The blog will pick a word of the week, to share & explore the selected word. Here’s an expression for the word – perception. Can we perceive the world truly as it is? Perception is the process by which we interpret & make sense of all the sensory information from the world around us. It’s how our brain organises, identifies & understands the inputs it receives from sight, hearing, touch, taste & smell. It’s how we experience our world & how our mind makes meaning of those experiences.
Perception is strongly influenced by our attention or focus, life experiences, expectations, culture, beliefs & emotions. “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite” – William Blake. How do we interpret our reality & why do two people experience the same events differently? Can we be certain of what we perceive? Is perception a reliable foundation for knowledge? Do we perceive experiences directly as they are or indirectly through our mental filters? “The mind is a neural computer, fitted by evolution with tricks & hacks to solve the challenge of perception” – Steve Pinker.
Perception is not passive, it is reliant on an active engagement with our environment & ourselves. It helps us understand consciousness, reality, emotion & knowledge. “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” – Marcel Proust. “The more I see, the less I know for sure” – John Lennon.
Plato believed that true knowledge comes intellectually from the world of forms, not from our senses. “Reality is created by the mind. We can change our reality by changing our mind.” According to Aristotle, perception is the starting point of knowledge. We perceive objects directly which leads to knowledge through reason. “Perception is the reception of the form of sensible things without their matter.” Descartes shared, “I think, therefore I am.” Berkeley said, “to be, is to be perceived.” Physical objects don’t exist independently of our perception, all reality is mind dependent.
Hume said that all knowledge comes from impressions & ideas. “The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions make their appearance.” Kant shared that perception is structured by the mind. “We see things not as they are, but as we are.” McDowell thought that perception can be both rational & intuitive. Perception is an exciting concept & phenomenon. “The whole world is a work of art & we are the artists of our own perception” – Virginia Wolfe.
