The Theories Of Perception: Virgil And S. B.

Perception is the process of recognizing and interpreting sensory stimuli. Our innate capability to see, hear, taste, touch and smell helps us perceive things in the world. When something goes awry with one of the senses, a person’s capability to perceive things is more challenging. However once an individual accepts and adapts to their own available senses, comprehending stimuli is much easier. This gives me reason to believe that perception is a learned experience. My theory is supported by themes that are connected throughout readings. A major correspondence throughout the readings seemed to be with identity. Once an individual accepts who they are, it allows them to grasp material better. Virgil and John showed similar issues as well
both went from being blind men to sighted men. The transition for either men was difficult because they didn’t understand much in the sighted world. For example, interpreting distance, shape, size and faces were lost on them. “It was as if they were babies learning to see all over again.” (Gregory and Wallace, 109). The transition was so challenging that both men slipped into a state of depression. Jeremy and John experienced depression as well when trying to deal with their blindness. The differences in transition came when Virgil and John were able to accept their new self and Jeremy and S.B. stayed in their depression state. In the beginning Virgil used touch to identify things, like the gorilla statue at the zoo, but after he had his second surgery he started to learn at his own pace. His transition was made successful to the vision world because he did the learning when he wanted to and found joy in experiencing what vision had to offer. John still wanted to stay in the visual world in the beginning but as time went on he slowly started to leave the visual world behind. He found that he had gone from accident to meaning through an extraordinary journey of introspection (Gregory and Watson, 31). The transition for John was effective because he found that living in a blind world was more meaningful than a world of vision. S.B. and Jeremy never experienced the epiphany that learning something new might be beneficial to their lives. They could never let go of who they were as individuals, so their transition to learn was much more problematic. S.B. continued to integrate touch into his learning skills, even as time continued on. Jeremey still held on to the importance of the visual world which left him feeling