IT’S JUSTONE THINGAFTER ANOTHER

Boram Park

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PerceptionPerception (from the Latin perceptio, percipio) is the organization,

identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to fabricate a

mental representation through the process of transduction, which sensors in

the body transform signals from the environment into encoded neural signals.

All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result

from physical stimulation of the sense organs. For example, vision involves

light striking the retinas of the eyes, smell is mediated by odor molecules and

hearing involves pressure waves. Perception is not the passive receipt of these

signals, but can be shaped by learning, memory and expectation. Perception

involves these "top-down" effects as well as the "bottom-up" process of

processing sensory input. The "bottom-up" processing is basically low-level

information that's used to build up higher -level information (i.e. - shapes for

object recognition). The "top-down" processing refers to a person's concept

and expectations (knowledge) that influence perception. Perception depends

on complex functions of the nervous system, but subjectively seems mostly

effortless because this processing happens outside conscious awareness.

Since the rise of experimental psychology in the late 19th Century,

psychology's understanding of perception has progressed by combining

a variety of techniques.Psychophysics measures the effect on perception

of varying the physical qualities of the input. Sensory neuroscience studies

the brain mechanisms underlying perception. Perceptual systems can also

be studied computationally, in terms of the information they process.

Perceptual issues in philosophy include the extent to which sensory qualities

such as sounds, smells or colors exist in objective reality rather than the mind

of the perceiver.

Perception Memory

Depiction

Experience

Reflection Mental Image

SocialNational

AssililationCultural

Identity Volition

RealityI magination

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Although the senses were traditionally viewed as passive receptors, the

study of illusions and ambiguous images has demonstrated that the

brain's perceptual systems actively and pre-consciously attempt to make

sense of their input. There is still active debate about the extent to which

perception is an active process of hypothesis testing, analogous to science,

or whether realistic sensory information is rich enough to make this process

unnecessary.

The perceptual systems of the brain enable individuals to see the world

around them as stable, even though the sensory information may be

incomplete and rapidly varying. Human and animal brains are structured in

a modular way, with different areas processing different kinds of sensory

information. Some of these modules take the form of sensory maps,

mapping some aspect of the world across part of the brain's surface.

These different modules are interconnected and influence each other. For

instance, the taste is strongly influenced by its odor.

Perception and realityIn the case of visual perception, some people can actually see the percept shift in

their mind's eye. Others, who are not picture thinkers, may not necessarily perceive

the 'shape-shifting' as their world changes. The 'esemplastic' nature has been shown

by experiment: an ambiguous image has multiple interpretations on the perceptual level.

This confusing ambiguity of perception is exploited in human technologies such as

camouflage, and also in biological mimicry, for example by European Peacock butterflies,

whose wings bear eye markings that birds respond to as though they were the eyes of

a dangerous predator.

There is also evidence that the brain in some ways operates on a slight "delay",

to allow nerve impulses from distant parts of the body to be integrated into

simultaneous signals.

Perception is one of the oldest fields in psychology. The oldest quantitative law in

psychology is the Weber-Fechner law, which quantifies the relationship between the

intensity of physical stimuli and their perceptual effects (for example, testing how

much darker a computer screen can get before the viewer actually notices).

The study of perception gave rise to the Gestalt school of psychology, with its

emphasis on holistic approach.

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ExperienceAs a general concept experience comprises knowledge of or skill of some thing or some event gained through

involvement in or exposure to that thing or event.[1] The history of the word experience aligns it closely with the concept

of experiment. For example, the word experience could be used in a statement like: "I have experience in fishing".

The concept of experience generally refers to know-how or procedural knowledge, rather than propositional knowledge:

on-the-job training rather than book-learning. Philosophers dub knowledge based on experience "empirical knowledge"

or "a posteriori knowledge".

The interrogation of experience has a long tradition in continental philosophy. Experience plays an important role in

the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard. The German term Erfahrung, often translated into English as "experience", has a

slightly different implication, connoting the coherency of life's experiences.

A person with considerable experience in a specific field can gain a reputation as an expert.

