Who Am I. Really.

Identity.

Who you are.

What defines you.

A quest for some. A stupid question for others. And always a tool for those who are aware of its power. Identity takes many forms – pride, honour, patriotism – and in every form it has brought people together and pushed them apart since time immemorial. I would argue that it is really identity and the feeling of inclusion and exclusion that it creates that gives strongholds like religion their power. If this argument were to hold water, this one word would probably be responsible for the largest share of bloodshed caused by a single motivating factor. Quite a thought.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant divided qualities into two primary classes – qualities things inherently possess and qualities we ascribe to things. The inherent qualities comprise the things in themselves, or “das ding an sich”. We then superpose certain qualities on objects (and people by extension); these superposed qualities are subjective in nature according to Kant. It can then be postulated that the perceived differences in the identity of things are due to this second layer of subjective ascriptions.

According to Kantian theories, there is this fundamental identity things possess. Of course the question of how we can distinguish these traits from any subjective additions, if at all, still remains.

Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy is characterized by his idea of a paradigm. A paradigm is a set of assumptions within which we view the world and construct all of our knowledge (knowledge as opposed to Knowledge). Revolutions in epistemology (in any field essentially) occur due to a changing of paradigms. Therefore paradigms aren’t fixed. However, they are not easily modified either. A paradigmatic upheaval has serious implications as all knowledge constructed within the previous paradigm has to be re-assessed, and discarded if it does not comply with the new set of assumptions. It is an idea that applies well when applied to figures like Albert Einstein who could not accept the quantum revolution despite having instigated new paradigmatic eras themselves.

So Kuhn’s paradigms make it impossible for there to be an unbiased anything. Assumptions are bias. The absence of assumptions is also the absence of any kind of knowledge. For even the simplest forms of deductive knowledge, assumptions are necessary. If this is now superposed with the two-layer Kantian identity idea, the first layer is something we can never get to. It would require an unbiased view, which Kuhn says we cannot have.

The wider implication of this is that while there is a dichotomy between ‘actual’ and perceived as regards identity, actual has no real practical meaning. Who you are or a thing is actually is a pointless question because you cannot know. It’s like asking what a quantum object is like in the absence of the observer- it could be nothing, everything, something entirely different – you just will never know. Practically all identity there is, is perceived.

It might seem logically consistent to conclude that you are what you think you are. However, it isn’t entirely accurate the way I see it. That conclusion would presuppose a certain freedom to formulate an independent opinion of anything. Shakespeare pointed out centuries ago (via Julius Caesar) that we see ourselves through other people’s eyes. Our perceptions are a product of society and by extension so are we, to a very large extent. If Robinson Crusoe claimed after years of solitary living that he was who he thought he was, it wouldn’t still be believable because again the freedom to form an independent perception was absent. Survival was his motivation as well as his compulsion.

There is an apparent pointlessness in trying to see things in black and white when wearing rose coloured glasses. And there is that same pointlessness in trying to search for what something really is or who you really are. The way I see it, while you don’t have the freedom to define yourself in any which way you desire, you still have a very large say. The challenge is to not choose to do or not do things because of something or someone, but to do them regardless of what something or someone wants you to do. Because it is really in the absence of external influences that you can find/define your identity.

Perception

KI was very central in redefining who I am. As I was thinking back on that in light of today's eerily accurate horoscope, I remembered my essays :)

Rushing them in just before the deadline, waking up suddenly with an idea on how to go about a certain essay, researching to get a broad perspective on the topic... I miss all that... 

Perception was my first ever full-blown philosophy essay. Its special to me because of that and because I got the highest for the essay... :D

PERCEPTION AS A TOOL FOR ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE

For the rationalists, like René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, the main source and final test of knowledge was deductive reasoning based on self-evident principles, or axioms. For the empiricists, beginning with the English philosophers Francis Bacon and John Locke, the main source and final test of knowledge was sense perception. In exploring perception as a tool for acquiring knowledge and the extent to which it is accurate we are actually in a way attempting to determine the validity and accuracy of empirical knowledge.

To understand whether perception can contribute to knowledge construction we first need to define perception and understand the elements involved in perception. One of the definitions that have been provided for perception is as follows:  “Perception is the process by which organisms interpret and organize information received by the sense organs”. Through this we can interpret that the accuracy and reliability of conclusions drawn via perception depends on two factors- the accuracy of the sense data and the interpretation of this data by our mind.

The word that casts doubt on the conclusions that we arrive at via perception is ‘illusion’. Illusions are common in normal perception and are natural consequences of the way our sensory systems work. An illusion can be thought of as something that causes us to deviate from reality. Illusions can be classified into two main types- those with a physical cause and cognitive illusions due to misapplication of knowledge. Although the causes differ considerably these illusions still can produce the same distortions and this makes them difficult to classify.

The Muller-Lyer illusion, the Ponzo illusion, the Zollner illusion, the Ames room are just a few of the many examples that show how our senses can be deceived. The stick that appears bent underwater but is actually just a trick of light  is probably one of the most widely used examples to illustrate and discuss illusions. If our senses can be deceived and our thought process influenced then how can we trust what we perceive?

Thus, illusions can be hard to justify and overcome and that makes trusting any knowledge gained through analysis of sensory data suspect.

Another problem which arises with perception is that perception is a causal process and causation takes time. Which means that at the time when perceptual processing is complete, the properties of perceived objects may be distinct from those possessed by the object when it was first seen by us. In extreme cases the object perceived may not even exist any longer. An example of the extreme case is the scenario when we perceive a star in the sky to exist when actually at that instant in time it may have ceased to exist or become a supernova. This is due to the enormous amount of time it takes light to travel the distance from the star to our eye.

However this aspect has a solution which is “One should reject the assumption that the object of perception has to exist at the moment we become perceptually aware of that object.” What we see is then to some extent the past. 

              

These are the two main issues that challenge the empirical point of view in my opinion. Then what alternatives do we have to further our quest for knowledge. If we apply the principle of charity and completely reject the empiricist viewpoint what tools can we use to acquire knowledge?

Rationalists believe that all knowledge can be gained through reason and logic and that exact knowledge does exist and can be gained. Though there is a lot that we can learn purely through reason and logic, if we reject all empiricist data we will have no foundation to build on. If we cannot establish 'first principles' or certain unquestionable assumptions we cannot build any knowledge. We won't know where to begin and we wouldn’t be able to establish anything at all. This situation would be the same as one created by a skeptic, one where absolutely nothing is certain and one where the only thing you can 'Know' is that you don't 'Know' anything at all.

                

Thus, if we reject perception as a tool totally, we may never be able to gain any kind of knowledge through pure logical analysis. Immanuel Kant tried to solve this problem by fusing elements of empiricism with those of rationalsim. He distinguished three kinds of knowledge: analytical a priori, which is exact and certain but uninformative, because it makes clear only what is contained in definitions; synthetic a posteriori, which conveys information about the world learned from experience, but is subject to the errors of the senses; and synthetic a priori, which is discovered by pure intuition and is both exact and certain, for it expresses the necessary conditions that the mind imposes on all objects of experience. Mathematics and philosophy, according to Kant, provide this last.

                

Perception may not be a very accurate tool to gain knowledge but it is an important tool. Without perception we would never be able to gain any sort of knowledge of the external world. It is perception which provides the bridge between the physical world and our mental realm. In fact, scientific inquiry is heavily dependent on perception and sense data. This is because the principles of science always seek to explain observed phenomena.

                

We do realise the importance of perception in knowledge construction. That is why we seek to develop sensory systems in artificial intelligence. The very fact that we believe that sensory inputs and their analysis are vital for the development of artificial intelligence indiactaes that we do understand and appreciate the importance and contribution of perception to knowledge construction.

              

Conclusion: Perception lies at the root of all our empirical knowledge. We may have acquired much of what we know about the world through testimony, but originally such knowledge relies on the world having been perceived by others or ourselves using our five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Perception, then, is of great epistemological importance.