How do we know that our reflection is what we actually look like?
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The answer is a mix of basic philosophy and basic science.
The science part is physics and biology. We know how lighting and reflections work, and we have a brain that learns to recognize and interpret reflections, and remember patterns. Further, even if we’re not taught the science, our intelligence notes that when we move our arm, the reflection of us moves our arm, and when we look at other flat mirrors we get the same reflection, and those are patterns that we learn from.
The philosophy part is the perception that we’re not so special that there’s some universal trick being played on us like in Jim Carry’s “The Truman Show”. It’s our reflection of what we actually look like because we don’t believe everything around us is designed to deliberately project a certain false reality. Some people might believe that, but it’s not commonly accepted.
Well it isn’t because it’s flipped. Also as a species we have thousands and thousands of years of experience with reflections, we see other people we’re with also reflecting on surfaces. We know how they work
Depends in what you believe in 😂
You could stand in front of a mirror with someone else and ask this person if the reflection of you he/she sees looks like what he/she sees when looking at you and assume that everybody sees reflections the same way, as we know how they work. So scientifically it’s proved, as someone already mentioned.
But there are philosophies that question science and even the existence of us (eg solipsism believes -as far as i understood it- that there is no world but only your mind exists in some way and the whole world, everything you experience, is only a imagination of your mind, like a dream. And now you dream that you read this text which actually isn’t existing as nothing exists 😉)
So if you believe in science and that your experiences are true, then you can believe in the fact that you look like your reflection. Well and if you don’t believe in all of this… then you can’t believe it and question everything 🤷🏼♀️
We know that when we put other things in front of a mirror the image looks like the object. It’s safe to assume that doesn’t change when we put ourselves in front of a mirror.
Mainly because our brains associate the actions we take with actions we see in the mirror.
It’s a strange coincidence that every time I move, the mirror person moves the exact same way.
If I have red paint on my face in the mirror and I touch *my* face, *my* hand gets red paint on it too.
How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren’t real?
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