Prosopagnosia, also known as Face Blindness, is the cognitive disorder of face perception in which the ability to recognize familiar faces, including one’s own face, is impaired. 

Colour Blindness, or colour deficiency, is the inability to distinguish between certain colours; usually occurring between greens and reds, and occasionally blues.

A Rorschach Test is a psychological test in which a subjects’ perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both.

As Homo Sapiens (latin for “wise man”), we gauge a lot of what we will do next in terms of observations from the past and predictions for what we believe may occur in the future. Through the process of generational, habitual learning, we are better able to navigate through the trappings of our everyday existence and steer ourselves away from what we perceive to be bad, in place of what we perceive to be good.

In fact, the processes of both inductive and deductive reason (and all scientific inquiry for that matter) is based off of past observations (which may or may not be tested) in order to help predict the future. We have become so wise through our rigour that we are even able to predict events with up to 99.999 ad infinitum% certainty. However, we can never account for the full 100% because there are just too many variables and unknowns in the universe to account for.

But are these things really happening—or are we just creating patterns and giving those patterns names?

The brain (and, in effect, us) hallucinates its conscious reality*. We were each gifted with a cerebral cortex of varying parameters for intaking data processed from our environment. It is what makes things both real and not real, all at the same time. An event can be very real to us (the sensation of a needle going into our skin, for example), but not real if we choose to use numbing cream or have a high pain tolerance. What one may think is exceptionally painful may be barely noticeable to another in the same situation. This variability is the basis for all subjectivity. Subjectivity is how we gauge our reality; and thus, our perception of what we believe to be really going on.

What about other animals with different or more complex input sensors? Did you know that a bee can see electromagnetic waves? Or that dogs are colour blind? Or that bats and dolphins use echolocation to get around?

Our input sensors are what allow us to intake data from the world around us and create patterns for recognition; which ultimately create our assumptions; assumptions which create habits and help to direct our future actions. But what if we had no input sensors? What would the universe be to us, then?

When looked at on a granular scale, we can see that the universe is entirely made up of atoms. If we each saw the universe from an atomic perspective, we would see that the universe holds no separation between you or I or it. Even what we believe to be space between us is taken up by oxygen molecules and gasses. It is only our input sensors that help differentiate this from that; you from I. However, from the lens of the totality of all things, we are all actually engulfed in a sea of atoms. It is only the mind, through the input sensors of our cerebral cortex, that allows us to differentiate it as anything else.

-what do you see and what do you want others to see?