22 replies to this topic

[Rockhauler2k1]

It seems to me that something that isnt discussed much in regards to paranormal phenomenon is the difference between sensation and perception . People that report having experiences often confuse the two things if not mesh them together in their telling of the event based on my years of research and experience.


We also each have our own set of personal filters that define our experiences as we have them. These filters are relative to our education , upbringing , and social status. It is this set of filters that determine wether or not we base our experience in sensation , perception or both. I have also found that some people have what I like to call Fixed Filters. These are the kind that completly stop the process of evaluating information due to fixed beliefs . A very sad state of mind indeed.

First lets do the obvious and give clear definitions of both terms before giving .


Sensation --- 1 a : a mental process (as seeing, hearing, or smelling) due to immediate bodily stimulation often as distinguished from awareness of the process -- compare PERCEPTION b : awareness (as of heat or pain) due to stimulation of a sense organ c : a state of consciousness of a kind usually due to physical objects or internal bodily changes <a burning sensation in his chest> d : an indefinite bodily feeling <a sensation of buoyancy>
2 : something (as a physical object, sense-datum, pain, or afterimage) that causes or is the object of sensation
3 a : a state of excited interest or feeling <their elopement caused a sensation> b : a cause of such excitement <the show was the musical sensation of the season>; especially : one (as a person) in some respect exceptional or outstanding <the rookie hitting sensation of the American League>

Perception --- 1 a : a result of perceiving : OBSERVATION b : a mental image : CONCEPT
2 obsolete : CONSCIOUSNESS
3 a : awareness of the elements of environment through physical sensation <color perception> b : physical sensation interpreted in the light of experience
4 a : quick, acute, and intuitive cognition : APPRECIATION b : a capacity for comprehension
synonym see DISCERNMENT


The purpose of this thread is to discuss the differences between the two forms of processing information. I think it may be useful to get opinions from both sides of the fence.

Help me out with this one if you will.

Thanks ,

Rockhauler2k1

[Bobnoxious]

Well, the one element of what you're talking about I find particularly interesting is the idea of "personal filters". While I don't have much to back this up, I think there's a possibility that the same phenomenon is behind any number of paranormal experiences. A person who has a religious "filter" might experience angels or demons where another person sees ghosts and yet another person sees extraterrestrials or alien spacecraft. But what are these people really seeing? Could be beings from dimension X whose physical form is so alien to us that we can only see them in terms that make sense to us as individuals, could be a full on hallucination brought on by some external energy, or could be something mundane that we just aren't able to see that clearly, so our minds try to fill in the blanks. I'm sure there's other possibilities, too. That's why despite being skeptical of the paranormal, I'm convinced that the vast majority of people claiming to have seen ghosts, UFO's, bigfoot, or whatever are sincere and honest. They are reporting their perceptions as accurately as they possibly can. But as studies have shown, even when dealing with as mundane a subject as picking out a person from a police lineup, eyewitness testimony can often be unreliable. Our brains developed for very specific tasks many years ago. Those adaptations serve us well for the most part, but sometimes they can mislead us. For instance, I'm willing to bet almost everyone here has been in a crowd and thought they saw someone they knew at a distance. But when they got close enough to see this person more clearly, it turned out it wasn't really who they thought it was. It's certainly happened to me on occasion, for example when my wife and I split up in a mall and I then go looking for her. Anyway, hope that's in the general vicinity of what you were looking for Rock.

[Markway]

A problem here, right from the "get-go". Human beings are so constructed that perception and observation are intertwined, and almost indistinguishable. Even Bobnoxious might support me on this one.

The problem is that we use our five senses as tools, but that the real work is done by the brain. Just for an example. Most people are lousy artists. Is there a fault in their eye?, their hand?, no, it is their brain. When you draw, the majority of people record what their brain tells them should be there. Here's a test: meet someone at the airport that you haven't seen for sometime. Do you fail to recognize them right away? Do they become familiar moments after identification has been confirmed? The file marked, "Sister" etc. has just been loaded.

[Rockhauler2k1]

Yes Bob thats the idea in general. I will clarify a bit more. I do see and understand the path of your remarks. Let me elaborate a bit more.

