Philosophy of Perception

This video discusses a rare condition known as Alice in Wonderland syndrome in which sufferers experience an altered perception of size.  Sufferers will struggle to accurately perceive the size of objects, people, and even themselves, often perceiving things as either very small or unrealistically large. Referenced briefly in our first reading, "What Do the Blind See When They Dream," Alice in Wonderland Syndrome is one of many conditions/disorders in which sufferers experience drastic or hallucinatory disruptions to perception, highlighting the ways in which our senses can deceive us.

Being a Beast A passionate naturalist explores what it’s really like to be an animal—by living like them How can we ever be sure that we really know the other? To test the limits of our ability to inhabit lives that are not our own, Charles Foster set out to know the ultimate other: the non-humans, the beasts. And to do that, he tried to be like them, choosing a badger, an otter, a fox, a deer, and a swift. He lived alongside badgers for weeks, sleeping in a sett in a Welsh hillside and eating earthworms, learning to sense the landscape through his nose rather than his eyes. He caught fish in his teeth while swimming like an otter; rooted through London garbage cans as an urban fox; was hunted by bloodhounds as a red deer, nearly dying in the snow. And he followed the swifts on their migration route over the Strait of Gibraltar, discovering himself to be strangely connected to the birds. A lyrical, intimate, and completely radical look at the life of animals—human and other—...

https://study.com/academy/lesson/self-perception-theory-definition-and-examples.html This link relates to how perception can be pointed inward upon ourselves. Addressing this is the Self Perception theory, which plays the idea that people create their attitudes by observing their own behavior and then making an assumption on what attitudes must have caused it. I found this video to relate well to perception, but also to exemplify just how powerful our brains truly can be. An interesting concept, I thought. I hope you do too!

This video relates to time perception. Upon research, I found that how we perceive time changes depending on the situation that we are in. One example of this is when frantic music is played in the car, the driver tends to drive at an increased speed as a result, as time has somehow seemed to speed up.  I thought this was a great example of how our senses and perceptions play tricks on ourselves. Whether it be an evolutionary benefit, or merely just our senses acting up, the changing of time is a common occurrence that exemplifies the sometimes unreliability of what we are perceiving.

        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.