Sanity

[Devils_Advocate]

I was having a debate with a friend of mine, whose a semi-kantian subjectivist. He proposed that we cannot be 100% sure that we are sane, or that we're interpreting reality correctly. Thus, if we can't be sure that we're sane, we can't be 100% sure of any facts of reality. Thus, the only way to have a common standard is to look toward the majority's view of what is "sane" or "real".

The way to beat this argument is, obviously, to prove that I am sane. But how can you prove that you are sane, if there is a possibility you aren't? If anyone's seen "A Beautiful Mind", you know it's possible to go years upon years seeing things that aren't there and never realizing it. Thus, if there is a possibility we're insane, doesn't it stand that we may be wrong about everything else - politics, for example? If we are, in fact, insane, we can't fully utilize reason or logic, and thus, our entire political position may be just as insane and irrational as us.

To put it in a nutshell, can someone please prove their/my sanity?

Thanks.

[Zip]

No, no, no...

Please prove me to be insane. Show me that my reality is not real. Show me something that is there is not.

[DavidOdden]

Thus, if we can't be sure that we're sane, we can't be 100% sure of any facts of reality.

What does it mean to be "100% certain", according to him? And does he just offer this as a possibility that might be wrong, or is he 100% certain that this is true?

Start with the epistemological fundamentals: is he being a nihilist? He may deny it, but I'd ask him to prove that he is not.

[Devils_Advocate]

What does it mean to be "100% certain", according to him? And does he just offer this as a possibility that might be wrong, or is he 100% certain that this is true?

100% certain means being able to claim full knowledge over the issue. For example, being able to claim a color is blue and not considering it might be yellow. And yes, he accepts that he might be wrong.

Start with the epistemological fundamentals: is he being a nihilist? He may deny it, but I'd ask him to prove that he is not.

He'd say "I don't know. Reality may exist or it may not. I don't claim to be sure."

Edited March 22, 2009 by Devils_Advocate

[DavidOdden]

100% certain means being able to claim full knowledge over the issue.

Okay, then he is simply mistaken in claiming that we cannot be 100% sure that we are sane. Whatever his basis was for denying certainty of sanity should apply to his denial of certainty.

[FrolicsomeQuipster]

100% certain means being able to claim full knowledge over the issue. For example, being able to claim a color is blue and not considering it might be yellow. And yes, he accepts that he might be wrong.

He'd say "I don't know. Reality may exist or it may not. I don't claim to be sure."

Tell him (for the somanyeth time) that knowledge of ''anything'' does not require omniscience about everything.

And try to explain to him how certainty is contextual.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

100% certain means being able to claim full knowledge over the issue. For example, being able to claim a color is blue and not considering it might be yellow. And yes, he accepts that he might be wrong.

Well, how does he know it is really yellow if he sees it as blue? The problem is that he is not starting at the perceptually self-evident. Blue means the way you see it, and if it is similar to the standard blue, then it is blue. The problem with all rationalists, and most Kantians wind up being rationalists to some degree, is that they think there is something superior to perception -- or rather that the human mind is superior to perception and is not based upon perception. You know, it's like saying how do you know this glass in front of me is a solid when I know that it is just a swirly mass of sub-atomic particles? Well, if it is solid to the touch then it is a solid, even though on a technical scientific level, glass is a slow moving semi-solid (which is why window pains start to sag over time).

But one must start somewhere and be certain of something on which to build the rest of one's knowledge and if you fall for the Kantian premises that what you perceive is not really real, then you have no intellectual foundation and therefore no real knowledge. This is one of the evils that comes from becoming a Kantian -- what is right in front of their face is not taken as a fact and can be dismissed. And it is true that once that is removed from the intellectual base, then going by the majority becomes a substitute for individual knowledge. His mind is cut off from reality, and so he cannot be certain of anything, though he will claim that he is absolutely certain of that, because it is his conscious state of consciousness.

I think the only cure is to get him to start with acknowledging that the facts right in front of his face are real and that he sees them as they really are. Short of that, I see no solution to his dilemma. In college, I knew a Kantian from Germany that was absolutely horrified when I told him that knowledge is built from the perceptually self-evident. To him, all of the reality that we see around us every day is really a facade brought about by the sensory manifold, and he really believed that. So, past a certain point, I couldn't get him to check his premises, since he refused to believe that knowledge is built up from the perceptually self-evident. It's a difficult problem if you are friends with him, but I see no other solution.

