In the office where I'm sitting, a lively, lengthy and probably interesting conversation took place about fMRI surgery. Fortunately, the long conversation was conducted in Italian
In the office where I am sitting, there was a lively, lengthy and probably interesting conversation about fMRI surgery. Fortunately, the long conversation was conducted in Italian, so that when one of the speakers finally apologized for the inconvenience they may have caused me (European etiquette...) I told him that it did not bother me at all, because It went "right over my head - lucky you spoke Italian".
It is clear to me that if the conversation had been conducted in Hebrew, or even in English, it would have interfered with my work.
This conversation made me think about perception processes, perception of language and perception in general.
After all, I hear well, and I heard the conduct of the conversation while I was sitting there minding my own business. But for some reason everything that happened didn't bother me and didn't register with me, and this is a good demonstration of how we perceive and process content, as well as linguistics and the process that went through the world of psychology/ the study of the brain by looking and perceiving (yes yes, an amusing pun was created here without meaning to) about perception.
It used to be common to treat the brain as a passive system - what is put into it, it processes and receives.
This approach gradually changed, and today it is common to think that perception is a constructive action, during which we, through active and even selective means, choose what to treat and what to process.
This "construction" of what we perceive, giving meaning or avoiding it, (and this can, of course, be in all our senses - taste, smell, hearing, sight and even touch) takes place at the brain level and starts from brain networks that are constantly dealing with one thing - to hypothesize About what will be and what was.
The difference between what we perceive "from scratch" and the assumption that we apply preconceived notions about the world, and actively influence what is perceived by our senses, of course has different names and sides.
Or - perhaps it would be more correct to say - there are two camps of theories. One camp assumes that we perceive every detail in the world around us with our senses, and these details are absorbed by us into an image. This is the bottom up approach - because the assumption is that every little detail is recorded and goes "up the system" upwards to the thinking person.
A second camp assumes that we act on the world, and react according to the situation or who we are. That is - our brain will make us perceive what is around us according to what suits us, or the situation, and in any case - orders from a higher up will affect how the small details will look. This is the top-down approach, because - we - the thinking humans - speculate what will happen and what will be seen in the small details, and influence "from top to bottom".
Of course, over the years, theories and developments have been presented for these views, and even scientific proofs engraved in stone (well, not in stone, in the paper of academic articles and scholarly textbooks) for this direction and that direction, and even a third approach that combines all of them, and I am short of deciding who is right.
But I admit that my thinking in this case was, because my perception was clearly influenced by what I assumed I would understand and what I wanted to absorb.
And even without referring to this specific case - isn't it interesting and thought-provoking - to know that what we want to think, believe in or speculate about the world - affects what we actually perceive?
Beck DM, Kastner S.
Top-down and bottom-up mechanisms in biasing competition in the human brain. Vision research, 2009
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Hebrew reader:
Response 6 Deborah Kederbol for girls.
Indeed, it is easy for anyone who engages (even a little) in introspection (which is what the author of the article did) - to discover that his perception is affected by his expectations.
My personal approach is the integrative approach.
My personal experience also shows that perception is influenced by expectations.
On the other hand, it is also clear to me that the perception is not completely subject to expectations.
This is what ultimately allows us to discover new things (think that if we discovered only what we expect we would have no ability to discover anything new!).
Think especially about everything that has already been told here about serendipitous discoveries.
And if we already refer to the subject of free choice, although this is not the subject of the article at all, then even if most of a person's choices are automatic and derived from prescriptions and experiences from the past, there is also a certain space where a person can consciously influence his choice, his way of thinking, his processes his decision-making, and thus his future automatic choices. The feeling of the "I" being an identity separate from the general is no more false than that which denies the existence of such a separate identity; In practice, the "I" is always separate to one degree or another from the general, but never completely separate from it, when the degree of its independence varies from one detail to another.
The comments above are further proof of the words of the author of the article: the perception of each reader is clearly influenced by what he or she wants to read, by their preconceptions, and not necessarily by what is actually written in the text.
This list is further proof of the existence of parapsychology, obscurity, epistemology, spirituality and snooze.
Every choice is conditioned by impressions from the past. These records determine what will choose or 'choose'. Personal choice is nothing more than an idea that reinforces a false feeling that the 'I' is supposedly separate from the whole, experienced in the imagination as real, and therefore decides does and experiences.
Beyond that, today it is known that the choice is made automatically and the mind is mainly busy inventing "logical reasons" for the choice.
point
Are you aware that you are funny? 🙂
What is free choice?
When you 'choose' to drink tea instead of coffee, is that a free choice? Is it not preceded by an action of the mind, an action of which you are not aware? Is the process that led you to choose 'tea'
Is a process that can be clarified?
I don't understand why the author didn't connect this whole thing of the will and the thinking person to the concept of free choice.
After all, if there is no free choice then everything is automatic, even this desire she mentions and then all her dreams collapse.