Abel Questions

1. According to Abel, perception is an"active inquiry, not passive reception...acts of perceiving as something."

2. When Abel says "seeing as," he means how we see everything, how it has a certain meaning to each person. "...Hamlet got Polonius to agree that a cloud looked like a camel, a weasel and a whale. Two people will stumble over a bit of hard clay, but only one of them will it as a fragment of a Greek vase."

3. To see what is the case requires:

a. Context- The setting; the surrounding information  that helps to understand the meaning of a specific thing.

b. Inference-that which is derived by reasoning; concluding or judging on the premises of evidence.

c. Concepts- General notions or ideas

d. Experience- instances of personally undergoing, or encountering something.

e. Interpretation- one's personal meaning for a piece, an idea, a thought.

4. What Nietzsche meant by "the fallacy of the immaculate conception" is that there is no "innocent eye", or one single, correct view of seeing-as. Psychologist Joseph Jastrow proves this point using "a  well-known drawing--it is a figure that can be seen either as a rabbit or a duck, and it shifts from one to the other as you look at it;it can never be seen as both and neither interpretation is 'correct.'" We did this in class when we looked at the three world maps, which were three different perspectives: one of how the world is normally shown, one of all the continents streched vertically, and one with the continents upside-down and the sizes of the countries skewed.

5. What Abel means by "there is no sharp dividing line between perception and illusion" is that "perception is 'multistable.' The ambiguity or avaiable choices are not always evident in an image and cannot always be isolated," so we can not always differentiate between what we percive and what we illuse.

6. Perception is selective by nature because "the number of sensory stimuli, or possible messages from outside, is greater than we can receive and process. The channels of communication to us are crowded and noisy; we must filter stimuli."

7. What Abel means by "to perceive is to solve a problem," is that we "'find strands of permanence in the tumult of changing  appearances' (Polyani) " so that what we perceive and what we have already perceived, helps us to identify what is always changing.

8. The role of social conditioning in deciding how things "naturally" look is important. "Realism" is used in art to describe how realistic and/or familiar something is to us. "each society relies on its own visual schemata; it takes for granted its own 'disorientations and 'distractions.'"

9. The  significance of the Durher rhinoceros is that although he had never seen one, he did a wood cut that became so popular it became the model for rhinoceroses in textbooks. His interpretation, however, was found to be incorrect by James Bruce, who traveled to Africa. But when Bruce illustrated it, it "was so strongly influenced by his [convention] of what a rhinoceros ought to look like (i.e., like Durher's woodcut) that no zoologist can identify what Bruce actually saw!" The influence of convention is demonstrated when a photograph is given to some African tribes in that they do not understand what is in the picture, even if they have seen it before, because they do not understand how photographs work, or even what a photograph is. What they see when they look at a photograph is varying shades of colors, or blacks, whites and grays, not an actual picture.

10. Convention influences perspective drawing because the artist must find a way to convey three dimensions on a two dimensional media. " The laws of optics and geometry  do not entail our conventional manner of showing distance nor did it occur to other generations, or cultures."

11. When Abel writes "believing is seeing" he means that if you can be convinced to believe something, you can be convinced to see it as well. "'Stooges' in experiments can get subjects in experiments to agree that they see unequal lines as equal, or that a fixed candlelight in a dark room is moving."

12. What Abel means by "hearing-as" is what we hear and what was actually said, maybe different, based on our perceptions. "If you are told, 'Bert was sleepy, so he went to bed,' almost any consonant can be substituted for the b in bed, with no change in what the brain reports."

Blink #2

1. Three Fatal Mistakes

Three Fatal Mistakes is related to our study of Perception, in that it showed the three ways that the four police officers' brains had "misses," which happened to be fatal in Diallo's case. Their brains received signal's telling them that Diallo "looked suspicious," "was brazen," and "was dangerous." However, the signals were incorrect. Diallo was "getting a breathe of fresh air, "was curious," and later, "was terrified." 

2. The Theory of Mind Reading

In this section, we learn about how two scientists manage to "read people's minds" by anaylzing their facial expressions. This relates to our study of Perception because it shows us that through learning about how the brain works, here specifically how our facial expressions relate to what we are feeling, we are able to understand the information we receive, and analyze it better.

3. The Naked Face

In this section, Gladwell goes on to show how Ekman uses FACS, to decipher facial expressions. Using his intensive knowledge of FACS, he uses his Perception of facial expressions to "mind read." This is related to our study, showing us how we know what we know, through our Perception, here: in facial expressions.

4. A Man,  A Woman, and A Lightswitch

In this section, Gladwell explores how, through autism, literal "mind-blindness" or lack of "mind-reading" ability. This shows how an autisitc person's perception is different, so they pull a different meaning out of something that an non-autistic person would. It relates to our study because we see how each person's perception is different, but also we see how each person receives that information to come to that perception.

5. Arguing With a Dog

This section is very much related to our study of Perception. Using information from the past couple of sections, Gladwell shows his readers how our perception changes with our mood, particularly with an adreneline rush. Our Perception changes and we are unable to "mid-read" because our "vision and thinking narrowed."

6. Running Out of White Space

In this section, Gladwell discusses how are you perceptions and how we act on them depend on the time we have to react to our perceptions. The more time we have, the more qualified we are to make a decision, based on our perceptions. We're not stressed for time, for a decision.

7. Something in my mind...

This section was extremely relevant to our study of Perception. Gladwell talked about really using your perception, but also thinking clearly on your perceptions, so that you fully understand your percetions and what they mean.

8. Tragedy on Wheeler Ave.

In this last section, Gladwell combines everything he has mentioned abut perception in the last seven sections. He puts its all together, effectively showing his readers how one  acts on their perception, and how one comes to that perception, particularly in moments of brief time, and stress, where one can become  effectively "mind-blind" and not read signs that show something different from what the instant perception says.

The Biology of Perception

Although I did not finish the test, my impression was that it was to sort of test our perceptions, how our individual brains receive information. I thought that some parts of it moved too quickly, but I'm sure that was the point, so that we, as students could better understand how important those first signals of the brain are.

I think the average person should know the basics of how our brains perceive information. I believe that this will help everyone understand our lives, and how and why we think better. The average person may be able to obtain more information, or more accurate information, if they understand the way their brain receives information.