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Paranormal research blog |
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Whenever new information becomes available on a subject ASSAP covers, it is added to the relevant pages of the website straight away. So, just because you've read a page, don't assume it will still be exactly the same when you next look. That way the ASSAP website remains an up to date research resource. The photo (above right) is the ASSAP blogger himself, out looking for anomalies wherever they are to be found, so that you can read about them here. Important note: If anything in this blog does not make sense, try following the links in text! If it still doesn't make sense, that's probably my fault ... Previous blog pages ... (including ghosts, UFOs, poltergeists, flying rods, miracles, orbs, hypnotic regression, big cats, vampires, near sleep experiences, premonitions, shadow ghosts, paranormal photos, auras, river monsters and dozens of other subjects) 1 September 2010: Perception, consciousness and the paranormal
Until recently, comparatively little was known about perception and consciousness but that is no longer the case. There is an article about these subjects in this week's New Scientist (30 Aug). Rather than summarise its relevance to paranormal studies, I will describe what is currently known about perception and consciousness including material from that article where relevant. The most 'important' sense is vision. That's because it contains more detail than the other senses and provides us with a direct view of the world around us. It is the sense we believe over others when there is a conflict between them. The first thing to understand about vision is that the view of the outside world we see in our heads is produced by our brains. Although it obviously uses sensory input from our eyes, they are only the starting point. The view we see of the world is divided into objects by our brains, even those partially obscured by other objects in front of them. Either way, the picture we see is essentially built up piece by piece, as each visual object is inserted in our view, rather than assembled pixel by pixel like a digital camera. The next thing to realise is that perception works in parallel. One part of our brains deals with object shapes, another with colour, another with texture and so on. Only when each object is re-assembled from these component parts is it presented to our consciousness. By that time the object has been recognised and identified by our brains. This is an important point because, sometimes, when an object cannot be seen well, such as in low light, it can be substituted by a 'generic' version of the object from memory. And sometimes, if this process goes wrong, the poorly-seen object may be misidentified and the wrong object substituted in. This is how we sometimes see a poorly-seen tree as a human figure, or ghost! The human figure is inserted into our vision and looks completely authentic. Things like perspective, lighting, overlapping objects and so one are all taken into account. We really SEE that human figure, sometimes in detail, despite it actually being a tree, because that's what our brain shows us (see visual substitutions)! The fact that different bits of the brain process different aspects of the object's image may be where mistakes happen in identification. If the different bits come together and apparently conflict, the brain must decide which of several possibilities is the most likely match. Context comes into play here. For instance, something resembling a human figure standing on the ground will probably be seen as a figure. The same object up in the air might be interpreted as something else, because people don't fly! Our brains contain a library of visual objects with which to match objects seen. These are produced from experience, seeing the world. They are not specific examples of things we've seen but rather generic models, composed of subparts. For instance, these might be shape, colour, shininess, smoothness of surface and so on. Our brains can manipulate these models so that we recognise an object from an angle we've never seen it before. We can even recognise new types of the same object that we've never seen before. So we don't have to see every type of car in the world to recognise a brand new model as a car. There seems to be nothing in this library of visual models that marks an object as fictional. We have all see flying saucers in science fiction movies. If we see something similar in real life, we are likely to think it is an alien spacecraft. It is only on reflection that we might think it has to be something else because 'flying saucers don't exist'! Obviously, that last bit assumes the viewer does not think UFOs are alien spacecraft. If they BELIEVE in alien visitations then the sighting will simply confirm what they believe, whatever the physical reality of the object in the sky (see UFOs). And what of consciousness? With all this stuff going on in the unconscious part of our brains, once objects are recognised and assembled, they are added to our conscious vision. You can view consciousness as a summary of all the sensory inputs that our unconscious brains have managed to recognise and assemble. There will be objects that cannot be identified or assembled which will continue to exist but only in our unconscious. Though we are not aware of these partial visual objects, they can still affect how we think. We might get a 'feeling' about a scene without consciously noticing what is causing that impression. This might manifest as an 'instinct' or 'sixth sense'. Maybe we don't consciously see the real human figure in a dark, lonely alleyway at night but might, nevertheless have a sense of 'someone there'. Of course, this could also be simply anxiety, perfectly natural in such a situation. We could get the same feeling even if there was no one there. If our 'feeling' is confirmed, the experience could be labeled as psychic. It is obvious from this account that some apparently paranormal experiences may be caused by ordinary sensory perception. Any paranormal theory that assumes consciousness is separate from a human brain also needs to explain how all the above happens without neurons! Anyway, that's all for now. More on this in future! The lowest photo on this page shows a UFO photographed recently in Paris. The full story is here.
Last month's (August) website figures are an average of 8217 hits per day. This is up on the previous month's 7995.
© Maurice Townsend 2010 |
Welcome to the ASSAP paranormal blog! Though this blog is aimed at anyone interested in the paranormal, it will be of particular interest to the paranormal research community. Updated frequently, but not regularly (don't expect something new every day!), it covers any paranormal topic, as well as highlighting recent changes to the ASSAP website. You may not notice it but this site changes on an almost daily basis. 
One of the things that puzzles me is the number of people who are trying to find out if, and how, extra-sensory perception might work, despite knowing little or nothing about how ordinary perception works. Similarly, there are those paranormal researchers who think that consciousness is a state that can occur independently of the human brain, while knowing little about current scientific research into the subject. I think every paranormal researcher should start by understanding the normal. Only then will they understand how the paranormal can be distinguished from it.