Markway , yes these two are often intermingled but this is where Im going with the thread. Its not so easily written off if you collect data as I have over the years and listen to the differing experiences. While the two thing are definitly linked , some tend to stand on sensation alone . Is this rational ? Not by my estimation , butit is reality for the person experiencing the phenomenon. This is the basis of personal filters and it defines the line where we each live in our perception.

Ive interviewed many people that have claimed a paranormal experience and some use the " I could feel it looking at me " or " I saw it out of the corner of my eye " experience . Some say that their hair on the neck stood straight up along with many other types of remarks. A number in this group of folks seem to be content to call the experience what it is and try not to over rationalize it through rationalization.

I would say this is a sensation type of experience.

There is a group of people however that take it further and try to rationalize the experience through their perception. They take both sensation and perception and combine them through their personal filters to understand the experience as a whole.

I hope this clears the water a bit more .

I will convey more specific information when time allows.


Rockhauler2k1

[Markway]

Bobs' post was not evident when I wrote mine or I may not have bothered to respond. To a large degree we said the same things, although Bob, as usual, can be expected to come down on one side of the paranormal fence, and I on the other.

I hesitate to go farther with this, as we are after all, on the Skeptics' board. I too interviewed and did fiel investigations. I feel that I have a low level of a certain sort of psychic ability which I believe to be quite common. For what my word is worth to you this ability was tested by several of my old confederates and found to be accurate to within a few feet. To whit; I seem to be able to detect certain changes in energy associated with hauntings etc. The air seems to be "thicker", and if the place is "bad" the air seems to look blue, or dark, while if the area is benign the air looks yellow. Sometimes I could pick up an emotion or two and danger came through very well.

It seemed obvious to me that the air had not become denser or changed in hue, as others could not always perceive what I did. I suspect that my brain was being directly stimulated and could only interpret that stimulus in terms of the input it is predominantly designed to receive. I'm not the first one to think of this. This approach has been used to dismiss hauntings. Unfortunately for the debunkers the haunting reports are not random but type specific.; in other words, wittnesses consistantly see the same thing at the same place even when they have no knowledge of what to expect. It's the sort of thing that a good scientist will leave out of his report.

[Bobnoxious]

Rock - Gotcha' now. Cold spots, feelings of apprehension, feeling of someone/thing watching you, corner of the eye phenomenon, etc. You might even include "deja vu" in the list.

I think most people try to "rationalize" these feelings because our brains innately want to put labels on things. We feel something strange, and darn it, we want to know why! So we find the closest thing within our sphere of knowledge that seems to fit that feeling, and decide that's what it was. I think it's very hard to stay completely neutral simply because of the way our brains have developed. And yet at the same time it's crucial if one is doing a real investigation not to jump to conclusions.

Markway - With regards to your comment about people always having the same experiences in the same place, all I can say is that still doesn't prove your point. I probably sound like a broken record bringing up the "ghost frequency" thing again, but I think it's a very important fact to consider. If a particular audio frequency can cause identical changes in the perceptions of a high percentage of people, that should be looked into. And perhaps there are other environmental factors that do the similar things. The correlation between power lines and paranormal experiences suggests that's a possibility. Obviously this can't explain every paranormal experience, but it should be ruled out.

As for your personal ability to see the air in differing hues depending on whether the area is benign or bad, what exactly do you mean by those terms? What has to happen to classify a location as one or the other? Can any of this energy be measured by instruments? If so, what are you doing to rule out the possibility that this energy is coming from something mundane before reaching the conclusion that its paranormal?

[DukeofBoogie]

I'm not the scientific type. Never was, never will be. I sense. I percieve. I live in my surroundings, and I trust my sense more than anything. Take that however you will. That's the way I work. But, I never claim to be a parnormal investagator. I am not objective (or patient) enough.

I AM objective. If I experience something, I run through my head to see if it can be explained within my sphere of knowledge. But I'm not objective enough to bill myself as an investigator.

What I'm getting at is....