Certain religious traditions (such as types of Buddhism, Surat Shabd Yoga, mysticism and Pentecostalism) and

educational paradigms with, for example, the conditioning of military recruit-training (also known as "boot camps"),

stress the experiential nature of human epistemology. This stands in contrast to alternatives: traditions of dogma, logic

or reasoning. Participants in activities such as tourism, extreme sports and recreational drug-use also tend to stress the

importance of experience.

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Physical experiencePhysical experience occurs whenever an object or environment changes. [3] In other

words, physical experiences relate to observables. They need not involve modal

properties nor mental experiences.

Mental experienceMain article: Mind

Mental experience involves the aspect of intellect and consciousness experienced as combinations of thought, perception, memory,

emotion, will[citation needed] and imagination, including all unconscious cognitive processes. The term can refer, by implication, to a

thought process. Mental experience and its relation to the physical brain form an area of philosophical debate: some identity theorists

originally argued that the identity of brain and mental states held only for a few sensations. Most theorists, however, generalized the

view to cover all mental experience.[4]

Mathematicians can exemplify cumulative mental experience in the approaches and skills with which they work. Mathematical realism,

like realism in general, holds that mathematical entities exist independently of the human mind. Thus humans do not invent mathemat-

ics, but rather discover and experience it, and any other intelligent beings in the universe would presumably do the same. This point of

view regards only one sort of mathematics as discoverable; it sees triangles, right angles, and curves, for example, as real entities, not

just the creations of the human mind. Some working mathematicians have espoused mathematical realism as they see themselves ex-

periencing naturally-occurring objects. Examples include Paul Erdős and Kurt Gödel. Gödel believed in an objective mathematical reality

that could be perceived in a manner analogous to sense perception. Certain principles (for example: for any two objects, there is a col-

lection of objects consisting of precisely those two objects) could be directly seen to be true, but some conjectures, like the continuum

hypothesis, might prove undecidable just on the basis of such principles. Gödel suggested that quasi-empirical methodology such as

experience could provide sufficient evidence to be able to reasonably assume such a conjecture. With experience, there are distinctions

depending on what sort of existence one takes mathematical entities to have, and how we know about them.

Emotional experienceMain article: Emotion

Humans can rationalize falling in (and out) of love as "emotional experience". Societies

which lack institutional arranged marriages can call on emotional experience in

individuals to influence mate-selection.[5] The concept of emotional experience also

appears in the notion of empathy.

Spiritual experienceMain article: Religious experience

Newberg and Newberg provide a view on spiritual experience.

Social experienceMain article: Socialization

Growing up and living within a society can foster the development and observa-

tion of social experience.[8] Social experience provides individuals with the skills

and habits necessary for participating within their own societies, as a society itself is

formed[citation needed] through a plurality of shared experiences forming norms, cus-

toms, values, traditions, social roles, symbols and languages.

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Religious ExperienceMain article: Religious experience

The experience experiencor.[7] Mystics can describe their visions as "spiritual experiences". However, psychology may explain the same

experiences in terms of altered states of consciousness, which may come about accidentally through (for example) very high fever,

infections such as meningitis, sleep deprivation, fasting, oxygen deprivation, nitrogen narcosis (deep diving), psychosis, temporal-

lobe epilepsy, or a traumatic accident. People can likewise achieve such experiences more deliberately through recognized mystical

practices such as sensory deprivation or mind-control techniques, hypnosis, meditation, prayer, or mystical disciplines such as mantra

meditation, yoga, Sufism, dream yoga, or surat shabda yoga). Some "primitive religions" encourage spiritual experiences through the

ingestion of psychoactive drugs such as alcohol and opiates, but more commonly with entheogenic plants and substances such as

cannabis, salvia divinorum, psilocybin mushrooms, peyote, DXM, ayahuasca, or datura. Another way to induce spiritual experience

through an altered state of consciousness involves psychoacoustics, binaural beats, or light-and-sound stimulation.

Subjective experienceSubjective experience can involve a state of individual subjectivity, perception on

which one builds one's own state of reality; a reality based on one’s interaction with

one's environment. The subjective experience depends on one’s individual ability to

process data, to store and internalize it. For example: our senses collect data, which

we then process according to biological programming (genetics), neurological network-

relationships and other variables such as relativity[disambiguation needed] etc.

[clarification needed], all of which affect our individual experience of any given situation

in such a way as to render it subjective.

