Through your eyes

How do we view the world? I think most people don't really question the world or how our perspectives came to be. Most people's lives are so fast paced that they rarely have time to slow down and wonder. I would say that most people are realists. They believe their senses and believe that all the information that they receive is accurate. If they ever slowed down to think about it, they would quickly come to the realization that that is not the case. On the complete other end of the scale, there are the skeptics that question everything that the human race 'knows.' They believe that nothing is actually real, they doubt everything and look at nothing with complete certainty. The third way to look at things is called relativism. Relativists basically believe that we can know things, but what we know is restricted by what our senses tell us.

When we first started talking about these different ways of viewing our knowledge of the world, i automatically thought that i would be a relativist. I know that we cant believe everything, and i am aware of the problems of human perception; but on the other hand, i also think that our perception and our views are not 100% flawed. I believe that we can rely on our senses to give us somewhat reliable information, that we can trust, and base our lives upon. However, the more i began thinking about this, the more i began to realize that we (& me personally) cant exactly be categorized in this way. We are all realists when it comes to some things. I think that very few people would argue that the clothes that we are wearing are not really there, or are some sort of visual illusion, and that we are all naked in reality. At the same time, we are skeptical of some things, especially due to the fact that there is no clear distinction between skepticism and doubt. It is human nature to question or doubt new foreign ideas. We have previously explored this idea through examples such as Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Therefore, we all doubt some things. What these things are could be different from person to person, but i believe we all oppose or doubt at least one idea. This could range form the existence of ghosts to the existence of God. As for relativism, i think that it is the most applicable view that would help us make sense of the world around us; but at the same time, i think that we sometimes go to those extremes, especially if it was something that is more based on belief rather than knowledge.