Are you Able?

What is Perception?

Perception is the interpretation of various senses by the brain, organizing them into a coherent image, allowing you to process images.

What does Abel mean by "Seeing As..."?

Abel means that what you see is not what is really there, but what the brain organizes into an image that you see. You don't see the world as it is but as how your brain perceives it to be.
To see what is the case, what is required?

Context (the circumstances or events that form the environment within which something exists or takes place), inference (the process of reasoning from a premise to a conclusion), concepts ( broad abstract idea or a guiding general principle), experience (knowledge or skill gained through being involved in or exposed to something over a period of time) and interpretation (a mental representation of the meaning or significance of something).

What did Nietzsche mean by “the fallacy of the immaculate perception?” How does Psychologist Joseph Jastrow prove this point? When have we done this in class?

He meant that you are unable to see something if you can't perceive it. Jastrow proved this by using a well known drawing; it could be seen as either a duck or a rabbit and shifts from one to the other while you look at it.

What does Abel mean when he writes: “there is therefore no sharp line dividing perception from illusion?”

He meant that perception, in some cases, is the illusion, like, for example, when you look at the picture of a line circling smaller every time so it seems as if its going into a point at the center, you see the circle as moving, even though it isn't moving at all.

Why is perception selective by nature?

Perception is selective by nature because of the fact that we can receive and process only so many stimuli, that we could be missing large amounts of other types of stimuli, but we entirely miss them.

What does Abel mean when he says: “to perceive is to solve a problem?”

He means that our ability to respond to some stimuli is beneficial to our survival as a species. We are able to think and invent which is all do to perception, which allows us to gain an advantage over the other species.

What is the role of social conditioning in determining how things “naturally look?”

We determine what looks natural by what our society tells us is normal. What the society believes is normal, you think is normal. Every society has different ideas of normal.

What is significant of the Durer rhinoceros story? How was the influence of convention demonstrated when some tribes were given a photograph?

The significance of the Durer rhinoceros story is that Durer made a model of a rhinoceros without having ever seen one, using second-hand accounts and his imagination. Natural history books ended up using his model for centuries. When James Bruce ended up going to Africa in the 1700's he noticed how wrong Durer's model was and drew a rhinoceros himself. But his drawing was so influenced by what he thought one should look like, no zoologist could identify it. (Nothing on tribes)

How does convention influence perspective drawing?

It influences you to draw what seems normal by societal norms, and you may not even realize it but it has a very large influence; sometime some so that it becomes unrecognizable due to the struggle between your vision and societal norms.

What does Abel mean when he writes: believing is seeing? How might this point be seen in the study of the natural and the social sciences?

He means that if you don't believe something your brain can percieve something as something else. It might be seen in the light of people's intolerance of other's view's.

What does Abel mean by “hearing as…”?

That if you expect to hear something, you will hear wht you expect to hear, not what was actually said. If somebody says one thing, but you expected another, you'll hear what you expected.