Madison Kosh

UWRT 1104-033
November 16, 2016

The Sixth Sense: Perception

Have you ever paid attention to how you, independently, get through
your average day? How you casually look around to tell yourself what to do
and where to go, or how you go out to lunch and order something off the
menu that you have a particular taste for? Well, the way you, and everyone
else in the world, can complete the things we consider, necessary, everyday
tasks, is through the use of our senses.
I mean think about it, every single day, we use our eyes to navigate us,
our hands to feel the texture and temperature of things, our ears to listen to
the words other people speak, our nose to smell the scent of things around
us, and our mouths to taste the flavors of the food we like. Every day, you,
me, and the majority of the world around us, involuntarily use our senses in
everything we do. For example, because I am chewing gum right now, I am
using three of my five senses, all at the same time just sitting here typing
this paper. We take the experiences we have with our senses and our mind
interprets those experiences into events; we proceed to give these events
meaning based on how they affected us or made us feel, and we later use
what we learned from those events to determine the future decisions we
make. This is the process of how ones perception is built.

Dr. C. George Boeree, a retired professor and psychologist from

Shippensburg University who has a BA, MS, and PhD in psychology, defines
perception as, In the broadest sense, perception is a matter of interaction
between the world and the self. At its simplest, we take the events the world
gives us and give them meaning by interpreting and acting upon them
(Boeree).
After realizing how relevant and impactful this is to everyones lives, I
couldnt help but think of people who were born without, or have no
recollection of having one or more of their senses, like Helen Keller. Helen
was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama on June 27 , 1880. At less than two years of
th

age she caught an illness that produced an extremely high fever and body
temperature, which left her deaf and blind by the time she was 19 months
old. Throughout her life, Helen worked on regaining her senses through
special schooling and help. By the time she was 23, she had strengthened
her senses enough to write The Story of My Life, an autobiography of her
early childhood through young- adult life (Helen). Although I have not
personally read Kellers book, her story made me curious about the way the
absence of her senses affected her decisions and how she perceived the
world. After discovering how significant our senses are in our daily lives, and
then thinking about Helen and her story, it led me to research: Does the way
humans strength of our senses vary, influence the way every individuals
perceives things?

My research process guided me to some very diverse views and

discussion points about this topic. One of my sources that I found most
interesting was a peer reviewed article called Subcultural Influences on
Person Perception. The two authors of this article, Asia Friedman, a professor
in the Sociology department at the University of Delaware, and Ashley S.
Waggoner, a professor in the department of Psychology at Indiana University,
have each made many contributions to scholarly, peer- reviewed articles on
sociological and psychological topics. This article discusses how many
subcultures, such as profession, region, youth, class and hobbies all play
various roles in influencing thought and perception. I found this article
interesting because not only did it talk about the influences subcultures have
on perception, which is something I had never considered before, but it also
touched base, and provided support to my original question; how absence
and lack of access to a sense significantly impacts individuals perceptions.
The authors of this article make a great point, Whether normatively
withheld, disregarded, or simply unavailable, our perceptions of others are in
part a reflection of the particular details of appearance and behavior that we
cannot access (Friedman). This basically means that the perceptions we
have of other individuals is a reflection of the things we dont know or see
about them. Do I agree with this statement? Somewhat. Regardless whether I
agree or disagree, this led me into consideration of my classmates, my
professors, my friends and family, and all of the people I interact with on a
daily basis. I then thought larger. I thought about the world, and how seven

billon people experience every single day in a different way. This made me
realize how anyone around me will never have the exact same perspective
that I do on anything, simply because no two peoples senses affect them in
the same way.
An additional source of mine, The Case Against Reality, an article
written by Amanda Gefter, is in the form of a conversation between herself
and a cognitive science professor, Donald Hoffman. Although this is written
by Gefter, the article is predominantly Hoffman discussing his views about
perception and reality. Hoffman, a published author and speaker on TED
talks, has spent three decades studying perception, artificial intelligence,
evolutionary game theory and the brain (Gefter). The reason I bring this up is
because of the connections made between Hoffman and the the authors of
Subcultural Influences on Person Perception. Hoffman has a strong belief that
human perceptions of the world are nothing like reality, that they are all
illusions. This article is very lengthy with much detail, but a quote that
summarizes his main point is, We realize with a jolt that what we perceive is
never the world directly, but rather our brains best guess at what the world is
like, a kind of internal stimulation of an external reality (Gefter). After all of
Hoffmans technical reasoning as to why our perceptions are illusions, I was
slightly confused and pretty much disagreed with every point he made, until
I read one of his examples towards the end. This is where I made a
connection between my previous source and Hoffmans theory. Throughout
this article Hoffman discusses how physics proves that there are no public

physical objects, which is why I was confused and blatantly disagreed. He

then put it into example form, Heres how I think about it. I can talk to you
about my headache and believe that I am communicating effectively with
you, because youve had your own headaches. The same thing is true as
apples and the moon and the sun and the universe. Just like you have your
own headache, you have your own moon. But I assume its relevantly similar
to mine. Thats an assumption that could be false, but thats the source of
my communication, and thats the best we can do in terms of public physical
objects and objective science (Gefter). After reading this and actually
processing Hoffmans thought, it gave me an epiphany. This is when I made
the connection between his view, and the views of the authors of my
previous source. When they stated that humans perceptions of other people
are a reflection of things we cannot access, I made a direct correlation
between their statement and Hoffmans statement about humans source of
communication. This was my epiphany: when two people talk about a thing
or object that has a title, like the ocean for example, they each automatically
assume that the other person perceives that thing or object in the same way
they do, because of its title. When in reality, their perceptions of that title are
probably entirely different, because they, most likely, had different
experiences, causing their senses to interact differently with that title. But
this is something we would never know, which is why we cant assume,
because we cannot access the way the other person perceives things.

