Unit 2: How can we ever achieve certainty? Sensory Perception

If you had to choose one sense to give up permanently, which would it be and why? Which sense do you feel gives you the most accurate perception of the world? Journal 9/15

“Perception is active inquiry, not passive reception.” (Ruben Abel) Awareness of something through our five senses “We must cook the raw sensation before we can digest it. We must place sensations in a context, draw inferences, use concepts, project, select, learn, impose structure; in doing this, we rely on convention, on tradition, on accepted paradigms, hypotheses, beliefs and social pressures.”—Ruben Abel (Man is the Measure, chapter 4) What’s perception?

Pressure Itch Temperature Thirst Hunger Direction Time Muscle tension Nocioception (pain) Proprioception (the ability to tell where your body parts are, relative to other body parts) Equilibrioception (the ability to keep your balance and sense body movement)

“common sense realism” Perception is passive and straightforward Accurate picture of reality Act of observation does not affect what is observed Adequate for dealing with everyday life “common sense realism”

Qualities and senses Sensation—provided by the world or ourselves? John Locke qualities are primary IN the objects (shape, extension, solidity, motion) George Berkeley all sense perception can only occur within me “To be is to be perceived.” Things are combinations of sensory ideas Galileo "I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on reside in consciousness. Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be annihilated.“ **Who would believe that our senses are ultimately reliable? Qualities and senses

Sense receptors identify stimulus (taste buds, eyes, nerve endings) Brain translates stimulus into sensation Higher brain function filters, processes, categorizes information Sensory process

Perceptual Illusions Illusion—from illudere, “to mock,” Types of illusions Context Figure and ground Visual grouping Expectation Perceptual Illusions

Why? We tend to highlight certain aspects of what we see Figure and ground

Why? We make contextual judgments daily in order to survive.

Why? Natural human tendency to group perceptual experiences. Faced with ambiguity—humans will seek out pattern Gestalt Apophenia Visual grouping

Expectation Why? Expectations influence how we see things. “misperception” Again, partly dependent upon the “coherence” theory of truth Expectation

http://www. ted. com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things?language=en#t-525195 Sensory Priming

Count the passes….

Consider the following “knowledge questions Consider the following “knowledge questions.” Choose one to answer in an in-depth response in your journal. You may consider any subject/AOK.  1. If our brain filters out ‘irrelevant’ information, how might our expectations of a real life situation influence what we come to know about it? Use at least one example of this phenomenon to support your point. 2. How might our paradigms shape what our brain interprets as important? Use at least one real world example of this phenomenon to support your point. 3. If what we know is dependent on context, what implications does that have for our knowledge? Use at least one real world example of this phenomenon to support your point. Journal Break!