Sense+Perception

**Sense Perception**

Do androids dream of electric sheep?

Philip K Dick We perceive the world through our five senses: sense perception is the active, selective and interpretative process of recording or becoming conscious of the external world. Because sensory perception is an important dimension of our understanding of the world, its function and scope should be examined and critically evaluated. The following questions may help students become aware of the nature and power of sense perception, and how it relates to knowledge acquisition, knowledge claims, and their justification.

**Nature of Sense Perception** [|Limitations of human sense perception and how technology can extend this] By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. Aldous Huxley (1954)
 * In what ways does the biological constitution of a living organism determine, influence or limit its sense perception? If humans are sensitive only to certain ranges of stimuli, what consequences or limitations might this have for the acquisition of knowledge? How does technology extend, modify, improve or restrict the capabilities of the senses?
 * What possibilities for knowledge are opened to us by our senses as they are? What limitations?
 * Is the nature of sense perception such that, as Huxley suggests, sensations are essentially private and incommunicable?

[|Link to a BBC podcast about perception and the senses] [|A range of Lectures about all aspects of Perception] [|Experiments which exposed a human to different sensory inputs, ones we dont usually experience] [|Hearing colours and tasting shapes] 
 * Importance and Limitations of sense perception**

[|Article about a man who is face blind] [|How magicians exploit the limitations of our visual perception] [|Site about the work of a blind Artist] and also a [|New Scientist article] about them  [|Article on the effect of language on Perception] [|How the look and sound of food can affect our perception of its taste] The use of colour and its cultural implications [|World class violinist becomes a busker in New York, what are the responses?] [|Facial prejudice - how does a person's face bias your view about them?] [|Rene Magritte an artist who deliberately puts thing out of context] [|Grape expectations, an article about wine tasting - very interesting!] The Matrix is a great film to consider when it comes to questioning our senses, and thus, reality. Almost every aspect of this film challenges our most fundamental knowledge claims, even the ones that we know as 'a priori', or in simpler terms, undoubtable (e.g. 1 + 1 = 2).
 * To what extent do our senses give us knowledge of the world as it really is?
 * Does the predominance of visual perception constitute a natural characteristic of our human experience or is it one among several ways of being in the world?
 * What is the role of culture and language in the perceptual process? Given the partially subjective nature of sense perception, how can different knowers ever agree on what is perceived? Do people with different cultural or linguistic backgrounds live, in some sense, in different worlds?
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left;">How, and to what extent, might expectations, assumptions and beliefs affect sense perceptions? How, if at all, can factors that bias our views of the world be identified? Is all sense perception necessarily theory-laden? Do knowers have a moral duty to examine their own perceptual filters?
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left;">It is often claimed that information and communication technologies are blurring the traditional distinctions between simulation and reality. If this is so, what might be the consequences?

Here are two videos of how the Matrix can relate to the theories of two prominent philosophers, and how it confronts our daily subjective experiences we call 'senses'. [|Philosophy and the Matrix - Kant] [|Philosophy and the Matrix - Descartes]


 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;"> Sense Perception and Areas of Knowledge **
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left;">What role does observation play in the methods used to pursue knowledge in different disciplines? For example, are the conditions, function and results of observation the same for biology and human science? If not, what accounts for the differences?
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left;">What role does what we expect to see, or are used to seeing, play in what we observe? For example, after learning about the structure of cells from a textbook, how “neutral” might the observation of a slide under the microscope be? Can we learn how to see things properly?