The 2 dogs below are the same species, breed, and probably alike in their behaviour. But how can we tell what their perception of the world is?
Imagine that you are taking this pair for a walk in the park. Whilst you amble along, they will sniff trees and other four-legged friends, pee on every patch they think is theirs, and tug at the lead to chase after squirrels. Now, we think we know why this behaviour occurs based on studies done by canine zoologists, but how can we be so sure? Take a minute to think, how you, a human, could be so sure what a dog is thinking about its activity. Are you wiretapping in to their train of thought, seeing through their eyes, or tasting the food that they eat? No. Impossible (as of right now). What we do and think as people is purely a human experience, and can never understand what it means to experience life as a dog (not to mention the other ~8,999,999 species of animal that live on Earth). Only the dog knows why it behaves as it does, and as much as we try to assimiliate our experience to theirs, we will only be searching for answers. Now, let's twist the knife a little bit...
Cast your mind back to the 2 dogs in the picture. They are two animals of the same species. Now even though they look the same, and act the same - do they perceive the world in the same way? Possibly not. They cannot, nor will not be able to put themselves in the other dogs' situation. The "real" world is intrinsically attached to the perception it represents.
Take, for example, the variation in eyes of humans and dogs. We as humans have binocular vision, meaning that our eyes sit on the front of our head, sacrifcing the peripheral scope of our vision for focus on depth perception. A dogs eyes are positioned further toward the side of the head than humans, giving them a 20 degree advantage in their peripheral vision, but sacrificing depth perception. Humans have better colour perception due to having more cones on the retina, whereas dogs have better night-vision due to having more rods on the retina. So, even though our vision spectrum is different to dogs, analysis of a dogs eye shows that they see similarly to us, probably in a colour-blind fashion. But we'll never truly know, because each perception is tied to conciousness, and until we find a way to analyse conciousness, then we can't say for definite. We do have a good idea that canines see in a similar light spectrum as us, and therefore, can imagine quite accurately what it's like to see like a dog.
This is where the fun begins. We've established that a dogs vision, due to eye shape, structure, cones and rods, and spectrum, is likely similar to ours. Can you imagine what a fly's vision looks like? Don't lie, you can't.
The truth is, a fly's eye performs in a completely different way to humans. A fly has compound eyes, which is to say that light doesn't travel though one tunnel like a pupil, but thousands of receptors called ommatidia that allow the fly to act quicker than their predators. They cannot control the amount of light entering the eye, but can seemingly see what's happening before a human swatting it can, almost like in slow motion. Their evasion tactics are also somewhat thanks to their near 360 degree vision. The fly's perception of the light spectrum is also different than ours, existing in the ultraviolet range, meaning that it sees colours that the human brain cannot fathomably comprehend.
This again refers back to Umwelt, labelled by Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas A. Sebeok. Each experience of a single organism on Earth is completely different. The reality of their "world" is undoubtably separate from the rest of life on Earth. It doesn't just concern sight either, it's the 5 senses, and more that we don't possess. We can never understand what a Dolphins' echolocation feels like, or an ant's antennae, nor can we see what other people see. Of course, we have the same evolutionary adaptations that make our life experience mostly indistinguishable, but it's the little variations that may be where opinion and preference lie.
Perhaps the reason that our preferences towards (the contentious isse of) different coloured curtains is because we literally see them differently to one another. Moreover, it may be the reason that I like spaghetti bolognaise and you like mackerel. We like to think that our exposure to life is the same, but these subtle predispositions say otherwise. To some extent this assertion is true, as we know that some humans have better colour perception than others due to more cones on the retina. How far the variation in each of our 5 senses goes is difficult to measure.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this. The next time you have a disagreement with someone over anything, take a step back, and make more effort to empathise with their perception of things. We can do a better job to understand other points of view as a species, and as far as we know, these opinions could be due to literal physical differences...
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