perception is prediction

Here are five features of perception to consider:

1. Perception is transactional: perceptions can only be studied in terms of the transactions in which they can be observed.   There is no separate, divisible event of perception; the act of perception occurs within transactions between humans and humans, humans and objects and objects and humans.  Context is everything.

2. Perception is rooted in a personal behavioral center: perceiving is always done by a particular person from her own unique position in space and time and with her own combination of experiences, needs and set of transactions.  For example what does the perceiver want or need from the perceived event?  Perception is rooted in desire.

3. One of the functions of language is to minimize the uniqueness of individual experience and create a commonality of shared meaning and perception.

4. Perception is an externalization: each of us, through perceiving, creates a psychological environment which we believe exists independent of the experience.

5. Perception is more about controlling the environment than taking in sense stimuli.  Perception is most important as a means of predicting the probabilities within our environment.  Perception is prediction.

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