Rationalists, such as “Descartes and Spinoza”, believed that all human knowledge “lay in the mind” and depended on reason while the empiricists, like “Locke, Berkeley and Hume”, believed that our knowledge of the world around us is conceived through our senses. When Sophie puts the “red tinted glasses” on, her mind knows that everything thing she had just seen is not “pink” or “crimson” but is simply perceived that way through her senses. It is because her mind knows that her world has not just “become red” that I believe more in the ideas of the rationalists. If I were to put on a pair of “red-tinted” spectacles, I would know that I was still in the same room but simply with a colour filter between me and my surroundings.
However, Alberto goes on to say that we are “not able to take off the ‘glasses’ of reason”. Therefore, we must react to events in exactly the same way as others. This automatically implied to me that senses are the only reaction that can be altered to change the way we see something. However, after further insight, I realised that each individual has their own unique “reason”. I understand reason to be the thoughts, beliefs and ideas that we have been brought up to believe. For example, the Hitler Youth group in 1930’s Germany were brought up to believe that they were a superior race. Therefore, this supposed information coloured their view of all other races. They would react differently to those who had an international based upbringing.
Having been presented with this metaphor, I now imagine that everyone has both a pair of ‘reason glasses’ and ‘senses glasses’. However, it is how thick each of the lenses are that affect how you live your life. In my case, I depend very much on what I know and have been brought up to believe. Therefore I think I have a thick “reason” lens but a thin “sense” lens. However, my mother is a culprit of seeing things ‘through rose-tinted glasses’. This saying means that you are a person who filters out the bad qualities of an event or memory to preserve the good aspects of the experience. This quality implies that she does not listen as much to her reason. Being reliant on the rose-tinted glasses allows our better judgement to be tested and we become fully dependant on our senses, abandoning our reason.
In conclusion, I believe that wearing “red-tinted glasses” changes our perception but our reaction is mostly dependent on our individual reason. Unlike Alberto, I do not believe that the glasses “limit the way” we perceive reality. They simply provide a new angle at which to view a situation.
However, Alberto goes on to say that we are “not able to take off the ‘glasses’ of reason”. Therefore, we must react to events in exactly the same way as others. This automatically implied to me that senses are the only reaction that can be altered to change the way we see something. However, after further insight, I realised that each individual has their own unique “reason”. I understand reason to be the thoughts, beliefs and ideas that we have been brought up to believe. For example, the Hitler Youth group in 1930’s Germany were brought up to believe that they were a superior race. Therefore, this supposed information coloured their view of all other races. They would react differently to those who had an international based upbringing.
Having been presented with this metaphor, I now imagine that everyone has both a pair of ‘reason glasses’ and ‘senses glasses’. However, it is how thick each of the lenses are that affect how you live your life. In my case, I depend very much on what I know and have been brought up to believe. Therefore I think I have a thick “reason” lens but a thin “sense” lens. However, my mother is a culprit of seeing things ‘through rose-tinted glasses’. This saying means that you are a person who filters out the bad qualities of an event or memory to preserve the good aspects of the experience. This quality implies that she does not listen as much to her reason. Being reliant on the rose-tinted glasses allows our better judgement to be tested and we become fully dependant on our senses, abandoning our reason.
In conclusion, I believe that wearing “red-tinted glasses” changes our perception but our reaction is mostly dependent on our individual reason. Unlike Alberto, I do not believe that the glasses “limit the way” we perceive reality. They simply provide a new angle at which to view a situation.
2 comments:
Hi Anna
You appear to put a lot of faith in propositional knowledge; what you call 'reason'. But does propositional knowledge really mean 'reason'? Is your mother's 'rose-tinting' any more or less filtered than your 'reason'? If we take the glasses as a metaphor for our perceptions being tainted by what we believe to be true, it follows that only by removing the comfortable and familiar lenses can we really 'see' clearly for the first time. For example, if you beleive in God or do not believe in God, you are wearing a set of lenses that 'colour' your perceptions. It follows then, that in order to see clearly you need to be prepared to see the world without the 'faith' lenses or the 'atheism' lenses. In other words step BEYOND your propositional knowledge into the total unknown. Now, that takes real 'faith'!!!
M Turver
i like how you proposed the idea that the glasses have different thickness and that it is the thickness which which determines how you live. i never thought of it in this sense and it was interesting reading your analysis of the glasses.
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