[Devils_Advocate]

Well, how does he know it is really yellow if he sees it as blue? The problem is that he is not starting at the perceptually self-evident. Blue means the way you see it, and if it is similar to the standard blue, then it is blue. The problem with all rationalists, and most Kantians wind up being rationalists to some degree, is that they think there is something superior to perception -- or rather that the human mind is superior to perception and is not based upon perception. You know, it's like saying how do you know this glass in front of me is a solid when I know that it is just a swirly mass of sub-atomic particles? Well, if it is solid to the touch then it is a solid, even though on a technical scientific level, glass is a slow moving semi-solid (which is why window pains start to sag over time).

But one must start somewhere and be certain of something on which to build the rest of one's knowledge and if you fall for the Kantian premises that what you perceive is not really real, then you have no intellectual foundation and therefore no real knowledge. This is one of the evils that comes from becoming a Kantian -- what is right in front of their face is not taken as a fact and can be dismissed. And it is true that once that is removed from the intellectual base, then going by the majority becomes a substitute for individual knowledge. His mind is cut off from reality, and so he cannot be certain of anything, though he will claim that he is absolutely certain of that, because it is his conscious state of consciousness.

I think the only cure is to get him to start with acknowledging that the facts right in front of his face are real and that he sees them as they really are. Short of that, I see no solution to his dilemma. In college, I knew a Kantian from Germany that was absolutely horrified when I told him that knowledge is built from the perceptually self-evident. To him, all of the reality that we see around us every day is really a facade brought about by the sensory manifold, and he really believed that. So, past a certain point, I couldn't get him to check his premises, since he refused to believe that knowledge is built up from the perceptually self-evident. It's a difficult problem if you are friends with him, but I see no other solution.

It's amazing that there are people who believe that...

During the debate, the topic of color-blindness came up. He stated that color blindness, where someone sees a color differently from the rest of us, is a form of proof that we can't be sure of anything we see - we may be (at one extreme) insane, and see things that aren't there, or we could simply be color blind and not realize it. Seeing as how we can't even be sure the colors we see are really the colors we think they are, how can we be sure of anything we see? I've never come up with this argument before, or anything like it, and epistemology isn't my strong point. Any suggestions on how to respond?

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Seeing as how we can't even be sure the colors we see are really the colors we think they are, how can we be sure of anything we see? I've never come up with this argument before, or anything like it, and epistemology isn't my strong point. Any suggestions on how to respond?

Objectivism answers this with the idea of the "perceptual form". Unfortunately, that doesn't come up in the online Ayn Rand Lexicon. Basically, we perceive something a specific way because we have sensory equipment of a certain type. Something with a consciousness and no eyes would not see things at all, but that doesn't mean that those thing normal sighted people see are only manifestations of our eyes. Normally sighted people see blue, red, and green; color blinded people see only shades of gray -- but each one sees what he sees in the form brought about by his sensory equipment. So, it is not as if your vision of blue is an illusion, it is a real effect on your eyes by their interaction of the entity in a well lighted room. Color doesn't just happen through no means, it comes about because you have color vision.

But the Kantians take those sorts of quandaries and say that there isn't anything that we are aware of on the perceptual level that is a perception of the entity the way it really is -- it's only the way we perceive it to be and they try to find out what something really is by no means of perception. In other words, they try to determine what something is via no effable means; though usually that is translated as how it really is with perception abstracted out, hence the rationalism. So, they might say the glass is really a cloud of electrons and protons whirling about as being what it really is, as opposed to you seeing it as clear and hard and heavy.

They want to grasp the reality of the world through no human means.The really die-hard Kantians won't even say that the glass is really a cloud of subatomic particles, because that is a form of human knowledge. They really do think or believe that humans can never know reality either through perception or through thought.

So, I would say your friend is not a die-hard Kantian, at least not yet, because he is talking about the difference between color sight and color blindness, which can only be explained in terms of having different types of eyes. In other words, he is dropping the context of what it means to have eyes in the first place -- that with eyes you would see colors and shapes.

The different ways people of differing eyes sees colors or don't see them is more a proof of perception being strictly causally reactive to the environment. It is not as if once a color blind person understands that his eyes work differently that his conscious mind can compensate for that difference and all of a sudden he sees in color. Kant snuck in a premise that perception is based on the conscious mind, whereas it is quite the opposite in reality.

