Perception: An Illusory Clarification Of A Dualist Perspective
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Perception: An Illusory Clarification of a Dualist Perspective
The fact that we regularly incur perceptual illusions allows for several inferences to be made about both the nature of the mind as well as what we perceive to be reality. The word in itself is actually misleading; derived from the Latin capere, meaning “to take”, the prefix per meaning “completely”, this would suggest that perception is in fact our complete take when in actuality, this is not the case. I believe that the existence of perceptive illusions shows that the mind-body relationship is dualist, and that the trustworthiness of the senses alone cannot be complete. I believe this postulation, though not easily proven, is reinforced though an analysis of several views of cognitive psychologists, theoretical physicists, as well as various philosophers.
It is a readily-held belief among many cognitive psychologists that, as we move about in the world, we create our own internal model of how the world works. In essence, “we sense the objective world, but our sensations map to percepts, and these percepts are provisional, in the same sense that scientific hypotheses are provisional” (“Perception”). This meaning that our sense organs perceive various forms of perceptive energy which is then categorized by the brain. My argument for the existence of a dualist mind-body relationship, stemming from the study of cognitive psychology, comes with a phenomenon known as top-down processing. This is the idea that, rather than information coming in from the sensory organs and being processed by the brain, “the flow of information progress[es] flows from the top down as it start[s] with an existing knowledge.” (Braisby & Gelatly, 2005:77).
Richard Gregory (1980:181-97) suggested that individuals attempt to recognize objects by by generating a series of perceptual hypotheses about what that object might be. He conceptualized this process as being similar to how a scientist may investigate a problem by generating a series of hypotheses and accepting the one that is best supported by the data provided. According to Gregory, we are forced to generate hypotheses because the sensory data are incomplete. If we had perfect and comprehensive sensory data we would then have no need to make up these various hypotheses as we would know what we perceived. Because of the existence of perceptive illusions, the idea of perfect and comprehensive sensory data is an impossibility. Also, for myself, the generation of hypotheses as asserted by Gregory is indicative of a dualist mind-body relationship as it allows us to fill in the gaps in our sensory input. This process of filling in information is where we may find rifts between what our senses perceive and what we find to be in actuality.
When one belives in the existence of a dualist relaionship between the mind and the body it is important to address the musings of Rene Descartes as his works in Meditations on First Philosophy popularized this very notion. His most famous postulation was his defence of the stance of Substance Dualism. For Descartes, this is the assertion that there are two fundamental kinds of substance: mental and material. Unfortunately I have found that I disagree with Descartes as a result of the weaknesses of his account of “causal interaction taking place in a physical location in the brain”(Cahn, 1999:343). Also I am not entirely convinced that the mind is a non-material thing. I have found that in exchange for Descartes non-material mind I have opted for subscription to a scientifically explanable (or soon to be explanable) form of duality. Although I have stated that my idea of mind is not necessarily immaterial, I do not know that it is either measurable or existing within our 3 dementions. This stems from informal readings of string theory, an adaptation of quantum physics that allows for 10, and even up to 26 dimensions (“String Theory”).
For me, the mind-body relationship is akin to that of wave-particle duality. In sciences such as physics and chemistry “wave-particle duality holds that light and matter exhibit properties of both waves and of particles” (“Wave-particle Duality”). This concept is a cornerstone of the discipline of quantum mechanics: inadequacies of either Ðwaves or Ðparticles alone has given rise to this duality in order to describe the behaviour of quantum objects. Resulting from various works of famous scientists such as Albert Einstein, and Louis de Broglie, “it is now established that all objects have both wave and particle nature (though this phenomenon is only detectable on small scales, such as with atoms), and that a suitable interpretation of quantum mechanics provides the over-arching theory resolving this ostensible paradox” (“Wave-partice Duality”). It is within this dualist framework that I an interesting theory that coincides with my dualist assertions.
The theory I am referring to is that of consciousness
having the ability to cause wavefunction collapse. That is, our observation of the world around us is merely a snapshot (particle) of the continuous quantum waves flowing around us. Therefore our body, and the physical world around us, occurs as a result of our conscious perception. I believe that this is the best way to show how there is a possibility
for two seemingly completely different types of substances (material: 3D, and Ðimmaterial) are able to interact causally. Rather than looking at the subject in terms of the macroscopic Newtonian level, perhaps the causal interaction that takes involves energy, dark matter or some other such mysterious processes. Furthermore, “the process of Ðmeasurement in quantum mechanics is regarded to as consciousness itself” (“Consciousness causes collapse”). I also believe that it is as a result of this Ðprocess that the mystery of mind/body can better be assessed. “In quantum mechanisms, events at the microscopic level (at least) are indeterminate” (“Dualism (philosophy of mind)”).
Lastly, I feel that it is necessary to assess