Sense of Perception

Sense Perception

Our five senses are important sources of knowledge that actively structure our knowledge about the world rather than passively reflect reality. They are ‘the gates and windows’ of the mind that controls communication between the outside world, and ourselves presenting us with different variety of the world. Using our senses to be aware of things is defined as our Perception. We do not realize that perception plays a bigger role than what it may seem, playing a more active process in our everyday lives.

There are differences in the relative importance we attach For example, the great majority of people would be more willing to give up their sense of smell, and least willing to give up their sight. We adjust ourselves greatly on our vision that we identify it with knowledge. Our smell is sometimes called the mute sense as we have a limited amount of vocabulary to describe a smell in contrast to sight. However, we perhaps take our sense of smell for granted. Our sense of smell has more direct route to our brains than of our other senses. Smells are able to trigger powerful memories as well as how we select our choices in life. This could explain why the perfume industry is worth a significant amount.

According to the theory of Empiricism, all knowledge is based on perceptual experience. The fallibility of perception is significant to issues in the real world. It plays a key role in almost all areas of subject matter such as when an observation is needed to test a validity of a source, eyewitness accounts in history and many others. As mentioned before, perception is a passive and relatively straightforward process, which gives us an accurate picture of reality known as Common sense realism. We trust that our senses must somewhat be a reliable tool, because we have survived so far relying on it.

Perception consists of two elements, sensation and interpretation, but we are often not consciously aware of the concluding element. The element of sensation is provided by the world, whereas interpretation is provided by or minds. The way we see something depends partly on the context in which we see it, usually not being aware of the interpretation by our minds of the sensations that is received into our senses. An example of this is that we have a natural tendency to look for meaning in what we see and to group our perceptual experiences together into shapes and patters; visual grouping. We often get perceptual errors, as our minds are able to help us be more aware of the role that interpretation plays in perception.

We are constantly making a variety of unconscious assumptions about our experiences in the world around us. For example, when you look at an object, you do not see patches of colors. You see the world of familiar everyday objects. When you look at something, what actually appear on you retina are two small inverted two-dimensional images. However, unconsciously, you only see one life size dimensional world that is the right way up. People that suffer from a brain damage experience, known as visual agnosia are unable to interpret what they see.

Perception is selective and what we notice in a given environment is influenced by factors 5 factors, intensity, interest, contrast, mood and expectations. In our perceptual fields, we only notice some things and condone others, as our minds would overload if we were consciously aware of everything. For example, when engaging one is studying in class, they concentrate on what the teacher is saying and their facial expressions along with their gestures yet have no conscious awareness of the ticking of the clock or the picture on the wall. What we see depends on the 5 various subject matters mentioned. For example intensity and contrast affect us such as when a bomb explodes we notice it compared to the hum of the computer. We notice a drop of blood on a white cloth rather than a blood on a red cloth. This shows that our perspective on something affects the way we see it. Thus the saying “He who has been bitten by a snake fears a piece of string”.

So how do we distinguish between appearance and reality? So far we have identified reasons for being cautious with the validity of perception because we may misinterpret what we see, fail to notice something and we may misremember what we have seen. A way to distinguish between appearance and reality is to use a second sense to confirm the evidence of a first. If one is not sure that a wall is in front of them, they can bang their head to it to know it is there. Pain can be a proof of the reality of an object. Another way is by appealing to coherence. If a drunk sees a cow flying over the moon, then he is likely to assume it was not real when he is sober again. We rationalize what our experiences are because it makes more sense. A final principle is the testimony of other people. The credibility of evidences are greatly increase if it is confirmed by other people. While our senses are prone to error, we have many ways to correct our mistakes.

While our senses give us important information about the world, they only capture only certain kinds of date in their net as they each have limited range of sensitivity. For example our eyes are only sensitive to light of a limited wavelength. Imagine if our senses were more capable of a greater amount of sensitivity. The way we experience the world is partly determined by the structure of our sense organs.
If we had a more acute sense of hearing we might hear the revolting pain to our ears when a car honks at a far distance just like when you are near it.
If we accept that pain and taste are subjective then we might conclude that color and sound are also subjective.

There are three main theories about the relationship between perception and reality. The first is common sense realism, which was mentioned before as the way we perceive the world mirror the way the world is. We have argued that there are good reasons for rejecting this as what we perceive is determined partly b the nature of our sense organs.
The second is scientific realism, a theory stating that the world exist as an independent reality, very different from the way we perceive it. The world or our everyday experience is in reality, just a realm of atoms whizzing around in empty space. And the last, phenomenalism could be seen as a call to humanity as it insist that we can only know the world from our human perspective and that this is ultimate reality. Despite the doubts, the existence of the external world is the most reasonable hypothesis to explain the regularity of our experience.

Perception is an important way of knowing however, we have seen that there is more to perception than meets the eye; therefore it is unwise to rely completely on the evidences our senses provide us. Even though perception cannot give us certainty, knowledge requires something less than certainty. IF the evidence of our sense is consistent with other ways of knowing, then it is a good enough foundation for reliable knowledge.