Brain Puzzle: What is Perception?
Perception is not a process in the brain, but a kind of skillful activity of the body as a whole.
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“Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us,” writes the philosopher/cognitive scientist/neuroscientist Alva Noë. “It is something we do.”
In the video below, Noë tells us that, paradoxical it sounds, “just because something does enter our eyes, provides a stimulus to the nervous system, doesn’t mean we experience it.” In fact, what shows up for us is not so much a matter of what is happening inside of us, but how we are achieving or failing to achieve access to what’s going on around us.
Watch the video here:
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
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