Socialsocial refers to a characteristic of living organisms as applied to populations of

humans and other animals. It always refers to the interaction of organisms with

other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether

they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is

voluntary or involuntary.

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DefinitionIn the absence of agreement about its meaning, the term "social" is used in many

different senses and regarded as a fuzzy concept, referring among other things to:

Attitudes, orientations, or behaviors which take the interests, intentions, or needs of

other people into account (in contrast to anti-social behaviour) has played some role in

defining the idea or the principle. For instance terms like social realism, social justice,

social constructivism, social psychology and social capital imply that there is some

social process involved or considered, a process that is not there in regular, "non-social"

realism, justice, constructivism, psychology, or capital.

The adjective "social" is also used often in political discourse, although its meaning in a

context depends heavily on who is using it. In left-wing circles it is often used to imply a

positive characteristic, while in right-wing circles it is generally used to imply a negative

characteristic. It should also be noted that, overall, this adjective is used much more

often by those on the political left than by those on the political right. For these reasons,

those seeking to avoid association with the left-right political debates often seek to label

their work with phrases that do not include the word "social". An example is quasi-

empiricism in mathematics which is sometimes labelled social constructivism by those

who see it as an unwarranted intrusion of social considerations in mathematical practice.

Cultural IdentityCultural identity is the identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as

far as one is influenced by one’s belonging to a group or culture. Cultural

identity is similar to and has overlaps with, but is not synonymous with,

identity politics.

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DescriptionVarious modern cultural studies and social theories have investigated cultural identity.

In recent decades, a new form of identification has emerged which breaks down the

understanding of the individual as a coherent whole subject into a collection of various

cultural identifiers. These cultural identifiers may be the result of various conditions

including: location, gender, race, history, nationality, language, sexuality, religious beliefs,

ethnicity and aesthetics. The divisions between cultures can be very fine in some parts of

the world, especially places such as Canada or the United States, where the population is

ethnically diverse and social unity is based primarily on common social values and beliefs.

As a "historical reservoir", culture is an important factor in shaping identity. Some critics

of cultural identity argue that the preservation of cultural identity, being based upon

difference, is a divisive force in society, and that cosmopolitanism gives individuals a

greater sense of shared citizenship. When considering practical association in international

society, states may share an inherent part of their 'make up' that gives common ground

and an alternative means of identifying with each other. Also of interest is the interplay

between cultural identity and new media.

Rather than necessarily represent an individual's interaction within a certain group,

cultural identity may be defined by the social network of people imitating and following the

social norms as presented by the media Accordingly, instead of learning behaviour and

knowledge from cultural/religious groups, individuals may be learning these social norms

from the media to build on their cultural identity.

National AssimilationNational assimilation or cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to

demographic multiculturalism that supports or promotes the assimilation of

cultural and ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation

is often used when referring to immigrants and various ethnic groups settling

in a new land. New customs and attitudes are acquired through contact and

communication. Each group of immigrants contributes some of its own cultural

traits to the new society. Assimilation usually involves a gradual change and

takes place in varying degrees; full assimilation occurs when new members of

a society become indistinguishable from older members.

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Cultural influenceA group (a state or an ethnicity) can spontaneously adopt a different culture due to its political relevance, or to its perceived

superiority. The first is the case of the Latin language and culture, that were gradually adopted by most of the subjugated people.

The second is the case of subjugated, but older and richer culture, which see itself imitated by the new masters, e.g. the victorious

Roman Republic adopted more from the Hellenistic cultures than it imposed in most domains, except such Roman specialties as law

and the military.

Cultural assimilation can happen either spontaneously or forcibly. A culture can spontaneously adopt a different culture or older and

richer cultures forcedly integrate other weak cultures. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic

groups who have settled in a new land. A new culture and new attitudes toward the origin culture are obtained through contact and

communication. Cultural changing is not simply a one-way process. Assimilation assumes that relatively tenuous culture gets to be

united to one unified culture. This process happens through contact and accommodation between each culture. The current definition

of assimilation is usually used to refer to immigrants, but in multiculturalism, cultural assimilation can happened all over the world, not

just be limited to specific areas. For example, a shared language gives people the chance to study and work internationally,not just

being limited to the same cultural group. People from different countries contribute to diversity and form the "global culture" which

means the culture combined by the elements from different countries. This "global culture" can be seen as a part of assimilation that

causes cultures from different areas to affect each other.

