Synesthesia and Perception

Synesthesia is an uncommon perceptual anomaly in humans where one stimulus creates more than one perceptions. There are many different types of synesthesia that range from Grapheme (color/ character), to Lexical gustatory(word/ taste). This 'disorder' of sorts is very interesting for perceptual philosophy for many reasons. It has many aspects of both cognitive science and philosophical inquiry. This cognitive phenomenon is not fully understood in terms of how it works by science. There are a few theories and the most commonly accepted one explains why it can be both inherited and it can also happen while on certain psychotropic drugs. This theory is about how the brain starts off with all the senses in one spot and they migrate to different spots. The wires sometimes get crossed and Psychotropic drugs along with genetics can mix wires in the brain up at times causing synesthesia.
This video from Michal Levy is an interesting depiction of an artistic remake of what it is like to have one type of synesthesia where music gives people a color sensation.
http://vimeo.com/8508477

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Negative Afterimage

Reber Shukri Professor Vaughn Negative afterimage is a stimulus which elicits a positive image. In order to experience this, one can look at a bright source of light and then look away to a dark area. The way negative afterimage works is when the eye's photo-receptors which are the rods and cones adapt to over stimulation and lose sensitivity. The photo-receptors which are constantly exposed to the same stimulus will fatigue their supply of photo pigment, resulting a decrease in signal to the brain. The way negative afterimage connects to perception is because of bottom up processing where the stimulus influences what we perceive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szy8iNCljlQ <Link to the video

Illusions that Confuse Multiple Senses

In this video, several illusions are shown that deceive your senses. Illusions such as the Zöllner Illusion and the Poggendorff illusion confuse our bottom up processing by tricking our vision. However, our vision isn't the only sense that these illusions can confuse, blind individuals presented with raised versions of the same illusions are also confused by them. These illusions effect the visual and touch systems by confusing our bottom up processing by tricking out sight and touch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je1mkzRU5rc&t=64s

How Your Expectations Mess With The View of The Present

In this video the waiters and waitresses give the customers a water menu with fancy different names. They then taste the differently packaged water. Since they were convinced that they were actually different types of water, they were comparing them and actually tasted a difference. The reasoning behind this is, since they were told that they were different, they believed what they were told. They perceived what they expected it to be. This is is an example of how your expectations mess with your view of the present. Therefore, they tasted the water to be different but in reality it was tap water the whole time in different bottles.

Philosophy of Perception

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