tok response essay Astrid

Perception is the understanding of things through our 5 senses. These are the "windows" between us ourselves and the outside world (reality). I agree with the claim "Our senses are not impartial windows between otuside world and ourselves- they are biased"because it is proven that our interpretations are influenced by factors such as intensity, contrast, interest, our mood and expectations.\
In everyday life, our minds interpret the sensations thta flood into our senses subcnociously. Although out senses are important source about the world, they dont reflect reality. Our 5 senses/ wnidows act like a filter, which structure or twists the reality; so therefore our senses are sometimes unrealible.
Richard van de lagemaat points out that "Perception consist of 2 elements: sensation adn interpretation, but we are often not conciously aware of the latter element." By looking at visual illusions, we are aware that interpretation plays an important role in perception. E.g. we have a natural tendency to look for meanings in what we see and goup our perceptual experences together into shapes and patetrns. Perception is also selective in a way how our mind treats "less engaging" things as the background against which what we are interested in stands our (we usually notice intense and contrasting stimulus). What we see also depends on subjective factors like oru interest, mood, feelings and emotions. All these factors can determine what show up through our perception, as the pattern of our interest changes, so does what we perceive. As a result, we are all seeing only what we want to see and therefore uor sense are partial and we can't simply take the evidence of our snese as the absolute reality. Not only that our senses cometimes mislead us, they are also selective and can be altered by our beliefs and discriminations.
To get a better understanding of the relationship between perception and realiy, we need to look at 3 different theories. (1) Common-sense realism; which believes "what you see is what is there." That means the way we perceive the world reflects the way the world is. (2) Scientific realism; which believes in "atoms in the empty space." Scientists think that reality is a colroless, soundless and odorless realm of atoms dashing around in a void. (3) Phenomenalism; which believes "to be is to be perceived." That is, al knowledge must ultimately based on experience. For example, Gailleo once said "The tickle is not in the feather." What jhe means is that tyhe tickle is simply a subjective experience that results from the niteraction between your skin receptors and the feather. Some people are not even afraid of tickling at all.
In conclusion, I believe our 5 senses are partial windows between reality and ourselves. The culture we come frmo, our past experiences, the environemnt aruohd us, the things we do everyday all affect the way we see the world. For our senses to be unbiased, we would have to strip away the interpretation that our sense-organs inflict on it.