So, with your senses, you see that the glass is clear, you feel that the glass is hard, you hear it making a noise when it is struck, etc. These are the various perceptual forms in which you are aware of the glass. And they are all real, and really about the glass being what it is in reality.

[Zip]

Can't colour be proven by the wavelengths of the light refracted or something?

I still say that getting him to prove you are insane is the best way to go. You are up against the old trick of proving a negative. He might as well have asked you to prove god doesn't exist.

[JMeganSnow]

Can't colour be proven by the wavelengths of the light refracted or something?

Not exactly--the existence of a real physical difference which most people *perceive* as color can be proven, but if we "directly" perceived those wavelengths then there wouldn't be such a thing as color-blindness. The idea of sensory form is important in communicating this issue. It's also a hair-splitting issue, unfortunately.

[John McVey]

To put it in a nutshell, can someone please prove their/my sanity?

The question is flawed, beause your "obvious response" is the wrong approach. The onus is on others to demonstrate why a questioning of sanity is worth taking seriously.

Sooooo, let me see if I have this right... a guy says that one cannot trust that what one sees is truly there on the grounds that it might be a figment of one's imagination... and he says that one ought therefore go by what others say... who may be a figment of one's imagination... and this guy (who may be a figment of your imagination - or are you of his?) thinks he's fit to question your sanity? Ooooookay. I doubt if it has occurred to him to look at it that way. Try it and see whether he makes a pretzel out of himself or starts to question his premises.

If the latter then this is your opening. Show him that the bottom line is that it is inescapable that existence exists and that one knows it does, so one knows in principle that one can be in direct contact with realiy and know the truth about it. That's what you have to bring to the guy. Either he identifies for himself that existence exists, or he doesn't. If he does then you're in, and then it's a matter of time and decent exposition of Objectivist metaphysics and the antechambers of epistemology.

Now, with that principle alone one is perfectly justified in saying that the onus is on those who say we can't be sure we can have contact with reality to put up or shut up, that they have to give solid arguments in favour of their position and not sit content with baseless accusations. They can't do it, though, they'll never be able to substantiate any of their claims and make them withstand scrutiny. Once you know what you're doing you can demolish anything and everything that the anti-consciousness brigade throws at you. The reason is that once you've got that principle of consciousness of existence, plus the axiom of identity with its corollary of causality, one can then work on the basis that one's sense organs are 100% causal devices and that every single last shred of sensory data is totally the integration of a wide variety of data streams generated by contact with the real world. There ain't no part of sensory data that ain't fully the product of real-world causes - those causes also happen to include the nature of the sensory apparatus itself, and hence is the basis for many medical sciences.

After that, explaining illusions etc is a matter of explaining the difference between sensory-perception and inference. To be a clever-cloggs you can also delve into the nuances of automated perceptual integration and the potential for illusions at that level, such as the Necker Cube etc and all those others that frequently do the rounds in the "cool" email chain letters I'm sure most of us have received a number a times. That is also dealt with in those medical sciences, and again, you have nothing to fear there. For an encore you can round it out by satisfactorily explaining bizarre phenomena like synesthesia and phantom limb syndrome in a way that preserves the integrity of our perceptual contact with reality. And after that, the rest is the main hall of epistemology. All error is error of inference, not of perception. Inference is correctable, and verifiable by reference to perception, via full integration of all available data. Certainty takes work, but it is possible. That is what reason shows you how to obtain.

If, OTOH, he still refuses to accept that existence exists, or goes all pretzel-like, there is nothing you can do to force him into it. Just keep on asking him - so long as you think he is honest - why on earth one should not accept the fact that existence exists, given the evidence? The content of the evidence is irrelevant, it is the mere fact that evidence exists that is sufficient to accept that existence exists. Ask him what reasonable grounds he has to reject it. At a certain point, however, if he keeps up his profession of skepticism on the matter that all one can do is consider him dishonest or that his sanity is indeed compromised, and that, either way, one should just walk away.

JJM

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Can't colour be proven by the wavelengths of the light refracted or something?

Actually, color vision is more complicated than just seeing specific wavelengths of light. A combination of wavelengths can be seen as one color, which is why artists can mix paints together to get different colors. On the subatomic level, there are more than one wavelength of light coming from the pigments, but we see them as being one color because of how our eyes work. Another example is white light, which we know is composed of many wavelengths of light, though we see it as one color -- white.

