DO I BELIEVE WH4T I SEE, OR DO I SEE WH4T I BELIEVE?

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Today, we will delve into the heart of a topic that seems more like a play on words, but which carries a challenging psychological and philosophical depth.

Are we merely spectators of the world or the authors of our own narrative? What are the beliefs that shape our interpretation based on? Evidence? Desires? Illusions?

If our perception dictates our beliefs, then our reality reigns supreme. But what if our beliefs filter our perception? Wouldn't we then be prisoners of our own mental constructs?

Sharpen the blade of your critical analysis and let's get started!

 

Our Window to the World

 

We all know that perception is the process by which our five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch) capture stimuli from the environment around us and transmit them to our brain. There, they are interpreted and transformed into our conscious experiences.

However, as direct as these interactions may seem, this is not what actually happens. Our senses, however well developed, are also very limited. Taking human vision as an example, we realise that it only captures a small range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our hearing, on the other hand, is unable to pick up sounds with very high or very low frequencies.

Furthermore, factors such as lighting, distance and context directly and significantly influence our perception. Objects may appear to have one colour when under the influence of a certain light, but appear to have another colour under a different light. Depending on the environment we find ourselves in, a particular sound can be interpreted as comforting or threatening.

But we do not only have physical limitations; cognitive limitations are also present. Our brain interprets, filters and fills in gaps based on our past experiences and expectations. That's right, it is not just a simple passive receiver of information. This ability to interpret, filter and fill in gaps means that each person perceives stimuli, even if they are the same, in completely different ways, as each individual is influenced by their life history, cultures and emotional state.

Therefore, perception is the main tool we use to interact with the environment and people, but it is far from infallible and 100% reliable. Recognising these limitations is always the first step in understanding how our beliefs directly influence what we perceive.

 

The Paradox

 

When we talk about the limitations of our perception, we cannot fail to mention the dilemma:

Is it our perception that defines our reality, or is it our reality that shapes our perception?

Indeed, from the pre-Socratic period to today's neuroscientists, this question still rages in debates about what we call ‘reality.’

Let's look at a simple example. Imagine walking for hours in the Sahara desert, with sand dunes stretching as far as the eye can see. It is extremely hot, you have run out of water, the sun is baking your brains from above, and you start to see mirages. You believe you are seeing an oasis with palm trees and water in abundance. You walk towards the oasis with relief, getting closer and closer, but you are frustrated because it is not there. Would this situation be an error of your vision or an error of your belief?

 

A Starting Point or a Dead End?

 

This question already tormented the thinkers of Ancient Greece. They challenged themselves, asking: ‘What we see is substance or appearance?’ A guy named Parmenides, already dissatisfied with the mutability of the sensory world, defended the idea of an immutable truth. For him, nothing we perceive with our physical bodies reveals what is real. His disciples may have called him a big-nosed hardhead, but without this idea, the debates would never have even begun.

Another Greek citizen, named Heraclitus, unlike his colleague, spoke loudly about the eternal and constant flow: ‘Everything flows, nothing stays the same.’ For him, beliefs and perceptions intertwine and dance in a cycle that has no beginning and no end. Thus, if nothing has a fixed essence, beliefs and perceptions would co-evolve.

A few years later, Plato said that the sensory world was just a poorly made shadow of the extrasensory world, which he called the world of ideas. Let's say that his famous ‘Allegory of the Cave’ is a very philosophical version of the question ‘am I seeing or imagining all this?’ The guy believed that what we perceive through our senses are just distorted versions of the truth. This means that what we see, hear, and feel may be just a shadow theatre.

If we see a puppet dancing in front of a cave wall, we may even believe that there is a dancer, but the dancer is nothing more than a mere projection. Therefore, the act of seeing feeds our beliefs, even false ones. According to him, in order to reach the ‘real,’ we need to transcend our sensory perception.

Aristotle was a disciple of Plato and complained about his master's excessive use of abstractions. Thus, he introduced us to the notion of a correspondent truth, that is, the idea that a belief is only true if it corresponds to an objective reality.

For example, if someone claims that fire burns after touching a hot coal, that belief corresponds to the phenomenon. But even so, Aristotle also admitted that our senses can deceive us and, in this way, he ended up solving nothing of the original dilemma. He just put it in a different light.

 

Inner Certainties and Methodical Doubt

 

Who has never heard the famous phrase ‘Cogito, ergo sum.’? (I think, therefore I am.) And if you didn't think you were special, you don't know what it's like to doubt things... Just like a dog chasing its tail, dear René Descartes doubted everything. It's as if he was born certain that the world could only be a simulation created by an evil genius — yes, he really believed that. Until the moment he realised that he couldn't doubt that he was doubting.

This guy had such a strong belief in his own thinking that all his beliefs became unshakeable rocks. And from that point on, he separated the mind from the body, thus creating Cartesian dualism. Bodily perception was no longer worth anything; only thought could guarantee the truth. With this new paradigm, we began to believe what we think and not what we see — at least some of us.

This guy was the one who ‘cleaned house’; beliefs came to reside in rational judgement and not in the evil and treacherous senses. However, this ‘magic solution’ swept under the rug of existence the explanation of how the mind and body interact - besides never providing an explanation for those humans who exist but do not think.

Thus, without convincing answers, we were left with the feeling that the juggling act performed by the Cartesian model (still in force) only transferred the discomfort, but did not extinguish it or answer anything.

Shortly thereafter, in 1690, John Locke publicly disagreed with the exaggerated Cartesian dualism. In his work ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,’ he stated that the human mind is like a blank slate at birth, and that our experiences shape our beliefs. Therefore, if a baby somehow touches a hot ember and starts crying, it will soon have created the belief that fire burns. He called this original perception, which means that all knowledge derives from the senses or from observations reflected from this data.

