Seeing is Believing?

It is often said that seeing is believing yet it is generally clear that it depends on the individual to interpret what they see and how they tend to believe what they see. Seeing is one of the major ways humans take in their surroundings therefore making sight one of the greatest sense perceptions. However this does not necessarily mean that seeing can be directly interpreted to be believing, as in order to believe, our perception is run through previous knowledge. Therefore to a certain extent seeing can be believing. A case of seeing being believing in our society can be observed as people tend to react by saying, "I don't believe you! Show me...." In particular an example could be seen as a student tries out for a football team even though his or hers credentials are good the coaches always say, "Show me what you got" meaning that they need to see to believe what has been said. However, despite being an important method of perception, seeing can not always be believing as it can be clouded by other ways of knowing such as language and emotion. As of the example we saw in class of the McGurk effect, we can see that despite hearing the same thing our sight interprets things differently giving us a different outcome all in all. I believe this is evidently showing that seeing is not believing necessarily as what we see leads to different beliefs in different people due to different interpretations and emotions.

Language [Reflection]

Language has a wide variety of roles including expression of emotion and giving directions but language's purpose overall is a way of communicating between us. There are many wonders in language including interesting connotations, denotations and ambiguity which are the main cause of miscommunication as each party does not fully understand what is being said. This is one of the things that struck me the most as we all experience a situation with the literal meaning quite often being not the actual meaning. We saw different examples of connotations in speech, for example the difference between 'shit' and 'faces'. Despite having the same literal meaning, we can see that 'shit' has a negative connotation and is associated with inappropriateness. Look at these two words describing a group of people: 'childish' and 'youthful'. What can be assumed? 'Childish' implies the fact that this group of people are immature while 'youthful' suggests a group of energetic and willing people. This is not the literal meaning yet is used to describe the actual situation without being rude and this is particularly a useful part of language to maintain friendships.
Another major thing that caught my interest about language is Benjamin Lee Whorf's theory of Linguistic Determinism. It is stated that our thoughts are controlled by our native or mother tongue and this does enable us to think certain thoughts. His general point was 'if a language has no words for a certain concept, then its speakers would not understand the concept.' I found this rather interesting as it seemed partly true to me. From my experience, I have seen  people have different ways of thinking based on where they come from yet I do not believe this limits us from learning concepts that are recognized by other languages. It is clear that concepts can exist with out words to describe it. For example, in my native language there is no word or phrase to describe homosexuality but this concept is existent proving that a certain concept can exist with out words to describe it. On the whole, language is a method of communication and this has been evolved overtime to the complex nature it has now such as ambiguity and connotations, but I believe it does not limit our thinking.