Besides, the conception of wavelengths are build up from the perceptually self-evident, not the other way around. In other words, wavelengths are epistemological after perception, not before it. It would be like saying we can prove that the glass is clear because we determine the crystalline structure of glass and show that the molecular structure permits light to pass through it, when all one has to do is to look at the glass and see that it is clear.

I'm not sure what Megan is getting at when she says it is a hair splitting issue. Perhaps she can elaborate.

[Space Patroller]

It's this kind of stuff that both gives philosophy a bad name and needs to be addressed and is why psychology and philosphy overlap.

In the first place. "sanity" is a legal term meaning "of sound mind" and used for legal purposes. There is no xx%, it's qualitative. You either are or aren't. Your propositions, if they are complex, may fall on a scale from false to mostly false to mostly true to true. but these are specifics. In fact to have the debate requires a state of mental soundness. Therefore a state of sanity is the norm and to be presumed.

There is a mental health element here. Beofre the Great Revisionism of 1978 that turned much of psychology into a racket, there were levels of disturmbance that ranged from phobias, neuroses, psychoneuroses and psychosies. Also the particular disturbance could be global meaning the person was out of it. or, like Paranoia highly specific; persons wearing rad hats, ditto phobias. falling, cats and night are common and respond very well to behavior therapies.

This gets into one of my pet subjects. mental hygiene and self-induced mental illness. I hold that there are two kinds of mental illness. ENDOGENOUS: a reuslt of some biological or physical event; a goot hit in the head, the dreaded "chemical imbalance" or the like; and EXOGENOUS: induced by psychological means. Please note that things like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Sick House Syndrome, Irritable Bowel Syndrome and some others, unless they are "wastebasket diagnoses"; the result of and incomplete testing process, respond to the Placebo Effect and its opposite the Nocebo Effect, and Cognitive Therapy. There is also a proper function of mentality. How do we judge that? Even at the non-professional level we speak of "being a few bricks short of a load", "being a few planes short of a carrier" and "not playing with a full deck". These generally refer to a person who is not in touch with the external world. This is also in the context of being a grownup. A child has neither the cranial development nor experience to have achieved that state. Indeed much of "growning up" is coming to the implementation of the Primacy of Existence. So if growing up is attaining this as a function of mentality then it must be childish (in the unhealthy sense) to be otherwise). If that is so, then a mentality that is not functioning in the primcacy of existence mode must be unhealthy and therefore insane in that sense of the work. We look down on the self-abosorbed twit. Well isn't 'self-absorbed" the same as "egocentrism", "subjectivism" and "solipsism"? Do you think it is by accident that the Great Tyrannts of the last century were deemed as head cases? Yet they practiced Collectivism and Altruism to the letter and with perfect integrity. The Muslim terrorists practice mysticim with perfect integrity. It is a lack of integrity on the part of modern Christians that keeps them from being violent.

Religion is not the only kind of induced mental illness that is in force.

http://cockpit.spacepatrol.us/09jan.html

and

http://cockpit.spacepatrol.us/09mar.html

Show that the left is fundamentally insane, how and by what process.

while at the adult leve. this should be easily "curable". It is usually the case that this is not implanted at the adult stagel since it would be rejected by a fully-functional adult with a loud WHAP! It is implemented in childhood and gets built into the "operating system [mentality or psycho-epistemology]" by menas of force or sophisticated techniques agains which the normal child has no defenses. Worse, it is not done for evil but for the good by those who have had the same done to them. This is true of religion, "red diaper doper babies" and would be true of Objectivism iif it were tried. A child is just out and out not equipped to deal in such matters or at the level that such matters require. Which is why I think at some time that kind of stuff has to be banned from the civilized world; it is both force and fraud and interferes with the development of true free choice. It also explains why somany young atheists are so angry, even here, which being a reaction to a bad situation, is an impediment to further mental growth. Just the fact that one has broken free of the programming sould be a cause of joy nor does it take away the fact that religion does preach real virutues and has some elements of rational philosophy. Also please note this . much of the research on mind-control cults done in the 1980's showed that the likelihood of joining a cult of this sort matched that of having a strong religious background. It should also be noted that these cults are overwhelmingly mid to far left and the psycholgical and spirtual descendents of the communes of the 1960's. It must really suck to be a Christian Rightist with that kind of tlhing staring at you.