For Locke, the act of believing what we see is almost like a tautology - a language vice that consists of repeating an idea using different words - in this case, our senses, even if imperfect, would function as a blank canvas and our beliefs would appear as sensory stimuli occur. Following this idea, someone who has never been burned may believe that fire serves only as a source of light. Experience would reveal what is real, thus correcting beliefs.

To put it another way, Locke promoted the idea that sensory perception is what controls beliefs. All very nice, but this ended up opening the door to another question: if our diverse experiences generate different beliefs, where does Truth fit into this whole story? Locke may have tried to answer that our perception is flawed and requires caution, but this would not invalidate empiricism. Great consolation.

In 1710, Berkeley outmanoeuvred Locke's ideas - and in a very dramatic way. In his work ‘A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,’ Berkeley says ‘Esse est percipi’ (To be is to be perceived) and, furthermore, he stated that there is no such thing as independent matter, everything is an idea in the divine mind. The whole thing ended up becoming something like ‘I see because I believe that God sustains what I see.’

The old scepticism vs. faith debate - boring. The believer above even used acid humour against the sceptic: ‘Your brain only exists because God wants you to see your brain exist.’ Berkeley blurred the line between seeing and believing - and, to top it off, gave even more ammunition to people who love to use God as an argument for everything.

But as if all this drama wasn't enough, a few years later, David Hume decided to take the path of scepticism in an even more disconcerting way. He questioned causality. He said that we never see the necessary connections, only the succession of events. This would mean that if we see the ball rolling after a kick, we believe that it was the kick that propelled the ball.

Confused? Let me explain better. What exists in all this is only our mental habit of associating events, and as a ‘result’ of this, no one can prove anything with certainty; all knowledge is provisional and based on repeated perceptions. This conclusion further exacerbated the whole dilemma: we can no longer fully trust our senses or our reasoning, and now we are stuck in a loop of doubt.

 

The Kopernican Revolution in Philosophy

 

Some time later, Immanuel Kant appeared to add a little more fuel to the fire. He arrived saying that reality itself (which he called ‘number’) is inaccessible and that what we know are only representations formed by our minds (the ‘phenomena’). The unfortunate man did not stop there and claimed that there are innate mental structures, ‘categories,’ that shape all our experiences. Sensory perceptions would enter our brain in a raw form and be filtered by these a priori categories: time, space, and causality.

Translated into plain English, this means that the idea of ‘I believe what I see’ is very relative, because everything we see has already passed through the mental filter. The mind organises the world into pre-existing categories (space, time and causality), which means that we already see the world through the filter of our beliefs long before we know we are looking at something. Beautiful, isn't it?

Unlike Locke, Kant said that the world and the mind do not touch each other directly. The world ‘in itself’ is something unknowable; we only access phenomena modelled by our mind. Beliefs are not mere perceptions, but mental constructs.

To give an example, this would sound like when we look at a river, it appears continuous to us because our mind imposes this idea of continuity, even though the liquid particles are completely discontinuous. If we are convinced that the world is orderly, it is only because our intellect has imposed this order.

The result of this? We do not see anything that is directly real. Our brain is not a passive mirror of reality. No. It is like a hyperactive projector that is always trying to predict what is to come. We only see what we already expect to see. And what do we expect to see? What we already believe! Welcome to the maze.

 

The Post-Kantian Debate

 

After Kant threw shit into the fan, the realm of philosophy entered into divergence. Fichte completely denied the history of the ‘world in itself’; for him, the ego is what creates everything. Shelling had a very spicy affair with mysticism. Schopenhauer, in turn, threw in everyone's face the idea that irrational will shapes our perceptions. For all of them, it is as if beliefs and perceptions dance to the rhythm of an infinite and continuous tango.

Things got so crazy that even Kant got caught up in it. He, who was the guy who hammered home the idea that we perceive a world that has already been filtered, found himself stuck with yet another question: so, if we perceive our beliefs rather than reality, what are these beliefs based on? Okay, poetically inconclusive.

 

Everyone Lives According to Their Own Truth

 

Coined by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, perspectivism has become a right-wing hook for the idea that absolute truth can exist. For Nietzsche, reality is not something fixed, objective and external, but rather something that reveals itself differently according to the individual, because they are conditioned by their culture, biology, experiences and also by their passions and desires.

In his words: ‘There are no facts, only interpretations.’ This may seem like nonsense to some, but at the same time it is something deeply liberating - yet disconcerting. Imagine that we have a kaleidoscope view, now imagine that we observe the world through this view, each rotation completely changes the pattern, but all patterns are real. The perspective of perspectivism is similar to this example: we are approximately 8 billion views, all of which are valid within their own contexts. Take that, Absolutism!

There is no way this concept will not shake the arrogance of those who say ‘I know what is right,’ as it would place us before the relativism of human experiences. However, it is important to understand that perspectivism is not an invitation to develop a nihilistic view; it is not about ‘anything goes, so nothing matters.’ Quite the contrary, it is more like a call to self-responsibility, because if everyone sees the world in their own way, then it is up to each person to explore, confront, and expand their own horizons.

Perspectivism would also be an invitation to empathy and dialogue. After all, if we all have legitimate worldviews, there is no basis for judgement, but every reason to listen and talk. In the current times in which we live amid almost hysterical polarisation, perspectivist ideas would force us to leave the comfort zone created by certainties.

These ideas could show us that by blindly believing in only one version of the facts, we become the mental equivalent of someone who always eats the same dish because they think it is the only one on the menu of a five-star restaurant.

