagination. Minds or souls exist, and they all play a part in each other’s personal world. Because perception is muddied, the only pure form of communication is through emotion. Men create excuses in their surroundings to fight idealism because they are afraid of the responsibility that comes with being the inventor of the world around them.
Men gather data about the world around them through interaction with it. When someone touches a dog, for example, neurons fire and memory registers two things: the soft feeling of shimmering retriever coat and the word “dog.” In these two images lie the two sides of perception: individual and group perception. The first, individual perception, is what each person takes in. Each person has a unique filter between their realization of the sensory stimulation and the entity itself. This uniqueness stems from unique mind/soul structure. Every mind is unique, so every perception must be unique. Therefore, individual perception is different for each person. This differs from the second side of perception. When someone’s hand is near the “dog,” that person’s mind creates an expectation of what will happen when they touch the “dog.” This expectation is built from a lifetime of exposure to group perception. Group perception is how the community has deemed something should be perceived. In our example, the community blindly accepts that the “dog” should feel soft. When a man touches a “dog,” he says, “This dog is soft!” It makes no difference as to whether or not the feeling he feels brushing against him is the same feeling as “soft” really is - he is inescapably trapped in the group perception of “soft.” Therefore, because of his unique perception, what he means when he says “soft” is entirely different than what his counterpart means.
This discrepancy with touch extends to all senses. Now, all incoming information is suspect. Because sensory information is in the mind, there is no way to be sure of what, exactly, is causing sensory excitement.
There is no difference between pain or pleasure and heat or cold. All are sensory. Therefore, all exist only in the mind. The senses are completely subjective, so something like ‘heat’ or ‘pain’ couldn’t exist outside of a mind. Heat and pain and cold and pleasure are illusions we create because humanity desires a tangible, controllable world.
Since senses exist only inside the mind, there need be nothing outside the mind to create them - materials and matter are just as illusory as senses are.
“But wait!” A skeptic would say, “What about minute details? Surely the world is far too detailed to be a figment of my imagination!”
Not so. Matter is transitory. The skeptic’s search for details will turn them up only because he wishes to find them. His brain is giving him false solace. For example, a beach is made of endless delicately placed pebbles. The skeptic would look at each one and speculate that there is no possible way he could have thought up something so complex. But the idealist would see the beach as something undivided - I do not see each pebble because I accept the whole of the beach.
But this doesn’t mean that we can’t be sure of anything’s authenticity. Emotions are universal. This is because they transcend the perceptive filter. An emotion (unlike ‘soft’ or ‘cold’) can be created through some type of soul-searching. Beauty, ugliness, love and hate are universal not because they are objective but because they are unperceivable. Each person creates these pure passions and applies them outward. These are purer than sounds or motions because of their a priori nature; therefore, they are the means by which souls communicate. When a man speaks, he isn’t really saying anything at all. He’s just trying to use words to push emotion past the wall of perception. When I look at my dog and feel love, a spiritual connection is taking place independent of our perceptive filters. Emotion, therefore, is what links souls to each other.
There are a cadre of scientific arguments to fight these statements. Science can prove, for example, that all human eyes see the same wavelengths because of the way retinas react to light and dark, etc. This does not even begin to breach the impenetrable keep that is sensory subjectivity. Body parts like hands and eyes are one layer outside the perceptive filter and therefore subject to perceptive distortion. Also, since they are outside the realm of conscious thought, they are subject to be changed to satisfy us through our complete control of our personal universes. For example, when I touch my dog, I feel her fur in spite of the fact that it’s only a figment of my imagination. This is because my sensory filter is satisfying my lazy desire not to have complete control over a private world.
In conclusion, each person creates a erroneous world. Senses are an illusion, designed to take away man’s power and responsibility for his world. Nothing you perceive can be real, because every incoming snippet of information has to be viewed behind a sensory filter - a wall of subjectivity that is different for every person and the only thing that transcends this filter is emotion, which is also the only pure method of communication. It is each person’s job to free themselves of worldly illusions through a priori reasoning.