I trust my gut. Paranormal, or not. Thats how I've learned to live, through my senses. After all the "gut" feeling is a sensation. And I swear on my mother's grave, it serves me well.

Now my gut tells me that I might not make any sense here, but that's my 2 cents. I hope it seems relevant to the conversation. It does to me (in my perception)lol

Edited by DukeofBoogie, 04 December 2005 - 01:39 PM.

[Markway]

Dear Bob,

Have to watch my boozin I can't lay an egg like my last posting here on the Skeptics' Board without being prepared to explain myself.

Something that has gotten lost is the term "Preternatural". Frankly, this is where I would put Acupuncture. Acupuncture is based on no known neurological interaction or pathway. However, acupuncture has been tested and found to work upon animals, thereby eliminating the Placebo Effect.

When we talk about social conditioning, (filters) to construct what we see during a paranormal experience, why believe that direct brain stimulus should be so exact?

What I can do is/was based upon feelings I have when exposed to certain places. I don't ask if the place is haunted, I KNOW. The testing was done by a colleague who knew the building history of the Pac Med Hosp. in Seattle. The original structure was very haunted. Electricians working in the old morgue installing the new service for Amazon.com, complained about street people wandering into their workplace, a work hazard as there were exposed energized parts. The security guards had a big Yuk Yuk as they could describe the various "street people", all ghosts seen for many years. The foreman, an old and very excitable friend, about melted down. Nobody had heard the stories, everyone saw.

[Bobnoxious]

Markway,
I don't think the stimulus itself is exact. In fact, almost the opposite. It's simply something beyond our capacity to percieve as it really is. So our brains look for something in the ballpark to file it under.
Thanks for clarifying your abilities a little further. But as you probably know from some of my previous posts on other topics, I'm very leary of anyone who just "knows" anything. I work from a paradigm in which I know nothing, and rely on evidence in my attempts to get as close to knowledge as possible. In the absence of definitive evidence, I'm just fine continuing on down the road without making up my mind.

[MoonChild]

Bob, the "definitive" evidence is a term which is confusing. Since we are discussing about perceptions and sensations, is there a fool proof way of documenting the sensations? And fool proof in whose standards?


Okay here is a little something from me. I may need to go back to more than three+ years. This was the time when my dad's hospitalisation made me move back to my home town. Since he had undergone a surgery, and was so weak from cancer treatment, we had to move to a house near to the hospital. This house was built more than 45 years, and was owned by one of our relatives. I have had very serious experiences in one of the rooms of the house, which my dad was using. Infact he never have used it, since he was more hospitalised than being at home. I have shared a few of my experiences with GV around that time, I don't know if anyone remembers. I could never sleep for more than 10 minutes in this particular room, be it any time of the day. I could feel people walking around, I could feel being watched, and the feeling was NOT a positive one. I could also feel people "pushing" me off the cot. I shared this with my sister, and she was willing to change rooms with me. She never had any serious sleepless problems, but she could hear people walking around, and whispers, which she said, were not legible.

Things changed, and after my dad's death, and lot many months, I moved back to the room, but I was determined to keep things away from me. Had a stronger mind, that is.


Roll back to day before yesterday, when I found out that house was used as an Intelligence Buereu office, and has had some incidences during the 1960's when we had military rule. People have been questioned and killed in this house, in the very rooms I had problems, that is - the room I was using and the room next to it. There was always a feeling of heaviness about that place, which was unexplainable.


Back to our discussion. I never had anything to percieve so as to have that kind of encounter in the first place. I have always believed It is all in my mind, which this information makes me believe even stronger. What I meant to say is that, in those days, my mind was in total turmoil, and perhaps was letting the outside energy to influence me. Was that a perception? Or was that a sensation? Or were they intefering with my then encounters even though I never had ANY idea of the history of the place?

[Markway]

MoonChild,

I don't think that this was what Rockhauler had in mind when he started this thread, but is probably what his interviewees had in mind when they discussd their feelings.

