We create the world we perceive by the beliefs and stories we hold as truths. We believe in time and space and distance so we live in a world where these concepts seem to operate. It’s amazing, really, that our brains shape and inform our world and our minds are the reflection of our beliefs.
Perception, from a scientific perspective, points to the internal comparison or exchange of information from what we are seeing and sensing in the environment through the sensory organs of touch, taste, smell, hear, and see. There are many other sense organs that we’ll investigate later in the writings.
Humans utilize these organs for comparing and contrasting these appearances of life with the stored memory files within the brain. These memory files are saved representations of our previous experiences.
Because human perceptions and projections are proved to be based on the past, on previous experiences, and knowledge, the possibility of perceiving and sensing new and fresh information is really quite rare and challenging. To maximize our safety, as early humans we were wired to quickly and automatically use past experiences as a guidepost to determine future appearances. This primitive wiring was much more important when we were fighting lions, tigers, and bears and keeping safe to procreate and populate the tribe.
Today this hyper-developed ability to situationally compare and access the environment is not much needed since our biggest challenge could be along the lines of selecting food from the refrigerator to eat for a snack.
Whenever we add new knowledge to our existing database of knowledge (stored energy bits of perceptions) the stored energy patterns are updated with the new perceptual data to keep the organism safe, whether this energy pattern belongs to a human being or a parasite.
Keep in mind that each being will perceive a pre-recorded version of a familiar habitat and not the actual habitat that is appearing. Humans will habitually overlay a recollection of similar past experiences over the top of the present habitat thus not actually and accurately perceiving the totality of what is appearing, the actual appearance. When the brain believes it is seeing something it has seen before, it jumps to the conclusion this new thing is the same thing, even if it is not.
Our brains are wired to live in the past and base the present experience on a similar past experience. Human brains are wired for survival so we usually approach new people, places, and things with some amount of caution since we have no reference point for this new person, event, or thing.
We also tend to regard familiar appearances as being somewhat safe and less unpredictable and this gives the brain more space to focus on other data collection. This tendency to compare and access helps keep us safe and to save time calculating if the new environment might be deadly or dangerous.
We actually see only see a small portion of what is appearing and our brain quickly fills in the rest of the picture. Apparently, this tendency of the brain helps us flee when a predator is coming towards us and relax when we are sitting on the porch sipping tea.
Humans use language to name, claim, label, and internalize accumulated sensory experiences and perceptions to project future outcomes based on past experiences. All language is relative, based on the pairs of opposites, and is a system of communication using sounds and symbols to compare, contrast, and describe one thing to another.
We frame these internal bits of language data as useful knowledge or information about our environment and our ability to navigate the world we believe we inhabit.
But what is knowledge and how is it different from intelligence? Knowledge is usually referred to as sensory information gained through experience. Intelligence, on the other hand, is the ability to apply knowledge. Intelligence is beyond the local mental activity of the brain and is the higher vast unlimited instinctual or intuitive capacity to apply local knowledge while perceiving what is appearing.
We used stored mental information to inform our current and future activities. Taking this one step further, the perceived and believed outcomes of our actions are perceived as actual experiences-in-time which are then stored as new and/or updated knowledge.
All forms of life energy, even single-cell organisms experience their environment through some type of perception. When there is a perceived repetition of activities we call this a pattern or a memory.
It’s still mostly a mystery how human beings internally organize incoming perceptions to create and store information.
Yes, I want to know, so, this article below from Stanford helped me better understand how the brain uses memory to make sense of the world. Perhaps it may help you as well.
Anita
” ‘Memory’ labels a diverse set of cognitive capacities by which we retain information and reconstruct past experiences, usually for present purposes. Memory is one of the most important ways by which our histories animate our current actions and experiences. Most notably, the human ability to conjure up long-gone but specific episodes of our lives is both familiar and puzzling and is a key aspect of personal identity.
Memory seems to be a source of knowledge. We remember experiences and events which are not happening now, so memory differs from perception. We remember events which really happened, so memory is unlike pure imagination. Yet, in practice, there can be close interactions between remembering, perceiving, and imagining.
Remembering is often suffused with emotion and is closely involved in both extended affective states such as love and grief, and socially significant practices such as promising and commemorating. It is essential for much reasoning and decision-making, both individual and collective. It is connected in obscure ways with dreaming.
Some memories are shaped by language, others by imagery. Much of our moral and social life depends on the peculiar ways in which we are embedded in time. Memory goes wrong in mundane and minor, or in dramatic and disastrous ways.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/archives/sum2012/entries/memory/