What is perception?

 

"As the sun climbs across the horizon, the boy starts the long walk to the well. Slowly he is joined by other children with determined faces carrying plastic buckets. Although it is a long and arduous walk to fetch the water, none of the children grumble. Water is life, water is precious; a lesson learnt very early in their young lives."

"In a suburb of City X, the automatic sprinklers turn on as the paperboy throws the rolled up news paper on the well manicured  lawn. In the kitchen the kettle is boiling, the dishwasher mumbling, and in the laundry the washing machine is humming. Upstairs junior is having a shower in the children's bathroom while dad is having his in the on-suite. Katie is brushing her teeth with the tap running, while mom is rinsing a few delicates in the basin."

Water is water, in one instance perhaps perceived as a given, something that just is there in the taps, in another situation it may be perceived as something without which life isn't possible. (Of course, human beings, no matter what, where, who, or his/her perception of water, depend on it to stay alive.)

Perception, is one of those many ambiguous words we commonly use. ("Perception may be thought of as the orientation of your internal state of mind," says the Urban Dictionary) One way of viewing perception is to equate it with

our sensory experience of the world around us and how we then organise, identify, and interpret that information so we may understand it.

"You were rude to me," she said. "What do you mean?" he asked, "I was only telling you the truth".

"Well, it may be the truth to you, but it isn't to me!" she answered angrily.

"You said that the new doctor is really nice, I feel that he is really insensitive".

"I thought you said it was a short walk to the station, I hate to see what a long walk is for you then."

Perhaps in simple terms one could define it as such: There is a Perceiver (a person becoming aware of something), there is a Situation/Event/Person/Issue, and there is an Interpretation of the sensation/experience by the Perceiver.

The mechanisms that form our perceptions however, operate mostly below the level of consciousness, so basically we cannot sense how we sense. Consider optical illusions for instance, your eyes will have you convinced something is absolutely one thing, but the mind will tell you that it isn't. There are amputees that are sure that they can still "feel" their amputated limbs. (Phantom limb syndrome) How can we determine when our sense information is accurate?

Often our obliviousness to our act of interpretation of information, leave us insensitive to the possibility of error.

Is what we "see" what we want to "see", or are we oblivious to information we prefer not to "see"?

Is feeling that we "know" something the same as actually knowing?

Often when we claim to know something, we exclude the possibility that we may be wrong, however,

thing is, what method do we apply to know what we know?

Since we can't sense our minds reconstructing memories/information across the many regions of our brain, we may encounter the same problems with our memory that we have with perception. (Optical illusions, phantom limbs etc.)

We may know that the earth is round, that the stars can still be seen long after they have "died", that we are nano-specs in the sight of the cosmos, yet we stand on ground that is flat, watch stars that are stationary with the apex of heaven right above us; hence our perception may become at odds with what we know. On a quantum level, what does the world we know look like, feel like?

Perhaps perception can be defined as an "attitude/understanding based on what is observed or thought".

Most of us are prone to regard the ideas in our heads as direct reflections of reality, and interactions with others who challenge this notion may be asked to: "Get real!" "Check your facts!" "What planet are you living on" et cetera.

Before the age of five most of us are Naïve Realists (=the mind and the world, never diverge from each other), but we "grow out of it". We learn to determine what is probable based on our prior experience of the world; we choose the most likely answer to any given question based on our experiences from comparable situations.

Problem may be though, that much of our biases/belief formation does not take place in, nor leave any traces in conscious thought, so our biases become virtually invisible and exculpatory to us.

"Look at that kid with the hoodie, bet he's got something to hide why else would he have the hood up?"

(People wearing hoodies are suspect)

"Sheeesh, that woman in that short dress is asking for trouble."

(Women wearing short dresses are purposefully provocative)

For some of us "to know" something is akin to scientific method: observations leading to a hypotheses (must be testable)

the hypotheses are subject to experiments (results must be reproducible), outcome is a theory which is logically consistent, empirically tested.

If science says something is so, then we know it is so. For some of us.

For some of us to know is: I can touch it, see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, feel it...I know it to be so.

Yet others may conclude: I have researched, studied and been instructed, I have thought about this....I know it to be so.

For some of us, perception is knowing, for others knowing is perception, yet some of us may conclude that "gut instincts" is knowing on a deeper level. On the other hand, for some of perhaps it is: "That's how I feel, so it is real."

My hunch is that for most of us, its a question of using a mixture of all the above.

I find it interesting that we use "scientifically proven" as some sort of guarantee for knowing (beyond scrutiny) since science have made some giant blunders. In the eyes of science, by knowing what is not so, we edge our way toward what is so.

For some of us perhaps perception is not about what is "real", but what is real to us....not about what is considered to be "true" as much as what we consider to be true to us.

Example: Your car brakes down on the way home. You find yourself stranded in a location you have never even stopped in before, little less at night. As far as you can see, there is no public phone and your cell phone has run out of battery.

You realise that you have forgotten to get petrol and that the tank is empty. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a kid in a hoodie taps on your side window, what do you do? What if the person tapping on the window is a priest, a policeman, a drunk, a nurse, a soldier, a person walking the dog, would you respond the same way?

 "There are things known, and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception." (Aldous Huxley)

 "Anybody who's ever gone through a hard time - any outsider's perception, no matter how much information they're given, they have no idea what the person's life is like." (Amy Grant)

 

"There is no truth, only perception." (Gustave Flaubert)