Use this space to discuss how a movie you've watched furthers your understanding of Sensation and Perception.
7 Comments
Ella McDonald
10/5/2013 01:13:17 pm
I watched Inception, and it furthered my understanding of sensation and perception by "planting the idea in my brain" that you will never know what true reality is. In the movie, Leonardo's wife, Mal, believes her reality is real, while Leonardo believes a different reality is real. There's really no way of knowing who is correct. Our brain trusts the sensory information that is delivered to it. It also naturally predicts other stimuli when it might in fact not even exist (like the example of us assuming that as we turn our backs on an empty room, everything remains the same), and we believe that as well. How do we know that it all is real, and that every sensation we feel is actually caused by something outside of our own selves, and not just made up and projected "out" of ourselves by our own brains? This movie points out that because people may have different realities (as indicated in the ending scene when it never shows whether the top keeps spinning or not, as well as Mal and Leonardo not having the same "reality"), all of the world that we perceive and believe as reality might all be a thought up in our own brains.
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Marta Sola-Pfeffer
10/6/2013 05:33:37 am
After watching Inception, I feel like I fully realize one simple concept: the world we live in is our own creation. That is, that everything we see, every action we perform, and everything we hold to be true is completely subject to our own personal biases. I saw this particularly through the eyes of Dom Cobb, the protagonist in Inception.
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Casper
10/6/2013 11:19:51 am
Inception and The Matrix relate to what we're learning about sensation and perception because they are both about how we perceive the world around us to be real, but really there is no way to tell whether it is. Everything that we accept as reality could just be the product of our brain, after all, without our brain, the sensory information gathered by our senses is useless. Inception is about dreams and it makes the viewer ask themselves what makes the "real" world any more "real" than a dream. The Matrix explores the idea of our world being an illusion, a cover-up of the real world. Both point out that really there is no way to be sure that our world is real. This relates to Descartes' theory "I think therefore I am" which basically says, I know I exist because I can think, but I can't prove that anything outside of my consciousness is real, even my own body.
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Dylan Weaver
10/6/2013 01:50:50 pm
Hey! I have a joke. do you wanna hear it? Ok, here it goes. "Rene Decartes walks into a McDonald's. He goes up to the employee and orders a burger. They ask him if he would like fries with that. He respnonds 'I think not' and dissapears." Hilarious right? Rene believed that his mind defined his existance. Your welcome. S o I recently watched The Matrix and Inception. And although they definetly wern't as funny as me they still touched on the same ideas of sensation, perception, and reality.“What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. This is the world that you know.” This is Morpheus’s answer to Neo in The Matrix and the Decarte-ness is almost dripping off it . The entirety of The Matrix revolves around the idea that we sense and percieve reality is fundementally flawd and easily fooled. It also echos what we were saying at the end of clss Friday: we do not percieve the world how it really is, but as it is usefull for us to percieve it. In other words, there is no reality that we can ever know unshaakably IS reality. We only ever know perceptions of it in the form of subjective reality. For me, reality is something both subjective AND objective. What I mean is that objective reality, say the existence of the physical universe, does not necessarily depend on subjectivity to be real. But then, subjective reality, say the experience of an emotion, impulse or dream, doesn't necessarily depend on objective reality for its existence. The subjective world is as real as the objective world. Both have their own reality. One is not "more real" than the other. But when subjectivity trumps objectivity, or vice-versa, we get into trouble. I mean, just look at Cobb, Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Inception. People in his line of work are so wary of sensation and perception becasue they know (like us students of Psychology) that sensation and perception do not always mean reality and thus can never PROVE reality (yes, by the way, I just equated myself to Leonardo DiCaprio. Except I'm obviously better looking). Mal is a victim of this enlightenment and commits suicide becuase she is so distrusting of her sensory perceptions. She chooses her subjective reality over Cobb's subjective reality.
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Maggie Mahoney
10/7/2013 01:51:13 am
I watched The Matrix, which heightened my understanding of sensation and perception in a few different ways. First of all, (SPOILERS!!) Neo, a computer hacker, realizes that he has just been perceiving his life, instead of actually sensing it. Neo figures out that for his entire life, he has lived in a pod of goo that keeps him alive. His electrical impulses are harvested by aliens and used to power "The Matrix." Anything he has ever sensed, has actually only been in his mind. I thought that this was interesting because it posed the question: are we actually sensing what we are thinking we are sensing? Another interesting concept from this movie was the character Cypher. Cypher, who learned the truth about this Matrix, betrays the rebels to their suppressors. For Cypher, the truth is too painful for him, and he would rather live in a state of contented ignorance, than a state of painful reality. This was really interesting to me, because I felt that was a very true statement. In many instances, people have chosen to do what is wrong, because it is easier and more comfortable. A mass state of ignorance is easy to manipulate and influence, which may explain how many crimes against humanity have gone un-prevented . For these reasons, I thought that watching The Matrix was really fascinating—especially from a psychological perspective.
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Mr. Taglieri
10/12/2013 03:05:53 am
Great job relating the movies to the core concepts of Sensation and Perception. I'm really impressed by your insightful and thoughtful responses. I thought you may want to check out what Descartes actually wrote as it is foundational to the ideas expressed here. Here are links to Meditations and Discourses, both works contain the famous quote and I find Meditations a little better in explaining its meaning. Here's a snippet:
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Dylan Weaver
11/6/2013 11:35:10 am
I love how the first link is for a Marxist website.
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