As I've said before, I'm low wattage, all that I get is the halo, few specifics usually. I never finished my story about the hospital; my brain is truly going. The hospital had been added onto about five times, but unlike most buildings these days, the additions had been made in the character and style of the original structure. My partners' mother had been a nurse in the building for 30 years, and my partner knew where the additions were. One evening we walked the building and I could detect when we had left the original structure. Weird, huh? That isn't what expect from a haunting.

[Rockhauler2k1]

Markway,
         I don't think the stimulus itself is exact.  In fact, almost the opposite.  It's simply something beyond our capacity to percieve as it really is.  So our brains look for something in the ballpark to file it under.
         Thanks for clarifying your abilities a little further.  But as you probably know from some of my previous posts on other topics, I'm very leary of anyone who just "knows" anything.  I work from a paradigm in which I know nothing, and rely on evidence in my attempts to get as close to knowledge as possible.  In the absence of definitive evidence, I'm just fine continuing on down the road without making up my mind.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The stimulus is exactly the point Bob . Well stated. I was trying to use a term that didnt imply feelings. It seems to me that people with fixed filters tend to treat their beliefs as fact . This is limiting to the point where it is crippling and distorts the very thinking that can explain a happening in logical terms.

They work both ways ( fixed filters ) . Its not just a disease of believers. It also can apply to skeptics and non-believers just as easily.

Sometimes the only evidence we have of an event is the stimulus that allows us to know it happened in the first place. A feeling can paralize a human being . Ive witnessed it first hand .

Lets say that being there and either taking part in an event through stimulation ( physical feeling ) or hallucination ( visually seeing something that doesnt logically belong in the environment ) can be many things dependent upon our personal filters.

I'll even go as far as saying that having preconcieved ideas about a place that is supposed to be haunted can cause even a reasonable a person to experience stimulus that is easily explainable as a normal happening . By the very same token , a person that has no idea what so ever that a place is allegedly haunted can have an experience of stimulus that can make them paralized with fear for no know reason.

Our personal filters have everything to do with how we experience things .

I will post more later on my findings in specific cases when time allows.


Rockhauler2k1

Edited by Rockhauler2k1, 06 December 2005 - 07:38 PM.

[Markway]

I strongly disagree with the statement that " our personal filters have everything to do with how we experience things." As before stated learned information is incorporated into experienced phenomena. This phenomenon is at it's smallest effect upon first experience. The author and paranormal researcher, Paul Devereaux has tried to run with your theory about brain stimulus and cultural filters, but even he has to admit that there are serial sitings of identical images at individual locations.

[Bobnoxious]

Okay, but can we maybe agree to meet somewhere in the middle? All philosophizing aside, I think that there is a reality with a capitol 'R'. But at the same time, I also think our perceptions of that reality can vary a great deal. Whether you call this a filter like Rock does, or a reality tunnel like Robert Anton Wilson, our beliefs do play a role in how we interpret information. Our filters/reality tunnels are all pretty much in synch when it comes to something like identifying rocks, trees, cats, dogs, etc. But when we're dealing with something less concrete, personal bias can easily come into play. And I agree with Rock, this can be an issue with believers and disbelievers alike.

[Markway]

Okay, but can we maybe agree to meet somewhere in the middle?  All philosophizing aside, I think that there is a reality with a capitol 'R'.  But at the same time, I also think our perceptions of that reality can vary a great deal.  Whether you call this a filter like Rock does, or a reality tunnel like Robert Anton Wilson, our beliefs do play a role in how we interpret information.  Our filters/reality tunnels are all pretty much in synch when it comes to something like identifying rocks, trees, cats, dogs, etc.  But when we're dealing with something less concrete, personal bias can easily come into play.  And I agree with Rock, this can be an issue with believers and disbelievers alike.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah Bob, perceptions of reality can vary substantially. I once took a stone skeptic along with my group on a ghost job. Our guest was a journalist hoping for a little fun at our expense, but any advertising is good, right? On this night we got an apparition moving down a corridor. She moved right through the journalist. Four of our people saw it, and as required did not discuss, but made notes for future comparison. When we talked it over later even the journalist described essentially the same sight, BUT the writer said that he had not seen a ghost, "because ghosts don't exist", ergo, he had not seen a ghost. A week later "he had suffered a delusion".