- Sophie Rand
- New York, NY
- United States
Student Engineering, The Cooper Union For The Advancement of Science and Art
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Can we ever know how another person "senses" the world?
In my Bioelectricity class this week, we learned about the cells
in our body that help us sense our environment: chemosensors in our
tongue that help us sense taste, for example, the photoreceptors in
our eye that sense light, and the hair cells in our ears that sense
the mechanical vibrations of sound, to name a few.
As a result, I recently revisited my answer to the age-old question of
“how do I know that the blue I see is the same blue you see?” that was
so startling and exciting to most 3rd graders playing baby Kierkegaard
a little bit differently. An answer could be that we just have to
trust that perception is guided by biology and that humans are
biologically identical to within 80% of our biological systems.
This answer, of course, raises new questions: even if you and I may
perceive the same blue, is that blue "real?" Where does sensation
leave off and perception begin, and how may we trust ourselves as we
try to compare them? Can we ever know how another person "senses" the
world? Would love to hear your thoughts!
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George Kong 30+
In a manner of speaking, no - where I stand affects the nature of the sound that travels to me. But setting aside complex emergent variables like that one for now, we must simply consider, is the 8 khz tone you hear of the same frequency as the one I hear? What about the 9khz tone? the 10?
Those tones are simply a function of the frequency of soundwaves vibrating on your eardrum. Frequency a function of vibrations per second - which could be moderated, affected and modified from the perspective of the soundwaves hitting your ear drum... but also in terms of how fast the rest of your brain operates relative do those frequencies. I imagine a brain that operates at the frequency of Gigahertz would percieve the sound differently from us (200 hz with our neural switching) as a function of that speed.
On the other hand, those sounds preserve a certain ratio and relationship between each other. Two notes the first higher than the other shares a certain characteristic that having the first note lower than the other would not have. It is the job of our perceptual system to preserve these sort of informational characteristics - in order for our perception to be useful to us. As a result, it's fair to say that, it's not possible for perception to be completely different from one person to the next - a certain characteristic needs to be preserved between all the variables; discordant contrasting colours in a smooth gradient for example would be found to be incongruent with the general perceptual experience of the world (i.e. you can't see my white as dark grey, because then writing legibility would differ dramatically from me and you - unless of course you have some sort of genetic affliction like colour blindness) .
Josh Mayourian 50+
Comparing how individuals perceive sounds definitely is a good way to relate to the question at hand. You also make a good point saying "writing legibility would differ dramatically from me and you."
Another example that strengthens your point is the difference in people's physical attributes. Everyone obviously looks different, even though everyone's basic structure can be argued as similar. I believe visual perception is similar to this idea, as everyone has a very similar base. As seen in http://www.ted.com/talks/sheila_nirenberg_a_prosthetic_eye_to_treat_blindness.html , people have a similar way to process information to output. However, the coding can differ slightly, leading to small differences in what people see.
An interesting thing to consider is the difference in perception of twins. Just as identical twins look very similar physically, are their visual perceptions more similar than two random individuals?
raluca conache