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When we say that our sight limits our ability to perceive the world, I can’t help thinking, stop overreacting!! Like Jessica said, it doesn’t hurt my feelings that reality is a construction of the brain. Our view of reality is “dependent on processes we are largely unaware of”, so what? Who here wants to have complete conscious control over your own reality? Any takers? Think twice. Talk about a full time job, we couldn’t even function in society if we were in charge of perceiving every input in our world. Call me unimaginative, cold, and pragmatic, but it doesn’t scare me or bother me at all that I am dependent on a reality that sometimes involves the “resolution of an inescapable ambiguity in the input we receive”.
Yes, sometimes we can be tricked into a false sense of reality (optical illusions) but that is why it is so great that we have multiple senses. With all of the senses working to interpret input, we can make a more “accurate” picture of reality. I am also intrigued by Evan’s reality as an asymptote example, but who is the lucky devil who gets to define ultimate reality? I have to question the usefulness of defining a “true” reality when, well, there is no truth…
Also, what do you think about the movie, The Matrix? I watched it this weekend, and could not stop thinking about its implications for our class. Perhaps we should follow the white rabbit into our own rebellion against the “machine” and why it is we seek to have so much control over our own lives.