Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

Maritte is a Belgium artist full of wisdom in his artworks. One of his famous painting has lingered in my mind strangely and it has been more than a decade since I saw the painting in an art class in Lyon.Rene Magritte Portrait

The image is a pipe, but the text says, "This is not a pipe." It is a painting of a pipe or more precisely, representation of a pipe in Magritte's mind. Did he paint the pipe as he was observing one or recalling one he saw some time before? Light and his sensory functions must play a decisive role in his representation of a pipe, which is not actually important. Much of the focus goes to the representation is not the "real" object itself. 

How people perceive the "objective" tangible world is subjective. I personally think it is marvelous that human beings come to a common ground and "mistakenly" say this is a pipe at the sight of Magritte's painting.  

It's the same with language. Image and language provoke our imagination. We see what we think we see.
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But before I jump into a conclusion by saying that images are "deceptive," the images below can show that the brain tends to work hand in hand with visual inputs to generate meanings. The brain masterminds  the "deception." 

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