 

The 20th century, modern psychology and cognitive science

 

Let's start with William James, the guy who focused on the usefulness of beliefs rather than their absolute truth. It works something like this: if we believe that a train will help us cross the tracks safely, then that belief is something that ‘works’.

For James, our perceptions adjust to our beliefs that maximise our lifestyle. Using the same example, if we see the train coming, it is because we are expecting the train to come, that is, our belief has literally shaped our selective attention. But if we fail to see the train coming towards us, why do we think there would be a delay? That's right. There is no answer to that. Therefore, ‘I see what I believe’ becomes a pragmatic imperative; our beliefs would shape our experiences in an adaptive way.

Some time later, Gestalt psychology was born. Köhler, Koffka and Wertheimer demonstrated how our mind tends to organise stimuli into meaningful patterns. Example: when we see three dots in a row, we perceive a line, but this line is not seen when we look at each dot individually.

Our prior beliefs about shapes cause us to see patterns, that is, we learn to observe complete pictures and not pieces that have no structure, because our mind is adept at filling in gaps. If we see a face partially, say half covered, our brain will complete the gap.

As a result, the idea of ‘I believe what I see’ becomes hostage to a mental framework that fills in visual puzzles, and sensory neutrality ceases to exist.

As we approach more modern times, we have Michel Foucault and a warning: what we call truth is always linked to power relations. This truth is socially constructed and shaped by dominant discourses. According to him, there is no objective, absolute and immaculate truth; what exists is a dispute over ‘official’ versions of the facts. This has direct implications for how we perceive the world, of course.

Another contemporary philosopher who decided to stir up this hornet's nest was Richard Rorty. He said that truth is what our group accepts as true. Quite simple. Objectivity, in his view, would be just a myth and all knowledge would be only a temporary consensus.

Therefore, the million-dollar question posed at the beginning of this article would have no definitive answer. But it would reveal something very crucial: we live surrounded by constructs. We construct beliefs. We construct perceptions and sometimes even call these constructs ‘reality.’

 

The Reality Filter, Confirmation Bias, and Mirror Neurons

 

Speaking a little more about beliefs, they are the convictions we hold about the world and are formed from our experiences, teachings, culture, and emotions. They are our filters, through which we interpret the information we receive. When we firmly believe in something, we tend to interpret data and information in a way that confirms these beliefs, ignoring and rejecting other information that may contradict them.

This phenomenon has been given the name ‘confirmation bias.’ This bias is a form of cognitive economy, because by confirming our beliefs, we avoid the mental effort of reconsidering them — pure laziness of thinking and fear of being wrong. In the 1960s, psychologist Peter Wason conducted an experiment that illustrated this. He showed several participants the number sequence 2-4-6 and then asked each one to discover the rule behind this sequence.

The vast majority of participants formulated a very specific hypothesis (e.g., ‘increasing even numbers’) and then proceeded to test only the sequences that confirmed this hypothesis, completely ignoring other hypotheses that could refute the one they had chosen. The correct rule was very simple, ‘numbers in ascending order,’ but very few participants identified it, all because of confirmation bias.

But it would be wrong to think that this bias only affects individuals. If only it were so simple. Societies are also affected. We live in times of increasing political polarisation, where people tend to feed on information that reinforces their views, while rejecting sources that challenge them.

It doesn't take a genius to guess that this creates information bubbles where different groups live in parallel realities, each totally convinced that they have the truth. The old game of we're right and they're wrong.

Recognising that confirmation bias exists is essential for the development of more open and critical thinking. Obviously, this involves actively seeking information that challenges our beliefs, but above all, our willingness to reconsider them when new evidence emerges.

Another simple example of this would be: a person who believes that a certain group is dangerous will tend to remember only news that reinforces this existing idea, which means that they will ignore any evidence to the contrary. Needless to say, this attitude becomes a vicious cycle, where belief directly shapes perception, which in turn reinforces the belief itself, regardless of whether it is coherent or not.

Therefore, here, ‘I see what I believe’ would be the general rule. Hans Christian Ørsted was stunned when he witnessed the movement of a compass near an electric wire. This phenomenon would have been quickly ignored if he believed that magnets only interact with iron.

Another experiment, first conducted on monkeys in 1990, led to the discovery of mirror neurons. Italian neuroscientists noticed that the pre-motor cortex of monkeys has a special type of neuron that activates not only when a particular monkey performs an action, but also in the monkey observing the other monkey performing that action. In other words, these neurons mirrored the action of the other monkey in the brain of the observer, as if the observer were performing that action himself.

Later, in 2001, evidence showed that humans also have these neurons and that they are located in the pre-motor cortex (the area responsible for planning and coordinating body movements), the inferior parietal cortex (the area responsible for object and face recognition, colour perception and the ability to differentiate complex shapes) and Broca's area (the region of the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere, usually the left, responsible for speech and language production). 

Mirror neurons act in this way and are fundamental to various cognitive and social functions. Examples of this are imitation: when we learn by observing others; empathy: when we understand the emotions of others; language: related to the origins of verbal communication; and theories of the mind: our ability to imagine what others are thinking or feeling.

Never has the phrase ‘Children don't listen to what their parents say, they copy what their parents do’ made so much sense.

 

The Mind That Deceives

 

As we saw above, philosophy has tired of warning us that our senses can be very deceiving, but all these warnings have fallen on deaf ears. With that, cognitive psychology was born and came in with a bang, bringing with it data, experiments and graphs – lots of graphs. According to cognitive psychology, the human mind is like a meaning-making machine that is full of shortcuts, buttons, biases and, of course, bugs.

An example of this would be optical illusions. Our mind does not ‘see’ or ‘hear’ passively; it interprets, corrects and completes things, and often makes serious mistakes in the process. Psychology has shown us that perceptions are directly influenced by several factors, such as attention, emotion, fatigue and even the unfortunate expectation.

