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Spinning Wheel Illusion
Source: www.ankeshkothari.com
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Can we trust our senses? This is not just a philosopher's question, although it is one they have long debated. "Idealism," philosophically speaking, is that point of view that contends that, "reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial." (Quoted from the Wikipedia article, "
Idealism"). "Realism," of which there are many particular kinds, is the philosophical school that believes that our senses either directly or indirectly gave us access to the real world. An idealist is not sure that what we see, hear, or touch is really real. A realist is sure. So far as our daily lives go, we are all realists. We go about our business assuming that our senses are reliable, a point of view called "common sense realism." In more contemporary speak, our brains are hardwired to process information, which the brain does selectively because it cannot possibly handle all of the data bits of the world around us. Vast amounts of visual data bombard our eyes, but our eyes are constructed to filter out most of it, leaving only what is important for us to see. We are evidently especially good at picking up data bits that are in motion because, back when we were developing our evolutionary equipment for survival, things that moved might be dangerous or might be edible. Still, we go through life not seeing most of what is around us and necessarily so.
So, do we live in a world of our own imagining or in a real world? Ultimately, we can't prove our answer. Most of us would surely answer that we live "in the real world." Of course, the illustration accompanying this post is not moving, but if we look at the circles for a moment they
appear to move even though we
know they aren't moving. The proof of the pudding, so to speak, is that we survive on a daily basis. Out senses are sufficiently reliable to provide us with the wherewithal to get through the day in a routine, "normal" fashion.
There is, however, a theological point to be made here, namely that in fact our daily survival depends on the trust we put in our senses. There is no way we can prove "all of this" is real. We live in faith, and living in faith is the fundamental condition of our lives. Our senses, that is, create a world for us assembled out of bits of information, which we
believe (trust) approximates the real world. Faith is our natural state.