VolitionVolition or will is the cognitive process by which an individual decides on and

commits to a particular course of action. It is defined as purposive striving,

and is one of the primary human psychological functions (the others being

affection [affect or feeling], motivation [goals and expectations] and cognition

[thinking]). Volitional processes can be applied consciously, and they can

be automatized as habits over time. Most modern conceptions of volition

address it as a process of action control that becomes automatized (see e.g.,

Heckhausen and Kuhl; Gollwitzer; Boekaerts and Corno).

Willpower is the colloquial, and volition the scientific, term for the same state

of the will; viz., an "elective preference". When we have "made up our minds"

(as we say) to a thing, i.e., have a settled state of choice respecting it, that

state is called an immanent volition; when we put forth any particular act of

choice, that act is called an emanant, or executive, or imperative, volition.

When an immanent or settled state of choice controls or governs a series of

actions, we call that state a predominant volition; while we give the name of

subordinate volitions to those particular acts of choice which carry into effect

the object sought for by the governing or "predominant volition".

According to Gary Kielhofner's "Model of Human Occupation", volition is one of

the three sub-systems that act on human behavior. Within this model, volition

refers to a person's values, interests and self-efficacy (personal causation)

about personal performance.

The book A Bias for Action discusses the difference between willpower and

motivation. In doing so, the authors use the term volition as a synonym for

willpower and describe briefly the theories of [Kurt Lewin]]. While Lewin argues

that motivation and volition are one and the same, the authors claim that

Ach argues differently. According to the authors, Ach claims that there is a

certain threshold of desire that distinguishes motivation from volition: when

desire lies below this threshold, it is motivation, and when it crosses over, it

becomes volition. Using this model, the authors consider individuals' differing

levels of commitment with regard to tasks by measuring it on a scale of intent

from motivation to volition. Modern writing on the role of volition, including

discussions of impulse control (e.g., Kuhl and Heckhausen) and education (e.g.,

Corno), also make this distinction. Corno's model ties volition to the processes

of self-regulated learning.

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Conceptions of willpower are generally based on the assumption that we have rational control, and that the reduction

of this control results in a lack of willpower. We can thus turn our rationality to serve our impulses or wishes, and

sometimes have great willpower in pursuing them. For instance, an alcoholic can be very cunning in pursuing his

desire to drink, and may display great determination in achieving this goal. Other times, however, he may know that

this behavior is destroying his life, and may resolve for the moment to forgo it. Both resolutions may be explained with

reference to willpower, depending on how rational his choices are in each case.

The observer's error is to assume that humans are essentially rational creatures, and that human will always serves

that rationality. In fact, we are only partly rational, and often our will serves various motivations aside from reason.

In their research study The Role of Volition in Distance Education: An Exploration of its Capacities, Deimann and

Bastiaens (2010), attempt to apply the concept of volition research to distance education (DE) research and practice.

They argue that the concept of volition, volition competence and use of volitional strategies have direct application to

the field of DE. The ability to stay focused and ward off distractions otherwise known as volition is a skill set required

by DE learners to be successful in knowledge acquisition.

MemoryFor other uses, see Memory (disambiguation).In psychology, memory is the

processes by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved. Encoding

allows information that is from the outside world to reach our senses in the

forms of chemical and physical stimuli. In this first stage we must change

the information so that we may put the memory into the encoding process.

Storage is the second memory stage or process. This entails that we

maintain information over periods of time. Finally the third process is the

retrieval of information that we have stored. We must locate it and return

it to our consciousness. Some retrieval attempts may be effortless due to

the type of information.

