Why your senses are actually a limited filter rather than a perfect mirror
In short: We often trust our senses as objective windows into reality, but Colin Blakemore argues they are actually biological instruments designed for survival, not truth. By evolving to detect only what we need, our brains create a restricted, subjective world, leaving us blind to vast portions of the environment around us.
In his 1982 Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution, neurobiologist Colin Blakemore explored the profound gap between the physical world and our perception of it. While we rely on our senses to navigate, find food, and locate mates, these organs act as filters that both reveal and restrict our outlook. Blakemore posits that our perception is not a direct reflection of reality, but a construct generated by the brain, which interprets signals from our biological instruments of detection.
This perspective challenges the reliability of human experience, a concern long debated by philosophers like Plato, Descartes, and Bishop Berkeley, alongside physicists such as Newton and Helmholtz. Blakemore suggests that the validity of our 'imagined world' depends entirely on the collaboration between our sense organs and neural processing. Because we evolved to sense only what is necessary for our survival, we are effectively deaf and blind to much of the activity occurring in the world. Every species, he argues, inhabits a unique perceptual world shaped by its specific sensory repertoire.
Blakemore, who passed away in 2022, dedicated his career to understanding how the brain interprets visual signals, particularly during early development. His lectures aimed to move beyond 'human chauvinism' by acknowledging that other animals possess marvellous sensory capabilities that we cannot directly experience. By testing our own senses, we can begin to appreciate the incredible performance of our brains while remaining humble about the boundaries of our own perceptual reality. Ultimately, we live in a world of our own creation, defined by the specific, evolutionary limits of our biology.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Making sense - Colin Blakemore's 1982 Christmas Lectures 1/6
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