Concepts Dominate Our Perceptions

Concepts Dominate Our Perceptions

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6:20 In simple terms, every perception we have is understood in relation to the concepts we have about what is being perceived. Once we learn to glimpse perception prior to our conceptual additions, we begin to understand the nature of concept and how it can limit us in our ability to experience. I’m not suggesting that we attempt to live without concept, but that we need to be aware of how concept dominates our perceptions and experience. We’ve already touched on this notion, but now let’s look into it in more detail and depth.

6:21 Pure perception is incomprehensible to us. What we commonly call perception is really the interpretation of a meaningless phenomenon into a specific and useful “cognition.” Fundamentally, a perception is simply a sensory encounter with some object or occurrence, and is without association or emotional charge.

6:22 There are two major conceptual contributors that dominate all of our experience: “interpretation” and “meaning.” Since perception as itself is meaningless, what we perceive is useless without interpretation. The mere fact of seeing an object, hearing a sound, or feeling a sensation means nothing unless we know what it is and how it relates to us. To make sense of what we perceive, we automatically associate, classify, and interpret the meaningless data that is available. First, everything perceived is quickly interpreted so as to determine what it is—a flower, a squeak, a dog, a chair, soft, fast, a person. Having conceptually identified what something is, we then immediately relate it to ourselves.

6:23 No matter what we perceive, once we interpret it in some basic way, we will go on to assess its value or threat to us by associating it with an array of past experiences and beliefs, and so supply it with meaning. This meaning renders the thing ugly, expensive, mine, hers, sacred, too big, useful, ridiculous, friendly, dangerous, or what have you. Once meaning is attached, our minds will immediately infuse the thing with some “emotional” charge, subtle or gross, to indicate in a feeling-sense how we should relate to it. This charge is based on the value or threat that a thing or notion has relative to us, and so this feeling-reaction contains information suggesting particular behavior—should we run or feed it a biscuit? Such feeling-charge manifests as attraction, fear, disinterest, annoyance, desire, boredom, importance, repulsion, and so on, as well as many such feelings far too subtle to warrant a name. The application of interpretation, meaning, and emotional-charge occurs so fast and automatically that we do not distinguish any of these as separate activities within our whole experience.

6:24 This mechanism is a remarkable feature of the human mind—a rapid means of converting all perceptions into a self relating form which enables us to take the necessary actions to insure our safety and survival. It’s wise to remember, however, that everything we think we “know” is an interpretation. Every bit of information we take in is influenced and altered by our particular set of beliefs, assumptions, and associations. These alterations are conceptual “add-ons” that strongly influence our experience of whatever is perceived. What we react to is not the object itself but rather the interpretation and meaning that we ourselves apply to the object.

There is nothing either good or bad,

but thinking makes it so.

—William Shakespeare

6:25 The same process that we apply to objects of perception also works the same way on our own thoughts, emotions, and sensations. We associate them with the past, we assess their meaning and value— just about any reaction we can have to physical objects will also arise in relation to our own mental processes. Our ideas and beliefs and, in a way, our entire history are applied to everything that comes into our awareness—whether it’s people and objects, or our own thoughts and feelings.

6:26 What we know as reality is influenced by the concepts with which we interpret it. From “tree” to “hot” to “disgusting,” what something means to us predetermines how we will perceive it. Yet this relationship between concept and reality is so seamless it is undetectable. The car “is” beautiful in our eyes, the apple “is” delightful in our mouths. Our reactions to an ugly and dangerous monster are pretty much the same thing to us as the experience of the monster itself.

6:27 Unless we make the distinction between our additions and what’s there, we can’t become conscious of what’s actually there. Our whole experience of self and life is conceptually dominated. This means that we are not simply experiencing life and who we are; we’re also constantly “imagining” life and who we are. Since it doesn’t seem like it’s our imagination we’re perceiving, we don’t know the difference between what we are adding and what is there. Let’s see if we can recognize the way this conceptual influence acts on our personal experience.

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The Book of Not Knowing, Chapter Six

Peter Ralston