The well-known ‘invisible gorilla’ experiment conducted by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris demonstrates this very well. Some participants are instructed to count the number of passes between players, but many do not even notice the presence of a man dressed as a gorilla who suddenly crosses the scene. This is because our attention is selective. We see what we are prepared to see, or rather, what our beliefs allow us to see.

 

Neuroscience and Neural Plasticity

 

It is now clear that our brain is not just a neutral spectator. It is more like an obsessive screenwriter, constantly rewriting scenes as they unfold, based on what it believes should be happening.

Modern science has shown us that what we call perception is, to a large extent, pure prediction. That's right, our brain predicts what we are going to see even before we actually see it. Some neuroscience research, such as Karl Friston's ‘predictive brain’ theory, has brought some intriguing information to light. This data has shown that our mind works like a crystal ball, i.e., through divination.

Our mind receives sensory data from the world and compares it with its own internal models, and when there is an error in the prediction, the mind adjusts... or simply ignores the error and continues to insist on its own model. This gives rise to phenomena such as optical illusions... it is just our brain preferring internal consistency to admitting that it has made a serious mistake.

A very practical and popular example is the famous ‘blue and black or white and gold dress.’ People only see different colours because each brain makes different assumptions about the lighting in the scene. There is no such thing as seeing it right or wrong. Each person was only seeing what their brain judged to be most likely. 

Other studies, such as those conducted by Portuguese researcher Antonio Damasio, confirm that our emotions directly influence our rational decisions and also our sensory perceptions. This shows how much our beliefs involve the prefrontal and parietal lobes of the brain. These regions are responsible for integrating sensory information and emotions, i.e., the stimuli that our senses receive are given an emotional meaning.

Example:

Some people believe that a four-leaf clover brings good luck. MRI data showed that when these people made eye contact with a clover, they showed reduced activity in the amygdala, a structure linked to the limbic system and fundamental in processing and recognising emotions such as flight or fight, meaning that the person's fear and anxiety decreased.

On the other hand, there was increased activity in areas related to reward (ventral striatum), which means that the person's brain responded as if something good was actually happening.

From this example, we can conclude that:

What we believe or expect changes the way our brain processes a given experience. Therefore, beliefs are not just abstract ideas, they modulate our brain activity and can even reshape our perception of the world.

And it doesn't stop there. As a result of these beliefs, our brain creates synaptic plasticity that further consolidates these beliefs over time. If we repeat certain ideas, the connections will be reinforced. We are beings who learn through repetition. How many times did you have to repeat something until you memorised your multiplication tables, or learned to read and write?

That's right. The same is true for people who observe (read, watch, listen to) alarmist headlines in the news every day. These people generally have perceptions of chaos, panic, fear, anger, insecurity, anxiety... regardless of whether there are statistics showing reductions in violence levels. The consequence: the world will seem increasingly violent and worse to them. All because this belief is repeated and reinforced by receiving more and more daily stimuli produced and broadcast by the media.

It is interesting to note that people who do not follow these alarmist media outlets do not have these reactions. They may be aware of the existence of violence, but they also understand that good news does not make headlines because it is not as profitable as news that spreads panic and fear. This is precisely why political advertising exists. They make us believe in terror, scarcity, misery, crises... all with the aim of creating perceptions of threat that consequently ‘justify’ wars, cuts, tax increases... There is no pointless argument when it comes to the manipulation of the masses and, unfortunately, this is not conspiracy theory.

 

The Pygmalion Effect and Embodied Cognition

 

A classic experiment was conducted by Rosenthal and Jacobson in 1968, when they showed that the expectations of some teachers directly influenced the performance of their students. These teachers were given random names of students who were about to ‘improve their grades.’ Months later, these ‘lucky’ students actually raised their grades.

How did this happen? Quite simply, the teachers unconsciously began to treat the ‘chosen ones’ in a much more encouraging and positive way, thus shaping the behaviour of these students based on their beliefs about them.

This ‘prophecy’ was named the Pygmalion Effect, but it is also known as the self-fulfilling prophecy. It is a psychological phenomenon where an individual's expectations of another can directly influence the performance and/or behaviour of the ‘target’ individual, causing these expectations to come true.

The phenomenon was given this amusing name because of a Greek myth. In this myth, a sculptor falls in love with his work, a statue. This statue comes to life thanks to Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. The main idea is that what we believe can take shape and become real.

Very exciting, but as everything has two sides, the opposite of this also exists and is called the Golem Effect. This refers to a person who has negative expectations of another, which consequently contributes to the poor performance of the ‘target’ person.

For those wondering if this effect is limited to schools, the answer is no. In other environments, such as corporate and family settings, both the Pygmalion Effect and the Golem Effect occur frequently. The only difference is that people are often unaware of it. Our beliefs act as invisible moulds that shape the clay of reality, because they not only give us an interpretation of the world, they also construct it.

Contrary to what most people think, our mind is not a mirror that reflects the world and the people around us. It is like a flashlight that illuminates some points while others remain in the shadows. This is precisely why self-questioning is so important.

What beliefs are you cultivating? They are dictating the rhythm of your life, and questioning them is not just about personal development; it is about learning about the engineering behind your reality.

The year was 1991, and scientists Varela, Thompson, and Rosch said that cognition itself did not reside only in our brains, but throughout our entire bodies. When we touch something with our skin, a teddy bear, for example, our sensory nerves pick up the information and send it to our brain. It interprets it as a certain tactile sensation, in this case something soft, and based on that experience, our brain creates a belief about this type of texture.

