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I think seeing is a ridiculously amazing and efficient process. However, I now realize that we really don’t see with our eyes, but with our brains. To Holly’s post regarding the reason why we don’t have a lot of sensory neurons, I think it’s because we don’t need them. Our brain and nervous system is able to perceive our outside world rather accurately with the limited sensory neurons we do have. All it needs is a simple upside-down, miniature, 2-D captured photo, and the nervous system’s corollary discharge signals, central pattern generators and action potentials can do the job. Also, in response to eshuester’s post regarding reality, I think reality exists despite what we perceive. If we think our eyes are deceiving us, our other senses can verify the existence of things that make up our reality. Also, other people with their senses can verify it.

An example of where our brains do the seeing, but others help us verify reality occurs with anorexia. My sister who suffered from the disease for a long time used to ask me what she looked like when she would look at herself in the mirror. She swore to me at 96 lbs. she could see her belly hanging over her shorts in the mirror. I learned that a lot of anorexic patients will see physically different things in a mirror than what other people see. Although recovered, she’ll ask me if I can tell her what she looks like because she’s still unsure if her brain is still processing her reflection falsely.

Reality goes on without us. Other people and organisms can perceive reality and verify it exists at times when we are incapable of perceiving it or perceive it incorrectly. Emily Dickenson’s poem claiming that the brain contains everything is not completely accurate. One brain cannot contain another brain. Although it can control one’s perception of the world and their behavior, and the world only exists because of the brain, someone else’s brain can contain a world completely different. Therefore reality is comprised of everyone’s joint perceptions of it.