Believing Is Seeing
Nature and Consciousness
Believing Is Seeing
A tree as you see it is a mental representation of a physical object. Your brain interprets the incoming percept as a familiar object: tree. Because it’s familiar, the mind has no problem placing it in the big familiar mental category labeled “tree.” It further classifies it more specifically as cottonwood or oak tree. But the interpretative step in the brain is necessary to know what you’re looking at. In this sense, all that you see exists in your mind. The mental representation is more real to you than the physical object. In fact, you only “see” the mental representation.
The mind contains a great many object representations, against which incoming perceptions are compared and categorized in the process of making sense of what we behold. If the object perceived is completely unfamiliar, the mind more laboriously assesses it, attribute by attribute, and files the resulting composite in a novel category with a new name that constitutes learning.
Some psychologists argue that categories exist only because we have experienced the objects, as knowledge built up from what we have personally perceived, whereas others, such as Kant and Jung, maintain that some are innate features of a collective unconscious, or archetypes that we all share at a primordial level. Either way, what we see and know of the world exists in the mind and does not come purely from direct sensory experience. The mind actively constructs what we see and know based on input from sensory perception.
Interpretation of incoming sensory perceptions is subject to bias from other mental characteristics, such as knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes. Different people looking at the same object may see it quite differently. I see vines along the riverbank outside my home as beautiful fresh and vibrant growth, whereas my horticulturist friend sees them as an invasive species threatening the natural order. The reality looks very different depending on mental characteristics of the observers.
To doubting Thomases, “seeing is believing;” only when they’ve seen something can they believe it. To the contrary, I hold that believing is seeing. We see what we expect to see, what we believe is there. It’s virtually the same thing to say that we see what we want to see. Members of a political party see their nominee drastically differently from how members of the opposing party see her. The objective reality lies somewhere in between.
Or is there actually an objective reality? Undeniably, there is a physical object giving rise to the perception of a tree or candidate, but the mind interprets the perception to make sense of it, and the interpretation is what we see. So, what we unavoidably see is a more-or-less biased vision of what’s out there. Scientific observation attempts to objectify nature to the greatest extent possible, but potential for biased interpretation can hardly be eliminated. Even scientists’ vision can be biased by what they want and expect to see. Rival scientists may see the opposite in their observations and interpretations.
Scientific and materialist perspectives view nature as objective, something to be studied and acted upon from the detached and privileged human perspective. They do not regard it as being somehow an actor in its own right. This view sets homo sapiens apart from and above the rest of nature, rather than as being interwoven and interdependent with it. Therein lies the original sin culminating in climate change and other cultural and psychological maladies.
In contrast, the idealist or transcendental perspective views nature as subjective and acting upon us, just as we do on it, even perhaps with some intentionality. We would be naïve to think that our limited bands of perception tell us all there is to know about the lives of plants and animals and the forces that impel them. German forester Peter Wohlleben, in The Secret Life of Trees describes how trees communicate among themselves and share nutrients and critical information through vast underground networks of fungal mycelium. Plants of course generate oxygen, enabling animal life. Surely also, as many religions hold, plants and the earth emit subtle energy (chi in Taoist belief) that enlivens body, mind, and spirit among those with awareness enough to imbibe and use it. These views conceive of “subtle structures” of the human body, the chakras that exchange energy with plants and the earth, with rejuvenating physical, mental, and spiritual effects. This exchange is what “being one with nature” means to me, something quite literal. Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist spiritual masters affirm this as self-evident truth.
Our ordinary perceptual bounds are quite limited. Yet we assume that what we perceive as being “out there” is all there is. But my dog shows me where the interesting smells are when I have no clue there even is a smell. There clearly is more out there than what we consciously perceive.
Our perceptual bounds are further constrained by expectations. If we don’t believe it likely that something is out there, we’re not likely even to notice it. For example, I regarded the Sandia Mountain range as a prominent aspect of the Albuquerque environment, but not of Santa Fe’s. Consequently, it took longer than I care to admit to notice that I had a nice view of it looming on the horizon from a park just outside of downtown Santa Fe. I just wasn’t expecting those particular mountains to be there. Our attention is trained on what we learn, and are taught, to expect.
It’s not only what we expect to see but also what others expect us to see that limits and distorts our perceptual field. In the 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch conducted an experiment in which subjects were asked to answer questions about the relative lengths of lines on paper. The great majority of the subjects conformed their responses to the wrong answers given by the experimenter’s confederates rather than report what they themselves had actually seen. Perception bends quickly to the influence of others whom we consider important to us. Partisan perceptions of politicians who figure in conspiracy theories are an obvious example.
On the other hand, perception can be expanded by paying careful attention to nature and things around us. Attention and perception are normally trained on the “medium range” of our perceptual field. We often overlook smaller features of the larger environment, like bees buzzing around beautiful purple flowers, even though this is happening adjacent to where our footsteps fall. A wonderful micro world awaits inspection as we stride heedlessly over it. Similarly, how many celestial wonders have passed right over our heads as we sit preoccupied beneath them? They may be speaking epiphanies from outside of our awareness.
Many accounts of experiences in altered states, such as those from Aldous Huxley, Michael Pollan, and numerous others, describe plants in the surrounding environment as incredibly luxuriant, significant, and consciously welcoming to the journeying pilgrim. The same commentators swear to the reality of the vision, that it is not merely a crazy hallucination. Like any perception, these exist in the mind, as interpretations of what our eyes have seen. Could these, occurring to us when the doors of perception are blown open, be the true reality, that is just too great to see from within our normal perceptual limits? Perhaps these limits protect us from a reality so overwhelming as to threaten our sanity. But the world around us is more fabulous and astonishing than the material world can imagine. So, keep your senses as open as you’re able to. Nature is subjective and may reveal itself more deeply and truly than you ever imagined when you do.
