Revisit the "red-tinted glasses" extended metaphor in Chapter 25 ('Kant'). What's the meaning of it? (Hint: Consider what Sophie discovers about rationalists and empiricists along the way.) How do these questions of perspective apply to your own life? Use examples from the novel and your life to illustrate your understanding of the "red-tinted glasses" metaphor/experiment.
In the book, the red tinted glasses is a metaphor to emphasize that our source of knowledge is in a way, innate (existing in one from birth; inborn; native) and that it also depends greatly on the in what culture, community and family we are raised in. For example, in middle-eastern cultures (especially in Muslim countries), polygamy is a right thing. However, other countries in the world (those with western cultures) will see it as a bad thing because we are taught by the community around us that it is wrong. Rationalism and Empiricism are philosophical doctrines which explains how we comprehend knowledge and our perspectives to it.
Rationalists argues that knowledge come from intuition (direct perception of the truth; without any experience) and Empiricists argues that knowledge come from experience. However, Kant argued that our understanding in the world around us is not only through intuitions, but experience (different concepts) and intuitions. This supports the belief that on what I said earlier about the comprehension of knowledge.
Immanuel Kant quoted, "Intuitions without concepts are blind, concepts without intuitions are empty".
This basically means that you cannot grasp the truth without using both experience and intuition.
Each person have a different perspective on different things, as I said earlier, different perspectives comes from different cultures , communites and families. This is because of the different ways we comprehend knowledge and where it sources from, it leads to mistakes, hatred, stereotypes, racism and sexism etc. I believe so because I use to believe that yakult is bad for your health because it contains bacteria; but then it turns out it is a bacteria good for your health. I made this mistakes is because my childhood self believed that bacterias only does harm and nothing else, to the body (sickness etc). After this incident it made me realise that everything must be viewed from different concepts.
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5 comments:
Your examples for the metaphor is interesting, really culture-focused. By the way, why do we comprehend things differently? Also, your yakult example..how do you get different perspective out of that? Isn't it either good or bad for your health?
Yes sometimes when we weigh out as many different perspectives, we can draw out knowledge that is truthful.
Overall this means that we can draw out as many theories as we can to support one approach until someone discovers a new theory disproves the knowledge. This was part of Karl Popper’s theory of falsification.
Your example of Yakult shows that over time, new knowledge discovered can change an approach to a subject.
Your examples for this question is very interesting and well thought through, well done :)
Your example of Yakult shows that over a certain period of time, because of knowledge our perceptions might change as new discoveries are made.
I like your example of your beliefs of yakult because in one point in life I belived in the exact same thing as you, until someone explained to me that the bacteria is actually not harmful and that I learned, as well, we need to see everything in different concepts in order to know the complete truth and not be affected by what we think we know
I agree with most of your points. Your Yakult example is a great one as it shows how people's thinking can be flawed when greater and more indept knowledge is missing. We can apply this to not only racial and sexual discrimination but also many of the blemishes in humanity.
So what are you views upon this matter? Do you think our 'glasses' are more affected by the knowledge fed to us or the society we grew up in .. or, to a certain extent, are they both the same?
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