The phrase seeing is believing is understood by most everyone I have known, including myself, as obviously true. Here is an internet explanation of the idiom:
When we hear the phrase “seeing is believing,” what comes to mind? Perhaps it brings up images of a skeptic who needs concrete evidence before they can believe something. Or maybe it makes us think of the power of visual proof in convincing others. Regardless, this idiom has become a common saying that reflects our reliance on tangible evidence.
How to Hide an Empire
Buy New $15.93
(as of 05:55 UTC - Details)
Over time, this idea became more widespread and was adopted by various religions and cultures. For example, in Christianity, there is a famous story about doubting Thomas who refused to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead until he saw him with his own eyes. Similarly, many Eastern religions emphasize the importance of personal experience over blind faith.
The idiom “seeing is believing” also gained popularity during the Enlightenment period when science began to play a more prominent role in society. Scientists emphasized the importance of empirical evidence and observation in understanding natural phenomena.
Today, this idiom continues to be widely used and serves as a reminder that personal experience can often be more convincing than hearsay or second-hand information. It encourages people to seek out firsthand experiences and make their own judgments based on what they see rather than relying solely on what others tell them.
Over the last few years I have been receiving an internet education on cognitive science, starting from Jordan Peterson, continuing with John Vervaeke, Jonathan Pageau, and Iain McGhilchrist among others that has changed my view. There was one short video Peterson described that made a radical change in my understanding of consciousness. Take two minutes to do this attention test now before you continue reading.
Did you see it? It doesn’t matter if you did, just know that many people do not.
The cognitive scientist John Vervaeke has described relevance realisation. In short, the conscious mind has always an infinite amount of data to see. But this combinatorial explosion of data is impossible to comprehend so the brain must focus attention on a small limit, and to conceive of reality as much less granular. As a trivial example, when we see a table we do not necessarily see its parts, four legs and a top.
Silver Lozenges with V...
Buy New $19.95 ($0.83 / Count)
(as of 02:21 UTC - Details)
I have previously described the work of Iain McGilchrist and His Magnum Opus – LewRockwell on the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Here he describes what is seen by the hemispheres. The left hemisphere excludes everything that does not conform to its preconceived model of what is true. It acts as a cognitive filter. The right hemisphere is “much better at seeing the big picture.” Another valuable explanation of his theories can be found here: The Mystery of Consciousness: Dr. Iain McGilchrist’s Keynote at Kinross House (2024)
The full video linked to in the previous paragraph is titled How faith can re-enchant a left-brained world. The modern materialist model of the world that we are immersed in makes the spiritual realm impossible to see. In this conversation Jonathan Pageau discusses prayer and attention, in particular, if you pay attention to good things through prayer, life will be better.
A poignant example of the practical consequences to everyday life of the attention and filtering I have described herein are found in this internet conversation on the Youtube channel The Meaning Code. Ryan describes how his attention, his relevance realization, changed after coming out of a depression. In particular, he describes his view of his city, Dallas-Fort Worth, going from a nihilist loathing to grateful appreciation.
I am currently reading the novel Nana by Emile Zola to follow my daughter’s high school literature class. I had read Nana and other works by French realist authors such as Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Stendahl’s Le Rouge et le Noir, and Maupassant’s Bel-Ami. I could not understand these bleak pictures of humanity. I understood there is the base and evil in people, but there was no expression of goodness in these works that I see in the world. I now believe that these authors did express the reality that they saw, but I think that their attention was fixed only on the base, such that they did not see the good.
This short explanation cannot do justice to such a broad and important topic. But I hope you will see that while seeing is believing has a certain veracity, it is more important to understand that reality is conceived such that believing is seeing.
