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Articles

What is it Like to be a Dragonfly?

Benedict O’Connell explores puzzles of perception with Locke, Kant and Nagel.

Do our senses give us an accurate idea of the way the world is? Every day we’re confronted by masses of data about the world: sounds, smells, shapes, hues, textures. But does our sensory information amount to a picture of reality – an idea of things as they really are?

Sensing the world around us accurately and with precision must be advantageous in natural selection terms. We can see why humans and other species would have developed refined senses through the process of evolution. We might think of the gazelle who can detect their predator miles away with an acute sense of smell, and so potentially evade a sorry end; or the human, who upon recognizing the blue mould on a putrid apple, decides to eat something more pleasant and less poisonous.

Over 90% of animal species have visual processing of some kind.

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