PERCEPTION

A Way Of Knowing

He who has been bitten by a snake fears a piece of string

Persian proverb

Main points of perception

The Mind plays an active role in Perception. That there remains a need for a world out there, even with the subjective turn in experience, i.e. have a right to an option- to have ones own view- also not a guarantee that not every option is right. THAT FROM THE STUDY OF PERCEPTION KNOWLEGDE ISSUES EMERGE ( new unanswered problems emerge)

 A short explanation goes something like this. When we look at an object, we can normally see both fine detail and coarse detail. However when we are close, the fine detail will dominate, and when we are further away, we lose the fine detail, and see more of the coarse detail.

 Both of the faces you see above are hybrids each face is actually a combination of two faces. The left hand face shows an angry women in fine detail, but within the picture there is also coarse detail of the calm face. Move away, and you lose the fine (angry) detail, and just see the coarse (calm) detail. The right hand face shows the calm face in fine detail, and the angry face in coarse detail. This is based on work by Dr Aude Oliva (MIT) and Dr Philippe Schyns (University of Glasgow).

Perception, a process by which organisms interpret and organize sensation to produce a meaningful experience of the world.

 Sensation usually refers to the immediate, relatively unprocessed result of stimulation of sensory receptors in the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or skin. Perception, on the other hand, better describes ones ultimate experience of the world and typically involves further processing of sensory input. In practice, sensation and perception are virtually impossible to separate, because they are part of one continuous process.

The common understanding of Perception

There is an awareness of the external world; this is intuitive , direct & without doubt; it is variable in quality and accuracy, selection and degree; perception yields knowledge of objects & properties of things. Through perception Judgments are made and truth claims are tested.

We perceive the world through our 5 senses. Our 5 senses are: Sight Hearing Touch Smell Taste

Sense Perception is an important dimension of our understanding of the World The channel of communication between ourselves and the outside world Its function and scope should be examined and critically evaluated

There are differing views on the role of our five senses towards the acquisition of knowledge

Common-Sense Realism: Perception is a

passive and relatively straightforward process which gives us an accurate picture of reality

Common Sense Realism

The way we perceive the world mirrors the way the world is

Sense perception is the active, selective and interpretive process of recording or becoming conscious of the external world

 Perception can be thought of consisting of two distinct parts Sensation: The part provided by the world around us Interpretation: The part provided by our minds

Questions to Discuss
1. To what extent do our senses give us knowledge of the world as it really is? 2. What role does what we expect to see, or are used to seeing, play in what we observe? 3. What is meant by the saying knowledge is the true organ of sight, not the eyes? 4. Do you think perception is a more important source of knowledge in some subjects rather than others?

BUT THERE ARE ILLUSIONS

Perception is never certain, never final. Many appearances are not of bodies but are private objects of awareness; sense experience itself. There are dreams, phantoms limbs and hallucinations which cannot be identified with real properties of objects.

Supporting the role of perception Direct Perception

Some people would say that it is not a form of thinking, in that one's ideas do not affect the process. Perception is automatic and independent of will. In this view perception is viewed as objective. Direct Realism Theory of perception according which we perceive material objects directly, without the mediation of ideas or sensory representations. Although it is also called "nave" realism, this view often requires a sophisticated defense, especially in its attempts to account for the occurrence of hallucinations and perceptual error.

Challenging the reliability of perception Indirect Perception

Idealism Belief that only mental entities are real, so that physical things exist only in the sense that they are perceived. Representationalism Theory of perception according to which we are aware of objects only through the mediation of the ideas that represent them. Helps explain illusions but leads to debate about the Phenomenonalism Belief that the immediate objects of sensation provide no evidence for the existence of anything beyond themselves. Physical objects have no reality apart from our individual, private perceptual experiences of them.

Look at the middle column.

 In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. Methods of studying perception range from essentially biological or physiological approaches, through psychological approaches through the philosophy of mind.

 That is, we sense the objective world, but our sensations map to percepts, and these percepts are provisional. A percept is a philosophical term which roughly means an individual's observation/ perception of something external to one's self; more specifically, the resultant of perceiving. Just as one object can give rise to multiple percepts, so an object may fail to give rise to any percept at all: if the percept has no grounding in a person's experience, the person may literally not perceive it.

 This confusing ambiguity of perception is exploited in human technologies such as camouflage, for example by Peacock butterflies, whose wings bear eye markings that birds respond to as though they were the eyes of a dangerous predator

 The eyespots are reminiscent of those on the feathers of the peacock, hence the name. The eyespots are exposed when the butterfly is disturbed by a potential predator (such as birds) in an antipredator display in which the butterflies flick their wings open and make a hissing noise. The open wings create a false perception of another predator

(note how a glance at the image can give the impression of a cat staring) and the effect is strong enough to deter the predator from eating it.

Impossible ring

Rubin's Vase

This ambiguous figure demonstrates our ability to shift between figure and ground which provides the basis for the two interpretations of these figures

In this famous ambiguous figure it is possible to see either a young woman or an old woman. It is a drawing and if you examine it in detail it will probably be rather hard to decide what all of the different components represent in each of the interpretations. Nose, hat, feather, ear, etc. are identifiable...but you're mind seems to be imposing these interpretations on the drawing rather than being compelled by the "perceptual evidence."

Who is the tallest?

Monks or water fall ????

