The dance of illusive Perception

Let’s do a small thought experiment. We conceptualise the world through the information

we get from our sensory organs, and a complex deductive process carried out by our brain.

Let’s for simplicity focus on our vision, and information and deduction process associated.

So, for argument’s sake, this person has one sensory organ, the eye, but rational can be

extended to all other organs that make up a complete human. We ‘see’ an object when

essentially 3 ingredients sync together. (1) A particle or a wave emerging from the relevant

object (2) The wave connecting to the eye as the sensory organ (3) the nerve system that

communicates this signal to the brain, and the brain that then compares the attributes of the

information contained in this signal with a pre-established database and giving a certain

conclusion or perception . The final artefact of this process is that one sees or recognises the

relevant object (e.g. car) and the whole process takes place in a tiny infinitesimally small

time scale, and we deduce the time lapse as instantaneous.

However, what is perhaps not so apparent and inherently hidden in this process is the creation

of a ‘me’ for the car to be recognised. Logically it is impossible to recognise or recollect any

entity or feeling in an absolute sense because the very notion of perceiving is pegged to the

existence of an owner that recognises and perceives this object or feeling. Further investigation

concludes that when the object of the car is recognised, a priori, not only is a ‘me’ created but

also a distinctive shade of ‘mine’ associated with the ‘me’ is created as well. Hence, for every

moment the recognition occurs so does the creation of a ‘me’ and an associated ‘mine’ as a

priori for recognition. Those attuned to mathematics would identify these separate “me’s”, as

series of extremely high frequency observations, yet by nature analogues to an IID. In simpler

language, these “me’s” that are created every time perceiving occurs are essentially

unconnected but occurring at an extremely high frequency, with an infinitesimal time

separation. These moments of perceiving arise, exist and decay momentarily and essentially

do not exhibit any relationship with the subsequent moments. The mind is blind to this

inherent process due to the pace at which it occurs, hence connects these ‘me’ dots and creates

a narrative of a person. Again, mathematicians might see this narrative as analogues to a path

dependant stochastic process created by the series of ‘me’s, that have an embedded memory

function.

The illusion does not stop there. By the time* perceiving occurs, albeit infinitesimally small,

the object (i.e. the car in our example) that emitted the light wave or the particle would itself

have undergone an infinitesimally small change due to the everchanging transforming process

associated with all matter. Hence the perception, which itself is created through a process of

arising, existence and passing away can never be the actual state of the object, thus creating

an even grander illusion. The moment a tacit understanding that perceiving gives rise to

arising and passing away of a series of unrelated “me’s”, forming an illusion of a non-existent

reality occurs, then the story ends, and the narrative of ‘me’ comes to a grinding halt.

Now about the notion of continuity inferred through the enduring physical forms of our

bodies, I think it is the manifestation of the world that we create in our minds individually by

taking in the information be digest through our 6 sensory organs as essentially ‘fixed’ albeit

for a short time. For example, take the transition from an infant to a toddler. If a bundle of

matter/energy conforms to a certain set of attributed that we have preconceived based on our

memory and judgement conforms to a certain standard (weight, skin tone, behaviour etc) we

call that bundle of matter/ energy an infant. The after some time* if this bundle of

matter/energy conforms to a different set of standards (heaver, different behaviour etc. based

on the pre-programmed information) we call this bundle a ‘toddler’. We essentially mover for

a fixed state to state in our minds (infant, toddler etc.) where as in reality there was never an

infant nor a toddler but just an ever changing bundle of matter / energy in a constant state of

flux.

So...one might ask, what’s the big deal. One is a internalisation of discreet (fixed) steps and

the other is a continuum. The issue is when it is fixed the human nature is to create

attachments or repulsion (as the case may be) to these fixed notions and build castles in the

mind and then suffer when the expected happiness signal breaks down as it is built on the

fixed / permanent notion when the reality is different.

*The concept of time itself can only be valid so long as the narrative of ‘me’ takes shape.

References

Draaisma, D., 2018. From meat to mind: the root of consciousness. Nature, 556(7699),

pp.26-28.

Draaisma, D., 2018. The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain

Makes the Mind. Nature, 556(7699), pp.26-27.

Draaisma, D., 2017. Perception: Our useful inability to see reality.

Judd, K.L., 1985. The law of large numbers with a continuum of iid random variables.

Journal of Economic theory, 35(1), pp.19-25.

Ross, S.M., 1995. Stochastic processes. John Wiley & Sons.

Saul, L.K. and Jordan, M.I., 1999. Mixed memory markov models: Decomposing complex

stochastic processes as mixtures of simpler ones. Machine learning, 37, pp.75-87.