Re: HM.Frameworks:Taxonomy:Perception vs. Perspective

[Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga <rkthunga@humanmarkup.org>]

This really WAS a long post ;-).  Really appreciate the time and effort to
bring these views.

1) What is the difference between 'perspective' and 'perception', at least
how you semantically see them?  Or would they be equivalent?  To me, they
seem equivalent.

2)
Perception -- there seem to be two main functions
   -it can describe a Schema
   OR
   -it can describe the data within a Schema

3) Based on your post, would you possibly add other fields (attributes, in
the case of the XML Schema Module created 2-3 weeks ago)?
We also considered using DC for this purpose as well.

Role?
    <perspective role="observer"/> or
    <perspective role="interpreter"/>
    perhaps
    <perspective role="programmer"/>
    <perspective role="authorizer"/>
Depth of consciousness?
Validation/Proof?
Human Validation/Proof? (human needs to validate this)
Example/Analogy?
Comprehension Level?
Appeciation Level?


4)
<rex>
I mean a gestalt of observer and observed, as opposed to "observations of
the observer."
</rex>

How would you represent this, potentially in markup?   Possibly associating
both the names and values of a particular schema with a common or
synchronized namespace?  (Again, for clarification...a namespace can point
to ANY resource right? ....thus, not necessarily a schema, but a
pre-populated schema with values for the 'perspective' filled in....in other
words, we are DEFINING a schema, based on its perspective, or based on the
perception of the author.)


5)
(I'm skipping a bunch of steps here in Buddhist or Cognitive Science
theory...but I'm with you)

Sensation-------------->  Perception
(5 sensory channels)          (some sort of interpretation)
---------------------


That's my quick rundown....let me know what you think (and I might have
completely missed your points)...well, do let us know.
Thanks again for the insight Rex!  There's a lot out there to include here.

-------------
Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga



<rex>
In the realm of HumanMarkup, one area that we have not taken up, at least by
name, is Perception. Just approaching the topic makes me uncomfortable.
Partly this is due to my background in advertising art direction, where
perception is everything, and the task at hand was and is always to discover
what the target market's perception of any given product or service is, what
that market's perception of the competition is, and then trying to change,
reinforce, introduce or otherwise manipulate that perception. Partly this is
due to a characteristic I share in common with most of humanity,
uncertainty. I don't care to be found out when my own perception of reality
is proven faulty, and face the attendant embarassment.

So, having admitted my reluctance, I will say that my background, which
required quite a lot of reading, particularly in Psychology, will serve me
well as I grapple with this thorny concept. Before I get into specifics, I'd
like to explain a bit about advertising as it is actually practiced, as
opposed to the popular perceptions by which the practitioners of this
allegedly nefarious art have been viewed, from the movie, "The Hucksters" to
the Television Series, "ThirtySomething."

Until the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web, Advertising didn't
(couldn't) actually sell anything. So Advertising couldn't try to sell you
anything you didn't need. At best it could persuade you to view a product or
service in a favorable way that might incline you to buy it. I point this
out as a case where an entire vocation deeply involved with Perception has
been unable or has not put forth the effort to correct a common
misperception. Whether it could or not is moot, but the point is that we are
sometimes unable to see correctly what is right in front of us.

Additionally, one wonders why the vocation doesn't mount a greater effort to
refute outright falsehoods persistently alleged about it, namely the mostly
mythical practice of flashing three to five frames of words like "You are
Hungry" in the 24 frames per second of film or the 30 frames per second of
video, the so-called practice of "subliminal persuasion."

If it exists, I didn't find it, although it has been reported to have been
tried in the fifties or sixties during drive-in movies and proved
inconclusive, but again the point is not whether it happened, but that it
apparently wasn't cost-effective. I think it can safely be said that if it
had proved cost-effective, it would have been used extensively enough to
have attracted widespread acceptance within the general practice of
advertising, so that I could not have ignored it had I tried and it would
also have attracted more negative attention than it has. The fact that the
belief that it does exist lingers, points to a threshold where belief,
modified or supported by membership in a particular cultural group, so
influences Perception that it can be said to become Perception itself.

So I will attempt to maintain a focus that does not dismiss or fail to see
what is close at hand while working on the larger structure of HumanML at
the same time that I try to prevent my own cultural biases from overtaking
my own Perceptions. I usually discourage the use of the word, try, when
approaching tasks in favor of adopting a more positive attitude of simply
stating that one will do something, to avoid starting any initiative with
the idea that failure is an acceptable option rather than an unavoidable
possibility. However, in this case, I have to acknowledge that one cannot
wholly prevent one's own biases from coloring every effort one makes to a
greater or lesser degree.

Starting with the definitions, my copy of Webster's Ninth New Collegiate
Dictionary lists the first definition of Perception as consciousness. That
gets us into difficult territory from the inception of our investigation
because no attempt can be made to understand consciousness, how we
experience and interact with the world, without considering phenomenology.
So, syllogistically, we need to consider phenomenology when probing
Perception. However, I will return to that, since my starting point is to
take the whole of Perception into account first.

So, staying with the ramifications of our definition, we start with
Phenomenology and proceed. My dictionary then defines Perception as
observation, tautologically, a result of perceiving, resulting in a mental
image, or concept. Then it cites awareness through physical sensation of the
environment with the example of (color~), followed by quick, acute intuitive
cognition or appreciation presumably resulting in comprehension, or
discernment.

The common denominator in all of these definitions whether connected or
distinct, except for consciousness or awareness which, to me, are
inseparable, is that they describe "states." So, I see Perception as best
defined as a "Phenomenological condition or state that exists within
consciousness based on experience resulting in cognition or comprehension."

When I say "Phenomenological" in the foregoing statement, I mean a gestalt
of observer and observed, as opposed to "observations of the observer." This
is important for HumanMarkup, if it is agreed upon, because it includes some
consideration of the states of both observer and observed when interpreting
Perception.

This is all a rather long-winded way of saying that I think Perception is
best positioned, within the Taxonomy of HumanMarkup as a description of the
state of a human object's consciousness in relation to a given object or
circumstance.

In this way, Perception occurs between sensory channel input to the human
object in the context of whatever previous predisposing factors may be in
effect and the formation of intentionality, and the subsequent possibility
of taking an action.

It is important to remember that we are not describing human consciousness
here, we are building tools, a language, that is capable of making a
workable, useable, interoperable, description of human consciousness as it
exists and interacts within the digital information environment.

Since this inclusion of Perception is very important for our work, in my
opinion, I will have to include it in the UML Classes Structure which has
developed thus far, but I am hoping to have some informing discussions about
this first. .

This is important because it has ramifications up and down the Taxonomical
Ladder we are building.

Although this is not the main focus, or even one of the two actual
specifications we are working on, I do not want it to distract from that
effort, but to be workable within those two schemata, xml and rdf. However,
my deliverables schedule is the end of this month, and since there is not
all that much work that remains to be done on this first pass of this
adjunct work, I thought it might be nice to hit one of our early milestones.
It is the principle of low-hanging fruit. It is just an easy harvest of
accomplishment

So, now that I've gotten this far I'd like to say that I think Perception,
if we can come to procedural definition which is accurate or can be adapted
to improve accuracy, will give us a potent tool for reducing
miscommunications. It is my observation that the greatest number and
greatest consequences of miscommunications are based on misperceptions, and
improving perception is the key to improving communication.

Okay, can I have a vacation now? How about a few minutes off?
</rex>