"In order to find how things really are, one mustunderstand the filters through which one perceives the world."

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Theory of Knowledge - Mr. Greulich

“In order to find how things really are, one must understand the filters through which one perceives the world.”

In order to fully understand this statement, it is necessary to comprehend the key terms and what is actually meant by them. It is clear that the statement consists of a problem and a solution. The problem is finding out how things really are, and the only solution is to understand the filters through which one perceives the world. Starting off, it is important to clarify the key terms. It is interesting to research on the term “really” in this context. “Real” is a term, which can is different for everybody. This is exactly what the statement says: Every person perceives the world differently because of their individual filters, and that is why reality is different for everyone. Concluding, it is practically impossible to understand how things really are, because they will always be different to others.

One of the most vital filters to be considered would be the way we receive information through our senses, and through which we receive it. Since we have several senses that sense different things (light, sound, smell, surface), we receive different information from each to create a general image of reality. All our senses have specific functions, and all of these are limited. An eye, for example, can sense light which has reflected from objects. It cannot see radio waves, which may be there a swell. Also it is not possible for the eyes to obtain information from areas which are not being “looked at”. The eyes have a specific field of view which cannot be altered. For most people the visual sense is the most important one because of various things, such as: orientation, emotions conveyed by sight, etc. It is clear that the same limitation rules apply for all our other sense as well. For the sense of sound, we can only receive sounds, which are in our spectrum. For taste, some things can not be tasted because our taste sensor cannot read them. For the sense of touch we can only “feel” things, which are big enough for our sensory receptors to read them. For example, microscopic bacteria could never be identified as microscopic bacteria by a human being. The sense of smell is directly connected to our sense of taste, so the same rules apply. We can not smell radio waves for example.

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Simply using our senses, there is no way to perceive, and therefore no way to “know” everything that is around us. Concluding from this it is virtually impossible for a human to perceive the entire world. Not only can we not know everything, but we can also know things differently from others. Concerned with just senses, people may sense things differently from others due to either a loss of an entire sense, which would make the human prone to extraordinary development and use of the other senses, or a sense of one human may be naturally or trained to be ...

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