Hallucination & dreams are pictures submitted from the mind, so you could say you are looking at these things with you're minds eye, and this topic is for seeing with your ordinary sight, you see?RowCla
But "ordinary sight" is just as much "seeing with your mind's eye".
The eye doesn't make pictures, it simply transmits a signal to the BRAIN, which is where sight REALLY occurs. If you damage the brain you can remove someone's ability to see, even though their EYES are 100% fully functional.
NOTHING that you see is ever an accurate representation of reality. Because your eyes aren't the same eyes as mine or a dog's or a mantis shrimp's. Furthermore, your BRAIN is not the same as mine, a dog's, or a mantis shrimp's. If you, me, a dog, and a mantis shrimp were all made to look at the same scene and describe what it looked like, we would NOT see the same thing. That is, what you and I see would probably be VERY close (since our eyes and brains are simlar), and both of our perceptions would be vastly different from that of the dog or the mantis shrimp or the fly.
The thing is that there are NO objective criteria for what that one scene SHOULD or DOES look like. Absolutely none. The fly sees something very different than what you and I see. And both you and the fly are correct. That IS what the scene looks like, from the point of view of both you and the fly.
Or to take a familiar example, take a camera. Suppose you see a beautiful sunset, so you take out your camera and take a picture. You then look at that picture later and say "pfft, that's not what that scene looked like." But you're wrong. That IS what the picture looked like TO THE CAMERA. And the camera's opinion is JUST as valid as yours. Your eyes are different than the camera's lens. Your brain is different than the camera's internal processor. But there are NO objective criteria making YOUR interpretation of the scene any more CORRECT than your camera's. The ACTUAL scene still remains UNSEEN. Unseen by you, your camera, the dog, and everyone else. EVERYONE is simply converting a limited part of reality into something that can be seen by the limitations of the observing device. YOU are an observing device. You are an observing device honed by millions of years of evolution (actually more like billions, if we extend this to its logical conclusion). And no observing device sees reality 100%. Observing devices generally tend to observe specific things FOR A REASON. Just as digital cameras are supposed to make images that look a certain way, that's merely survival of the fittest. Humans make digital cameras. Therefore, humans want pictures from digital cameras to look good. When a digital camera makes pictures that just look ****ed up to the people who want to look at pictures, that camera dies. Meanwhile, the cameras that make pretty pictures survive, and are then refined with additional models. Similarly, the needs of a mantis shrimp or a fly do NOT have the same requirements. If mantis shrimp saw reality the same way that humans see reality, then there would be no more mantis shrimp. They all would have gone extinct. Different observing devices occupy different ecological niches. And the requirements for how an observing device is supposed to see varies WILDLY.
With respect to eyesight, that's all we are. An observing device, who renders data in a particular way that promotes our continued survival. And THAT'S IT. We have a particular limited range of vision for a REASON. Because THAT range of vision is advantageous to our survival. But to say that what I see represents reality is erroneous in the extreme. What I see is VALID, but it's an inherently limited and biased rendering of reality based on what my body decides is fit to add in or subtract out. I see a red car, but the car does not OBJECTIVELY look red. The car simply reflects light of a certain wavelength and amplitude and frequency. The intrinsic properties of the reflected light are objective, but it's absolutely fallacious to say that the car looks objectively red. I see red. Someone with total color blindness will NOT see red. Someone who is completely blind will see that car as just looking black (just as black as everything else, with no difference between the car and anything else). And EVERYONE's interpretation of a red car is equally valid. The blind person's eye is STILL getting hit with photons of the same wavelength as the photons that are hitting your eye. Just as your eyes are constantly being bombarded by the same "invisible light" that a mantis shrimp can EASILY see. The car does NOT objectively look red, and your body's rendering of the car as being red is no more accurate than the blind person's rendering of the car as not looking like a goddamn thing.
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