Perception is almost everything in life. As human beings, we perceive things. These things we perceive give us knowledge about them or other things in life.
While it is true that we perceive things, it is not true that all we perceived are real, accurate or even a real.
Human senses, it has been argued, do fail us. Sometimes we perceive something and are sure we did but later discovered that we didn't really perceive anything and our senses just played a fast one on us.
A driver who drives in the rain would be sure he is seeing an uphill ahead or a tree ahead but on getting to the spot where he thought the tree was, he would find nothing and discover that trees are by the road sides.
Our senses of smell, sound and touch all do deceive us. There are times we thought and were sure of what we perceived or heard only to be told it is not.
Similarly, if my eyes are closed and i was asked to touch a matter, i might be sure within me that it is a table but in reality, it is not but shaped in a table-like manner.
These are some of the pranks our senses played on us which made the idea of perception and reality a good debate in philosophy.
To make matter worst, different people could have different opinions or ideas on same thing. 6 & 9 are popular perception 'scam' that depend on the way we look at things.
In another instance, two people looking at colour 'BLUE' might have different opinions on what colour is in front of them.
We know today that there are different 'BLUES' out there. This is itself a confusion. But it is more confusing when different people perceive same colour but say it is sky blue or turquoise blue.
You wonder if they are seeing different things but in reality, their sight is playing the trick on them.
For these people, they are sure of what they are seeing. According to their perception, they are sure that is the colour but the real colour is neither the two but just one of them.
This illusion occur in almost everything because perception can never be trusted.
We get confused about textures, smells, sounds, and things we see. All these point to the fact that we should not trust our perception. That they will only deceive us.
Perhaps, you are thinking, this doesn't happen all the time! I agree too but can we trust such channel of acquiring knowledge if it's capable of deceit? A channel that is deceptive and could lead us into wrong direction.
While this is my view, it appears science rely so much on perception to draw conclusion.
Well, science goes through rigorous researches to eliminate any error before reaching a conclusion. So they may be exempted.
For me, i think we need to add intuition and reason to this perception. That way, we will know how to differentiate illusion from real thing because our rational thinking will point to us what is logical as against what is not.
For me, i can't trust nor rely on senses to draw conclusion on any fact. They deceive and could lead to error.