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Perception, or interpretation?

Heeeee's back! The metaphysical twite we've all come to know and be annoyed by.

Perception comes first. Every sensory input must follow a reflex arc, which Ivan Pavlov pioneered the study of. Yeah, the "ring the bell and the dog salivates", guy! Since interpretation occurs in the brain there's always a time delay between the time of sensory acknowlegement, interpretation, and reaction to it. The reaction to a sensory stimulus extends the time delay even more, since the interpreted output from the brain must be retransmitted to the appropriate muscles. 90 feet per second is the speed at which this occurs in the frog.

Now, be a good boy, do your f****** homework, and get a good nights sleep. LOL, cheers, captaincranky,

But what about for say..at birth. When you initially perceive something, you aren't interpreting simultaneously? Because what is your perception based off? Instinct? I was just pondering it. The fact that there is a delay does make sense, it just seems weird that we can perceive something with no prior or simultaneous idea of what it is.

I think that song was by Olivia Newton John, Elton John's twin sister. (Just kidding about the twin sister part).
Well, the nerve pathways are shorter, are they not? Besides, how could anyone know what, if any, perception is going on inside the womb. Is there nerve transmission through the umbilical cord? Look that up.
Here we run into a situation, where belief and knowledge collide. It is mostly accepted that human beings do not have instincts. Whether this is an ego ploy to further separate man from the animals, is also debatable. Once upon a time, it was believed that man had thousands of instincts. Once upon a time it was believed that you could cure health problems by bleeding someone. To which I might add, with oftentimes disastrous results. It does open up the question what exactly is interpretation of events. To me it seems, in that case, the disease came first.

Believe it or not, this is a very "seventies" discussion. Psychedelic if you will. L-y-S-ergic acid D-iethylamide drastic alters interpretation of all sensory input. And twite.... DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME! It's also well accepted that the recreational drug use of the seventies was a huge mistake.

There were a number of experiments done involving "sensory deprivation tanks". You might google this topic, as it is directly related to your question.

I'm a non-believer in the separation of man and animal, so I'm going to stick with my somewhat provincial concept that you have to experience something before you can evaluate it.
Again cheers, captaincranky

Can't be. It takes finite time to register the stimulus, connect it to known information and then start interpretation -- still more time to lock-in
an opinion or judgment.

Yeah twite, what he said!

Well there has to be some sort of "instinct" because everything is initially interpreted fairly close to the same..for example, if we both looked at a car, we can both agree that the tires are round. Now, round may look different to you, or me..but physics can back up the fact, that indeed, round is round. So how did our brain initially assign round to be round, rather then a mass of rocks, or a candle? Thats just what i don't understand. It makes sense that you would have to perceive something first, and shortly after you would interpret it..I just wonder what perception is based off..

First, the assignation of the term "round" is a function of language. If you were spanish you'd call it "redondo", and it wouldn't be a "tire" it would be a "llanta" . (Pronounced "yanta").
Second, simply because we perceive the same object in the same terms, that only goes to the physical fact of it's existence. The nomenclature comes from descriptions derived from your, (and my), socialization. Somebody from another planet might see a blue, squareish thingy. We "see it" (actually describe it), the same because we were both socialized in a similar English culture. So that's not a result of any "instinct" whatsoever.

So, you receive a sensory "impression" of a physical object, then you apply the process of interpretation, through a series of learned comparisons. I know a lit stove is not an ice cube through a series of learned evaluations. I perceive it, I evaluate it, I react to it, Hopefully always in that order.

As to whether humans have "instinct", we possess less than all other animals, due to the fact we are born less capable of surviving than all other creatures. Instinct is the term we apply to a creatures ability to survive without formal learning. Actually I think humans do have vestigial instinctive capabilities, but nothing to the extent we could survive on. It takes a few years for a human to learn that a tiger is dangerous, or that a cow could be dinner. The tiger knows that the cow is dinner from the jump, or close to it. The transmission of knowledge from generation to generation is much lower in animals. Mama tiger can't break out a book with a picture of a cow in it to show junior, he's got to learn by watching her.

As to perceiving and interpreting at the same time, you may think you are, but measureably you're not.

This makes a lot more sense now. Thanks.

Yeah...this mystery is solved...

I would have to go and say perception . Perception is what you need to be able to interpret something . It's similar if you look at an orange...you must perceive the orange to use your interpretation to see if it is ripe, orange, etc.

Here's my opinion...

Perception in this case could be made using a base language, like binary in motherboards and CPU's. A language that we cannot understand without...Interpreting it first.

When we're interpreting, we're like a GUI, changing the base data (Binary in a PC's case) into a language that we can understand.(English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, etc.) Interpretation is taking the original data apart to explain it.

And then you wonder...what does this data transcoding?

Evolution allowed us to become less afraid, of our surrounds. Without evolution we would not have existed. Our superior intellect allowed us to defend ourselves against predators. Anyone that can grip a weapon is now potentially higher on the food chain than anyone that can't, they just need to be able to think well enough to figure out how to use what they have in their hands to their advantage. Humans could do that, we are the only species that figured that out.

Evolutionary principles + our ability to defend ourselves allowed us to have more vulnerable offspring because the elders in the community could protect them.

Why, your CPU of course!
Back in the day when sociology was in it's infancy, (right, like it isn't now), it became fashionable for "sociologists" to describe what they considered "instincts" in humans, until the numbers of "human instincts" ran into the thousands. Then they changed their "collective" mind(s). However, your description does bear a similarity to "herd instinct".

The transmittal of knowledge from generation to generation rests in large part on the printed word. Since we consider ourselves more evolved by virtue of being more knowledgable, (sic,Homo >"Sapiens"<), it's an easy conclusion to reach that Gutenberg is partially responsible for accelerating our evolution. Our innate, abundant, and ruthless violence allowed us to reach the point in "civilization" where we can spout such platitudes as "the pen is mightier than the sword". Ironic isn't it? Paradoxical too, I might add.

An historcal "farcenote"; Gutenberg built his first printing press in 1450 AD. The Spanish Inquisition began in 1478. I think the Spanish Catholic Clergy had too much free time on their hands, once they no longer had to transcribe religious manuscripts by hand, and as we all know, an idle mind is the Devil's workshop.

These are the good, solid, fundamental principles behind the arms race. Now, if we could only figure out how a creature with 99% of the same DNA as a Chimpanzee got it's hands on thermonuclear weapons, the rest of life's mysteries would be solved.

i think its perception.... but i dnt knw de reason.

here is something that will be much much harder to answer than that simple question. its the question we have always asked others always asked ourselves ever sense we learned of it and i have finally figured out the answer...



how much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?

i will give you 10 guesses than i will just tell you.

What exactly do you mean by "chuck"?

in this case throw and you will never get it right!!!