by Kevin Lamb

Created on: March 05, 2009   Last Updated: August 16, 2009

Perception is defined as: "the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information." This sensory information is your mental processing which determines what your perception of reality is. Perception is usually done in two phases; internal perception, and also external perception. How you process these thoughts when they enter your mind will determine your mental perception.

Rene Descartes asked the question: "Do I exist?" Freudian psychology claims that "self perception" is an illusion of the ego. So, the question remains to be asked; can our perceptions allow us to experience the world as it really is? And can we "really" relate to another point of view instead our own mental perceptions?

Internal perception (proprioception) relates to the perception of our bodies such as: sensing limbs such as arm and legs, the feeling of sitting or standing, hunger, feeling excited or tired.

External or sensory perception (exteroception) is the perception of events or activities outside of our bodies such as: sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. All of these sensory perceptions are permanently entered into our minds to be recalled each time a sense is recognized. These are the external senses which drive our lives, and plays a part in our emotional perceptions of life.

The most philosophical problem with perception is the way in which we gain our knowledge. However, in order to better understand our perception we must first look at our metaphysical viewpoint. Is our viewpoint to reality: "direct realism, indirect realism, or idealism? How we perceive these external perceptions will then determine what our outlook, or viewpoint is.

Extrasensory perception (ESP) is another type of perception to be considered. ESP is the ability to "acquire information by paranormal means; independent of any known means." This term ESP was coined by Duke University researcher J. B. Rhine to "denote psychic abilities."

ESP has sometimes been referred to as the sixth sense. This sense is all about: gut instinct, hunch, or intuition. Parapsychologists usually regard such tests as the "ganzfeld experiment" as compelling evidence for ESP. Whether this sixth sense has any influence on our perceptual senses is undetermined; due to the disputed evidence base.

Among the most common beliefs is that our third dimensional perception starts in early childhood as "naive realism," in which you believe that what you see, is also true about yourself. Many people

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>