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Is what we perceive, really what we think it is? We look ahead and we see a tall green plant, we believe it is a tree. If there was an alien standing next to us would he, or it, see the same thing? Wouldn't it be something if the alien saw something different? Maybe he would see things only a little different. He might see the tree as we do but the leaves might look red to him instead of green. On the other hand, his view of the object might be a lot more radical. Maybe the tree would look more like a bush to him.

If this were the case who's perception would be correct? Could it be possible that both are correct? Why not? Just because we tend to think that we are seeing what is really present doesn’t mean that this is true. There may be other things and/or other dimensions out there that we are not even aware of. Hey, there might even be other life on this planet existing on a plane that we are not even aware of.

There are differences in perception even among the sexes. A recent study of the differences of how computer email was perceived by men and women showed that even though it was used by both men and women, women felt that it’s purpose was different from men.

The thing with perception is that it is a very wide view of everything. Wikipedia describes it in the following manner:" perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. Methods of studying perception range from essentially biological or physiological approaches, through psychological approaches to the often abstract 'thought-experiments' of mental philosophy".

An example of perception is how young people view how the world works and how older people, who have much more experience in worldly things, perceive this. Perception seems to change as we get older. This type of perception is more phychological than physical. Physical perceptions seem to remain the same, more or less.

If you thought that a tree was green when you were a child, you probably think that it is still a green tree. The height of the tree may have changed in your mind if you were very small, when you first saw it. Small children tend to think that the things in the world around them are much bigger than they actually are. This is due to the small size of the child.

We, as humans, probably rely more on our eyes for correct information than any other organ in our bodies, but do our eyes always give us the right information? Sometimes we see things that trick our brain. For example there are many puzzles out there that ask you which line is longer? These lines, although straight, are put into different geometric shapes and it is very hard to find the answer. One line may look much shorter than the other but when it is measured it is the exact size of the other. Things can look perfectly level to us under certain circumstances but they can actually be slanted. We can even see things that are not there, things such as mirages.

I think that one has to go no further than listening to testimony in court cases to realize that people perceive things differently. So many times a proper identification can’t be made even though there were several witnesses because each witness saw the defendant differently. One might say he was 6 foot 2 inches tall with black hair and a medium build and another might say he was about 5 foot 11 inches tall with a heavy build. The problem is that sometimes perception also depends on memory. If you were asked how you perceived something a year ago you now have to rely not only on the perception but your memory of it. As if perception wasn’t hard enough to reconcile between two people, memory just makes it that much harder.

My wife and I often have differences on how we perceive things. She will tell me that a certain auto pulled out of a street without stopping for the stop sign. I will have seen the same incident and clearly see that car stop. I will say that I heard so and so say such and such and she will insist that this was never said. One time I got into an auto accident. The intersection was very large and I had stopped. I got an arrow to proceed straight. As I did,a car made a left turn in front of me coming from the opposite direction. The only witnesses to the accident were the cars behind him who swore that I went through a red light. They had no way of seeing the arrow because it was facing me. A policeman on the scene said that this intersection had problems and that sometimes the arrow would come on to go straight while the turning arrow went on from the other side, but that he would deny ever telling me if I said he did. Great help that! The point is that everyone on the other side of the light perceived that I went through a red light when the truth was that I had a green arrow to go straight. This was a perception of assumed right, as I like to call it. They had assumed that since there was a green turn arrow in front of them that I must have had a red light.

Think about this the next time you observe something, does everyone else see this event the same way I am seeing it?