Topic Tuesday #18 2012/11/20 - "Perception is Reality"
"Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?"
-Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 2
Where is reality? What is reality? How is reality different than a dream? Do you know? Have you ever thought about it? The school of thought is called "Proprioception"
We have Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, and Taste. Those are the standard 5 senses, but there are a few more: Vestibular [Inner Ear: Gravity and Acceleration], Kinesthesia [Body Muscles / Joints: Bio-feedback for Movement and Position of appendages], and Nociception [Thalamus: Perception of Physiological Pain].
These senses can be easily fooled. Here are some examples where you have been fooled, and will be fooled time and time again - In referenced order above.
[Sight] 3D technology takes advantage of our stereoscopic vision to make 2D object leap or sink away from their flat origin.
[Sound] What's the sound of a lightsaber? This make believe movie icon, which you will instantly recognize is the hum of idling interlock motors in old movie projectors and interference caused by a television set on an unshielded microphone. But we hear the sound of battle! We think of cutting metal and severing limbs and deflecting blaster bolts (the sound of a hammer striking a guide wire to a communication tower).
[Smell] We use chemicals to make smells go away, but sometimes they are still there and just masked. This is just over powering a sense. The reality hasn't changed, but it doesn't matter, since the bad smell is gone. You accept that it's gone.
 |
| Male Senses Scaled by Sensitivity. |
[Touch] A clever magician can fool us with clever deceptions. The "Hey! Look At The Monkey" distraction while a gentle touch of one hand confuses you to the removal (or addition) of an item from your hand (or pocket). It's an art form, based on deceiving you. More direct stimulation with topical analgesics or chemicals that can cause a burning or cooling sensation are also blatant sense tampering.
[Taste] "Lick the wallpaper, the snozberries taste like snozberries!" Though Wonka was fictional, the technology is sound. It's just another chemical combination giving false impressions. Additives that go into your chewing gum, soda, and countless other consumables fool your taste buds into thinking that thing you are devouring, tastes good. Ever thought what it might taste like without the additives?
[Vestibular] If you ever played the game where you took a bat, and kneeled over it and spun around in a circle to make yourself dizzy and then tried to run in a straight line, you have actively fooled your inner ear and made yourself look foolish in the process. But at least that's all in good fun!
[Kinesthesia] This is a hardest one to replicate, but an example would be the phantom twitches reported by amputees. The limb is gone, but the brain still thinks it is there because kinesthetic senses are still being triggered.
[Nociception/Pain] If you have ever had anesthesia, you know that pain receptors can be fooled. Whatever was causing your pain, it is still there. You just don't notice, or in some cases, care. On an interesting note, your brain lacks nociceptive tissue. This might be due to the fact that any injury of sufficient magnitude to cause pain in the brain will incapacitate the organism and prevent it from taking appropriate action, which is the actual purpose of pain.
We can learn much from the experience of being tricked and having our reality altered before our senses. It all comes down not to our senses, but our perception of what is "real". Our minds are the key. We are enormously complex in our methods of interpretations. Smell and Taste go together. Our Vision tends to track the Sound in our environment. Eye-Hand coordination is another example of linking these attributes These senses gather the information of our physical existence and deliver them to our brain to determine actions, reactions, and (most importantly) meaning.
What does this mean? It means reality is a very individual experience, since reality is your interpretation of the world around you through your senses. What we understand is unique since no one has your perspective on your senses. Something that smells good to you, may be repugnant to me, and the adage of "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", tell the tale clearly.
Then to twist you all up, go watch the Matrix.
"Do you think that's air you're breathing?"
