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Subject: HM.Frameworks:Taxonomy:Perception
- From: Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>
- To: humanmarkup@lists.oasis-open.org, humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
- Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 10:22:35 -0700
Title: HM.Frameworks:Taxonomy:Perception
Alert: Long Post
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?
Ciao,
Rex
--
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
Tel:
510-849-2309
Fax: By Request
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