Brain Puzzle: What is Perception?

“Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us,” writes the philosopher/cognitive scientist/neuroscientist Alva Noë. “It is something we do.” 

In the video below, Noë tells us that, paradoxical it sounds, “just because something does enter our eyes, provides a stimulus to the nervous system, doesn’t mean we experience it.” In fact, what shows up for us is not so much a matter of what is happening inside of us, but how we are achieving or failing to achieve access to what’s going on around us.

Watch the video here:

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.