Response to Assignment #2 - Hey Tou Chiu

In Chapter 25 – “Kant”, Alberto presents Sophie with a pair of red tinted glasses to explain to her about Kant’s philosophy. Not surprisingly, everything she sees around her becomes red, pink and crimson. He further explains that the ‘glasses’ we wear limit the way we perceive the world and reality. Everything we see is part of the world, but our ‘glasses’ changes the way how we as individuals see it. This experiment demonstrates Kant’s agreement with both the empiricists and rationalists. Kant agreed that our knowledge do come from our sensations and that within ourselves; there are ‘decisive factors’ that determine how we make out everything around us. Like in the book, Sophie would not say that the world is red just because she can see the world around her is red.

When I think about the rationalists - (i.e Descartes and Spinoza) who thought that ‘reason is a primary source of knowledge’; and the empiricists – (i.e Hume, Locke, Berkeley) who alleged that knowledge that we acquire about the world only comes from what our senses tell us, it came upon me that in actual fact, these philosophers themselves wore a pair of their own ‘glasses’ as well. For example, Descartes believed that ‘we cannot accept anything as being true unless we can clearly and distinctly perceive it’. Like what Plato said, ‘What we grasp with our reason is more real than what we grasp with our senses’, Descartes did not trust what his senses told him as he thought they may be deceiving him. This ‘stubborn’ view can be related to each of the ‘glasses’ we wear where they put constraints on how we view the world.

Agreeing with Kant, I believe the way we perceive everything around us incorporates the mind and our sensations. Both factors influence the way we see things. This is evident in an encounter with new people. When my friend and I meet a new person (i.e newcomer to the school) for the first time, the newcomer may be speaking exceptionally loud to those around him. My friend and I would interpret his behavior in a very different way. My friend may say that the newcomer is rude and impolite to speak in such a loud voice beside his peers, where on the contrary, I would say that he is not trying to be rude but it is just because he is born with a loud voice. As each of us are different and experience different things, everyone one of us therefore are special and unalike. All this goes back to the fact that every human being wears their own set of ‘glasses’ that control how we see the world.

To conclude, I think we are influenced by those around us and we mix and shape all the factors with our own thoughts to have our unique perception. We all have our own set of ‘glasses’ (not only one) that give ‘the’ view of our world. Perhaps if we are able to ‘take off’ these glasses, we will be able to see the ‘true and real’ world that we have been living in.