August 20th, 2007 Fred McVittie
The lure of common sense is incredibly strong and we have an inbuilt tendency to view the world in a way which we might think is ‘realistic’. This means that what we see of the world is how it really is and our sense give us an unproblematic access to that world. Even when we become aware that there are many aspects of the world which are beyond the reach of the sense, from ultraviolet light to the ultrasound squeaking of bats, and acknowledge that our awareness of these phenomena is through some act of interpretation (so the sound of bats becomes the movement of a needle in an acoustic meter, ultraviolet light becomes a waveform on the screen of an oscilloscope) we still regard the impressions of our sense as transparent and direct. We feel that when we look at a tree, or hold a rock in our hands, we are not carrying out any kind of interpretive act but that our activities are unmediated, untheorised, and uninterpreted. We might claim a kind of naturalistic support for this impression by referring to the experience as essentially the same as the unalloyed experience of children and babies. That in the golden age before education and conceptualisation there was a unique way of being in the world which was entirely of this realistic type. As over-educated and over-intellectual adults, this view continues, these natural perceptual abilities are shrouded in a conceptual fog that prevents us from seeing clearly what is really there. As grown-ups, it is felt, we compulsively dismantle the world-as-it-is in favour of some interpretation that might or might not serve some ends.
But what are the grounds for this assertion? We might say ‘there is a tree’ and point to the tree at the bottom of our garden, go on to suggest that all the proof of realist/naturalist perception is contained in that statement. However, we know that there is more to it than that. If we close our eyes the statement becomes, at best, open to error. Making no impact on the senses, we have no evidence for its existence at all. The tree and our seeing of it are inseparable, and removing our sight also removes the guarantee of any visible tree existing. The visibility of the tree simply vanishes. Furthermore, we could go on removing one by one those aspects of the tree as it appears to the sense. Just as we can remove its visible qualities by closing our eyes we can remove its smell, taste, touch, and any sound it might make as the wind sways its branches simply by banishing the sensory impression of it. So we can only say ‘there is a tree’ if we first acknowledge that are gesturing in the direction of our sensory impressions, even if our hand is pointing toward the bottom of the garden.
Also, we should consider what these sensory impressions are, if they are not the tree itself. We know from the testimony of science that these sensory impressions are the result of complex physical and neurological events which are alchemically transformed into the various sensory mods’ some events become sounds, some others, superficially similar, become sights, or smells, or tastes. Since the basic biochemical processes are identical, these transformations are also interpretations, with some signals being translated into the language of vision, others into the lingo of sound. The experience of synaesthesia demonstrates this interpretive act which precedes the most basic act of perception in that, with those who experience this condition, these is a constant slippage between one interpretive strategy and another, in which shapes are perceived as sound, colours as tastes, etc. And while it is tempting to conclude that these unusual experiences are simply misfirings, deviation from the normal perception which offer realist views of the world, this would miss the fact that all perception is also construal, not only that of synaesthetes. It would betray a perceptual chauvanism equivalent to claiming that the language one spoke was real because, while to a French person a chair is une chaise, to an English person a chair really is a chair. Seeing is never transparent but is always an act of interpretation.
We know and cannot deny that the story of vision which begins with the eye and ends with the bald claim ‘there is a tree’ needs fleshing out. This narrative involves a cast of thousands including photons, cells of the lens, aqueous humor, sclera, choroid, retina, optic nerves, neurons, axons, dendrites, neurotransmitting chemincal, complex neuronal structures allowing for the individual processing of straight lines, diagonals, fields of colour, colours themselves, textures, edges, memories, language, the formation of whole gestalts from the accumulation of disparate elements, distinction of figures from background, our ability to name. It is only through the careful co-ordination of these millions of players that the play called ‘there is a tree’ is rehearsed at all, and the extent to which this choreography of ideation can go wrong is an indication of how ultimately interpretive the simple act of seeing is. Any break of misfiring in the great chain of seeing brings the perception of the tree crashing around our eyes. It is also significant how culturally and species-specific such a statement is, which is obvious if you consider the point of view of an any, a bear, or a bacterium. Every word in the sentence ‘there is a tree’ demands a huge amount of knowledge about being human to even begin to make sense
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