From an information processing perspective there are three main stages in

the formation and retrieval of memory: Encoding or registration: receiving,

processing and combining of received information Storage: creation of a

permanent record of the encoded information Retrieval, recall or recollection:

calling back the stored information in response to some cue for use in a

process or activity

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Sensory memorySensory memory corresponds approximately to the initial 200–500 milliseconds after an

item is perceived. The ability to look at an item, and remember what it looked like with

just a second of observation, or memorisation, is an example of sensory memory. With

very short presentations, participants often report that they seem to "see" more than

they can actually report. The first experiments exploring this form of sensory memory

were conducted by George Sperling (1963) using the "partial report paradigm". Subjects

were presented with a grid of 12 letters, arranged into three rows of four. After a brief

presentation, subjects were then played either a high, medium or low tone, cuing them

which of the rows to report. Based on these partial report experiments, Sperling was

able to show that the capacity of sensory memory was approximately 12 items, but

that it degraded very quickly (within a few hundred milliseconds). Because this form of

memory degrades so quickly, participants would see the display, but be unable to report

all of the items (12 in the "whole report" procedure) before they decayed. This type of

memory cannot be prolonged via rehearsal.

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There are many types of sensory memories. Iconic memory is a type of sensory

memory that briefly stores an image which has been perceived for a small duration.

Echoic memory is another type of sensory memory that briefly stores sounds which

has been perceived for a small duration.

Short-term memoryMain article: Short-term memory

Short-term memory allows recall for a period of several seconds to a minute without

rehearsal. Its capacity is also very limited: George A. Miller (1956), when working at Bell

Laboratories, conducted experiments showing that the store of short-term memory was

7±2 items (the title of his famous paper, “The magical number 7±2”). Modern estimates

of the capacity of short-term memory are lower, typically of the order of 4–5 items,[3]

however, memory capacity can be increased through a process called chunking.[4] For

example, in recalling a ten-digit telephone number, a person could chunk the digits into

three groups: first, the area code (such as 123), then a three-digit chunk (456) and lastly

a four-digit chunk (7890). This method of remembering telephone numbers is far more

effective than attempting to remember a string of 10 digits; this is because we are able

to chunk the information into meaningful groups of numbers. This may be reflected in

some countries in the tendency to display telephone numbers as several chunks of

three numbers, with the final four-number group generally broken down into

two groups of two.

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Short-term memory is believed to rely mostly on an acoustic code for storing

information, and to a lesser extent a visual code. Conrad (1964)[5] found that test

subjects had more difficulty recalling collections of letters that were acoustically similar

(e.g. E, P, D). Confusion with recalling acoustically similar letters rather than visually

similar letters implies that the letters were encoded acoustically. Conrad’s (1964)

study however, deals with the encoding of written text, thus while memory of written

language may rely on acoustic components, generalisations to all forms of memory

cannot be made.

Long-term memoryMain article: Long-term memory

The storage in sensory memory and short-term memory generally have a strictly

limited capacity and duration, which means that information is not retained indefinitely.

By contrast, long-term memory can store much larger quantities of information

for potentially unlimited duration (sometimes a whole life span). Its capacity is

immeasurably large. For example, given a random seven-digit number we may

remember it for only a few seconds before forgetting, suggesting it was stored in

our short-term memory. On the other hand, we can remember telephone numbers

for many years through repetition; this information is said to be stored in long-term

memory. While short-term memory encodes information acoustically, long-term memory

encodes it semantically: Baddeley (1966) discovered that after 20 minutes, test subjects

had the most difficulty recalling a collection of words that had similar meanings (e.g. big,

large, great, huge) long-term. Another part of long-term memory is episodic memory

“which attempts to capture information such as “what”, “when” and “where”.

With episodic memory individuals are able to recall specific events such as

birthday parties and weddings.

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Short-term memory is supported by transient patterns of neuronal communication,

dependent on regions of the frontal lobe (especially dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and

the parietal lobe. Long-term memories, on the other hand, are maintained by more

stable and permanent changes in neural connections widely spread throughout the

brain. The hippocampus is essential (for learning new information) to the consolidation

of information from short-term to long-term memory, although it does not seem to store

information itself. Without the hippocampus, new memories are unable to be stored

into long-term memory, as learned from HM after removal of his hippocampus[citation

needed], and there will be a very short attention span. Furthermore, it may be involved

in changing neural connections for a period of three months or more after the initial

learning. One of the primary functions of sleep is thought to be improving consolidation

of information, as several studies have demonstrated that memory depends on

getting sufficient sleep between training and test.[8] Additionally, data obtained from

neuroimaging studies have shown activation patterns in the sleeping brain which mirror

those recorded during the learning of tasks from the previous day[citation needed],

suggesting that new memories may be solidified through such rehearsal. Research

has suggested that long-term memory storage in humans may be maintained by DNA

methylation, or prions

ReflectionReflection is the change in direction of a wavefront at an interface between

two different media so that the wavefront returns into the medium from

which it originated. Common examples include the reflection of light, sound

and water waves. The law of reflection says that for specular reflection the

angle at which the wave is incident on the surface equals the angle at which it

is reflected. Mirrors exhibit specular reflection.

