Can we trust our senses?

From your reading, explain the following:

1. Confirmation bias

2. Argument ad ignorantiam

3. The paradox of cartography (map-

making)
Compare Notes
 Perception is
influenced by our
Expectations
• Perception is more than just “capturing” an image
• It is also about processing
• We assume ‘normal’ text and so filter out abnormalities
 How many times does the letter F appear in the
following sentence? (You have 10 seconds.)

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-

SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-
IC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS
 How many times does the letter F appear in the
following sentence? (You have 10 seconds.)

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-

SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-
IC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS
 Perception is
influenced by
Language

bbc.co.uk
“Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh
uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaert in what oredr the
ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is
taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The
rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it
wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed
ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Ceehiro!”
 How we name something
changes how we perceive it
Fascinated by what was happening
Bored by what was happening
 Perception is
influenced by
Language

bbc.co.uk
 Seeing is interpreting

Perception involves the search

for meaning and patterns

All seeing is seeing as…

 How should we see this shape?

How can adding 3 lines change our perception?

• Where does this 3rd dimension come from?
• Is it the inside or outside of a cube?
• Or is it still a hexagon?
 Optical Illusions
Our mind makes sense of something
which is impossible
M. C. Escher
 Café Wall Illusion

Digital Harbour Port 1010, in Melbourne, Australia

Count the black spots. How many are there?
Ambiguity
Context helps us resolve ambiguity
 Optical Illusions
• Some people see one thing, other people see
something else
• We can adjust how we see and what we see so
that we see things differently

• Seeing is interpreting
• Perception involves the search for meaning and patterns
• All seeing is seeing as…
Old woman or Young woman?
Man or Woman?
Figure-Ground Ambiguity
 Acoustical Illusions
Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven
Forwards
If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow,
don't be alarmed now,
it’s just a spring clean for the May queen.
Yes there are two paths you can go by,
but in the long run
there’s still time to change the road you’re on.
Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven
Reverse
with lyrics
Oh here’s to my sweet Satan.
The one whose little path would make me sad,
whose power is satan.
He’ll give those with him 666,
there was a little tool shed where he made us suffer,
sad Satan.
 Visual Grouping
Tendency to look for meaning in what we
see and group our perceptions into
shapes and patterns
 Can we trust our senses?
• Perception is influenced by our
expectations
• Perception is influenced by language
• Perception is interpretation (all perception
is perception as…)
• We can adjust how we perceive things
• We use context to resolve ambiguity
• Perception is limited by our biology
 Our perception is
limited by the nature
of our sense organs
What we do not see

What we see
Geordi La Forge from Star
Trek: The Next Generation
Why don’t we perceive things which happen very fast or very
slow?

Théodore Géricault’s “The Epsom Derby”

What film reveals about how horses run
 Our perception is
limited by the nature
of our sense organs
Our perception is
limited by the way
our brains work (or
fail to work)
 Visual agnosia
(the inability to recognize familiar objects or
faces )

“The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

and Other Clinical Tales” by Oliver Sacks
 Autistic Savants
• Autism = psychological impairment
meaning that has limitations in ability to
interact socially or communicate
• Savant = have one or more areas of
expertise, ability or brilliance that are in
contrast with the individual's overall
limitations
 Synaesthesia
• a neurologically based phenomenon in
which stimulation of one sensory or
cognitive pathway leads to automatic,
involuntary experiences in a second
sensory or cognitive pathway
• e.g. grapheme → color synesthesia
when seeing numbers or letters leads to
simultaneous perception of colours
Filmmaker Stephanie Morgenstern
"A few years ago, I mentioned to a friend that I
remembered phone numbers by their colour. He
said "So you're a synesthete!" I hadn't heard of
synesthesia (which means something close to
'sense-fusion') – I only knew that numbers seemed
naturally to have colours: five is blue, two is green,
three is red… And music has colours too: the key
of C# minor is a sharp, tangy yellow, F major is a
warm brown..."
 Nobel prize winning physicist,
Richard Feynman

When I see equations, I see the letters in colours

– I don't know why. As I'm talking, I see vague
pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and
Emde's book, with light-tan js, slightly violet-
bluish ns, and dark brown xs flying around. And I
wonder what the hell it must look like to the
students."[
 Pareidolia
• psychological phenomenon involving a
vague and random stimulus (e.g. an
image or sound) being perceived as
significant.
• Common examples include seeing images
of animals or faces in clouds, the man in
the moon, and hearing hidden messages
on records played in reverse.
A cloud formation that some have interpreted as a
the face of God
A satellite photo of Mars, taken in 1976, with
shadows creating the famous Face on Mars
A satellite photo of Mars, taken in 2006, with higher
resolution and different lighting conditions
Sold on eBay for $28,000
 Faces in the
smoke of 9/11
From www.christianmedia.us

“People may ask themselves, why would there be

faces in the smoke, and also, why so many? I believe I
know the answer to that question.
Demons can feel and experience things like we can.
Consider that picture of the demon below that has its
head sticking up like it is on some kind of rollercoaster
ride. An act of hatred and violence is a thrill ride for a
demon, they not only participate, in so far as
influencing someone to commit acts of violence, they
get a thrill during the act. Demons knew what was
going to happen in New York and they gathered there
to jump in at the point of the impact, like a human
jumping onto a moving train to have a thrill.”
 Apophenia
• the experience of seeing patterns or
connections in random or meaningless
data

e.g. hearing a ringing phone whilst taking a

shower (The noise produced by the running
water gives a random background from which
the patterned sound of a ringing phone might be
'produced'.)
 How should we explain christianmedia’s
explanation of the faces in the smoke?
• Their perception is influenced by their
expectations?
• Their perception is influenced by their
language?
• All perception is interpretation?
• They have adjusted how they perceive
things?
• Their perception is limited by human
willingness to see faces where there are
none?
 Perception in Science
• Prosper-René
Blondlot
• 1903: announced he
had discovered N
rays, a new species
of radiation –
photographic
evidence
• About 120 scientists
said they also had
seen them
• Richard Wood proved N experimenter's bias
rays did not exist • bias towards a particular
• Removed an essential result – produced
prism from the apparatus, because the human
but Blondlot still claimed experimenter is expecting
to see the rays to see that result
• Substituted the materials • e.g. because it is
being used for one which expected for a certain
was not supposed to give result to be produced, or
off N rays – but Blondlot for a certain theory to
still saw them hold true
 Perception in Science
Discovery of Penicillin
• Fleming saw what others had seen – but
interpreted it differently
 Can we trust our senses?
• Perception is influenced by our
expectations
• Perception is influenced by language
• Perception is interpretation (all perception
is perception as…)
• We can adjust how we perceive things
• We use context to resolve ambiguity
• Perception is limited by our
biology/neurobiology
 How is this relevant to us?
• In Natural Sciences?
• In Human Sciences? (Hist, Geog, Psych, Philos)
• In Art?
• In everyday life?
This is not an animation. But
How it moves.
can you stop the waves?
• How does it work?
• How does it look like it is moving and why
does it stop moving when you concentrate
on one spot?
 Research
• Prosopagnosia
• Capgras delusion
• Schizophrenia
• Erotomania
• Fregoli delusion
• Cotard delusion
• Somatoparaphrenia
• Pseudopregnancy
• Mirrored self-misidentification