After thinking about how experience influences perception, I decided to

furthered my research process because I became curious about how
experiences with different external factors influence your perception. Factors
like drugs. Theres the common drugs, that many people have experimented
with and can relate to, like what it feels like to be high when you smoke
marijuana, or how it feels to be drunk after you drink a lot of alcohol. Well,
a feeling of a not so common drug, one I cannot relate to but has always
peaked my curiosity, is what someone experiences when they trip on LSD.
Even if someone has not experienced what its like to be drunk or high, the
majority of people know what those terms mean. But what exactly does
someone experience when they say they are tripping? And how does
someone who has not used this drug try to relate to that term? Sure, Ive
tripped and fell on my face before, but how is someone who has never
experienced an acid trip supposed to know the difference between the two
trips.
One of the reasons I chose to research the drug LSD is because it is the
most commonly used hallucinogen and is claimed as one of the most
powerful drugs ever created. I wanted to know how the effects of this
extremely powerful drug affect peoples perception during and after use. To
get a better understanding of what its like to trip and how it affects your
perception, I read an article by a staff writer for The Atlantic, Adrienne
Lafrance, called When Robots Hallucinate. In this article, a group of
engineers programmed a collection of artificial brains, computers, in a way

where they experienced what its like to trip acid. These computers were
programmed with a code called Deep Dream, that is set up in a way similar
to the way the different levels of neural networks are setup in humans
brains. The engineers would show the computers a picture, and tell them to
enhance what they saw. The results were oddly familiar to some humans.
They produced images with different colors, swirling lines, stretched shapes
and waves of shadow and light. Later in the article, Lafrance brings up
commentary from an old woman who hallucinates and she explains what she
experiences. Its not like a dream. Its like a movie. Its got color. Its got
motion. But its completely silent, like a silent movie (Lafrance). The article
concludes with quotes from a computer science professor, that claim humans
are reporting that the images these computers produced look like what they
see when tripping on acid or hallucinating (Lafrance).
After seeing the images these computers produced, reading about
what you experience when you hallucinate, and being told that these two
things resemble each other, I got a pretty general understanding of what its
like to take LSD. However, there wasnt much discussion about how this drug
influences its users perceptions. I took this opportunity to expand my
research even further, but this time on a more personal level. I had always
heard that after you take LSD, you can perceive the world in ways you
couldnt before, so I decided to conduct an interview with one of my peers
who has experienced an acid trip. The interview was short because I asked
very straightforward questions, but received some quality feedback. Most of

my questions were focused around perception and how it was affected

during and after their experience. I asked questions about during the trip
like: how do your senses interact with how you see your surroundings? Do
your surroundings interact with you, and if so how? And what feelings and
emotions were you experiencing? Some questions I asked about after the trip
were: do you perceive things differently after this experience? What was it
like accessing new parts of your brain? And, do you feel different now
compared to people who have never experienced what its like to trip?
The answers to all of these questions were intriguing to listen to, yet
somewhat challenging to try and picture. However, I did get a much better
understanding about how LSD influences your perception. The two
responses that I found the most interesting were, Everything around you
interacts and connects with you as one. Its like you are the sun and all of
your surroundings are planets that orbit around you. And, After tripping, I
perceive everything so much more uniquely now. Entering different parts of
my brain was like entering a new dimension of different ways to view the
world (Anonymous).
After all this discussion about LSD and tripping, youre probably asking
yourself why I did so much research about this topic and why is it such an
extensive point in my paper? Well, the main reason I conducted an interview
was to give my readers examples from a first hand experience, so they could
try and relate to what its like to experience this drug. Why do I care if you
can relate to this or not? And why should you care if you can relate to it or

not? Because that is your perception. Before I ever considered doing an

interview, I was reading through Lafrances article, when I read over a
section that left me speechless.
An important thing to remember is that all normal sensory perception
in humans are hallucinations constrained by sensory input. So our
hallucinations correspond to some degree what is actually in the
outside world. But perceptions are all internally generated.
In other words, all human perception is generated in the brain, not in
the actual world, even when the thing youre perceiving actually
exists (Lafrance).
When I read this quote by Lafrance, I was so taken back, because
earlier when I disagreed with Hoffmans idea about how human perception is
just an idea of what the world is like, how its an internal stimulation of an
eternal reality, I realized there was nothing there to disagree with; he was
right. Combining Hoffmans and Lafrances ideas with everything I learned
about LSD, gave me a second epiphany: humans are tripping all the time.
We just dont have as intensified experiences as someone would from LSD
because we dont access all the parts of the brain that you would if you were
to take acid.
Now how did that affect your perspective?
So, in all seriousness, what is your perception? And do we have an
actual sense that is our perspective? With that being said, I am going to
leave you with this thought, and hope you to consider it often.

The next time you are doing something you consider a necessary,
everyday task, stop and think to yourself, am I doing this through the use of
my senses? Or do I have an actual sense that is my perspective, telling me
what I need to do?

Works Cited

Anonymous, University of North Carolina Charlotte, student.

Boeree, Dr. C. George. "Perception and Interaction." Perception and Interaction. N.p., n.d. Web.
15 Nov. 2016.

Friedman, Asia, and Ashley S. Waggoner. "Subcultural Influences on Person Perception."

JSTOR. N.p., Dec. 2010. Web. 16 Nov. 2016.

Gefter, Amanda. "The Case Against Reality." The Atlantic. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

"Helen Keller Biography." The Biography.com. Ed. Biography.com. A&E Networks Television,
n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2016.

Lafrance, Adrienne. "When Robots Hallucinate." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 3 Sept.
2015. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.