Now, our brain already expects to feel the softness of the teddy bear when it sees one, based on past experience or the appearance of the teddy bear. Thus, our brain adjusts how it will interpret the signals received by the skin, even before touching the teddy bear again. It starts to pay more attention to signs of softness and less to signs of hardness, a process called ‘neural emphasis’.

But if, on the other hand, our brain sees something that it expects to be hard, based on the appearance of the object, for example, a decorative pillow with a hyper-realistic brick pattern. Our brain sees the brick/pillow and immediately associates it with something hard, but when we touch it, we feel a soft surface. For a few milliseconds, our brain will be confused, finding the sensation strange or even interpreting it as something resistant. All this because visual expectation has created a wrong tactile interpretation.

These silly examples show that our expectations directly influence how our brain perceives things when we touch them. If we believe something is soft, our brain will adjust our senses to confirm this belief. And if we expect something to be hard, our brain may ‘see’ hardness where in reality there is none. This shows us how our mind is capable of shaping even our most basic sensory perceptions, in this case, our sense of touch.

This is how our mind, our brain and our body communicate incessantly. The phrase ‘I see what I believe’ takes on a physical dimension here.

 

Positive Psychology and the Grey Area between Objectivism and Subjectivism

 

The founder of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, back in 2011, entered the fray with the idea that having optimistic beliefs leads to healthier behaviour. According to him, people who believe in personal growth tend to perceive feedback from others not as criticism, but as opportunities for self-improvement.

This belief in potential leads them to see even the harshest criticism as opportunities for improvement on their path to personal development. Interpreting criticism as an affront is something that is not present in the minds of these individuals.

With everything we have said so far about beliefs, it is clear that many of us may find ourselves in a war where flawed perceptions battle subjective beliefs. With this in mind, philosopher Roy Bhaskar proposed a ceasefire in the form of critical realism.

This approach brings the point of view that there is an objective reality independent of our beliefs, and our access to it is always mediated by our interpretations.

To better illustrate this idea, think of reality as an immense and deep ocean. We navigate the surface of this ocean in our mental boats, where each boat faces the waves according to its own perspective. All this movement on the surface is completely irrelevant to the bottom of the sea, which remains there, steady, regardless of whether anyone is looking at it or not.

Critical realism does not deny the existence of truth, but recognises the limitations that exist in perceiving it fully. Bhaskar harshly criticises naive empiricism — the belief that our senses capture reality exactly as it is — and also extreme relativism — the claim that everything is subjective. What he proposes is a layered approach to reality, where the world is made up of structures, often invisible and deep, as well as events and experiences.

Our perceptions capture events, our beliefs may even attempt to explain these structures, but both are directly subject to error. This balance between objectivity and subjectivity is essential today, when truth seems to have become just another choice on the menu. Critical realism invites us to put on the ‘sandals of humility,’ because reality does exist, but we need to dig a little deeper to understand it.

 

Truth or Post-Truth, Somatic Markers and Internal Simulations

 

We are officially in the post-truth era. This is a period in which facts considered objective have much less influence on public opinion than emotions and personal beliefs. In other words, this means that reality no longer has much value; what matters is what appears to be real, what pleases followers, and what confirms what we already believe. Reality has become a spectacle, yes, because no one knows what is really real, but everyone knows that the stage is digital.

The internet has become a perfect ecosystem, where everything is perfectly tailored to show us only what we want to see. It doesn't matter if what's there is fake news, wars, cat videos, new diseases, drones that look like aliens, superhero films, aliens that look like drones, new pandemics, leaked documents from the American secret service, algorithm-managed content or conspiracy theories, everything has only one purpose, which is to feed our beliefs with more of the same.

In its early days and in its essence, the internet emerged promising to democratise knowledge, but today it is just another magic mirror where everyone gets only more of their own filtered reality bubble. The consequences of this are already plain to see: fragmented information, dialogue has turned into shouting, name-calling, death threats... just read the comments...

Beliefs have already overtaken perception, and perception itself is manipulated by those who control the channels of information. If before our challenge was to deal with the limits of our own senses, today the great challenge is to deal with the limits of others' discernment. The problem is no longer a lack of information, but rather an excess of it. Everything is neatly packaged to be seductive, with emotional hooks, mental triggers and viral, obvious content.

Is there a way out of this? Of course there is. Media literacy, critical thinking and a well-aligned internal filter. We need to relearn how to doubt, perhaps not everything, but that which is too convenient, too immediate and too comfortable... When everything becomes true, that's when the saint has to be suspicious.

In 1994, Antonio Damasio wrote ‘Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain’ and showed us that our emotions (somatic markers) guide all quick decisions. Our emotional beliefs form a kind of neural shortcut that colours our perception, thus facilitating impulsive choices. If we believe that a certain sound symbolises danger, our heart rate increases before we even realise rationally whether the sound is actually a threat.

Years later, in 2010, Karl Friston proposed that our brain acts like a Bayesian inference machine — a concept that refers to the way our brain processes information, making decisions based on probabilities and expectations. The brain creates internal models and compares them with sensory data; the differences (prediction errors) generate adjustments — or are ignored.

According to him, this would prove that our beliefs anticipate perception. We would be like neural orchestras that continue to play mental scores projected onto the stage of the senses. Bizarre, right?

 

Do we see God or do we only see what we want to see?

 

We are now entering sacred ground, literally. If there is a powerful example of the dilemma ‘do I believe what I see or do I see what I believe?’, that example is definitely faith. This is because faith operates precisely where evidence is hidden and beliefs reign supreme.

Many people of different religions and creeds have reported very interesting and deeply real spiritual experiences. Some people see Mary, others see Buddha, there are those who have seen the Orixás, or Allah, and even those who have talked to the Universe itself, not to mention those who have seen Satan. From shamanism to Yazidism, the experiences are always very real to those who feel them.

