The Case of the Colorblind Painter

B.

Is seeing believing?

            Seeing is believing is an idiom that means, physical evidence is convincing. This phrase implies that it is hard to accept the truth unless we see it. The reading about the experience of a colorblind explains the fact that seeing is believing because if one saw a black color, he or she will automatically believe the color seen is black. For instance, a colorblind person who knew the exact appearance of things hardly believes if those are the same things he used to know. That is why after the occurrence of the accident, when the painter drove to his studio the following day, he found a police carbon copy, which he did not manage to read but he believed, that was the paper looked like (Sacks & Wasserman, 4).

            The next day he again decided to go to work, but that day appeared to him as if he was driving in a fog even after him knowing that it was a bright sunny morning (Sacks & Wasserman, 4). The painter believed it was a foggy morning because that was what he had seen. Everything appeared to him as misty, grayish, bleached and indistinct and he believed it was so. He was confronted by police even after failing to identify the red lights and he believed there were no red lights because he had not seen them. When he reached his studio, he expected to find the horrible fog gone such that he may see clear things then but unfortunately, he could not see the brilliant colored paintings but instead could see entirely gray and void color in the studio. Mr. I the painter could no more bear the appearance of people to the extent of shunning sexual intercourse with his wife he saw people’s flesh including his had changed to grayish and he believed it was the appearance that is the reason he did not bear any more with the changed appearance (Sacks & Wasserman, 4). He closed his eyes while eating because of the grayish, dead of the food and this also show that he believed what he had seen and he could not want to look how disgusting the food was even after knowing the real appearance of some foods like tomatoes. This made him to black and white foods such as white rice, black olives, black coffee and yogurt instead of eating other foods that appeared horribly abnormal to him (Sacks & Wasserman, 5). This therefore explains that he preferred eating what he saw well because it was hard for him to believe the other foods because of their strange appearance. He found it hard to believe his wife’s selection of his clothes because he believed on what he knew and what he had seen before. This explains that seeing adds power on one’s belief.

 

            The phrase “seeing is believing’ can also be used to mean, that through seeing, one is able to do something perfectly. Meaning you do something with assuredness of what you are doing. It is also true in the case of the painter because when he tried to continue painting normally as he used to, he did not bring out perfect pictures like the way he used to (Sacks & Wasserman, 7). This therefore means seeing is believing and without seeing without believing. Therefore to produce brilliant pictures  for people with normal eyes, the painter needs to have normal eyes.

 

            However, this phrase can be disapproved by certain incidences thus, seeing shall not always suggest that something is factual. This therefore implies that seeing does not mean believing. There are things that can be believed even without seeing them. Basing on the case of the colorblind painter, he developed a desire to paint in color even after knowing that he could no longer see colors. He believed that even without seeing, he will be in position to paint using colors. His first exercise was to paint flowers from his palette (Sacks & Wasserman, 7). Nonetheless, the pictures he painted while blind were so confusing to a person with normal eyes and they could only reveal themselves when seen in black and white.

            Visual perception refers to the ability of the brain to make sense of what the eyes have seen. The way we interpret the world dictates the sense of reality. A person may have a complete vision and still have problems with visual perception. Visual perception starts immediately when the eye focuses the physical in form of light on to the retina. Those stimuli are then sent as electrical signals to the brain then interpreted as images. Visual perception skills are important for daily skills such as writing, reading, drawing, painting, completing puzzles, dressing and many others. Tit therefore implies that one’s visual perception may not be the exact representation of what is actually there. There are people with visual ability yet they lack perceptual capacity to process what they have seen. That is why we have people with a problem of misidentifying materials or example mistaking soap for pate. This problem is mostly suffered by people with colorblindness.

            When looking at the case of the colorblind painter, there are many chances of mistaking things. First of all, the way he perceives the colors is contrary to the exact color, for instance red and green are perceived as black whereas yellow and blue are perceived as whitish (Sacks & Wasserman, 5). In this scenario, the visual perception cannot be a representation of what is actually there but instead a wrong representation. The painter’s case has presented many scenarios of visual perceptions different from the actual representation. He perceived a bright and sunny morning as a foggy because of the effect of inaccurate visual perception. The way he perceived the appearance of people was completely different from the actual appearance of those people. When he tried to continue with his painting work, his visual perception of colors was already distorted and he could not view those colors as he used to. That is why the pictures he produced were perceived as confusing to those with normal eyes causing divergence between a normal eye’s visual perception and colorblindness’s visual perception.

Conclusion

            It is considerably agreeable to say that seeing is believing because you agree of something after seeing it. This for instance implies that what your eyes have seen is what you will believe it is. This is articulated in the case of the colorblind painter as he believes in things, despite his destruction of sight. He relied on what he was seeing even after him knowing the real appearance of those particular things. This destruction of vision destroyed his visual perception. Meaning his previous visual perception is different from the contemporary one.

Work cited

Sacks, Oliver & Wasserman, Robert. The Case of the Colorblind Painter. The New York Review of Books November 19, 1987