Philosophy of Perception

        After seeing the rubber hand video, I started thinking about phantom limb syndrome which can occur after a person has an amputation. I found a video about a man who is missing an arm, yet "experiences" a sensation of pain in the place where his hand would be. The video explains how the brain does not really know that the limb is no longer there and so sends signals directed toward his hand, trying to clench it. If this man did have a hand, his muscles would send feedback to the brain telling him to slow down the motion, however since he has no hand, the brain sends more signals resulting in a positive feedback loop. The solution is a mirror box. The man places the hand he does have in a box with a mirror, and his hand is reflected so it looks as if he has two. The ultimately tricks the brain with visual feedback and relieves the pain felt. This illusion shows us how easily the brain can be deceived, and emphasizes how our sensations can be psychological.

The Rubber Hand Illusion: Is Seeing Believing? This video demonstrates bottom up perception overriding top down knowledge. Initially, the participants had top down knowledge that the rubber hand was not their hand. Although the rubber hand looks similar to a real hand, it is clear the rubber hand is not a real hand. As the participants' real hand (that was hidden) and the rubber hand (not hidden) began being stimulated simultaneously, the participants' bottom up perception overrode their top down knowledge, and felt the rubber hand was their real hand. This was evident when the hammer hit the rubber hand and the participants reacted as if the hammer was hitting their real hand. This illusion demonstrates how our senses have the ability to deceive us, showing that seeing should not necessarily lead to believing.

This is a short video that can help you to explore how much you actually see with your peripheral vision. As you may recall from my in-class demonstration, you can see movement first with your peripheral vision and as objects move to your central line of vision, you can slowly see shape, color and then finally read words. This is because the structure of the eyes (with ratio of cones and rods) differs within the fovea and sides of eye. However, this relates to perception because we fill in missing things with our mind and we perceive color and shapes out of the corner of our eyes. We also use active perception by moving our eyes and exploring the area around us with our sight. I also brought candy to demonstrate that much of the information that we think we get from taste actually comes from smell. I think this is evidence that much of what we perceive is coming from different senses and being combined in a way to create what we experience.

I'm sure no one has thought about this for a while, and I'm sorry for bringing back painful memories of unending arguments over this dress. However, this dress is all about perception, and I felt it was appropriate to share. I see the dress as white and gold, so for those of you who see it as black and blue, I'd love to switch minds with you.

One single neuron (seen in blue above) was found wrapped around a mouse brain like a "crown of thorns."  Scientists believe this finding may shed light on how consciousness is developed and how so many different processes of the brain come together so quickly to give us conscious awareness.  The single neuron spans the occipital lobe, temporal lobe, parietal lobe, and frontal lobe.  This means that visual information, linguistic information, face and shape recognition, and somatosensory information, along with our decisions/judgments about all of this information, is all being integrated in the seat of the neuron at the claustrum.  This might shed light on how we, in a split second and without our even knowing it, are able to make prediction and corrections about our perceptions, as in the Predictive Coding Model.  It can also explain Locke's proposal that we make judgments about sense perceptions, such as a flat shape variously colored, without our even knowing it, t

Plato had a rationalist view, and referred to beauty as objective in that it was not localized in response of the beholder. But, should we think of beauty as having a more empiricist quality, being a relative assessment that lies in the eyes of the beholder, stemming from our sensory experiences? If this is our belief, then we could conclude that beauty can be created through a subjective judgment. Meaning that each individual decides what is beautiful to them, or not. But, watching the transformation of the model below, could lead us to believe that the overall thoughts of media in society would coincide with the objective perception of Plato. Consistently trying to persuade us to ascertain and become the pattern or form that transforms us into beautiful. And with beauty as an objective feature, we can assume that the majority of us will coincide in our perceived patterns and forms of said beauty. So…... Could Beauty be both objective and subjective? After all, indivi

The Case Against Reality  is an interview with neuroscientist, quantum physicist and professor at University of California, Irvine, Donald D. Hoffman regarding a study he published  here . His argument is essentially that human beings did not evolve to perceive the world accurately,  but rather, advantageously.  He claims that what is advantageous to perceive may look nothing like "reality," provided an external reality exists at all. He goes so far as to posit an idealist metaphysic grounded in his studies in quantum cognitive science, claiming that a very possible structure of the world could be a network of first-person perspectives creating a pseudo-collective reality which we all experience together. What type of epistemic state would the explanations posited by Hoffman leave us in? On one hand, "truth" goes out the window, but on the other, we have immediate access to all the "objects" of our perceptions and, to some extent, create those "object

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28683-how-trippy-version-of-mariah-carey-christmas-hit-fools-the-brain/