Seeing through the colored glass

In Chapter 25, Sophie learns about Kant’s philosophy by putting the ‘red-tinted glasses’ on. So what IS the meaning of the extended metaphor and HOW do these questions of perspective apply to my own life? In my perspective (through my own pair of glasses), I see the extended metaphor differently to how Gaarder has put it. I see it as a pair of red-blue tinted 3D glasses, exactly like the one shown in the prompt. Assuming that the empiricists are blue and the rationalists are red, we need both sides to balance out or else the pair of 3D glasses would not be complete. For example, if you go in one of the 3-D cinemas, it is necessary to put on a pair of those 3-D glasses, if not, you would not be able to see the full picture (as shown in the picture where blue rays pass through the red lens and vice versa). My interpretation is that we are already born with one pair of the red-blue tinted 3D glasses.

In literal sense, glasses serve to correct distortions of physical eyesight, badly made or wrongly prescribed glasses will cause their own distortions thus it can affect an individual’s perception of the world. In this case, however, we are already born with a pair of glasses and we continue to put on more pairs as we grow up. The pair that we are born with already contains both the red and the blue (empiricist and rationalist view) except at different shades. These imbalances of the shades mean that we either have too much reasoning or rely too much on our senses. This would in turn create bias views and lead to issues. The red glasses are an example of how our perceptions are influenced by conditions governing the mind’s processing of experience. This links back to the previous assignment where as we grow up, we experience more, therefore we ‘seem’ to wonder less and here, we ‘seem’ to view the world differently throughout our lives with more pairs of glasses.

Many argue that the glasses “limit the way you perceive the reality” and by “taking them off”, you will be able to see the reality clearly. But according to what I think, we are born with a pair of glasses (regardless of the lens, frame, shade, curvature, etc because it varies from person to person) within us and it cannot be taken off. A common idiom ‘rose tinted glass’ applies very much to myself, this means that all the negative factors/ view of the world is filtered and taken out, with only the pleasant parts left. The color of the shades is mainly based on our experience and how we want to perceive the world. In order to view the reality, more and more shaded glasses must be put on so that we can increase the color range until we see white light – a color that does not affect our perception of the world at all.

How we see the world is partly determined by the glasses we are wearing, but also by mental preconceptions. We cannot say that the world is red even though temporarily, everything is red. Kant thought that both rationalists “Descartes and Spinoza” and empiricists “Locke, Berkeley and Hume” were “both partly wrong and right”. Rationalists believed that the basis for all human knowledge could be found in mind whilst empiricist believed all knowledge of the world came from our senses. This relates back to my psychology knowledge where I have learnt the difference between ‘sensation’ - the physical stimulation of sensory receptors and ‘perception’ - interpreting, organizing and elaborating sensory information. Kant believed that certain factors in our mind influence our experience of the world. We perceive everything as occurring in time and space and these are innate characteristics of the human mind. Kant divides the world into things as they are in themselves and as we perceive them. We cannot know things as they are in themselves, but we can know how to perceive them.

To conclude, I believe that the “red tinted glasses” does change our perception slightly but I disagree to the fact that it “limits the way” we perceive reality. We will eventually wear the pair of red glasses at one point in our life. It is essential that we understand Kant’s theory where he took in the empiricists view, the rationalists view and other external factors. No matter what or how many glasses we are wearing, we must be aware of what really is happening around us and do not bias our views of reality as it may lead to severe world consequences such as stereotypes and racism.