How do you know, to believe?

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I’ve heard of an experiment done on cats, to study the processes of sight. The experimenters took extra care to be sure that the cats, as kittens, (their visual perception developing,) never encountered vertical lines. No vertical stripes, no vertical corners or edges or surfaces, etc: no vertical. In the controlled environment, the cats were perfectly normal. Once they were brought into the actual world, where this physical ‘concept’ of vertical is very much present, they couldn’t see it. They’d just walk into things, their vision was so distorted/vertical-blind. Many of the cats actually took to continually tilting their heads, making vertical respectively horizontal and so emerge in their vision. Their eyes never adjusted: developing, they never needed to see vertical lines, and now it was too late. They never would. It may have been horizontal they couldn’t see… I can’t remember.

Our ability to perceive seems so flimsy already. To hear that the actual mechanics of something as seemingly concrete as sight can be so erroneous, so oblivious…. is jarring. And yet I find myself believe it, or at least give it serious consideration.

I heard about this particular vision study a while ago; I mention it now because it came back to my mind today. I hope it frames this question better than my otherwise attempts to describe, inevitably vague, would have… I believe it does, I don’t know…
We construct our understanding of the reality that surrounds us, (I believe,) and hope we’re more or less correct, and with our senses think we see, that we’re more or less correct…. and we believe…

When I say belief, I mean the base, core, assumptions you carry with you. From mundane, uncontroversial, practically instinct, to the ones you had to sweat through aquiring. It doesn’t have to be theistic; it can be. (This question isn’t a religious one, at least not specifically. It also isn’t specifically about what you believe, as much as the processes that got you there, that you’re aware of. Although, the what can effect the how.)

Do you know what you believe? How you believe? What makes some things believable to you and others not—what do you find you rely on to help filter through the mass of human concept and personal perception, and why that/those?

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