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emily's picture

Reality

 First of all, I am very excited we have been talking about vision! Vision has always fascinated me, especially the role the brain plays in what we perceive. The fact that our brain "lies" to us makes a lot of sense with respect to corollary discharge, which checks expected information with perceived information. Since we do not receive any input from the spot where our optic nerve goes back into our head, our brain has to make up what would be there based on what it expects. I like to think about how much we perceive and to what extent it is "real" or just what our brain is telling us. There is really no way to know. If you have never seen the Matrix before, now is probably a good time with the context of our class discussions and where they might lead. If our brain is pretty much guessing at what it sees, how can we know it is telling us the truth? A three dimensional world becomes a two dimensional retinal "image" that in turn becomes a three dimensional perception. How can we be sure that anything besides our own brain really exists, if our brain is what tells us what we perceive?

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