SOPHIEWHITFIELD [THE BODY AND PERCEPTION]
PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTION.
‘‘The question that was raised in the earliest times, that we raise today, and that will always be raised and will always be a matter of perplexity: ti to on, what is being?’’ – Aristotle [KRELL. F, D., 1993:4].
Aristotle – the idea of truth and ontology.
Associations with the idea of the self and the speculation of the word ‘’being’’ can be traced back to one of the leading Philosophers in Ancient Greece – Aristotle. Aristotle was the initial Greek philosopher after Plato who subjected his ideas toward the knowledge and understanding of reality and what is true; he questioned what is being and what is real?
‘A substance, Aristotle concluded, is not simply a unit of matter, but is an intelligible structure or form (eidos) embodied in matter. Although the form is entirely immanent, and does not exist independently of it material embodiment, it is the form that gives to the substance its distinctive essence.’ [TARNAS, R. 1991:57].
Aristotle plays with the idea of form not just as a fundamental structure of all things but as the dynamic tangible feature regarding what something can become. It was Aristotle who was accustomed with the fundamental questions of metaphysics; concerned with subjectivity of presence in relation to the world that encompasses it.
Fig.1 Jacopo de' Barbari, Portrait of Fra Luca Pacioli with a young man.
Countless years later in the 17th Century Rene Descartes, a French philosopher concerned with the idea of experiencing the world, believed that the central role of the mind in our perception to the world, would hold through science the absolute truth of all things. Meaning that to experience something would create absolute certainty, free from scepticism.
‘The foundation of truth and knowledge begins by working from what is most evident to the mind of the individual.’ [SHAND, J. 1993: 76-77]
In his later years, Descartes was determined to find mathematical and scientific reasoning in order to explain the world, through ourselves as beings and our own capabilities of the mind. In this way he began ideas regarding the immortality of the soul, as his writings embarks on a route to ‘enable us to overcome the psychological resistance we may have to such a journey. It is the path which should be followed by the seeker after the ultimate foundations of knowledge.’ [SHAND, J. 1993:77]
Conceptual objection of the mind is a central idea in his work, through mechanical matter, the geometric conception of reality and the activity of thinking. Descartes believed the senses were too deceptive and can often be misleading in a world of reality; constant change would differentiate our ability to secure the absolute truth.
‘To be objective our science must be sense-independent and derived from reason or the faculty of understanding.’ [SHAND, J. 1993:77]
Empiricism.
Empiricism is deeply concerned with the idea that all known knowledge must span from our individual sensory experience and that the reality of what exists cannot simply be explained through reason alone.
‘We should reject as meaningless ideas or concepts which cannot be specified as corresponding to any possible experiences. We should reject knowledge claims concerning matters of fact about the nature of the world which are not supportable by the evidence of experience.’ [SHAND, J. 1993:114]
John Locke, born in 1632 and known for his correspondence in political affairs at that time, was fascinated by the ideas regarding the experience of the self which had traversed from Descartes. Locke throughout his life studied medicine and was inspired through a colleague to look at other means of exploring knowledge rather than simply ‘Aristotelian modes of physical explanation.’ [SHAND, J. 1993:116]
In the book philosophy and philosophers, written by John Strand, he explains the central concepts within Locke’s later philosophy, stating:
‘it is concerned mainly with determining the nature, scope, and limits of knowledge and with giving an account of the nature of reality… The heart of the matter lies in the interplay between scepticism and the scope of human knowledge; and it can be summed up by the aim of discovering what it is human beings are and are not fitted to know.’ [1993:117]
Following this, the derivation of the perception of reality through sensory experience; sensations and reflections, are highlighted in the work of Martin Heidegger who makes a clear focus towards the self and our ‘being’ within the world. Martin Heidegger is concerned with the function of the human mind and the physicality of the body in space; taking an existential phenomenological approach towards the body and the surrounding world.
In his book ‘Being and Time’, Heidegger addresses issues such as our natural intuition, our self-morality and the mode in which we perceive the world around us, through both our senses and our existential knowledge of time and presence within the world. It is here where the modern questions of our society today are based upon; are we simply the fleeting existence? How do we cope with our ‘being’ in a dimension of mortal reality? Referring back to Locke’s philosophy – how much should we know? What are we built to understand? With this constant void of questioning and interrogation of the mind and reality, how stable is our fragile form in mentality and control.
Fig.2 Martin Heidegger.
These mental instabilities and glitches of ‘rationality’ or common reason are becoming ever so dominant in today’s society. Sigmund Freud; a neurologist who dedicated his life to psychoanalysis and the interpretation of the sub-conscious through dreams, explored the realm of cognitive psychology and behavioural patterns/anomalies of the conscious self in human beings.
Freud’s study of his patients entailed reviewing memories from their past, concluding that most issues in later life were based on the idea of nature vs nurture. To him the initial stages of childhood played a predominant role in understanding the way in which people react to certain situations and perceive the world around them. He used dream studies in order to depict from a patients subconscious in a state of disengagement and unawareness (states of hypnosis). This was due to the fact that Freud found he could depict pieces of information which the conscious mind would disengage with, tapping into the void or the psyche of an individual’s inner being.
It was this void of the inner darkness which could not escape relative consciousness of the human self that fascinated psychologists. Further studies have shown that the effect of our subconscious alters the running of our day to day lives through our ability to make decisions and have stability in functioning in the world around us. The mind is a powerful thing; it controls, stores and interprets our sensory perceptions, emotions and behaviour. It controls why we do certain tasks in certain ways with no justification. The mind holds every memory throughout our lives that we have ever had; constantly interpreting the experience in a variety of ways as our understanding of reality grows.
To this day anomalous experiences of the body and mind are topics of vast discussion, with spasms in our mind occurring relating to such anomalies such as Déjà vu. Whereby we are tricked by our sub-conscious into believing that we have been in a specific place, at that specific time with every aspect identical to that split second fleeting experience.
The exploration of the subconscious has investigated into depths of the unfamiliar through methods of parapsychology; this studies extra sensory experience within altered states of consciousness. These studies have been concerned with the ancient ideas regarding immortality and our eternal existence, testing for energy transfer between the living and the dead worlds. Parapsychology is not just simply communication between past and present, but also it gives soul and being to not only human participants but objects. It is now concerned with looking at the transfer of energy which cannot be explained through physical or biological methods within the reasoning of the world (such as telepathy). The research is aimed at viewing the extra sensory perception of the individual; the idea of ultimate knowledge within beings which cannot be explained or controlled.
Fig.3: Interpretation of the unconscious mind.