Sense and Percep

Exam 2
Essay 3
Gavin Soccorso

Within the field of any science the question of credibility and solution become
apparent. To understand how we perceive our world we must first understand the
reasoning behind the processing of stimuli and how our perception can account (or
not account) for certain pieces of information. A few examples of attempts to
reinforce the explanation of perception and our senses include: Loan of intelligence,
infinite regress, statistical regularities and the Hoffding step.
As stated there are indeed many good theories of explanation of how we take in and
compute certain stimuli and as with each there are flaws. The Loan of Intelligence is
one such step in the realm of perception and cognition problems. The Loan of
Intelligence is the understanding that we must be able to have some sort of born-in
or pre-obtained information about a stimuli in order to perceive it. The problem with
this is that we would have no idea of where the information came from (the current
accepted theories and people such as Gestalstist,Helmholtz Geons, Structuralism
cannot explain where the originating info comes from). It is similar to the Gnostic
mysticism and metaphysical understanding that all knowledge is already present in
a cosmic soup and that depending on how our brains are formed will determine how
much (and when) we access certain parts of this soup. They believe this can
account for mass hysteria that takes place sometimes, as it is seen as a virus of
the cosmic soup. The problem with this in relationship to perception is that when we
perceive something (according to Helmholtzian thinking) we need to have the basis
of cognition of the stimuli formed within our brains before we perceive something

for the first time. Where does this come from? Another such problem is what is
known as the Infinite Regress. This is the infinite mirror effect of perceptual
dilemmas. The Infinite Regress is the understanding that something that is
understood or perceived has a copy of itself and that copy has another copy within
itself (so on and so on), similar to the opening credits of ABCs Modern Family. This is
very interesting concept indeed as it serves as a jump point for thinking about how
far the microcosm of the mind goes. However the flaw with this approach is that by
having someone in your head helping the main conductor, someone needs to help
that person and so on and so forth. This does not account for the point at which the
trade off ends and the perception itself begins. There has to be a point at which
the world is actually perceived by the brain and puts a finite stop on the passing of
help. Statistical Regularities is an idea that certain results or ideas can be achieved
through a sort of consensus and that information is taken as the norm and
anything else is viewed as an irregularity. So this is a form as to which one can base
the study of a phenomenon based upon the regularity of the majority of the census.
The problem with this approach is that it can be negated by an outlier (or an outside
factor that is mutant from the overall statistical data/ stimuli and perception). So if
one is basing how we see and perceive our world on one piece of general
hypothesis you cannot account for any variable that cannot be quantified by the
statistical evidence. Yet another paradox is the Hoffding step and its hurdle to be
crossed. The hoffding step is the understanding that you have to have full and unadulterated connection to your environment to be able to provide feedback about
the interpretation and analysis about it. In other words our interception of feedback
from external stimuli even without access to credible knowledge about it. This does

not account for the fact that we need something credible to base our elicited stimuli
upon.
Throughout learning and engineering we find ways to attempt to explain our
surrounding world and how it works. While some advances prove more adaptable
then others they will all have one flaw or another. The fact that some of the most
widely known researchers and theorys in the field of sensation and perception have
yet to fully understand some functionings of the human psyche is evidence there is
still some mystery left in us yet.