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.
To establish his point, or rather that of Kant, Alberto performs an experiment where he tells Sophie to put on a pair “red-tinted glasses”, and then explain to him what she sees. The obvious response is that she sees exactly what she saw before she put on the glasses; the only difference being that everything was red. Alberto explains that these “red-tinted glasses” limit our way of perceiving reality; what we see is a part of the world around us, but how we see it is affected by anything filtering our vision. Evidently, we “cannot say the world is red”, even though we “conceive it as being so”; that we see things in “pink” or “crimson” does not mean that it is in fact pink or crimson.
The “glasses” we wear is a metaphor to describe the way as to how we limit ourselves to perceive reality. From as early as our first day on the earth, our way of thinking is moulded by our education and surroundings: this is partially what divides people of different ethnic backgrounds, sexes, and financial status. The different upbringing of different people is why we all perceive different situations in a different manner. The “glasses” we wear contributes to our individuality.
I personally agree with Kant regarding what he thought about the difference between “the thing in itself” and “the thing for me”. For instance, when dogs bark, we conceive it to be nonsensical sound waves coming out of a dog. For all we know, dogs might be able to communicate with each other via barking. Our perception of reality blocks our mind from being able to comprehend what a dog is trying to say.
Hiral Shah
3 comments:
In my point of view, not only upbringing but external factors such as parents, teachers, people around us and the society all affect the way we percieve things and how we see it through the glasses we wear.
The perception we make does definitely contribute to our individuality because each and everyone of us have different views on how they see the world. Do you think that stereotyping affects our ways of perception?
Finally a blog I can completely relate to! I completely agree with you on the fact that our limits senses block our mind from being able to discover other things that this big world has to offer.
Hey!
I completely agree when you say that our external factors affect how we percieve the world;
however would you say these factors are the only reason to why we do so?
Our senses, along with our reasoning, is moulded over time by these external factors; but our reasoning in the end, is what enables us to think in the way we do
Post a Comment