But is this objective truth, or just a projection of these people's most intimate beliefs?

Let's bring William James back into the conversation. This psychologist and philosopher studied religious experiences in depth and concluded that they are deeply shaped by the mental and cultural structures of the individuals who had them. He said that the human mind has a natural predisposition to seek something divine, and that this divine manifests itself in the language provided by the person's culture.

Carl Gustav Jung and his concept of archetypes went a little further. He said that divine images are manifestations of the collective unconscious. In other words, they are ancestral symbols that inhabit the human psyche. The ‘God we see and talk to’ is just a symbolic mirror of our own unconscious.

On the other side of this crossroads was Richard Dawkins, who would say that this is all nonsense. For him, religious beliefs are just memes, cultural units that replicate and survive because they offer comfort, identity, social structure, and answers to the most feared questions such as ‘What happens when I die? What's next?’ In his view, there is no God, only a desperate desire for there to be one.

But before anyone gets upset, it is worth noting that, even though there is no objective and conclusive proof of the existence of something divine, spiritual experiences do transform lives, inspire altruism and offer meaning to the lives of those who have had them. Perhaps the facts and evidence don't even matter. Perhaps what really matters is the subjective impact of these experiences. Believers always see what they believe... this shapes their lives, whether for good or for evil.

 

The Everyday View of This Whole Thing

 

Let's come down from Mount Olympus of theories and put our feet on the firm, muddy ground of our daily lives. We have already learned that this idea of thinking we see the world as it is is pure nonsense. But there are still many people who think they make rational decisions and that our perceptions are reliable... Allow me to say two little words in Latin to this species: ridiculus maximus.

Remember that day when you were walking down the street and suddenly looked at a shop window and thought you decided to buy whatever it was out of necessity? Well, what if I told you that your brain was seduced by calculated lighting, carefully chosen background music, an artificial vanilla scent and state-of-the-art neurological marketing? Did you really think you chose to buy? I'm sorry to say that you were chosen, dear.

Advertisers and designers work hand in hand with neuroscience and behavioural psychology to create environments that make our brains ‘see what we want to see’. Brands invest billions to make us believe that we are in control. When in practice, they are controlling what we see while we believe that our need to buy is real.

Oh, and don't tell me you only shop online. There are design experts behind those shopping pages too. Even the colours are chosen for a specific purpose, as each one triggers a certain emotional and behavioural response in our brains. This is widely exploited in marketing, environmental psychology and visual communication. In addition, the intensity and saturation of a colour can also alter the emotional influence it has. Examples:

• Red

Emotional style: intensity, urgency, passion, excitement, hunger...

Effects on the brain: increases heart rate and appetite, stimulates immediate action, impulsive decisions, causes a feeling of warmth and/or alertness.

Commonly used in: Promotions (‘clearance sale’), fast food restaurants (McDonald's, KFC, Burger King...), Coca-Cola, calls to action such as ‘buy now’ buttons, YouTube, Sparkasse, Virgin (Virgin Media, Virgin Atlantic)...

• Blue

Emotional style: trust, calm, security, logic, sovereignty...

Effects on the brain: reduces heart rate and anxiety, associated with seriousness and stability...

Commonly used in: Banks (Itaú, Deutsche Bank, Caixa Econômica, CGD, Barclays...), EDP, Visa, technology (Facebook, IBM, Intel, Samsung...)

• Yellow

Emotional style: optimism, creativity, attention...

Effects on the brain: stimulates the central nervous system, increases alertness and visual memory, causes anxiety and/or irritation, impulsiveness...

Commonly used in: To draw attention to certain sectors and items in shops, supermarkets (Pingo Doce)... (shop windows, billboards, posters...), children's marketing, novelty marketing, alerts, Submarino, Lojas Americanas, iFood, Deutsche Post…

A quick summary:

Fast food restaurants use red and yellow: stimulation of hunger - impulsive action.

Technology and banks prefer blue: conveys security and logic.

Products that claim to be natural use green and brown: convey a connection with the earth and health (Natura, Luso, Alnatura, Waitrose, Nescafé, Hershey's...).

Luxury and fashion go for black and purple: they convey greater exclusivity and sophistication (O Boticário, Guloso, Milka, Cadbury, Porsche, Harrods...).

The neuromarketing industry has been in full swing for several years now, subliminally planting beliefs in the minds of consumers. If you believe that your favourite brand's logo represents status, you'd better do some research, because you're only perceiving value where there is none. Several studies have already identified emotional triggers that shape the public's perception of products.

Let's say that this is all just a blatant symbiosis. ‘I believe what I see because they make me see what they want me to see’ and, thanks to this little dance, advertisements continue to send hidden messages while we continue to believe that consumerism is our choice.

You don't have to believe me. Observe, research, study and question.

Moving on to our personal lives. How many times have we judged someone at first glance? It doesn't matter if it was because of their clothes, the way they spoke, the tone of their voice, or even just their face... We see something, often without even knowing what it is, and we decide whether the person is good or bad.

Some say it's a matter of vibe, frequency, not clicking, energy, dislike, and so on... but what if these assumptions are wrong? What if this is just a confirmation of a stereotype we already have in our minds and believe in?

With that, everything boils down to love or hate... Often, people aren't even in love with who the other person is. They're just in love with the image of themselves projected onto the other person. We see what we want to see... usually, after a while - it can even be years - the curtain of enchantment falls and reality appears - ‘Oh, but he wasn't who I thought he was...’, ‘He seems like a stranger, I don't know him anymore...’ - and the prime-time drama begins.

People are always who they are; it is often us who do not want to see it. Seeing is believing is a myth. Believing is seeing is the new rule.