Edited March 23, 2009 by Space Patroller

[musenji]

To him, all of the reality that we see around us every day is really a facade brought about by the sensory manifold, and he really believed that.

Question. Would integration of the senses play into this at all? For example:

"How do I know that that wooden block is a cube, and I'm not just seeing it as one when it's really a sphere?"

"Close your eyes and feel it with your hand."

If we were "creating" reality/perceptions, why should it have to be that the perceptions integrate with each other (in other words, different senses consistently "create" certain types of things in specific ways, e.g. wood makes a certain noise and feels a certain way when you knock it).

If reality is at our senses' whim, why should it need to be consistent at all? If they refer to evolution, that assumes that we need the senses to give us accurate information about the external world, because it is accurate information that leads to survival. In other words if they cite evolution, they grant that reality comes first/is the standard, and that we have adjusted to it, over millions of years.

[DavidOdden]

Not exactly--the existence of a real physical difference which most people *perceive* as color can be proven, but if we "directly" perceived those wavelengths then there wouldn't be such a thing as color-blindness. The idea of sensory form is important in communicating this issue. It's also a hair-splitting issue, unfortunately.

I question the idea of a "sensory form". It's clear that our cognitive access to the outside world world is mediated by our sensory organs, and we do have sensations coming from those organs. (I would also deny that light or sound wavelength is perceivable at all -- you can perceive something else which justifies the concept "wavelength", but since we had no notion of light or sound wavelength until just a few years ago, wavelength itself can't be perceived).

A "form" is a cognitive concept -- it's a kind of representation. The eyeball does not give you representations, so what the eyeball emits isn't a form. It is imaginable that human cognition operates by first and automatically assembling sensations into very primitive sense data, reporting such things as position, amplitude, frequency/wavelength which are the sensory form, and then some kind of reasoning process matches that data to some percept. A better theory, IMO, is that when those sensations enter the mind, they directly give percepts, with no intermediate sensory form.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

A better theory, IMO, is that when those sensations enter the mind, they directly give percepts, with no intermediate sensory form.

I think you are misunderstanding something regarding perceptual forms in Objectivism; the perceptual form is not an intermediary of our awareness of reality, but rather when we are aware of reality we are directly aware of entities and their attributes. On the cellular level, each cell reacts to stimuli itself, but we are not aware of this. What we are aware of is the biological / neurological integration of these inputs organized together so that we can be aware of the baseball, and not a white pixel here and another white pixel there, with a few red pixels scattered in there and then have to somehow put it all together into the awareness of the baseball. We see and touch the baseball, and are aware of it qua entity directly via our senses. There is no intermediary.

Someone else mentioned why can't we use the various senses to confirm one another, but if you accept the idea that the sense per se or qua their nature distort real reality, then you are asking to verify a distortion via another distortion. One has to accept the senses axiomatically, or not at all, though not accepting them at all is self-contradictory, since it is our only immediate grasp of existence.

By the way, I would not use the Kantian terminology of a sensory manifold because of all the philosophical baggage that comes with that term; including the assertion that the sensory manifold tangles inputs.

[DavidOdden]

I think you are misunderstanding something regarding perceptual forms in Objectivism; the perceptual form is not an intermediary of our awareness of reality, but rather when we are aware of reality we are directly aware of entities and their attributes.

That is pretty much what I said: there are no sensory forms, mental things that mediate between perception and the external world.

[Randroid]

Thus, if we can't be sure that we're sane, we can't be 100% sure of any facts of reality. Thus, the only way to have a common standard is to look toward the majority's view of what is "sane" or "real".

So, I'm supposed to just assume I'm insane, just to be on the safe side? If so, why should I assume that the "majority view" is not also a figment of my imagination? Your senses and your mind are all you have to go on. Might as well.

I once had a philosophical discussion with a friend, years ago, and I made the exact same argument your friend did. He may come to reason.

[Grames]

I was having a debate with a friend of mine, whose a semi-kantian subjectivist. He proposed that we cannot be 100% sure that we are sane, or that we're interpreting reality correctly. Thus, if we can't be sure that we're sane, we can't be 100% sure of any facts of reality. Thus, the only way to have a common standard is to look toward the majority's view of what is "sane" or "real".

This is skepticism. Trivially easy to refute. Self-refuting, in fact.

[wilicyote]

To put it in a nutshell, can someone please prove their/my sanity?

Thanks.

