Perception Essay, Research Paper
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands to our heads. This statement can be interpreted in many ways but I m going to try to analyze this from the Judaic point of view. According to the Biblical text also known as Torah everything that a person perceives has meaning and can be referred back to the Torah. Jews believe that the Torah is a map that guides their lives, therefore there is an interpretation for everything one perceives as the ultimate truth. The Torah is a resource for everything, as I believe it. Perception of truth can be interpreted as perceiving Judaism to be the truth of a Jew s life. If a Jew need find truth bring him forth to his religion. Many Jewish people who seem to be feeling a spiritual incompleteness seek the truth and find it in religion. Perception of truth is the detection of an analogy through the Torah s expression. The Torah gives analogies for people to associate with. Therefore all perception of truth as Jews know it is an analogy. All of life s daily happenings, occurrences, are analogies for a Jewish person. In the Torah G-d tells us real stories about people who lived to obey him. When the Jewish nation reads these stories in the Bible they relate to it. It is through the perspectives of these stories that a Jew learns what is morally right and wrong. In order to expect us to follow G-d s truth we must first look back to our Fathers and Mothers in the Torah for an analogy. It is only natural to want to have an analogy for the meaning of life s truth. We detect an analogy by perceiving the truth and vice versa. We would not be able to detect an analogy in the Torah unless it is true. If it were not of truth-value, then it would not be an analogy in respect to what the Jewish person is seeking. For example, Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but in the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow (Exodus 23:10).
G-d commanded this upon the Jewish nation. As human nature intended we often want an analogy and reason for what it is we are commanded to do. G-d being our creator knew this and therefore gave us many of them before he commanded it as law. Therefore G-d later said If a fellow Hebrew, man or woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh you shall set him free (Deuteronomy 15:12). We are created in G-d s shadow and have to do as commanded. It is from his creation of the world in six days and rest on the seventh; therefore we learn that on the seventh we shall also rest. Whether it is seven years or days; is not what is important but rather the message, the analogy. Once we detect the analogy we can also perceive it to be true. It is from the Torah our map that guides our life that we can perceive what is true.We reason from our hands to our head; it can also be said that human nature, G-d, intended for it to be that way. The process in which we reason is from our hand the physical to our head, which is mental or spiritual. When asked if we are responsible for something that has happened; our first response is we did not do it and did not see who did. This is best portrayed in the Torah; G-d tells his nation to say to the person who accuses them of murder Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done (Deuteronomy 21:6). Hence it is reasonable that we reason from our hands to our heads. I find this statement to be an analogy as well. Detecting an analogy is to our hands as all perception of truth is to our head. It is innate to want to feel something in our hand; which is what detecting an analogy actually is, a feeling, before automatically trusting our head in perceiving it as truth. It is inborn to want an analogy before trusting our perception of what is or is not truth.