11 Sept 2010
The Perception Spectrum
It occurs to me, somewhat randomly that our perception of the world around us (as in our interpretation of the data presented to us by our senses) lies on a spectrum. Reality is at one end and imagination is at the other, perception sits somewhere in between and its position varies depending on the individual.
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Far too linear for me. I tend to think of things like perceptions as being simultaneous, or actually happening in alternate order of what you *think* they happen in, or hodgepodge, stretched out over days to absorb one small detail moment of life. I can have a piece of data presented to my senses (like the smell of something good cooking) and have many thoughts, emotions, physiological sensations/perceptions at once, and not in any nice linear order. Reality and imagination as concepts, for me are nested inside one another. Imagining reality while reality takes place, Reality taking place while imagining occurs. Perception of the two is hard to separate. Imagination can't happen without Reality and Reality can't happen without Imagination and Neither can happen without Perception. Just what you made me think of.
ReplyDelete--Skivingwords
I'm not talking about when we perceive things, but how.
ReplyDeleteWe don't see reality 'in the raw' as it were, it is filtered through our consciousness which includes all the things you mention. Its not a cause and effect spectrum but rather a measurement of the reality of what we perceive.
Imagination being totally unreal, Reality being totally real, and Perception being somewhere in between.
There is an element of imagination involved in our perception of reality, conscious or not. We both see grass as being green. but your green may be different from my green. The classification 'green' is merely an arbitrary word and we could just as well say "Grass is elephants"
Reality, in the way I mean it, is the universe as it is, unfiltered by our crude biology. Its something we can never experience