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We see and understand things not as they are Elias, Nurul Ain Atiqah

but as we are. Discuss this claim in relation to 002348-013


at least two ways of knowing.

It is normal that as human, we have our own vision and understanding on certain things.

We sometimes don’t take things as they are as we have our own opinion on particular

things. The way people perceive things is different from each other. The claim we see

and understand things not as they are but as we are clearly shown that different people

have their own view on each aspect of their life. Things here do not solely refer to

objects. Everything that revolves around us can be regarded as ‘things’ such as situation,

people and conflict that always occur. ‘We’ refers to the person that encounters ‘things’

in their life. There are external factors that influence people to have different views and

judgments on each thing. These factors make them to not agree things as they are but as

we are. A person understands what they see in their own ways based on beliefs, culture

and experiences. Reason, emotion, perception and language strengthen the claim that we

see and understand things as we are because these ways of knowing give a big influence

on us to perceive things in the world.

Reason helps us to distinguish between good and bad arguments. It makes us to deny the

absolute truth of certain things. We no longer see things as they are because reason makes

us think rationally based on our own virtue. Each person has different virtues, which is a

characteristic possess by them that causes them to have different reason on the matter of

accepting things as they are. These virtues lead us to reasoning out reasons why we see

and understand things as we are. The reason may not tally with the truth of that thing, but

that makes us to have our own way to see and understand things in this world. The reason

that we made might be unethical, but that is our way to deal with certain things. Reason
We see and understand things not as they are Elias, Nurul Ain Atiqah
but as we are. Discuss this claim in relation to 002348-013
at least two ways of knowing.

makes us to see and understand the doing of bad thing differently with its truth. Our

virtues are strengthened by the reason that we make when we see and understand things

as we are. It is understood that the act of mercy killing which is killing someone just to

get someone off his or her pain as an unethical thing to do. It is similar as killing

somebody who is innocent. But, people that see and understand that act as we are, have

their own reason based on virtues that agree with the act of mercy killing. They see that

mercy killing is one of the ways to help the patients that had been in pain for a very long

time.

People that their life is surrounded by negative emotion such as anger, sadness or fear

cannot think and behave rationally and see situations in their own perspectives1.

Emotions make us to see and understand things as we are. Emotions control our mind to

judge things that revolve around us in our own way. We always see and understand the

same things differently at other time because our emotions that constantly change.

Sometimes, we do something that is irrational to other people. But, we believe it is the

best way to handle with the situations. Certain people perceive things interrelated with

their past experience and cause them to possess the negative emotion is different with

other people that live their life happily. This kind of person see and understand those

things in their own way and neglecting what other people might think of what they are

doing. Whatever they do is based on the negative emotions that always haunted them in

each particular thing. Thus, they believe and stick to their own subjective viewpoint and

do not realize that the objective viewpoints of other people see and understand
1
www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Negative_emotions_coping_tips
We see and understand things not as they are Elias, Nurul Ain Atiqah
but as we are. Discuss this claim in relation to 002348-013
at least two ways of knowing.

certain things not as we are but as the thing is. A man that had always been punished for

each mistakes that he did, does the same thing to his children when he becomes a father.

Because of the punishments that he always got when he was small, he becomes a

successful person and can stand on his own. For him, that is the right way to educate his

children. He does not realize that he is actually abusing his children because the anger

inside him that makes him to see and understand the acts of abusing a child as not a

wrong thing to do.

We use our five senses to perceive things through perception. What we see and

understand is limited by our sense of perception. The senses always make us to deny the

claim that seeing is believing. Even though our senses of perception see things as they are

but, we do not treat it that way. We always deny the truth when we see something that is

not understandable as they are. We see what we believe but not believe what we see.

Thus, ‘believing is seeing’ is the appropriate claim to show that we always perceive

things as we are. We try to relate things that we never encountered before with our past

experiences2. Inherited biases from previous knowledge and experiences make us to

expect things as we are not as they are. Prejudices and earlier assumptions also lead us to

see and understand thing differently from other people. Subjective belief arises when we

use our perception to judge things. This is because; perception on certain thing is

different for each person. Certain people see or hear different thing from the others. For

2
http://forums.philosophyforums.com
We see and understand things not as they are Elias, Nurul Ain Atiqah
but as we are. Discuss this claim in relation to 002348-013
at least two ways of knowing.

example, when a group of students carrying an experiment, they had set in their mind that

they will get the same exact results that they had learned theoretically. It is known that

when glucose is heated with Benedict’s reagent, the resulting solution will be brick red in

color with precipitate. Apparently, the students got an orange color with precipitate

instead of what they are supposed to get. But, there are certain students that see and

understand it as we are because their sense of perception which is the sight in this case,

had been influence by the knowledge that they had attained. Some of the students still

assume that it is a brick red color with precipitate. Thus, they still see and understand the

results as what they had learnt even though it isn’t.

Language can be deceiving. People can deny the truth of things using language.

Language limits the potential of us to see and understand things as they are. We cannot

describe the real situations of things using language. Only the person that sees those

particular things in front of them can understand that things as they are. People have

difficulty to use language to portray something that they had encountered in their life.

They might leave something really important when using language to describe things that

they come across them. Things that they leave out might be very important and this will

totally change the way it is supposed to be. People that never come across that thing in

their life will misinterpret it and do not see and understand it as they are. Biased element

also comes in when people use language to describe things. People will manipulate the

language so that we will not see and understand certain sensitive things as they are.
We see and understand things not as they are Elias, Nurul Ain Atiqah
but as we are. Discuss this claim in relation to 002348-013
at least two ways of knowing.

Politicians always manipulate the truth so that it is to their advantage and other people

will not see the things as they are. The caption of a picture does not describe completely

it as they are. It depends on the photographer whether to tell the truth or not. They might

add something that is not true at all or discard something that is sensitive to certain

people. Only the photographer knows and understands the picture as they are. People

who look at the photograph see and understand it as we are based on the caption by the

photographer. Thus, this limits the truth of that picture.

As a conclusion, what we see and understand depends on who we are. We see and

understand things based on what we want it to be. Thus, we do not easily accept things as

they are. Language, emotion, perception and reason give a big influence on how we

perceive the things that revolve around us. We believe in ourselves more in

understanding of certain aspects because it is natures of human that always have their

own opinion about things that they see and understand as we are but not as they are.
We see and understand things not as they are Elias, Nurul Ain Atiqah
but as we are. Discuss this claim in relation to 002348-013
at least two ways of knowing.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/ Negative_emotions_coping_tips

2. http://forums.philosophyforums.com

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