Portrait or man or woman with a baby

Perception - Using our senses

knowledge is derived from senseexperience

Empiricism the theory that all

What our senses can perceive:SIGHT

1% of the electromagnetic spectrum. (We sense radio waves as sound, infrared as heat, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays as damage to our cells).

SOUND
Frequencies between 16 and 20,000 Hz.

TOUCH
Varies according to the sensitivity of different parts of our bodies.Two points are perceived as distinct at a distance of 1mm on our tongues, and 70mm on our backs.

SMELL
Molecules that are soluble in our nasal mucus.

TASTE
A slight sweetness is better perceived using the tip of the tongue.

How reliable are our senses?

What influences how reliable they are? What is red? Is it the same to all of us? red? Which sense is the most reliable?

How do we know whether we have the right interpretation of our senses?

Has the use of ICT blurred the differences between simulation and reality?

Perceiving words
Liddle Mees Muffitt Saa Tonner Tufford Eaton Herr Corzon Waye Winn Alongo Kammer Spyra Unda Sathe Don Beese Eidher Ann Frydmann Mies Muffitt Taw Way

Little Miss Muffitt Sat on a tuffett Eating her curds and whey When along came a spider And sat down beside her And frightened Miss Muffitt away

Perceiving pictures

Optical illusions in art have not only been created in modern times. The next picture is by Guiseppe Arcimboldo, an Italian painter of the

16th century.

M. C. Escher Mosaic II, 1957

M.C.Escher Day and night, 1938

What can you see here?

What influences perception?

Attention (we cannot process everything that reaches our senses) Convention and cultural aspects (e.g. right angles, perspective) Belief/language (to what extent do we perceive what is incongruent to our past experiences?) Expectations (familiar sights)

To organize sense perceptions in our brains we require, at the very least, the following learned factors:

inference
concepts

experience
context

interpretation

But Knowledge issues

The issue in perception is HOW DOES ONE CONNECT THE KNOWING SELF WITH THE WORLD, THE OBJECT KNOWN Knowledge is limited by species specific conditions and appearance is no longer equal to reality. The problem of knowledge can be stated as THE WORLD IS NOT AS IT SEEMS TO BE. An epistemologistcal paradox emerges: we cannot detach ourselves. Lets find out why????????

Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

 Three prisoners have been chained deep inside a cave for their whole life. They are chained so tightly that all they ever see or experience are the grotesque shadows cast on a wall from a fire that is burning behind them. This is the only reality they have ever known. Then one day, a prisoner is released. He is blinded by the light outside the cave and astonished to see a completely new reality of people, animals, and objects casting these shadows into the cave. He rushes back to tell the prisoners the news, but to his dismay, the prisoners do not believe his fantastic stories of the world outside of the cave. For the shadows on the wall are the only reality the prisoners have ever known, and therefore, to them, that is all that will ever exist.

 The Allegory of the Cave is one of Greek philosopher Platos most well known works. It is an extended allegory, where humans are depicted as being imprisoned by their bodies and what they perceive by sight only. In the Allegory of the Cave Plato plays with the notion of what would occur if people suddenly encountered the divine light of the sun, and perceived true reality. Plato sums up his views in an image of ignorant humanity, trapped in the depths and not even aware of its own limited perspective. The rare individual escapes the limitations of that cave and, through a long, tortuous intellectual journey, discovers a higher realm, a true reality.

 Imagine human beings living in an underground, cave like dwelling, with an entrance a long way up, which is both open to the light and as wide as the cave itself. Theyve been there since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered, able to see only in front of them, because their bonds prevent them from turning their heads around. Light is provided by a fire burning far above and behind them. Also behind them, but on higher ground, there is a path stretching between them and the fire. Imagine that along this path a low wall has been built, like the screen in front of puppeteers above which they show their puppets . . . Then also imagine that there are people along the wall, carrying all kinds of artifacts that project above itstatues of people and other animals, made out of stone, wood, and every material. And, as youd expect, some of the carriers are talking, and some are silent. (514a1-515a3) Who, after all, are the puppeteers? Why do they deceive their fellow cave-dwellers?

Platos Cave and The Matrix

In The Matrix the moment in the film when Neo is released from his prison and made to grasp the truth of his life and the world is similar to when the captive moves outside the cave to see the real world. The account above roughly captures that turning point in the 1999 film, and yet it is drawn from an image crafted almost twenty-four hundred years ago by the Greek philosopher, Plato. The Matrix, by contrast, the two worlds are far less continuous with one another. The substance of lives inside the Matrix is supplied in mental states almost entirely cut off from this reality. (Ironically, the real world in The Matrix is very like the world inside the cave.)

Questions that Platos cave and the Matrix ask

What knowledge Neo attains that operates in him like the knowledge of the Platonic form of the cave? What does Neo know only after great difficulty but also whose truth is fundamental? What object is grasped by Neos intellect that he understands to be the condition of his knowing anything else? What knowledge enables him to be productive, to be a savior of himself and others?.

 It is nothing more than proper selfunderstanding. In both The Matrix and in the Cave, there is a single item the knowledge of which makes the knower more integrated and more powerful, and for Neo it is self-knowledge. IT IS SELF PERCEPTION!!!!!!!!!!!

Platos idea of Perception

Is that perception is not a process of putting knowledge into empty minds, but of making people realize that ;which they already know. This notion that truth is somehow embedded in our minds was also powerfully influential for Plato.

Final question
What is stronger ? Sight, smell or touch?