The important word in your question is “perceive.”
What we perceive, see, hear, taste, and feel as humans is different from other animals. Bees have compound eyes and can see ultraviolet light ranges that are invisible to the human eye. Birds and dogs can hear high pitched sounds that our ears are incapable of perceiving. Vultures don’t have a sense of taste so they can indulge in decaying flesh without recoiling in disgust.
We can all agree as humans that a traffic light is red and therefore we must stop. If we all learned from childhood that green meant “stop” then it would be common sense for us to stop at a green light. The blind person, of course, does not see the light at all and must rely on other cues that make up their “objective reality.” Yet the blind person will feel pain if he or she walks into a lamp post.
We can conclude then matter is an intelligently arranged system of atoms, with which we interact. How we perceive it is different, according to our sensory apparatus. The shape, color, and any other attribute depends on what or who is doing the perceiving. But it is still there. You cannot ignore the light post when you smash your head into it. Maybe you didn’t perceive that it was there, but it was there!
What we perceive, see, hear, taste, and feel as humans is different from other animals. Bees have compound eyes and can see ultraviolet light ranges that are invisible to the human eye. Birds and dogs can hear high pitched sounds that our ears are incapable of perceiving. Vultures don’t have a sense of taste so they can indulge in decaying flesh without recoiling in disgust.
We can all agree as humans that a traffic light is red and therefore we must stop. If we all learned from childhood that green meant “stop” then it would be common sense for us to stop at a green light. The blind person, of course, does not see the light at all and must rely on other cues that make up their “objective reality.” Yet the blind person will feel pain if he or she walks into a lamp post.
We can conclude then matter is an intelligently arranged system of atoms, with which we interact. How we perceive it is different, according to our sensory apparatus. The shape, color, and any other attribute depends on what or who is doing the perceiving. But it is still there. You cannot ignore the light post when you smash your head into it. Maybe you didn’t perceive that it was there, but it was there!
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