Q&A: Optical Illusions
Optical Illusions
Question
With God's help,
Hello Rabbi Michi,
I saw a video that presents many optical illusions (of the senses), and then shows how mistaken we were about them and how we continue to be mistaken by them. It claims that the reasonable conclusion is not to rely on our senses at all. Rather, “reality” is like Descartes' demon—something like idealism.
The Rabbi surely thinks that this is not the reasonable conclusion, and intuitively I feel the same way—but why? This isn't exactly ordinary skepticism without any real basis; here there are dozens of demonstrations in which we fail, continuously, second after second. And we don't always even realize that we were mistaken until someone points it out to us.
Answer
If we made a mistake in a math problem, does that mean that for every problem we solve we should assume it is wrong? On the contrary: the very fact that we classify things as mistakes shows that we have an implicit assumption that there are also true perceptions, and these are the exceptions. Just as we trust the conclusion that these are illusions, we should trust the conclusion that other things are not illusions. Otherwise, you know neither the truth nor that there are illusions.