Sense+Perception

=**__Sense Perception__**=

- A sense is "a particular kind of sensation" that living things have. - There are 8 senses: visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, cutaneous, kinesthetic, vestibular, and organic. - There can be a range of problems pertaining to the way living things' senses work simply because of the signals we receive. An example is a horse race where 2 horses are finishing at about the same time. The camera takes a picture and we see that 1 horse's head is slightly more forward, however, the other horse's legs are crossing the line. We would say that the horse with the head crossing the line is the winner because that is how we perceive it.
 * 1. What is a 'sense'? How many senses we really have. Other animals' senses. Problems with how we interpret the few signals we do receive.

2. How do senses work? Transducers. How we "see colors" and "taste spiciness". Where is the color? - Senses work by the body sending signals to the brain, and from there, the brain responds with an action. - A transducer is any device that can convert one type of energy to another, which can happen with all the senses sending signals to the body. - We see colors by the human eye and brain working together to produce the sensation of color. - We can taste because the sense of taste is connected to the central nervous system, which allows us to detect flavor of foods.

3. POVs (points of view). Subjectivity and objectivity. "What Really Happened?" Are some POVs better than others? Some more accurate? Is it better to have multiple POVs? - Every person has a point of view, and these POVs may vary depending on each person. This means that how people perceive the world is different. - Perception is not objective and unlearned, it is subjective. - "What really happened?" refers to the idea that it is impossible to know exactly what happened since people perceive things differently from one another. For example, at the tennis match some people might have seen the ball on the line, when others saw that it was clearly out of bounds. Who will be able to know for sure what really happened? - It is not fair to say that some POVs are better than others because everyone has one and everyone in the world thinks that they are correct about things that they sense. - It is better to have multiple POVs because you will have a better idea of the world because you are not limited in the sense that you are only perceiving the world in a single way.

4. The purpose of human senses: Recording data or organizing meaning? Perception as "attention dependent" and "gist-dependent", focused on** //**processing**// **data. - The human mind involuntarily creates meaning from stimuli. - Perception is "attention dependent" because in order to perceive something it takes us paying attention in order for it to happen and "gist dependent" because how we perceive something depends solely on the situation at hand. - An example is a lady who was formerly in jail. If someone had met her in jail, they would perceive her very differently than if they met her at the supermarket. 5. The priority of meaning: Advantages (coherent, stable experiences) and disadvantages (change and inattention blindness, untrustworthy eyewitness accounts) - The meaning of something is important because it is what makes us act a certain way or do something because of how our senses perceive it. - The advantage of knowing the meaning of something is that it allows us to act rationally towards or about something that we perceived in a certain way. - The disadvantage of knowing the meaning of something is that we may not act the correct way or have the right response since we are, in a way, "blind" and do not know the truth about it. - Change and inattention blindness are both ways of being "blind" and we act differently in certain situations when faced with these.

6. Organizing principles of sense perception: parsimony, seeing things as they "should" be, seeing things in context, seeing wholes rather than parts, "closure" (naming the stimulus) - Parsimony is the "simplest or most frugal route of explanation available." This would mean perceiving things in the easiest/simplest way that we can. - We see some things as they "should" be simply because that is how we would like to perceive them, not necessarily how they really are. - Context matters because it makes a difference to the way we perceive things. We may perceive something differently in a different context. - It is better to see things as a whole rather than as parts because it is better to look at the big picture than each small things in a situation because each small thing might have flaws, but when combined could make something amazing. The Gestalt theory exhibits this idea. - An example of closure is a street sign. They distract our attention and give us instant closure. They are not too simple or too obscure.

7. Theories about the relation between sense perception and reality. Common-sense realism. Scientific realism. Phenomenalism. - For us, reality is the way we perceive things, however, we will never actually grasp what the true reality is since our senses tend to blur it. - Common-sense realism refers to the idea that we perceive the world exactly how it actually is. - Scientific realism refers to the idea that the world described by science is how it actually is. - Phenomenalism refers to the idea that physical objects don't exist, but we simply believe that they do because of how we perceive the world. **