Sensory Perception

[Angrboda]

I'm hung up on the part about "discerning reality." We don't discern reality, and since we have no way of checking the relationship between sensations and reality, we can't even verify that there are any isomorphisms involved. I prefer to leave the questionable term, "reality," out of things at this level. Our minds create models of the world. These models seem to be adjusted on the basis of what appear to be inputs, the two most common being perception and memory, but likely not the only ones. It's helpful to keep in mind that we have many more than five senses, all of which contribute to our models of reality, yet only those with readily apparent qualia are typically counted. (I might ask why, or better yet point to phenomena like blindsight and hemi-neglect as examples of how we can both act on perceptions yet at the same time be unaware of the nature of those perceptions. I prefer to think of all perception and consciousness as similar to hemi-neglect; the purpose of perception is to guide behavior [which is another pathway we can't check], so the key question is not does the model accurately reflect structural features of "reality" but rather is the feedback loop perception --> model --> behavior --> environment --> perception --> .... one that is robustly self-sustaining or not, and how to describe that feedback loop. Reality is largely irrelevant to that question.) [And I believe that "reality" is properly speaking noumenal, unknowable, largely because there is no way to check the relationship between perception and internal model; the quality of being real is a metaphysical notion I'd rather do without.]