OfPonderingWandering

Can we really trust our interpretation of reality? 

No, nearly two thousand years of pondering, from Ancient Stoics to Modern Psychologists tell us we cannot trust our perceptions. Despite this, we can still live freely. 

Then what does Modern (Cognitive) Psychology have to say about perceptions?

Cognitive Psychology 

One of the most profound things I have learnt in psychology is the ‘Experience Error.’ The mistaken belief that our perceptions represent actual reality. Our perceptions cannot be relied on. Now, where do we go wrong? On all stages of perception. 

For our purposes, perception can be broken down into several stages: Stimulus, Pickup, Mental processing, mental image, and finally, we will tie in a little bit of what the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius has to say about perceptions.

On Stimuli

We really have no idea about the actual true appearance of an object. Take optical illusions, for example; those black and white circles drawn on a two-dimensional piece of paper somehow appear to be three-dimensional and can seem to move even though they are simply two-dimensional lines on paper. 

Another deceiving type of object is that of bistable images, which means ‘two ways of looking at (an image).’ These images are even more deceiving than a simple optical illusion. Their appearance, meaning, and emotion can change every few seconds; isn’t that wild? 

How can we truly trust our perceptions when we struggle to perceive the most basic features of an object? The failure of our perceptions only gets compounded as the stimulus is further processed. Not only do we get tricked by the object itself, but by our own sensory organs too.

Pickup

Our eyes can only perceive a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (less than 1%). This means that the image of the object we see in our head is just a sliver of what it actually is. The rest of the object remains completely imperceivable and elusive to our naked eye. 

Even from a biological standpoint, we are ill-equipped to fully perceive an object in all its grandiosity. Now, what happens to the stimulus as it enters into our mind?

Mental processing 

The stimulus does not get any clearer as it enters our mind, it only becomes more distorted. The stimulus gets converted into a neural signal that is then copied and sent to two different parts of the brain: the dorsal and ventral parts. Whereby movement and spatial location are accessed in the dorsal region. And object recognition is performed in the ventral region. Through an unknown process, the two signals are then combined into a single mental image. Yet, let’s sit with this, our image is split, then recombined, continuously… How can we ever be sure we are looking at the actual reality? 

Similarly, let’s talk about saccades. Have you ever rapidly moved your eyes from one side of the intersection to the other while driving? That rapid jumping movement is a saccade. What is interesting about saccades is a phenomenon known as saccadic masking. You know how when we film something and rapidly jerk our phone from one target to another, we get motion blur? Our eyes do the same thing, yet we do not experience motion blur. That is due to saccadic masking, where the brain temporarily shuts off visual processing during a saccade to maintain a stable scene. Yet, during a saccade, our brain relies on (sensory) memory to fill in the void. Even at the sensory level, we are ill-equipped to perceive reality as it truly is. But what about the mental image that is formed in our heads?  

Mental image 

Inaccurate object sensation, pickup, and processing lead us to this point. Much like a botched game of broken telephone, we can no longer assume some image in our head truly represents something that is really out there. Furthermore, our expectations about said image affect how we perceive it. Quickly top-down processing is an efficient, automatic, and quick type of processing that our brain performs in everyday life to reduce processing power. Crucially, top-down processing relies on past experiences to form expectations around a processing target. For us, this means we may be so blinded by past experiences we put ourselves into a mental set (a fixed way of thinking) that we cannot break out of.

All in all, we are more blind than we initially thought. We also recognised many of our perceptual limitations throughout history. The Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius had a great deal to say about perceptions. 

Stoic Sensation 

Long before the age of Cognitive Psychology, the Ancient Stoics knew they could not trust their perceptions. The Stoics treated perceptions as impressions, aspects of something much greater that we cannot control nor quite fully understand (due to the limitations of our humility). Thus, each perception must be thoughtfully examined, for the quality of our life depends on it. 

Firstly, Impressions. The Stoics say that we can only perceive a tiny aspect of something at a time (such as a dinosaur footprint compared to the entire dinosaur). Secondly, the Dichotomy of Control is a central Stoic idea whereby one should focus their energy on controlling what they can control, which can be as limiting as their own thoughts and actions. Over what one cannot control, such as world events, other people, and time, etc. 

These two central Stoic ideas combine into a perception-challenging viewpoint that Marcus Aurelius offers in his journal-now-book Meditations. Where Aurelius uses a kind of applied top-down processing to challenge his perceptions. That is, pause, assess, act (rightly). 

This idea can be seen quite well in this quote, ‘Your ability to control your thoughts, treat it with respect. It’s all that protects you from false perceptions.’ What Aurelius is doing here is applying the Dichotomy of Control to his own perceptions. Much like airport security, he screened each perception before giving them airtime. 

Now, with knowledge from Cognitive Psychology, we ought to do the same thing. For we know, through scientific evidence, that we cannot trust our perceptions. Much like Aurelius, we must start screening our thoughts. Especially the main driver of the shape of our perceptions, our expectations. 

Later, Aurelius hits us with another great nugget of insight, ‘The world is nothing but change; our life is our only perception.’ Throughout Meditations, the concept of transience is frequently discussed. Things and elements change; it’s their very nature. The stimuli that we perceive and our perceptions of them are subject to continuous change. Hence, we need to be conscious of this; we can trust that we see what we see, but we cannot let it dictate our reality.

Furthermore, Aurelius makes a beautiful point: ‘To live is to perceive.’ Our entire lives are centred around perceptions and the knowledge they bring. In another section, Aurelius states, ‘Thoughts colour the Soul.’ Similarly, our perceptions and complete faith in them also shape who we are. We can tie this back to the Dichotomy of Control. The one who perceives that everything is out of their control will feel great anxiety. Whereas the one who checks in with their perceptions and knows what they can control will feel a great calmness. This leads us to our final point, why should we care?

‘Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it because it was within my own perceptions- not outside.’ – Marcus Aurelius. 

Our perceptions shape our reality. We cannot change this fact, nor can we change how innately flawed perceptions are. So, we must change our relationship to our perceptions. We must pause, hold them up to the light of awareness, Stoic attitude, and… 

‘See them as they really are.’

Marcus Aurelius.