 

When Truths Become Hostages to Beliefs

 

Let's now take a brief look at the second topic that provides the most fertile ground for the ‘I see what I believe’ phenomenon. We have already discussed religions, now it is time for politics.

We are living in very interesting times, to say the least. What we consider objective facts have become malleable and bendable, all according to the ideological tastes of the consumer. If you are one of those idle people who discuss politics on social media while thinking you are going to convince someone to change their mind, then you already know what it is to waste your time, but you will also understand what I am talking about.

Those who discuss politics on social media, whether through posts, comments, stories, etc., do not understand that no one is there to learn, they are there to assert themselves, to confirm what they think they know. The internet is a mirror, not a window. Each of the ideological bubbles present there constructs its own reality and, like all good realities, it needs heroes, villains, ‘alternative’ facts and even its own physical laws.

Have you ever seen anyone studying geopolitics on TikTok or Instagram? No matter the subject, everything there is superficial; it is only called content because that word is neutral. What exists on social media are triggers to attract attention, reinforce existing beliefs, and distract people for as long as possible.

Studies by Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist known for his contributions to political psychology and social behaviour, have shown that people's political choices are largely motivated by moral and emotional impulses. You may be wondering, ‘Where does reason come into this?’ Well, it doesn't, because reason only appears to justify what has already been decided emotionally.

I mentioned ‘alternative facts’ above, and you may have thought that this was a miserable play on words used by the author, but no. This phenomenon was defended by the advisor to a certain US president in 2017. The poor woman was on a television programme defending the then White House press secretary who had made false statements about the size of the audience at the president's inauguration. When the programme host pointed out the lie told by the secretary, the adviser replied that her colleague had presented alternative facts.

Man, using an expression like that to justify lies and distortions as if they were legitimate versions of the truth is absurd, even if it is extremely common in politics. It's as if reality has gained multiple versions, like the Netflix series, where there are different endings to please the audience. This type of cognitive distortion occurs on both the right and left of the political spectrum.

Images, edited videos, headlines taken out of context, fake news, accusations and chairs, everything becomes ammunition. We don't need better symbols of disinformation, post-truth and manipulation of reality than these. The author of this article is someone who questions, studies and researches these issues on her own. In academic eyes, she could not express her opinion, as she does not have a piece of paper signed by someone hanging on her wall.

However, she is proof that lay people can indeed develop critical thinking — without having attended university and/or being a PhD in something — for the purpose of recognising expressions used to disguise or soften lies and manipulation. These distortions in language, as well as changes made to dictionaries, make it clear that there are other true versions of the facts, even when those used in political propaganda are proven to be false.

Collective perception is — and always has been — shaped not by evidence, but by narratives. The most effective narratives are not the true ones. They are the emotional ones.

 

Can we trust what we see?

 

Ah, science. The beacon of modernity that was born as an attempt to resolve the dilemma: what is real, after all? Can we trust our senses? How do we distinguish a belief from a fact? From Francis Bacon to Isaac Newton... everyone was eager to create a method that would cleanse the filters of perception.

Thus, the scientific method was born, based on observation, hypothesis, experimentation, analysis, repetition, conclusion — sometimes through falsification — and it has undoubtedly transformed the world. Since the creation of the scientific method, we now have:

• Precision agriculture (with drones, sensors);
• Algorithms that reinforce misinformation and polarisation;
• Anaesthesia;
• Antibiotics (such as penicillin);
• Biological weapons (anthrax, modified smallpox);
• Chemical weapons (mustard gas, VX, sarin)
• Long-life batteries (lithium-ion);
• Atomic bomb;
• Hydrogen bomb;
• Electric and hybrid cars;
• Cyber weapons and digital attacks;
• Therapeutic cloning of stem cells;
• Quantum computing;
• Biodegradable compounds;
• Creation and release of invasive species;
• Deepfake (digital falsification of faces and voices);
• Digital dependence and social media addiction;
• Automatic defibrillators;
• Deforestation driven by intensive agricultural technology;
• Water desalination;
• Diagnostic imaging (X-rays, CT scans, MRI);
• Solar, wind and hydroelectric power;
• Genetic engineering (ethical and unethical use);
• Unethical human experiments (Tuskegee, MK-Ultra, Nazis);
• Personal data exploitation (digital privacy violation);
• In vitro fertilisation;
• Geoengineering;
• GPS and geolocation;
• 3D printing of organs and prostheses;
• Synthetic insulin for diabetics;
• Artificial intelligence in autonomous weapons;
• Artificial intelligence outside ethical control;
• Internet and Wi-Fi;
• Genetic manipulation for eugenic purposes;
• Nanotechnology in air and water purifiers;
• Planned obsolescence;
• Industrial pollution and heavy metals;
• Pollution from plastics and microplastics;
• Bionic prostheses;
• Mass production of toxic pesticides;
• HTTPS protocol and web security;
• Excessive radiation from poorly calibrated devices;
• Facial recognition;
• Surgical robots;
• Weather and communication satellites;
• Genetic sequencing;
• Smartphones;
• Antibiotic-resistant superbugs;
• Space telescopes (Hubble, James Webb);
• Gene therapies;
• Cancer therapies;
• Atmospheric nuclear testing;
• Organ transplants;
• Vaccines;
• Viruses created or manipulated in laboratories (weapons);
  

Of course, this list is much more extensive. Keep in mind that science is not immune to limitations; scientists have their biases and interests. In addition to scientific institutions being pressured by political and economic interests, the methods themselves have their limits. Scientists cannot measure everything, test everything, and repeat everything—even if they claim otherwise. Science may have power, but it is far from perfect and fallible.