In acoustics, reflection causes echoes and is used in sonar. In geology,

it is important in the study of seismic waves. Reflection is observed with

surface waves in bodies of water. Reflection is observed with many types

of electromagnetic wave, besides visible light. Reflection of VHF and higher

frequencies is important for radio transmission and for radar. Even hard

X-rays and gamma rays can be reflected at shallow angles with special

"grazing" mirrors.

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Mental ImageA mental image is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly

resembles the experience of perceiving some object, event, or scene, but

occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to

the senses. There are sometimes episodes, particularly on falling asleep

(hypnagogic imagery) and waking up (hypnopompic), when the mental

imagery, being of a rapid, phantasmagoric and involuntary character, defies

perception, presenting a kaleidoscopic field, in which no distinct object can

be discerned.

The nature of these experiences, what makes them possible, and their

function (if any) have long been subjects of research and controversy in

philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and more recently, neuroscience.

As contemporary researchers use the expression, mental images (or

mental imagery) can occur in the form of any sense, so that we may

experience auditory images, olfactory images, and so forth. However, the

vast majority of philosophical and scientific investigations of the topic focus

upon visual mental imagery. It has been assumed that, like humans, many

types of animals are capable of experiencing mental images. Due to the

fundamentally subjective nature of the phenomenon, there is little to no

evidence either for or against this view.

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Philosophers such as George Berkeley and David Hume, and early experimental

psychologists such as Wilhelm Wundt and William James, understood ideas in

general to be mental images, and today it is very widely believed that much

imagery functions as mental representations (or mental models), playing an

important role in memory and thinking. Some have gone so far as to suggest

that images are best understood to be, by definition, a form of inner, mental

or neural representation; in the case of hypnagogic and hypnapompic

imagery, it is not representational at all. Others reject the view that the

image experience may be identical with (or directly caused by) any such

representation in the mind or the brain, but do not take account of the non-

representational forms of imagery.

In 2010 IBM applied for a patent on how to extract mental images of

human faces from the human brain. It uses a feedback loop based on

brain measurements of the fusiform face area in the brain which activates

proportionate with degree of facial recognition.

DepictionDepiction is meaning conveyed through pictures. Basically, a

picture maps an object to a two-dimensional scheme or picture plane. Pictures

are made with various materials and techniques, such as painting, drawing, or

prints (including photography and movies) mosaics, tapestries, stained glass,

and collages of unusual and disparate elements. Occasionally pictures may

occur in simply inkblots, accidental stains, peculiar clouds or a glimpse of the

moon, but these are special cases. Sculpture and performances are sometimes

said to depict but this arises where depiction is taken to include all reference

that is not linguistic or notational. The bulk of research in depiction however

deals only in pictures. While sculpture and performance clearly represent or

refer, they do not strictly picture their objects.

Pictures may be factual or fictional, literal or metaphorical, realistic or idealised

and in various combination. Idealised depiction is also termed schematic or

stylised and extends to icons, diagrams and maps. Classes or styles of picture

may abstract their objects by degrees, conversely, establish degrees of the

concrete (usually called, a little confusingly, figuration or figurative, since the

‘figurative’ is then often quite literal). Stylisation can lead to the fully abstract

picture, where reference is only to conditions for a picture plane – a severe

exercise in self-reference and ultimately a sub-set of pattern. But just how

pictures convey meaning is disputed. Philosophers, art historians and critics,

perceptual psychologists and other researchers in the arts and social sciences

have contributed to the debate and many of the most influential contributions

have been interdisciplinary. Some key positions are briefly surveyed below.

