The timing of perception
“Until about 20 years ago, science neglected the field of consciousness, saying it was too subjective for precise scientific examination.” The belief in the subjectiveness of consciousness has aparently been overturned as this article explains…
Now you see it, now you know you see it
What intrigued me about the study was how nicely it went with this weeks readings. For the unnamed author, consciousness is only ever discussed by way of the “conscious mind” (which they localize to the brain). Tracing the discussion of mind by way of Heller-Roazen’s index, it appears that such localization didn’t appear prior to Descartes’ splitting of mind from body. Aristotle, it seems, was not interested in localizing the common sense, or unified faculty of perception, into one part of the body. It was, instead, a point in time (55). If one takes the statement “the reception of the sensation occurs in the present” (52) to mean that it occurs simultaneous with the existence of the sensible thing, then it appears that Aristotle posits perception in a way contrary to the findings of this study. However, it seems that his focus lies more on sensation itself than the causes of sensation, and for this reason, his approach to time differs significantly. Instead of being interested in the prior-to of sensation, Aristotle concerns himself with the perception of it, the ways in which sensations are felt in undivided instants, felt for however long the stimulus is hitting the organ of sense, and continuing to be felt afterward as it haunts the unified faculty of perception (54, 69). Time, however, is a perception itself also felt through the master perceptual faculty (43), and thus, counts among the possible sensations, but is also the sensation through which other sensations are perceived. Time, however, “cannot admit of varieties of itself” (55), and at no time is this more the case than the present, as electronic equipment such as cellphones and computers are all updated to the official time provided by atomic clocks. As our experience of time becomes crisper, the question of delay arises.
Enter the Tel Aviv psychologists. Leibniz echoes throughout their study as they look at how “conscious perception” arises from out of “unconscious perception” (one might substitute apperception and perception here). The length of time it takes to cross into the “conscious mind” they conclude, depends on the “complexity of the stimulus”, though they do not define the parameters by which they measure complexity. Such a framing of what becomes consciously felt seems to suggest that sensations that are too complex could conceivably never be felt by the conscious mind as the length of time it would take to pass this threshold would be too long for the human-mind to register. This, and I recognize that the study is dealing in miliseconds but I nonetheless do not consider this unfeasable, would rework Leibniz’s doctrine of small perceptions into a doctrine of extreme perceptions, entering into the conscious mind from either side of the continuum from thorns to sledgehammers.
January 20, 2010 at 7:39 pm
This is an interesting study. I like your comment about the possibility of perceptions too complex to be dealt with. I would guess (and this is just a wild speculation) that being able to perceive entails learning how to ‘read’ sensations for their significance. When we see something that is utterly new or unfamiliar, we either comprehend it as a mess of stuff or as a variation on something familiar. There is some sort of process of figuring out how to properly contextualize this information. All perceptions, at least the ones we think of as conscious, involve cutting significant things out of a much larger flux. So I think something that is too complex for us to read properly would still show up, but only in part or in the guise of something less complex or more familiar.
January 21, 2010 at 1:35 am
Agreed, very interesting post Karen. I’ve encountered these kinds of ‘cognitive reaction time’ tests in the history of aviation medicine (going back to ww1) and space medicine (end of ww2), and in these instances the experiments were framed around the need to predict the functioning/behaviour of the human body as if it were a machine component. Or as a cybernetic organism composed of airplane + human. Systems designers wanted to know how quickly the operator could/would react to certain situations that would require speedy intervention or action. In this sense, psychologists were driven to attempt to quantify the supposedly mechanistic relationship between perception and apperception, and establish a normal time for “human reaction.” Somehow (it’s pretty late) this leads me to consider your points about time, technology, and modern living. Are these reaction tests just part of project to in a sense engineer the human mind to act even more mechanistically? This seems almost required given our rapid-fire-techno-social moment.
January 21, 2010 at 8:39 am
I thoroughly enjoyed your post Karen and am also struck by this idea that complexity, or perhaps simply speed, of stimuli might render them outside the realm of that which can be sensed. My mind immediately goes to the world of particle physics and the reality of posited entities.
I am sure most of us are familiar with Ian Hacking’s wonderful phrase, “if you can spray them, they are real” as a sort of pragmatic approach to realism, but what happens to our conception of objective reality when processes can happen so fast than we cannot say they have happened at all? The first thing that comes to mind are things like the artificial production and subsequent annihilation of antimatter particles. In what way can we say these exist? By reference to an influence they have? By reference to an inscription made on their behalf? The question that your post raises for me is one of the ontological status of antiparticles, quarks, and other short lived micro-physical phenomena. Is their reality merely subject to the limits of human perceptive faculties (the idea of human perception bringing into existence various configurations of the world is not so far fetched, see quantum physics/double slit experiments)? This is the certainly the position Hacking takes, that if we understand effect, cause, and are able to manipulate a phenomenon to some other end…we have found something that exists.
There is also the question, perhaps more directly related to Heller-Roazen, of whether or not we can claim that feelings, emotions, sensations, or qualia really exist, which brings us to one of the central questions of physicalist/vitalist debates: Is there something above and beyond the mechanical production and future reproduction/manipulation of sensory experience?