perception is inference
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Busier than ever, but loving it, although could have done without Maggie coming down with conjunctivitis and a chest infection during my first week in the new job. According to my entirely sympathetic manager, I'm not the first new hire she's managed that this has happened to. So the evening and weekend work may continue intermittently as I try to keep up my hours. And in the meantime, the wee'un's much improved after a couple of days on antibiotics and eyedrops. Although she's quickly wised up to the drops, whacking the bottle out of my hand as soon as I approach her with it.
That's all I have time for with a stack of work to catch up on and a gig next week to practise for, to say nothing of the state of the house. (Gaaaah...) A propos of nothing, this here is a fascinating (if a little troubling) article, which I've been reading a paragraph at a time since Wednesday. (I have high hopes of finishing it before the New Yorker yanks it.)
The account of perception that’s starting to emerge is what we might call the “brain’s best guess” theory of perception: perception is the brain’s best guess about what is happening in the outside world. The mind integrates scattered, weak, rudimentary signals from a variety of sensory channels, information from past experiences, and hard-wired processes, and produces a sensory experience full of brain-provided color, sound, texture, and meaning. We see a friendly yellow Labrador bounding behind a picket fence not because that is the transmission we receive but because this is the perception our weaver-brain assembles as its best hypothesis of what is out there from the slivers of information we get. Perception is inference.
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