The colours of our world...

This “red-tinted glasses” experiment is intended to help Sophie and the readers understand ‘how [Kant] could think both the rationalists and empiricists were right up to a point’. Through this metaphor, we are made to realise that every individual perceives things differently, and that if people do not attempt to change the colour of their glasses themselves (even temporarily), they will never be able to see how things appear to other people.

Before I explain the above, I first need to mention that Kant was an in-between of the rationalists and the empiricists. He thought that ‘both 'sensing’ and ‘reason’ come into play in our conception of the world’, which in other words meant that ‘all our knowledge comes from our sensations’, but ‘in our reason there are also decisive factors that determine how we perceive the world around us’. When Sophie wears the ‘red-tinted glasses’, the actual things that she sees are exactly the same as before she wore the glasses – the difference is in how she sees them. Everything appears to her as either pink or crimson, because ‘the glasses limit the way [she] perceive[s] reality’. In real life, people obviously don’t literally see their world in different colours, but they do see things through a kind of filter formed by their religious beliefs, culture, nationality, environment, and every experience they have had in their lives. This filter only lets certain things through, and shapes other things so that they can be let in. This shaping, according to Knox, is much like water adapting itself to the shape of the pitcher that it is poured into.

What the ‘red-tinted glasses’ or the filter that I mentioned above is symbolizing is bias, or a subjective point of view. By this, I am not referring only to extreme ideas like racism or sexism. No one has a completely objective view point. Even scientists, who are dealing with an objective topic (assuming that science really is objective), have subjective point of views. I can bet that not one scientist in the world has absolutely nothing ‘governing [their] mind’s operation which influence the way [they] experience the world’. For example, many would probably assume that a primary school student is less likely to be unable to carry out DNA experiments than a university student (because they have the stereotype that older students are smarter), or be surprised if they met a Japanese person who had never slept on tatami or had never eaten sushi before (This brings up a stereotype that I have been faced with numerous times before – some strange people do not seem to realise that it does not mean I have to eat sushi everyday just because I am Japanese …). Or it may be a stereotype that is even more ordinary, like a person assuming that they hate milk-flavoured candy or yogurt (before trying them) just because they hate milk.

What this all means is that everyone is wearing coloured glasses, whether they are aware of this or not.

In my opinion, all people are born with these glasses – they are already wearing them when they are sleeping inside their mother’s stomachs. Initially, everyone’s glasses are crystal clear, with no colour. But the moment they enter the world, their glasses start to get coloured – and what colours their glasses is different for each individual. One person may befriend their neighbour’s dog as a child and may have a positive view towards dogs for the rest of his life, while another may develop fear for dogs after he gets bitten by one. The colours of people’s glasses constantly change throughout their lifetime. A person may completely change their opinions, for example the dog-hating person may get to know a guide dog who helps blind people and thus start to have a positive view towards dogs (in which case the colour of his glasses would change completely; eg. from red to blue), or his views may become more extreme (colour gets darker; eg. from pink to red) or more moderate (colour gets lighter). I also think that people are not only wearing one pair of glasses – they are in fact wearing millions of glasses with different colours, because one pair of glasses cannot possibly represent a person’s perspective on everything in life. These glasses overlap to create yet more colours. For example a person with a pair of blue glasses and yellow glasses would see a green-coloured world. This overlapping of colours is just like how someone’s opinion on one subject can affect his opinion on another.

So how does the colour of a person’s glasses affect their viewpoint and result in bias? Suppose that an environmental activist was trying to persuade a factory to decrease carbon dioxide emission. We could say that the activist was wearing red-tainted glasses, as opposed to the blue glasses worn by the factory owner. The activist, through his red glasses, may only see advantages in the factory using wind powered energy to be more environmentally firendly. The factory owner, on the other hand, may only see the disadvantages, for example the possibility of less profit for his factory. The red glasses prevents the activist seeing the disadvantages for the factory, and the blue glasses prevents the factory owner seeing the possible advantages. As long as these two people do not attempt to be open-minded and listen to each other’s views, they will not be able to understand how things look through glasses other then that of themselves. If they try to at least give others a chance to express their point of views, even if they do not change their own opinions, the colour of their glasses would probably have become lighter. I say this because they are now able to see things that they had been unable to before, which means that their glasses must be filtering out less things and letting through more. Perhaps this idea is easier to comprehend if I refer to acidity rather than colours. Say that the factory owner's viewpoint was of a very low pH value. If he tried to open his mind to the perspective of the activist (a more 'alkali' point of view), then his outlook would be in some way nearer to pH 7 (even if still more 'acidic' than 'alkali'), because the acid and alkali can neutralise each other to some extent.

What this leads me to think is that the ultimate goal is probably to make one’s own glasses as near to the original crystal clear as possible. Because the lighter the colour of their glasses, the more likely that people can see the other side to things. I am not saying that it is better to have no personal opinion or view point. What I am saying is that one can only obtain a balanced perspective by understanding how others see things. Only then can one realise that the world is not just all red or all blue, and that it is in fact bursting with countless different beautiful colours.

People cannot, of course, erase every trace of colour from their glasses – and they cannot take off their glasses either. Like I mentioned before, no one has a perfectly objective point of view. But one cannot deny the importance of being able to see things from many different perspectives and forming an unprejudiced opinion – and this can only be done by trying to see the world without tainting everything with one’s own glasses’ colour. This, in conclusion, is what the “red-tinted glasses” experiment meant to me and has taught me.