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IllusionThe most famous and elaborate case for resemblance modified by reference, is

made by art historian Ernst Gombrich (1960; 1963 (1982). Resemblance in pictures

is taken to involve illusion. Instincts in visual perception are said to be triggered or

alerted by pictures, even when we are rarely deceived. The eye supposedly cannot

resist finding resemblances that accord with illusion. Resemblance is thus narrowed

to something like the seeds of illusion. Against the one-way relation of reference

Gombrich argues for a weaker or labile relation, inherited from substitution). Pictures

are thus both more primitive and powerful than stricter reference.

But whether a picture can deceive a little while it represents as much seems gravely

compromised. Claims for innate dispositions in sight are also contested. Gombrich

appeals to an array of psychological research from James J. Gibson, R. L. Gregory,

John M. Kennedy, Konrad Lorenz, Ulric Neisser and others in arguing for an ‘opti-

cal’ basis to perspective, in particular (see also perspective (graphical). Subsequent

cross-cultural studies in depictive competence and related studies in child-develop-

ment and vision impairment are inconclusive at best.

Gombrich’s convictions have important implications for his popular history of art, for

treatment and priorities there. In a later study by John Willats (1997) on the variety

and development of picture planes, Gombrich’s views on the greater realism of

perspective underpin many crucial findings.

RealityIn philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than

as they may appear or might be imagined.[1] In a wider definition, reality

includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or

comprehensible. A still more broad definition includes everything that has

existed, exists, or will exist.

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Philosophers, mathematicians, and others ancient and modern such as

Aristotle, Plato, Frege, Wittgenstein, Russell etc., have made a distinction

between thought corresponding to reality, coherent abstractions, and that

which cannot even be rationally thought. By contrast existence is often

restricted solely to that which has p hysical existence or has a direct basis in

it in the way that thoughts do in the brain.

Reality is often contrasted with what is imaginary, delusional, (only) in

the mind, dreams, what is abstract, what is false, or what is fictional. The

truth refers to what is real, while falsity refers to what is not. Fictions are

considered not real.

Related conceptsA common colloquial usage would have reality mean "perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes

toward reality," as in "My reality is not your reality." This is often used just as a

colloquialism indicating that the parties to a conversation agree, or should agree, not

to quibble over deeply different conceptions of what is real. For example, in a religious

discussion between friends, one might say (attempting humor), "You might disagree, but

in my reality, everyone goes to heaven."

Reality can be defined in a way that links it to world views or parts of them (conceptual

frameworks): Reality is the totality of all things, structures (actual and conceptual),

events (past and present) and phenomena, whether observable or not. It is what a

world view (whether it be based on individual or shared human experience) ultimately

attempts to describe or map.

Certain ideas from physics, philosophy, sociology, literary criticism, and other fields

shape various theories of reality. One such belief is that there simply and literally is no

reality beyond the perceptions or beliefs we each have about reality. Such attitudes

are summarized in the popular statement, "Perception is reality" or "Life is how you

perceive reality" or "reality is what you can get away with" (Robert Anton Wilson), and

they indicate anti-realism – that is, the view that there is no objective reality, whether

acknowledged explicitly or not.

Many of the concepts of science and philosophy are often defined culturally and socially.

This idea was elaborated by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific

Revolutions (1962). The Social Construction of Reality a book about the sociology of

knowledge written by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann was published in 1966.

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Time and spaceA traditional realist position in ontology is that time and space have existence apart from

the human mind. Idealists deny or doubt the existence of objects independent of the

mind. Some anti-realists whose ontological position is that objects outside the mind do

exist, nevertheless doubt the independent existence of time and space.

Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason, described time as an a priori notion that, together

with other a priori notions such as space, allows us to comprehend sense experience.

Kant denies that either space or time are substance, entities in themselves, or learned

by experience; he holds rather that both are elements of a systematic framework we use

to structure our experience. Spatial measurements are used to quantify how far apart

objects are, and temporal measurements are used to quantitatively compare the interval

between (or duration of) events. Although space and time are held to be transcedentally

ideal in this sense, they are also empirically real, i.e. not mere illusions.

Idealist writers such as J. M. E. McTaggart in The Unreality of Time have argued that

time is an illusion.As well as differing about the reality of time as a whole, metaphysical

theories of time can differ in their ascriptions of reality to the past, present and future

separately.

