Is this something even achievable? Is there even a reason to attempt to understand it or do we just watch the shadows in the cave? Why do other animals experience reality in vastly different ways some even more complex than humans?
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No, perfect knowledge and understanding and mastery (whatever exactly that even is; “perfect” is often a product of our own imaginations) are not attainable. However, there’s value in the exercise of learning knowledge and skills even if the realization of those things are less than perfect. Such efforts have greatly improved my life and the lives of those around me. Are those lives “perfect”? Nope. So what. They are a source of enjoyment and accomplishment just the same.
There is no reason other than biology why some animals have different and in some ways richer experiences.
The perfect truly is the enemy of the good. You seem to have some contrived idealism you got from somewhere or other that’s ruining your enjoyment of life. As someone who comes from a hyper-idealistic background the tried to impose a triumphalist narrative upon me (Christian fundamentalism), I can tell you, it’s a dead end street. Better to look at life as it actually is than as you wish it to be.
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I fear that the use of “perfect” was misinterpreted here as I meant understanding reality at its whole which is what I meant as perfect. Our understanding and experience of reality isn’t reality itself I would argue as to assume otherwise gets into a whole variety of weird philosophy ideas that can be unsafe. I would like to think pursuing an understanding of all reality isn’t fully necessary for human survival but we have as humans a stong urge to get there for some evolutionary reason. It’s just a matter of what those reasons are and if there worth it as a whole of humanity.
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Which animals would you say view things in a more complex way than humans?
Well depends on the senses right? Is we’re speaking on sight alone dragonflies can see shades of colors and movements that are virtually nonexistent to the human eye. If we’re speaking of smell a bloodhound has us beat all the way. The experience of reality is different depending on the being experiencing it but the colors dragonflies see exist just not to us or the complexity of smells exist just they can only be experienced by specifically bloodhounds. I mean all a tic can experience is heat to find blood for the most part. But if reality is one existing constant thing then why is every animal (humans included) experiencing it differently? And more importantly are we completely wrong in attempting to explain it? I’m grounding this argument in only science in hopes not to divulge into religious debate as it doesn’t shed light on this subject in anyway.
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Yes, I question how you use the term “perfect.”
I don’t believe that perfect understanding is possible.
I see human knowledge as something akin to a fractal mathematical design . . . as our knowledge gets more and more refined over time.
I also believe that the Uncertainty Principle puts a theoretical limit on what we are able to know and understand, as there is a “graininess” to the Universe that is like the pixels that compose a television image.
If we wish to consider pure mathematics, we can never have perfect knowledge of a number like pi . . . because pi is irrational and transcendental.
This means that if we convert the entire mass of the Universe into a giant supercomputer and gave it the task of calculating pi . . . it would still never have a complete answer.
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We will only ever perceive a part of / aspect of reality. We can’t be everywhere, we have limited senses, limited time, limited economic resources. But the good news is we can perceive much of it and we can leverage tools like the scientific method and the stored knowledge that humanity has accumulated to understand it better than ever.
Reality is not actually different for a bloodhound for example. It’s just that its perception of reality has a different emphasis. My dogs definitely experience our walks much more through smell than I do; I am pretty sure they have some synesthesia going on as well. But that doesn’t mean the smells don’t exist in my reality. I simply am not as keenly attuned to them. Similarly, that they don’t have the same proportion of rod and cone cells in their retinas, and therefore are partially color blind, doesn’t mean those colors don’t exist – they just don’t perceive them. But they can see better in the dark – doesn’t mean that wall doesn’t exist for me as I will still run into it because I can’t see it 
Even with humans, there’s a wide variety of responses to the same situation depending on what they are paying attention to due to personal, cultural, and other variations.
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Because every animal is equipped differently.
Also id argue no animal experiences reality in the complex way we do because our brains are more complex and that is the thing making something of what we sense.
For example an owl might be able to see a chess board or some land more clearly but we will have a more complex outlook on these things, not just thinking about what these things look like but how to use them, imagination, forward planning, memory, pattern recognition and so on.
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So we agree entirely then? Thats great!
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I feel that you should look into the use of tools by other animals they clearly show they’re capable of future planning. If a squirrel was incapable of future planning how would it plan to survive winter? Thats something that is inate not drawn from complexity emotional intelligence is what complexity would bring but even dogs are capable of that. Look we’re all just monkeys in shoes!
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You asked why, if reality is one constant thing, animals experience it differently, which I (mis?)understood you to be saying that if animals experience reality differently, it’s not “one constant thing”. So that is what I addressed. If we agree then that’s great but your original question probably needs rephrasing.
This addresses that i agree with what you are saying in the sence we are describing that reality and the perception of it are two entirely different things. The quote in question was asking why they are different i suppose. Like i said this treads on dangerous lines of thinking.
I suppose i would also say it was a question of why evolution didn’t push every living thing in the same direction to fully grasp all things or maybe thats humanities end goal I simply don’t know.
Its not that theyre not capable of future planning and not at all complex, but surely theres levels to this.
I used examples of land and a chess board. Just going with the example of land. There is more complexity involved in agriculture, engineering, planning years in advance, these things arent innate human instincts like burying nuts in the ground.
Im not an expert in measuring depths of experience but id imagine our brains are more complex and capable of vastly more complex exeriences than other animals.
There might be things we never experience that other animals do, but theres probably more variation and complexity to what we experience.
Things evolve to survive and breed.
Being able to fully grasp everything and be intelligent is sometimes actually a drawback for this.
To my mind it is more strictly a matter of evolutionary adaptation. Not every species has the same environment or needs. Evolution doesn’t “seek” or “push”, it is simply a dumb response. Also that response is not related to quality of perception or enjoyment, but only to that which facilitates survival long enough to conceive, bear and nurture young to maturity. That is the ONLY thing that evolution “cares” about.
And everything is a tradeoff. So for example black humans have partially evolved to be malaria-resistant in the tropics but that makes them prone to sickle cell anemia, too.
I can’t imagine a scenario in which evolution would have pushed, e.g., dogs and humans in the same direction. It pushed them in the direction that increased the species population, and just by virtue of being quadrapeds vs bipeds, there would be differences in what would matter there. And once there’s one diverse adaptation (say, keen sense of smell) that would influence future adaptations. It is like there’s an individual causal path for each species.
If evolution pushed everything to some common point of convergence, there would be no diversity. Everything would end up “apes with shoes”, or maybe “dolphins with fins” but what has actually happened is “infinite diversity in infinite combinations” to put it in Star Trek terms.
None of this means there isn’t one objective reality; if an individual had all the tools to measure and perceive it accurately then regardless what species they belonged to, they would deduce the same natural “laws” from the observed patterns as anyone else.
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Can be two different things, not necessarily are two different things. What helps humans understand reality best, are methods that are designed to remove as much subjective bias as possible.
Obviously different species have evolved ways of perceiving reality that wasn’t concerned with how objectively accurate that perception was / is, evolution “selects” for one thing and one thing only, and that is survival, or at least advantages that help species and individuals to survive long enough to reproduce.
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Gives us a clue how deadly malaria is that such a trait would be selected.
Cerebral malaria has a 20% fatality rate even with treatment. Severe malaria is nearly always fatal when not treated.
Since it’s easily preventable there’s a modern perception that it’s not so serious, but that doesn’t reflect its historical severity. Since malaria has been endemic in the tropics all along, I would expect people living there to have had evolutionary or at least epigenetic pressures to compensate for it. Honestly I don’t know more than that.