Ok ok,
Experiences in life depend on two occurrences: what our senses detect and how we perceive them. Not everyone sees the same things I do, or you do. A rose is a rose, but oh, what a rose it is.
What we ‘see’ filters through two processes. One is objective accumulation of data and ‘unthinking’ processing of said data. Our vision detects a cactus and our brain automatically interprets: thorns, ouch, stay away. This process and sometimes the final interpretation is often subconscious; you don’t even think about thinking it. Our lizard brain is imprinted with such responses for self-preservation. And we often react accordingly: cactus = thorns = ouch = move away.
Phenomenology Merleau-Ponty wrote: “In so far as I have hands, feet; a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent on my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way that I do not choose.” What is in the world is ‘there’, but our responses to that world, and hence, our ‘being’ in that world is more complex.
The other process is perception. Now, ‘perception’ is acquiring, interpreting, selecting and organizing information detected by our senses; sight, smell, sounds, touch, taste….. The first process is the input of raw data of the world around us in a specific point in time. Perception is, well, processing all of that data and ‘being’ in the world.
This is what differentiates us from each other. And from other animals. Our perceptions ‘color our world’, our reality, more than other animals because we have the ability to reason and think about thinking. That each piece of data may be perceived differently than the person next to you is what makes us individual. It is what splashes the variety of colors, shades and shapes on each of our world and reality. And being in that world as a thinking body that senses its surroundings.
It is what makes us, ‘me’.
Cheers
ps: I polished the facts off a textbook lying around at the computer table.
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