It would certainly look different; but I don't think it would be different. Many animals have better senses than we do, and many have worse. But I suggest that we're all dealing with the same reality.
Maybe so, PH. But I wonder what the world looks like to, say, an ant, or a crow...just curious.
Shifting gears from physical perception to perceptions we form wholly in our minds: We may all be dealing with the same reality, but it sure is amazing to me that we have so many different interpretations of it -- i.e., "worldviews." Sometimes it seems that worldviews can be so far apart that it's difficult to find a common language in which to speak of "reality" at all.
Case in point, from an outstanding article by Paul Johnson, in National Review (Oct. 13) on the newist "ism," Pessimism:
"Pessimism...is a critique of society, also a habit of mind, an instinctive reflex, a paranoid psychosis, easy to acquire and to express, highly infectious, which can be made to apply to everything the established order does and produces.
"Karl Popper, in his analysis of pseudo-scientific theories like Marxism and Freudianism, pointed out that their attraction lay in their apparent universality: They could be made to apply to almost any human event, collective or individual, providing explanations sufficiently coherent to satisfy educated people disinclined to inquire too deeply into difficult phenomena, and who merely want a quasi-religious creed in which to believe. Pessimism fits beautifully into this category. It applies to everything, simple or complex. It has coherency, consistency, and self-righteousness, and affords huge intellectual and emotional satisfaction to its believers."
(I posted this elsewhere yesterday, but really wanted it on this thread.)
Examples of this "ism" as they are currently expressed in our society: "George Bush is an incompetent, stupid, lying loser who can't do anything right; he is screwing up foreign policy, and making our friends and allies hate us. He only cares about the rich, and pushing America's weight around." "Global warming is gonna kill us pretty soon." "All senior officers of private corporations are lying, greedy crooks who cheat their stockholders." "Iraq is a quagmire, a second Viet Nam." "Conservatives want to destroy civil rights, set women's rights back to the Stone Age, and abuse minorities." "Morality is nothing but oppression designed to maintain the power of the status quo." Etc., etc.
In other words, the most negative and worst-case spin that can be attached to any person, circumstance, or development is the best one.
And you can read it all at the (incredibly influential -- why???) New York Times, the Oracle of Pessimism.
How does society find a "common language" when language has become merely rhetoric?
This sounds exactly like the problem that Plato encountered in his beloved Athens, in the persons of the Sophists -- master rhetoricians bent on justifying (for pay) such claims as "justice is the interest of the strong."
I guess I'm rambling. Must ramble into my forthcoming diatribe on the Republic. I'll be back!
PatrickHenry replied: It would certainly look different; but I don't think it would be different. Many animals have better senses than we do, and many have worse. But I suggest that we're all dealing with the same reality
This is a very important point PatrickHenry has made, and it actually contradicts what betty boop seems to be saying. (Sorry bb!)
Perception is not, "objectifying," at least in the sense that it is what determines "objectivity." It is reality that is objective, regardless of how it is perceived. It is objective because it is what it is independent of anyone's perception or knowledge of it. (I am speaking strictly in terms of human consciousness.)
I also have the impression that bb's view of perception is the Kantian, or what is sometimes called the "computer model".
I have that impression, betty, from this sentence, "What we 'see' seems to be what mostly constructs reality for us." I suspect you think of percepts as something created in the mind/brain with data delivered to it by the nervous system, the way a computer creates images from digital data delivered to it via sensors or a digital camera.
Now this view is not totally incorrect. Certainly our perceptual consciousness is associated with the brain, and certainly the reactions of the nervous system to external and internal stimuli end up affecting reactions in the brain. The part of the description that is most likely to be incorrect the supposition the nervous system is merely transmitting data, and the what the brain is doing is merely processing that data. The actual process is probably infinitely more complex and much more like an analog system of interaction than a one-way digital transmission system. It is also likely that perception is not isolated to specific points in the brain, but an aspect of the whole neural system. (This is one reason simply stimulating nerve endings does not produce the same percepts those same nerves normally stimulated do, and why cochlear implants, for example, cannot reproduce naturally heard sound.)
In any case, what perception does not do is "make-up" or "construct" percepts. Perception, however it works, is our direct awareness of material existence. Perception is not cognitive (i.e. it provides no knowledge). It is only our means of being conscious of existence (including our own). Knowledge is about that which we are conscious of. (Not making this distinction has gotten most philosophers, like Russel, for example, in lots of trouble.)
Here is something for you to chew on, and a challenge:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PERCEPTUAL (e.g. optical) ILLUSION!
If you do not already know this, please challange it.
I'll give you a hint why this is true. Perception does not know anything, therefore; cannot make any mistakes.
This business of human consciousness is terribly important. The views of Kant have so corrupted philosophy with his repudiation of consciousness, no field of philosophy today infected by that corruption (which is most of it) is sound.
Hank