Assignment #2 - Red Tinted Glasses

The “red-tinted glasses” to me is a mask that is put on for all of us, and cannot be removed even if we tried to. It means that when the ‘glasses’ are on, our views have changed. When Sophie puts on the glasses, she views the world as ‘crimson’ or ‘red’, otherwise known as her senses. Same as Sophie, if I was to put the glasses on, I would simply view where I am slightly red, but I would know that I am in the same place as I was before the glasses were put on. When the glasses were put on, we would become influenced by the thinking of how empiricists would.

This acquisition agrees with both empiricists and rationalists. For the reasons that even when the ‘glasses’ were put on, we do not assume the world is red, even though our views, sensations, are changed. Like what Sophie says that she knows the world isn’t red.

The empiricists, such as Hume, Locke, Berkeley, believed that ‘all knowledge of the world proceeded from the senses’. As they say that, they themselves have in a way ‘limits’ their own mind to thinking that. Like what Aristotle said, ‘there is nothing in the mind except what was first in the senses’. Because of this we can think that we do not have ‘innate’ senses, but we form the other senses around our ‘first’ sense. Where as rationalists, such as Descartes and Spinoza, believed that the ‘basis for all human knowledge lay in the mind’. Explaining that what we know is already situated inside us, but as we experience through life, we gain control of this knowledge. Both perspectives are seen as correct as it depends on which pair of ‘glasses’ we put on.
These perspectives apply to my life as when moments when I want to do things which will satisfy my senses, reason kicks in and changes my view and morality of what I am doing. An example would be when I see adults, or older relatives playing Mah Jong or cards, I would perceive it as a way that people have fun and enjoy themselves, but other people may see it as gambling and should not be allowed. This relates back to the fact that we perceive the situation differently, and that we have different ‘glasses’ on.

In conclusion, I believe that it is because of the way each and every one of us perceives the world, and the influences that compensate for each factor or obstacle that we overcome. Each of us put on a different set of ‘glasses’ and therefore have different views and perspectives.