"I know it when I see it." This statement confirms what many of us
believe about the data we accrue with our senses on a daily basis. We know
something when we apprehend somethingâ€"or, to use another cliché, if it
quacks like a duck, smells like a duck, and floats like a duck it must be a
Perhaps the most famous challenge to the assertion that seeing is
believing is the series of optical illusion pictures often shown in
psychology textbooks. Someone can look at one of these pictures and see a
young woman's head. Another person can look at the same picture and see an
old woman. Both individuals perceiving the same picture are in fact
correct, as there are two images embedded within the same line drawing.
But on a less obvious, more subjective plane of logical thought, one could
even state that a photograph not designed to be an optical illusion could
also contain two truths. A young child might see a portrait of a thirty-
five year old woman and call her an old lady. A sixty-five year old woman
would look at the same picture and see a young adult, perhaps even someone
Even the tangible rewards of the senses, like hearing, smelling,
feeling, and tasting, can lie to the perceiving individual. If one is
stuffed up' with a cold, an individual might hear things as muffled and be
able to smell things less intensely. A piece of rayon can feel like silk
to the touch, and if some artificial flavorings didn't taste like the real
thing (or better than the real thing) at least some of the time, Kraft
Foods and McDonald's would be out of business! On a more serious note, a
blind person, or a deaf person, or even a color blind person does not
receive the same sensory data as the majority of the population. This does
not mean the way the individual sees the world is wrong,' but clearly it
is differentâ€"much like the eyes of a bee s...