The map is never the territory, which is why science does not free us from our dilemma. What we see may, in fact, be only an approximation of reality, but it will never be reality itself. The way scientific data is interpreted is also shaped by beliefs. After all, who funds the research? What is the ideology behind the choices of what will be analysed and what will not? What is the point of all this?

 

Questions and Answers

 

• What is the difference between sensory and cognitive perception?

Sensory perception occurs when our senses pick up stimuli (light, sound, temperature). Cognitive perception involves mental processing that assigns meaning. For example, seeing a stain on the kitchen ceiling is sensory perception; perceiving the shadow of a moving cloud is cognitive.

• How do beliefs influence the perception of others' behaviour?
  

Beliefs act as selective filters. If we believe in someone's honesty, we will only see gestures that reinforce their sincerity. If we believe in someone's malice, we will interpret all the smallest signs as confirmation of their dishonesty. Confirmation bias experiments demonstrate our universal tendency to reinforce our initial beliefs, regardless of whether they are good or bad.

• Is it possible to see the world without the influence of beliefs?

According to Husserl's phenomenology, by suspending judgement (euchpê), we allow ourselves to experience phenomena in their pure form. In practice, however, we automatically filter beliefs. Meditation and mindfulness are ways of reducing interference, but it is rarely possible to eliminate it completely.

• How does neuroscience prove the interaction between beliefs and perceptions?

Through neuroimaging techniques that show the areas of the brain linked to beliefs that modulate perception. Example: the placebo effect in medicine, where belief in the medicine activates the analgesic pathways.

• What practices can help balance beliefs and perceptions?
  

Self-questioning to check automatic beliefs and observe perceptions. Mindfulness to perceive and observe without labelling or judging yourself. Constructive debate to expose beliefs and listen to opposing points of view. Recording cognitive dissonance, taking notes of situations where beliefs clash with experiences. Practice mind control; thinking and having thoughts are two completely different things. Learn to discard negative and useless thoughts. All change always starts from the inside out, whether it is the change you want to see in the world.

• How can you recognise when your perception is being distorted by your beliefs?
  

Pay attention to situations in which you refuse to accept objective information just because it contradicts your convictions. If your well-being depends on maintaining certain beliefs, you are probably creating justifications for ignoring contrary evidence. Recognising mental discomfort when confronted with other ideas is a sign of bias.

 

Between Seeing and Believing?

 

Not everything we perceive is real, just as not all beliefs stem from perception. We live in a society where both perceptions and beliefs are easily manipulated. Beliefs shape our reality, and realities increasingly reinforce beliefs. We are responsible for the illusions that inhabit our minds.

When we are not interested in our reality, we fall into the filtered arbitrariness of those who seek to profit from our automated certainties. Automatic beliefs imprison minds. The idea of absolute truth has been dismantled and is nothing more than a utopia. With that, we could at least align our beliefs and internal perceptions through critical and intersubjective thinking and dialogue.

Much of what we believe has been ‘implanted’ in our minds by our family, culture, friends, school, social media algorithms... and honestly, much of it is just emotional, intellectual, and even moral garbage. It's good to clean house every once in a while. So is thinking for yourself, however uncomfortable that may be. Those who don't cultivate questioning become pawns.

Much of what we think we know is just what we have decided to believe. This does not make us better or worse, it makes us human. The problem arises when we confuse opinions with truths, perceptions with reality, filters with facts.

That being the case, know that everything you have read here is part of my worldview; it does not have to be yours. Believing someone you consider more knowledgeable is always more comfortable. Questioning and searching for yourself is always more painful. When choosing between what is easy and what is right, at least do so consciously. Be aware that this choice can change your life. Don't be another piece in a game whose board you've never seen.

So, the question now is no longer whether we are victims or responsible for all this — because we are both. The question is: What will we do with this knowledge?

 

 

 ‘Illusion crumbles when we question reality.’ – UN4RT

 

 

Here are the sources, references and inspirations. Good luck, you'll need it. The links direct you to UN4RTificial, the Blog, where you will find a mini-biography of the author and some of his works.

 

• Parmenides of Elea, The Fragments of Parmenides.
• Heraclitus of Ephesus, The Fragments.
• Plato, The Republic.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics.
• René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy.
• John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
• George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge.
• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason.
• Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler, Principles of Gestalt Psychology.
• Johan Gottlieb Fichte, Foundations of the Science of Knowledge and Addresses to the German Nation.
• Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Shelling, The System of Transcendental Idealism.
• Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation.
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil and Posthumous Fragments.
• William James, Principles of Psychology and The Varieties of Religious Experience.
• Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and Discipline and Punish.
• Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.
• Peter Wason, psychologist responsible for discovering the ‘confirmation bias’ effect - Wason and the 2-4-6 Task.
• Hans Christian Ørsted, Danish physicist and chemist responsible for the beginning of electromagnetism, was also the first modern thinker to explicitly describe and name the mental experiment.
• Giulio Rizzolatti, Leonardo Fogassi and Vittorio Gallese, Neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the understanding and imitation of action. - Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
• Raymond S. Nickerson, Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises. - Review of General Psychology.
• Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, The Invisible Gorilla.
• Karl Friston, The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? - Nature Reviews Neuroscience and studies on the predictive brain.
• Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain.
• Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom - The Urban Review.
• Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and the Human Experience.
• Martin E. P. Seligman, Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness, Well-Being - And How to Achieve Them.
• Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science.
• Carl Gustav Jung, Man and His Symbols.
• Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion.
• Jonathan Haidt, The Moral Mind.
• Francis Bacon, Novum Organum.
• Isaac Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.
• Martin Lindstrom, Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy.
• Edmund Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy.
• Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is hidding from you.
• Jean Piaget, The Genetic Epistemology.