Blog #4

My Five Terms for Perception:

• Perception of Time: What is time and how do we know how to track it? How do we define "time",

"The Experience and Perception of Time." Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2000. Standford. 4 Jun 2008 http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/time-experience/.

• Illusion and hallucination: What are we seeing to be fake or real? Are hallucinations real because we can see them or are is there more to being real?

"The Problem of Perception." Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2005. Standford. 4 Jun 2008 http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/perception-problem/#1.3.

• Consciousness: What state of consciousness determines our behavior and how does sleep differ from being awake?

"Consciousness." Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2004. Standford. 4 Jun 2008 http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/consciousness/.

• Mental Representation: How our eyes take the images to the optic part of the brain and how that in turn gives us a mental picture of what is happening.

"Mental Representation." Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2000. Standford. 4 Jun 2008 http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/mental-representation/.

• Realism: What is real and how do our perceptions tell us if something is real or fake...who decided what is real and why?

"Realism." Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2002. Standford. 4 Jun 2008 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/.

Good Stuff

Blog #3

Here is a weird video i found on the topic. It talks about how your thoughts and the way we perceive those thoughts, can manifest into a reality. If you think your gonna do well at something, your subconscious makes a note, then you focus on that idea and strive to achieve...on the flip side, your negative preceptions can manifest into negative thoughts, and later actions. This video is pretty straight forward and you can take it anyway you want. I totally believe that most of us create situations in our head based on what we perceive them to be. Those thoughts translate into the actions and ideas we later see. I don't like the idea however, that everything we think up is gonna happen...that would be missing the point on the subject. I think that the ideas in our minds have the most influence in our actions; making bad judgements and false perceptions can add to the already jumbled world we live in...think about it

Blog #2

Here are a few links on my topic on the Problems of Perception. I decided that this would be the best and most interesting topic I could do.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/#1
This really covers all the basics and allows you to get a good foundation on perception and how we as humans see the world.

Here is a small excerpt from that site about the Arguments of Illusion:

• An illusion here may be defined, with A.D. Smith, as “any perceptual situation in which a physical object is actually perceived, but in which that object perceptually appears other than it really is” (Smith 2002: 23). For example, a white wall in yellow light can look yellow; a sweet drink can taste sour if one has just eaten something sweeter; a quiet sound can seem loud if it is very close to you; and so on. In these cases it is not necessary that one is deceived into believing that things are other than they are; so illusion in this sense need not involve deception. One can know that one is experiencing an illusion when it is happening.

This was taken from the above link listed...

http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/libweb/elib/do/document?set=search&groupid=1&requestid=lib_standard&resultid=3&edition=&ts=C89C5C9ECCA9A81FF4BBDA1CF18826C7_1212593427744&start=1&urn=urn%3Abigchalk%3AUS%3BBCLib%3Bdocument%3B152942457

This link talks about the use of our eyes in motion perception and is quite interesting...

http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/time-experience/

Finally this link talks about the perception of time and our existence on earth...another good read

Blog #2

What I want to Learn

Two of the most intriguing topics i hope to get a little more understanding about are Life and Death and The idea of Perception. I think that both of these topics create a lot of room for discussion and give me an opportunity to understand the world a little better.

Life and Death to me is a huge topic. Life is really different for all walks of life, depending on where you live, who your parents are, what influences, (both positive and negative), make an impact on your actions, and who you grow up to be. To me personality comes into play because you are who you grow up to be because of the way we are raised. your personality is a direct relation to who raised you and who was in your life early on. Slight changes can make an otherwise productive member of society into a twisted mental case. I like to think that there is enough research out there to back up that theory. Death on the other hand is quite another story. Death is so concrete and we cant deny it; life is only temporary. When you die what happens? Some say we go to heaven, others say we become part of the earth. I think we become reincarnated until we fulfill our purpose in life, what ever that may be. I like to think that at the end of it all, it takes a few different walks of life to clearly get the whole picture.

Second, the idea of perception really gets me thinking. Personal perception is everything and anything we base our actions on. The idea that we don't really "see" anything is interesting because how do we know what we are seeing is real? Animals see differently so does that mean we don't see the right things? We know that there are lots of theories and crazy people out there but when we sit down and ask the question: "is this the way we were meant to receive the world?" then it starts to make since. I think that what we see must be real because collectively as a society we are pretty uniform when it comes to what we build and our knowledge of the physical world. It's a really good topic and if any one has an opinion about that i want to hear it, so feel free to post.


Here is one video that i found; it is just a really weird view on perception.

(these are not my personal beliefs so don't think I'm a psycho!)