Presentism holds that the past and future are unreal, and only an ever changing present

is real.The block universe theory, also known as Eternalism, holds that past, present

and future are all real, but the passage of time is an illusion. It is often said to have

a scientific basis in relativity.The growing block universe theory holds that past and

present are real, but the future is not.Time, and the related concepts of process and

evolution are central to the system-building metaphysics of A. N. Whitehead and Charles

Hartshorne.

ImaginationImagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the ability of forming

new images and sensations when they are not perceived through sight,

hearing, or other senses. Imagination helps provide meaning to experience

and understanding to knowledge; it is a fundamental faculty through

which people make sense of the world, and it also plays a key role in the

learning process. A basic training for imagination is listening to storytelling

(narrative), in which the exactness of the chosen words is the fundamental

factor to "evoke worlds". It is a whole cycle of image formation or any

sensation which may be described as "hidden" as it takes place without

anyone else's knowledge. A person may imagine according to his mood, it

may be good or bad depending on the situation. Some people imagine in a

state of tension or gloominess in order to calm themselves. It is accepted

as the innate ability and process of inventing partial or complete personal

realms within the mind from elements derived from sense perceptions of the

shared world.[citation needed] The term is technically used in psychology

for the process of reviving in the mind, percepts of objects formerly given in

sense perception. Since this use of the term conflicts with that of ordinary

language, some psychologists have preferred to describe this process as

"imaging" or "imagery" or to speak of it as "reproductive" as opposed to

"productive" or "constructive" imagination. Imagined images are seen with

the "mind's eye". Imagination can also be expressed through stories such as

fairy tales or fantasies.

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Children often use narratives or pretend play in order to exercise their

imagination. When children develop fantasy they play at two levels: first,

they use role playing to act out what they have developed with their

imagination, and at the second level they play again with their make-believe

situation by acting as if what they have developed is an actual reality that

already exists in narrative myth.

Imagination and MemoryMemory and imagination have been shown to be affected by one another, found through

research in Priscilla Long's piece My Brain On My Mind "Images made by functional

magnetic resonance imaging technology show that remembering and imagining sends

blood to identical parts of the brain." An optimal balance of intrinsic, extraneous, and

germane form of information processing can heighten the chance of the brain to retain

information as long term memories, rather than short term, memories. This is significant

because experiences stored as long term memories are easier to be recalled, as they are

ingrained deeper in the mind. Each of these forms require information to be taught in

a specific manner so as to use various regions of the brain when being processed. This

information can potentially help develop programs for young students to cultivate or

further enhance their creative abilities from a young age. The Neocortex and Thalamus

are responsible for controlling the brain's imagination, along with many of the brain's

other functions such as consciousness and abstract thought. Since imagination involves

many different brain functions, such as emotions, memory, thoughts etc., portions

of the brain where multiple functions occur-- such as the Thalamus and Neocortex--

are the main regions where imaginative processing has been documented. The

understanding of how memory and imagination are linked in the brain, paves the way to

better understand one's ability to link significant past experiences with their imagination.

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Imagination vs. beliefImagination differs fundamentally from belief because the subject understands that

what is personally invented by the mind does not necessarily affect the course of action

taken in the apparently shared world, while beliefs are part of what one holds as truths

about both the shared and personal worlds. The play of imagination, apart from the

obvious limitations (e.g. of avoiding explicit self-contradiction), is conditioned only by the

general trend of the mind at a given moment. Belief, on the other hand, is immediately

related to practical activity: it is perfectly possible to imagine oneself a millionaire, but

unless one believes it one does not, therefore, act as such. Belief endeavors to conform

to the subject's experienced conditions or faith in the possibility of those conditions;

whereas imagination as such is specifically free. The dividing line between imagination

and belief varies widely in different stages of technological development. Thus in more

extreme cases, someone from a primitive culture who ill frames an ideal reconstruction

of the causes of his illness, and attributes it to the hostile magic of an enemy based on

faith and tradition rather than science. In ignorance of the science of pathology the sub-

ject is satisfied with this explanation, and actually believes in it, sometimes to the point

of death, due to what is known as the nocebo effect.

It follows that the learned distinction between imagination and belief depends in prac-

tice on religion, tradition, and culture.