To whoever pulls this off, I'm next in line.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

That is pretty much what I said: there are no sensory forms, mental things that mediate between perception and the external world.

But that isn't what Objectivism means by a perceptual form. We do not look at a perceptual form and then have to interpret that as representing something in reality. Perceptual form basically means the manner in which we are aware of reality via the senses and the nervous system. For example, you see this as one entity on the screen in a certain manner because you have color vision, that is the form in which you are aware of the . If you were blind, you wouldn't see it as a smilie face; and if you had only black and white receptors, you wouldn't see it as yellow. Your normal vision automatically organizes the sensory inputs so that you see it as one entity on the screen. This is what Objectivism means by the perceptual form -- the specific manner in which you are aware of reality due to your senses and their automatic integration via the nervous system (including the visual cortex).

In other words, we know that the smilie face is composed of individual pixels arranged in a certain way, but we don't see the pixels as individual color dots, we see the smilie face.

[DavidOdden]

But that isn't what Objectivism means by a perceptual form.

Why are you talking about "perceptual forms"? Please read my post, and tell me where I ever spoke of "perceptual forms". Please pay attention to the point that I actually addressing, about supposed sensory forms which mediate between percepts and external existence.

Also, please remind me where Rand speaks of a "perceptual form". If that's a term that you made up, could you explain it to me in terms of Rand's epistemology?

[JMeganSnow]

I question the idea of a "sensory form". It's clear that our cognitive access to the outside world world is mediated by our sensory organs, and we do have sensations coming from those organs. (I would also deny that light or sound wavelength is perceivable at all -- you can perceive something else which justifies the concept "wavelength", but since we had no notion of light or sound wavelength until just a few years ago, wavelength itself can't be perceived).

Yes, yes, we don't see the wavelength: our sensory apparatus can distinguish between DIFFERENT wavelengths which we perceive as color after it's been chewed by our brain. Peikoff talks about sensory form very briefly in OPAR. He's just making the distinction that because our physical sensory apparatus differs from the apparati of other people (because, say, they have fewer functioning cones or whatever), we may not see the same object in an identical fashion, but we are still capable of determining that it IS the same object by abstracting away the incidental differences. But there is still sensory form because the brain is receiving different sensory data.

I would not say that we get *sensations* from our sensory organs, I would say that our sensory organs provide us with sensory data which has a particular form based on the physical nature of those organs. Actually translating this data into a sensation (and then integrating it into percepts and eventually concepts) is done by the brain. As evidence of this, I point to the fact that people can still experience "sensation" in, say, a severed limb even though they are receiving no sense *data*--the part of their brain that would normally translate the data is wanking itself and producing phantom pain. So I think a distinction can and should be made between sensory data and the sensation itself.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

I think David Odden and I are talking past one another. I agree that when we observe reality, we are not observing a type of mental movie screen; if that is what you mean by a sensory form as an intermediary between our mind and reality, I agree that doesn't exist. However, it is a fact of reality that we observe reality in a certain manner due to the fact that we have sensory organs of a certain type and a nervous system and brain of a certain type. This specificity of our means of awareness of reality on the perceptual level is referred to as the perceptual form. I mentioned it earlier because the original posting in this thread talked about if we see something as blue how do we know it isn't really yellow? Things like perceptual forms -- colors, shapes, weight, smells, smoothness, etc. -- are all due to the interaction of reality with our sensory equipment, and we are aware of those facts of reality in a specific manner. In OPAR, Dr. Peikoff talks about the forms of perception, and that these forms are neither in reality apart from the senses nor in the mind apart from reality, but are rather due to the interaction of reality with our sensory equipment.

So, when I presented the smilie face and asked you to observe it, and you see it as one yellow round thing on the screen, that comes about because our sensory equipment automatically organizes the evidence of the senses so that we are aware of reality on the perceptual level rather than on the sensory level. On the sensory level, those pixels would be individual dots; but because we have the equipment to observe things on the perceptual level, we see it as one yellow round thing.

Kant claimed that because there is a processing involved in perception, that it cannot be trusted to present reality the way it really is. Objectivism rejects this because the sensory processing is strictly causal and is not open to mental volition -- i.e. one cannot decide to observe this smilie face as a green square thing. We do not have volitional control over our sensory equipment, like, say, a computer algorithm that would process it several different ways open to volition. And because we don't have that capability, the evidence of the senses is axiomatic.