This ‘world’ consists only of what our brain receives through our limited sensory signals. Our perception of the world is limited by our human biology. Humans can only perceive what their senses and nervous systems allow them to perceive. Not only our sensory perception limits us to know how the real world is but each human being is built differently and perceives the world in different ways. So therefore it can be true to say that the perception of the external world can be a personal interpretation when compared among different human individuals.
Thus consequently we as human beings interpret the world as we understand it through our own personal sensory perception but not as it really is.
In the world, all that we perceive is only our brain’s interpretation of the signals received from our 5 senses. It is an image formed inside our brain.
If one sees a flower in a vase in the external world, in reality it is not in the external world but in our brain. As humans we are not in direct contact with the external world and what separate’s us from this ‘world’ is our five senses. The five senses enable the brain to create or interpret an image of the real world.
As humans we also perceive the world empirically, which means that we obtain knowledge through our senses. This knowledge is based on experience (observation and experiment), especially the experience of the senses. The knowledge we acquire through experience is the basis of understanding, which is the making of that experience meaningful to us. Empiricism is what separates us, from the physical objective reality. It is a way for the human being to differentiate himself individualistically. It is a perception that enables someone’s ability to notice and understand things that are not obvious to other people. Each human individual will acquire different knowledge depending on their different experiences. The more experience a person has the more knowledge this person will have about life and the world. Other aspects affect our perception, such as our social and cultural background and our dependence on language.
For example, if an artist and a football player who has no interest in art, go to an art exhibition and examine a painting by the Abstract Expressionist artist Rothko; the football player will look at the canvas and see blocks of paint and would probably consider the whole piece as trivial. An artist on the other hand, with a better background on Rothko and his style, will see depth in the piece, he will fully understand the genuine value of the art and how emotionally stirring it is. This shows how differences in knowledge make it difficult or facile to understand something.
Sometimes you have people who practise the same profession but have different approaches to reach a goal: If you had a cubist painter such as Picasso and a renaissance artist like Titian in the same room and they were to paint the portrait of a woman. Each painter would have different approaches of representing this woman. The renaissance artist would most likely aim for perfect likeness, but the cubist would probably brake up the basic shapes and the lines of the portrait’s face to re-assemble an abstract form. These two artists have had two different backgrounds and this example shows that reality does not have to be objective; it can be approached differently in a more abstract way. It shows that the world can be perceived far beyond objective reality. It proves that empiricism is a boundless way of looking at the external world.
The world can be seen in two ways, through our sensory perception, and through the knowledge gained from experience of the senses (empiricism). When the world is seen from the sensory perception, it is quite limited in terms of knowing what the external world is because our brain is not in direct contact with the external world and the brain can only receive knowledge of the external world through the senses. Since every human being is built differently and perceives the world in different ways, the external world is viewed and altered from person to person. This reality is reasonably objective, and through empiricism, it is a matter of experience, and the more experience you get, the more knowledge you acquire. This is a better way of understanding the world
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud
