The Art of Perception

“Thus every act of perception, even something as simple as viewing a drawing of a cube, involves an act of judgment by the brain.”

This statement supports the fact that most of the knowledge we gain is from perception, meaning that most of our knowledge is perceptive and not objective. I have discussed this notion earlier in my previous blog, and this statement only provides further support for my argument. Although there are subjects such as science and math, which contain relatively objective truths, the way an individual judges this information is different, making even objective truths somewhat perceptive. For example, the Necker cube is the perfect example. This cube has to do with math (geometry), although we are given objective truths about the angles etc, when looking at the cube we all see something different. Hence, each brain is judging every piece of information in different manners, meaning that the stored information humans keep in their brains is extensively varied amongst different people.

This statement also implies the immense processes a brain goes through. Humans know very little about the brain, but we do know that it is a very complex organ. If in the simple act of looking at a cube, our brain is working to make a perceptive judgment, imagine what our brain goes through when watching a movie, or reading a novel. The very concept of art and creativity is born through the ideals of perceptive judgment. If all humans perceived the world in the same manner, there would be no imagination, and there would be no creativity. For example, if you gave a group of people a description of a person, and asked them all to draw what they perceived from the description, they would all end up with extremely varied drawing. From this, comes art and literature, which are demonstrations of the different perspectives on our world. Such forms of art would not be possible without these varied acts of judgments by individual brains throughout the world.