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New research shows that although we perceive character traits like trustworthiness based on a person’s facial expressions, our perceptions of abilities like strength are influenced by facial structure

A face resembling a happy expression, with upturned eyebrows and upward curving mouth, is likely to be seen as trustworthy while one resembling an angry expression, with downturned eyebrows, is likely to be seen as untrustworthy.

wider faces seen as more competent.

When you walk or drive in the UK, you’re being nudged by dozens of hidden messages embedded in the roads and pavements.

He suffers from a rare inherited condition that leaves him only able to make out vague colour contrasts around him. Yet he is able to safely pick his way through the hectic city streets, thanks to dozens of hidden messages embedded in our roads and pavements that few of us even notice are there.

This subtle form of communication is not just confined to the pavement, either: increasingly, motorists and cyclists are also unknowingly being told what to do.

in the most precise sense of the word, facts are meaningless…just disconnected ones and zeroes in the computer until we run them through the software of how those facts feel

Of all the building evidence about human cognition that suggests we ought to be a little more humble about our ability to reason, no other finding has more significance, because Elliott teaches us that no matter how smart we like to think we are, our perceptions are inescapably a blend of reason and gut reaction, intellect and instinct, facts and feelings.

many people, particularly intellectuals and academics and policy makers, maintain a stubborn post-Enlightenment confidence in the supreme power of rationality. They continue to believe that we can make the ‘right’ choices about risk based on the facts, that with enough ‘sound science’ evidence from toxicology and epidemiology and cost-benefit analysis, the facts will reveal THE TRUTH. At best this confidence is hopeful naivete. At worst, it is intellectual arrogance that denies all we’ve learned about the realities of human cognition. In either case, it’s dangerous

Instead of self-confident and self-centered answers, the author humbly asks fundamental questions: What is economics? What is its meaning? Where does this new religion, as it is sometimes called, come from? What are its possibilities and its limitations and borders, if there are any? Why are we so dependent on permanent growing of growth and growth of growing of growth? Where did the idea of progress come from, and where is it leading us? Why are so many economic debates accompanied by obsession and fanaticism?

The majority of our political parties act with a narrow materialistic focus when, in their programs, they present the economy and finance first; only then, somewhere at the end, do we find culture as something pasted on or as a libation for a couple of madmen.

most of them—consciously or unconsciously—accept and spread the Marxist thesis of the economic base and the spiritual superstructure.

"Perception by the senses rather than by the intellect." (Dictionary.com)

"Perception by or based on stimulation of the senses." (Medical Dictionary)

We perceive the world through our five senses. (Hearing, Sight, Smell, Touch, Taste) Our sense receptors are stimulated by sensory information. The brain translates the sensory information into sensations such as sound, taste, temperature, etc. Higher centres in the brain either ignore or recognize the sensations and their meanings, based on neuronal networks of past association and expectation. (Some of this stage 3 work actually involves reasoning).  Click the video to see a coffee-taste expert discuss the intricacies of how different coffees taste.    Sense perception is an important dimension of comprehending the world around us. It allows us to gather information from the outside world, so we can then go on to hopefully make sense of it

Hearing ghost voices relies on pseudoscience and fallibility of human perception

Nontrivial numbers of Americans believe in the paranormal.

Part of the attraction of the audio recorder for paranormal researchers is its apparent objectivity. How could a skeptic refute the authenticity of a spirit captured by an unbiased technical instrument? To the believers, EVP seem like incontrovertible evidence of communications from beyond.

Deciphering how the brain processes sight and hearing could have implications for how we understand and treat conditions such as dyslexia, autism and schizophrenia.

schizophrenia

Through a project called SENSOCOM, she is exploring how sensory perception affects communication, focusing on the brain’s deep subcortical structures.By doing this, she and her team are exploring a part of the brain traditionally excluded by research trying to understand communication impairments found in autism spectrum disorder and dyslexia, conditions which affect around 53 million people in Europe.

Language helps the human brain perceive obscured objects,

While some scientists have argued that vision is independent from outside factors, such as sounds or the brain’s accumulated knowledge, the study indicates that language influences perception at its most basic level.

“I think [the study] makes a really important contribution to the field of visual perception and cognition in general,” said Michael Spivey,

One important fact is that the brain works in some ways like television transmission, in that it processes stable backgrounds without much attention and moving parts more intensely and differently.

Recent research in babies shows that they respond most to unexpected events and use these to evaluate the environment and learn.

But, the over arching analysis of visual signals depends on what is expected.

GIVEN the complexities of the modern world, we all have to rely on expert opinion. Are G.M.O. foods safe? Is global warming real? Should children be vaccinated for measles? We don’t have the time or the training to adjudicate these questions ourselves. We defer to the professionals.

And to find out what the experts think, we typically rely on the news media. This creates a challenge for journalists: There are many issues on which a large majority of experts agree but a small number hold a dissenting view. Is it possible to give voice to experts on both sides — standard journalistic practice — without distorting the public’s perception of the level of disagreement?

This can be hard to do. Indeed, critics argue that journalists too often generate “false balance,” creating an impression of disagreement when there is, in fact, a high level of consensus. One solution, adopted by news organizations such as the BBC, is “weight of evidence” reporting, in which the presentation of conflicting views is supplemented by an indication of where the bulk of expert opinion lies.

An individual or organism capable of processing the stimuli in their environment is called to have a sensory perception.

This processing is done through the coordination between sense organs and the brain. Hearing, vision, taste, smell, and touch are the five senses we possess. The sensory perception involves detecting, recognizing, characterizing and responding to stimuli.

The process of sensory perception begins when something in the real world stimulates our sense organs. For instance, light reflecting from a surface stimulates our eyes. The warmth emanating from a hot cup of beverage stimulates our touch senses.

Sense-perception has long been a preoccupation of philosophers. One pervasive and traditional problem, sometimes called “the Problem of Perception”, is created by the phenomena of perceptual illusion and hallucination: if these kinds of error are possible, how can perception be what we ordinarily understand it to be, an openness to and awareness of the world? The present entry is about how these possibilities of error challenge the intelligibility of the phenomenon of perception, and how the major theories of experience in the last century are best understood as responses to this challenge.

According to Awareness, we are sometimes perceptually aware of ordinary mind-independent objects in perceptual experience. Such awareness can come from veridical experiences—cases in which one perceives an object for what it is. But it can also come from illusory experiences. For we think of an illusion as “any perceptual situation in which a physical object is actually perceived, but in which that object perceptually appears other than it really is” Smith (2002: 23). For example, a white wall seen in yellow light can look yellow to one. (In such cases it is not necessary that one is deceived into believing that things are other than they are). The argument from illusion, in a radical form, aims to show that we are never perceptually aware of ordinary objects. Many things have been called “the argument from illusion”

they remind us of the discrepancy between perception and reality. But our knowledge of such illusions has been largely limited to studying humans.