It’s like this: Why perceptions are our realities
Minds do not create experience, experience creates minds
Cecilia Bleasdale just needed a dress to wear to her daughter’s wedding. She had no idea what was about to happen. After considering several frocks, she sent photos of three to her daughter, Grace, informing her she’d purchased one of them.
“Oh, the white and gold one?” Grace replied.
“No,” Cecilia answered. “It’s blue and black.”
Try as they might, mother and daughter couldn’t agree on how the gown appeared in the blurry smartphone photo. Within days, millions of people around the world were having the exact same argument. Some saw “The Dress” as white and gold. Others, with equal confidence, saw it as blue and black. Numerous celebrities weighed in as well. Taylor Swift, who saw the dress as blue and black, said the controversy made her “confused and scared.”
It’s easy to see why. While we all share the same planet, each of us really does live in our own little world—something we don’t often notice. If you’re a political person, you might get a feel for this when viewing social media posts from people who disagree, but The Dress meme provided something more—a microcosm example of how individualized perception that can often be uncontrollable.
That’s because our brains mostly function beneath the surface of our awareness. And for good reason: Imagine the cognitive overload of always needing to tell your lungs to breathe or your heart to pump. But we don’t even have full control over our voluntary senses either. If you saw The Dress as gold and white, you couldn’t simply will your neurons to see it as black and blue. The Dress wasn’t just a silly internet debate—it was a gateway to the realization that minds do not create experience but rather that experience creates minds.
Humans often like to think we’re far superior to other animals, but science keeps casting doubt on that idea. Chimpanzees and other primates are famous for their intelligence, but cetaceans are also extremely smart; some have even been documented using an equivalent to personal names that marine biologists call signature whistles. Crows, octopuses, elephants, and parrots have also shown incredible abilities to use tools, play, and remember things years later.
What truly sets us apart from other rational animals is our ability to adapt to change, and to create it ourselves. When faced with habitat destruction or violent threats from rivals or predators, ancient humans moved, often hundreds of miles away. This is why Homo sapiens has the biggest range of any large animal in the world, and why we have become the dominant species on the planet despite being significantly weaker, smaller, and slower than many others.
Our brains are our greatest biological asset, which is more than a little ironic considering how little we understand them. Neuroscience offers many insights into how brains work and how mental internality arises from within the nervous system, but it leaves many questions unanswered. That’s why a new discipline of studying minds—cognitive science—has emerged, bundling ideas from neuroscience with those from psychology, ethology (animal behavior), philosophy of mind, and machine learning.
There are no perfect answers as of this writing, but there is so much to think about.
