The Perception Problem

“Perceived Reality” and Surgeon’s Scalpels

The “perception problem”, one which deals with answering the age-old question about how does perception provide reason for our beliefs about the world, has slowly become more prevalent today. I find myself constantly asking why does the one thing appear as two (sometimes completely) different things to two different people. The most predominant example in recent times is the manipulation of entire sects of society to have conflicting and alternate “realities” primarily through deliberate forms of disinformation.

I personally find myself being constantly reminded, on quite a daily basis now, how poor human perception of “reality” really is. Assuming we can define “reality” in the first place and leaving that discussion for another day, our perception is incredibly limited to the five senses-Sight, Smell, Hearing, Taste and Touch- and the average person is probably heavily biased towards sight anyways. Even in Sight, our human eyesight is extremely limited — first to the visible spectrum ranging from 320–780nm and even to distances from which we can resolve two objects. For Sight we are gated by where the light particles from the object hits our eyes. It becomes exponentially harder to resolve objects in the peripheral regions of the eye — try looking straight and reading a book only by placing it in the corner of your eye.

Perceiving or even having an experience beyond these physical limitations of our evolutionarily enhanced sensor-suite is impossible — but this has worked quite well for our species thus far. I think given this, it is fair to say that we’ve been successful as a species because of a more recent addition to our brain: the Neocortex. The Neocortex is a part of our cerebral cortex, roughly 4 the size of the a gorilla, which is responsible for conscious thought, spatial reasoning and language. Specifically, the part of the brain that has grown the most is the pre-frontal cortex of the brain. Responsible for “executive functions” such as planning and decision-making, problem-solving, self-control, and acting with long-term goals in mind. Humans as a species have shown a greater aptitude with regard to these “executive functions” compared to other species — one can argue that these qualities have essentially been the key prevailing factor for us.

Pre-frontal Cortex serves as the “intellect” — helps us with judgment and planning, but what needs judgment? What is the priority list governing your pre-frontal cortex’s decisions? As it turns out, the pre-frontal cortex is tightly coupled with our Limbic System of the brain — involved with emotional and behavioral processing (feeding, reproduction, fight or flight responses). It deals with the regulation of thirst, mood, hunger (the hypothalamus) as well as reward processing and habit formation (basal ganglia).

This unconscious part of our brain governing the pleasure centers, instincts and overall mood is a very dominant part of the brain, often subconsciously “in-charge” of how we spend our time and energy. Quite often the pre-frontal cortex serves to provide for the Limbic System — procrastinating until the last minute, rationalizing and justifying the “feel-good” decisions. Our initial belief systems, experiences and the respective reinforcement of behavior as a result of those experiences is used as a basis to dissect input information from the senses and then, subsequently, prioritize and plan actions.

So, how does it all relate to our perception of the world? Given an event observed by the sensory organs of two individuals, each individual will have different understanding of that event from each other and from the “actual” event. The two individuals perceive reality ( form an understanding and interpret the event) based on their own underlying unconscious belief system. Since no two individuals can ever have the exact same belief system and experiences from birth, no two individuals can ever share the same reality.

This “perceived reality” of an individual is then based on how the perceptive the five senses of the individual are, the inner belief system and experiences (the subconscious part), and then the person’s ability to rationalize inside that framework. One can really start to think of “perceived reality” as a dimensionality reduction problem, first reducing the complexity through the sense organs and then through some arbitrary function composed of our emotional regulator and reasoning ability. This analogy also means that our reasoning abilities only works inside the framework defined by the senses and the subconscious brain (unless the reasoning ability starts questioning the framework itself — which is what is happening in this blog…) Note that this system makes sense — we are conditioned to automatically and instinctually reduce vast amount of information to survive (For example- the limbic system really just focuses on survival of itself and the loved ones).

The problem becomes even messier as “perceived reality” is quite dynamic and evolving. Our belief system evolves through experiences and the constant feedback of reward-punishment (sometimes implicit) over time can unconsciously form belief systems that end up weighing down our “perceived reality” completely. Moreover, our reasoning ability also enhances through education. However, I think that we loose our sense organ capabilities over time — our sense of sight diminishes, our mind becomes sight-dominant, loosing touch and sense of smell.

Why is this important? If thoughts constitute your perceived reality, a fundamental understanding of the origin and purpose behind each thought has to be the first step to truly shut down all thoughts.

If we think about thoughts as a triggering reaction to some external stimuli, this framework helps us think about how and why we think the way we do. Moreover, knowing that such a framework exists also helps us narrow down to the things we can change and control about ourselves. We cannot change the wavelength that our eyes can operate on, or the sensitivity of our skin, but we can change our subconscious belief system. By constantly questioning and then ceasing to react to the result of the thought, and using our rational mind to question the implicit framework, the underlying mental and physical conditions, and the external stimuli under which the thoughts was generated, we can slowly change our subconscious belief system. The thought, which constitutes your reality for that given moment in time, is a function of all these different (often latent) variables. The first step is to realize those variables.

In Yoga the rationalizing part of the brain, the intellect, is often analogized to a surgeon’s scalpel — very sharp with a tremendous ability to cut and decipher through complex concepts. Today, we, graduated college students, are like 5 year-olds roaming around the world with a very sharp scalpel — cutting through complex social and emotional situations based on some ill-defined, ill-developed and implicit framework buried somewhere governing our day-to-day behavior, our happiness, and ultimately, us.