marmalade

This speaks to my sense of my own agnosticism.

Seeing things
Is perception everything?
Geoff Olson
http://commonground.ca/iss/198/cg198_seeing.shtml

But I’m more interested in what our reluctance to investigate certain phenomenon, from Kitty Hawk to O’Hare, says about us, rather than an alleged “them.” What intrigues me is the politics of perception and how we construct the world “out there.” Human beings make perceptual mistakes all the time. We don’t just see things that aren’t there; we sometimes don’t see things that are there, editing them out of consciousness entirely. And we do that with remarkably mundane observations.
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“I live in a spectrum of probabilities, uncertainties and wonderments.” Wilson refused to settle on one model for reality. He believed the universe continually presents us with quantum “maybes,” which our acts of observation collapse into definitive values.
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In Myth and Meaning, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote of his initial shock when he discovered that “a particular tribe” of Indians could see the planet Venus in full daylight with the naked eye. He describes it as “… something that to me would be utterly impossible and incredible.” But when he learned from astronomers it was feasible, he concluded, “Today we use less and we use more of our mental capacity than we did in the past.”

Most academics would have simply said the Indian tribesmen were “seeing things.” In his book Breaking Open the Head, Daniel Pinchbeck commented on Levi-Strauss’ discovery. “We have sacrificed perceptual capabilities for other mental abilities to concentrate on a computer screen while sitting in a cubicle for many hours at a stretch – something those Indians would find ‘utterly impossible and incredible’ – or to shut off multiple layers of awareness as we drive a car in heavy traffic. In other words, we are brought up within a system that teaches us to postpone, defer and eliminate most incoming sense data in favour of a future reward. We live in a feedback loop of perpetual postponement. For the most part, we are not even aware of what we have lost.”
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As the writer George Leonard put it, “Whatever your age, your upbringing or your education, what you are made of is mostly unused potential.”

Skepticologist

As usual, a very interesting and provocative post that promises to generate some stimulating discussion.

My personal read is that perception is, indeed, everything. How else to explain the wide divergence of meaning assigned to a particular event by those who have witnessed the exact same phenomenon?

Our beliefs are the sum total of our experiences as applied to the things we observe. It's consequently inevitable that our interpretations of an identical event will be vastly different. And that bugs me. Despite a personal commitment to maintaining an open mind in the interest of developing conclusions as close to the truth as possible, how can I be sure that my conclusions aren't erroneously perpetuated by filters I've put in place based on my own unique prior experiences?

I'm really not sure there's a ready solution to that dilemma. The best I can do is to put myself in a position to be exposed to as wide a range of ideas as possible, and to at least consider them seriously before discarding them in favor of those that fall more neatly into my comfort zone.

__________________
"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."

Clarence Darrow

marmalade

Essentially, this is why I'm not a materialist meaning I don't reduce everything to material causes. I just don't know the explanation for many things that I experience on a regular basis something like RAW's UFOs. I don't assume anything unusual and I mostly ignore these unexplained things. Most people do. We all have a limited capacity for curiosity and besides we can't seek answers to everything. Humans are creature of habit and our most deeply imbedded habits are perceptual.

I don't know about other people, but for me the question of what I'm not noticing is always nagging at my mind. I can be as mindless as the next person, and when lost in thought I can be utterly oblivious. And even when we humans are paying attention, we still can miss the obvious that is right in front of us.

"There is a famous business training film that shows people in black and white shirts passing a basketball back and forth. Viewers gathered to watch the film are instructed to count the number of times the basketball is passed. As the ball goes around, a figure in a gorilla suit walks into the scene. The figure turns to the camera and beats her chest, before walking off-screen. According to Daniel J. Simons, the psychologist who produced the film, 50 percent of instructed viewers fail to see the figure in the first screening, due to what he calls “inattentional blindness.” That’s right; half the people viewing the film fail to see a person in a gorilla suit walking across their field of vision."

On top of this, we have cultural paradigms. These are things that we never even consciously think about much less question. There is an anecdote that comes from a Spaniard ship log.

The Spaniards rowed to shore and the natives greeted them. The natives asked where they came from as people don't normally come out of the sea. The Spaniards pointed towards their several large ships, but the natives couldn't see them and they had no idea even what they were supposed to be looking for. The shaman started squinting and after a while the shape of the ships became apparent to him. Once he pointed the ships out to the other natives, then they all could see them.

This relates to something I saw on tv about an indigenous tribe. These people had never been around technology. The scientists visiting had brought cameras and a film screen. They filmed the people in the tribe, and then showed them the film. The people couldn't recognize themselves. It took many viewings until they were able see themselves on the screen.

And so this reminds me of the quote by Arthur C. Clarke:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

to_hobbes

Yes, perception is everything. Many people can all look at the same thing and see different things. But I think it is more amazing when many people look at the same thing and see, more or less, the same thing with trivial differences.

Two mathematicians can discuss an incredibly complex mathematic concept using mere words, where the uninitiated would not understand a thing. Several people can sit around a table and chat for hours, whereas a person who doesn't speak that language would not take away anything from that conversation.

I think of perception as a process in the human mind, and it is remarkable that the process of perception can be similar enough between members of a group to the point that communication, interaction, and understanding between those people can be possible at all. It is all part of our instinctively social nature.

It just goes to show that everything humans think, and by extension everything we perceive, relies on a very, very, large set of commonly understood assumptions that are defined by culture, language, and other such shared knowledge.

__________________
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(By the way, it's all in your head.)

joshnjob

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