That never really happened!

I am discovering how my consciousness-dominating addictions (i.e., preoccupations) create my illusory version of the changing world of people and situations around me.

I act freely when I am tuned in, centered, and loving, but if possible, I avoid acting when I am emotionally upset and depriving myself of the wisdom that flows from love and expanded consciousness.

--Ken Keyes, Jr., in The Handbook to Higher Consciousness 

You've heard this all before. Things are not always what they appear to be.

Sometimes we are intentionally misled, as when people want to sell us something or don't want us to know of a mistake. Sometimes we are "unintentionally misled," as when people deceive themselves and then faithfully report to us what they believe to be true.

This type of failure in the correspondence between what we see or hear and what is "true" stems from poor data: we draw an incorrect conclusion because we were provided with faulty information.

There is, however, a deeper issue underlying the lack of correspondence between our perceptions and "reality" -- namely, the fact that these perceptions are our perceptions, created in the "computer wetware" of our brains out of bits and pieces of sensory data. Why is this a problem?

First, let's think about this on a very gritty level--the level at which we physically see things. Being the myope that I am, I occasionally awake to see something on my dresser that I can't make out. It looks, perhaps, like an ashtray in the form of a goose. Now I know it cannot be this, because there are no ashtrays in my house and certainly no such thing was on the bureau when I went to bed. After staring at it for a while and pondering what it could be, I realize it is my belt curled up around my pants.

The interesting thing is that, once I have seen the belt and the pants, I can no longer see the goose-shaped ashtray. The data reaching my senses is, of course, the same; so whatever has changed must have been inside my head.

There are many formal examples of things of this sort in the psychological literature. Perhaps the most common is the "Necker cube," that wire-frame box which can be seen with either of two surfaces as the front. What changes when you go from one view of the box to another? The box isn't changing, so it must be something inside your head.

The Necker cube is slightly different from my goose-shaped ashtray in that I can, almost at will, "flip" the cube and see it the other way. But I can't see it both ways at once. Maybe I can even see it as just some lines on the page rather than as a three-dimensional object--but at any given instant, I can see only one thing.

Consider a computer analogy. Think of conscious experience as what appears on a computer monitor, and the sensory data as what is read off the disk. If a picture comes onto the screen, it is not a faithful representation of the bits on the disk; rather, it is built up from those bits in such a way as to create something we can see.

In a similar manner, what we perceive in the world around us is not a direct and faithful representation of that world itself but, rather, a "computer-enhanced" version based upon very limited data from that world. The processing itself often does not show on the monitor of consciousness, except by the intervening moments of nothingness. The more "please wait" messages there are, the more aware we are of the fact that the computer is doing some sort of processing. But when our brains are processing, there may or may not be such messages. If I try to multiply 37 x 5 in my head, I am quite aware of the processing; when I'm staring at the gooseshaped ashtray in puzzlement, I'm not aware of any processing at all.

Larry Jacoby has coined the term perceptual fluency to describe the ease with which a certain perception takes place. Fluid perceptions are those which take place "automatically"--which is to say, without conscious effort on our part. "Unfluid" perceptions are often described as inferences. It is easy--and dangerous--to take fluid perceptions as direct manifestations of reality. Such "naive realism" blocks communication between people, because if two people perceive different things and both believe that they "saw it with their own eyes," each can only conclude that the other is a fool or a liar. Neither of these fosters respect or rational conversation.

This can all be summed up with the commonplace, "We live in a world of our own construction" (although this statement emphasizes the final individual construction and misses the antecedent experiences and interactions which influenced it--more on social constructions another time). But exactly what are we supposed to do with our lives after having made this observation? And how is this issue related to humanism?

We can start with a spiritual act, one which we might call "perceptual humility." This means acknowledging that what we thought we saw isn't what really happened--which opens a dialogue with others and with ourselves concerning alternative versions (and visions) of the "changing world of people and situations" around us. Accepting the limitations of our perceptual apparatus frees us to use our conscious minds to augment it when necessary and possible.

This lesson is useful enough when looking at Necker cubes and op art, but it becomes crucial when we observe the social world around us. When we "hear" someone put us down, someone elase equally within earshot may not hear it that way. Who is right? Most of us have been to events which have been written up in the newspaper and wondered: did the reporter attend the same event I did?

The "correction" of "misperceptions" is the cornerstone of Aaron T. Beck's cognitive therapy for depression. Whether it is the depressed or the non-depressed among us who misperceive (see, for example, Shelley F. Taylor's Positive Illusions), both groups tend to believe they heard it right. The beginning of wisdom, however, is wondering what else might be true beyond what one thought one heard.

Of course, it would be logically consistent to claim that, since what I thought I saw isn't what was actually there, I cannot trust any of my perceptions. Thus, no perception is any better than any other, leading to perceptual nihilism. The only possible answer to this claim is that, even though imperfect, our perceptions are a shadowy reflection of the world and they are, in the end, the only possible basis for any intent at right action.

Furthermore, our perceptions are often surprisingly accurate. Photons from the world, imperfectly refracted and hitting our eyes in different ways, lead to a picture of the world that is a more accurate reflection of outer reality --as it is humanly useful to understand it--than are the patterns of photons themselves. This has been called the central miracle of perception. It is worth remembering that evolution took some care in "designing" the computer which does our perceptual enhancing--and worth taking a moment to accord this magnificent product the awe it deserves. When it comes to social perceptions, accuracy is often enhanced (but sometimes inhibited) by conversations with our fellow perceivers.

The task of the humanist, then, is to be humble with respect to one's perceptions, to strive to better those perceptions (by gathering information, by listening to others, and by doing our own psychological housekeeping), and to not give up on this important task just because we cannot do it perfectly. Once we've done our perceptual homework, we must act, at any given moment, based upon our best understanding and our deepest values.