Is Seeing Truly Believing?

"Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them," Obi-Wan said to Luke onboard the Millennium Falcon. The lesson conveyed is to not rely on your visual sense, but to feel and "reach out" intuitively to your instincts. I'm sure you're aware of the idea that nobody sees the same red. It's all a matter of perception. But how do we really know what we see is reality and not merely a perception of a collective experience?

An example of this is in the animal kingdom. Each and every animal experiences different parts of the color spectrum at higher or lower intensities along with differing waves. Spiders can see in ultraviolet, dogs can see in only two colors meanwhile giant adult clams are sensitive to three colors, but they cannot see defined images; only strings of color.

You can imagine that the world to an adult giant clam is alien to our own. This is a matter of perception. Our eyes are merely taking quick successive screenshots of the world at rapid speed and our brain is turning these signals into images. For example, you and I both witness an event at different angles. Will our versions of said event line up exactly or will we have differing perceptions about this event? This is why eye witness testimonies are not fully reliable in court. Perception along with memory can skew an event in our minds. Try to imagine all the eyes of the world are gone. From humans to the smallest known creatures with optics, what would the world look like? It's impossible. Just as impossible as thinking of a new color. But what about our other senses? Surely they can confirm objectivities in reality? Not necessarily.

Touch is one of the more important senses. Being social creatures, touch is sometimes the most intimate feelings we can have. But is it real? In the world of physics you are never actually touching anything. When you sit in a chair, you are technically floating on an atomic level. But we see the result of sitting in chairs right? Our weight presses down leaving evidence of pressure, but what have we learned about vision? The reason for this is because electrons never actually come into contact. They repel one another. Is our brain simply sending a sensation to our body since we are truly not touching anything? Yes.

Our other three main senses tend to be mostly subjective in nature. You like the taste of ketchup while I don't. Some foods are claimed to have acquired tastes by individuals and cultural delicacies may seem taboo to others. This also applies to our sense of smell. The scent of gasoline seems to be favorable to many while some find it disgusting. It's a matter of preference. It's a matter of perception.

The interesting thing about scent is that some of it is genetic (well a lot our senses are genetic). Our olfactory sensors are not same just like our vision. Someone can smell a floral scent while another person cannot detect any scent.

And that leaves us with our sense of hearing. Which we all know is dubious at times. Try one of the hearing tests and see what frequency your ears cannot pick up. For example, children with Autism may experience hypersensitivity to sounds or paranoid schizophrenics may hear voices. Are these real? Whose to say? Our own perceptive senses don't fool us like some believe, but they are merely interpreting the world around us by sending signals to our brains.

So is our reality real? Or are we all collectively perceiving our own environment? Maybe there is no reality and there is only perception of a reality. What's reality to me? Or more importantly, what's reality to you?