Conversation on the term `perception`

Conversation on the term perception

The notion of perception is often reduced to the process of obtaining deciphering , selecting , and organizing information in the brain as received by the senses . All animals are capable of perceiving objects but human perception is far more complex than other animals . Human perception is also an attitude , an emotive response that includes a deeper penetration into the nature of the object . Unlike other animals humans perceive not merely with their sensory organs and bodies , but also with their minds . For this reason , human perception greatly

involves cognition and emotions , logos and pathos

To illustrate , take an object , for example , a flower . The flower can be perceived as beautiful not only because of its physical characteristics that are pleasing to the sight and scent , flowers often trigger a memory , whether it be positive or negative that carries with it an emotive response . Someone who is triggered to remembering a funeral may be sad or bittersweet and perceive flowers as signs of death or mourning or even rebirth . Someone who receives flowers on positive occasions will have a warmer perception of the fragrant beauties . A honeybee or bird does not perceive the beauty ' of the flower . It is , instead merely food , a necessary object . This example serves the purpose of illustrating that human perception is more complex than other animals perception it involves not only the immediate object recognition and sensory detail relays , but involves emotive and associate properties that make perception , overall , unique in individuals

There are , however , general feelings associated with objects that may influence perception similarly in groups of individuals . Walker Percy 's Loss of the Creature ' describes human perception as it touches the realm of emotions , especially the concept of novelty . The travelers who are explorers , are overwhelmed with their positive surprise and amazement upon the discovery of these new lands : Every explorer names his island Formosa , beautiful . To him it is beautiful because in being first , he has access to it and can see it for what it is . But to no one else is it ever as beautiful-except the rare man who manages to recover it , who knows that it has to be recovered (Percy . In this example perception in both of its dimensions (as a process and a product ) is depicted as the development of a purely emotional attitude after the act of visual recognition

Contrary to Percy 's of perception , John Locke attributes perception to the realm of cognition and thinking : Perception , as it is the first faculty of the mind exercised about our ideas so it is the first and simplest idea we have from reflection , and is by some called thinking in general (Locke , Ch . 9 . Here perception is defined as a feature of the human mind rather than certain sensory or sensorimotor experience , as defined by Percy . Locke describes the product of perception as identification (classifying the object ) rather than recognition (the creation of the image of the object in the mind

Conversely , Thomas...