what's the relationship between perception and consciousness?

Question

what's the relationship between perception and consciousness? which one is more basic and foundamental? which one is dependent on which?

Answer 1

Ego is the "go-between".



Consciousness is the foundation.

Answer 2

Consciousness exists as a null, until the first sensate impression is made (sight, hearing, etc), and this produces a perception. This is the switch that turns on the faculty of consciousness.



Just as a blind person has no sight perception, he can have no consciousness of the nature of sight. An infant born with no working sensory apparatus would never have the faculty of consciousness switched on by his first perception. Occasionally this happens, when the brain is not developed, and the child dies, never knowing the feel of a nipple or the warmth of milk, the hug of his parents, the loud noises and lights of the delivery room. It is alive, but unconscious, because it receives no perceptions.



Consciousness is dependent on perceptions. Without a flow of them it would be worse than being in a sensory isolation tank for the rest of your life. You wouldn't know when you had peed yourself, let alone when someone was trying to feed you.



The mind can have no perceptions if it is not conscious. That is the meaning of comatose. That man who was thought to be comatose for 23 years (he is in the news this week) was conscious all the time. But the definition of comatose is that no perceptions are being captured by a consciousness because the consciousness has been shut down.



It needs perceptions to be defined as conscious, because consciousness conscious of nothing is a contradiction. But when consciousness is shut down, it has no capacity to perceive.



Consciousness is dependent on sensations primarily, not on perceptions primarily. Perceptions are what the mind turns sensations into; they are not the same. So therefore perceptions are dependent totally on sensations.

Answer 3

The perception means perceiving knowledge or information and consciousness is some thing you cultivate your mind about some issue and you are conscious about it.And both these two things are complementary to each other, and without perception nobody can have a consciousness. So the perception plays a crucial role in making us very conscious about certain things.



If your perception is wrong then your consciousness about some issues may become also become wrongful and misinformed, so our perception should be based on facts, then the consciousness will be also become very good.

Answer 4

id definitely say that perception is more basic than consciousness, and that they are both dependent on each other, perception more so that consciousness. the relationship between the two is very complex.



personally, i believe that your consciousness is determined by the way you perceive things, a simplified example of this is negative reinforcement. if every time you saw a clown you were beaten, eventually you would feel bad when you saw a clown without having to be beaten first. so, on a subconscious level, clowns make you feel bad because of the negative reinforcement given to you, which controlled your perception.



that is just a fairly "uneducated" opinion on the matter, and might not be the answer that you are supposed to know. the answer is just an answer, to know whether it is correct or not, you would have to inquire further.

Answer 5

This is what I believe:



Consciousness is our soul. Every being has consciousness. When we die, consciousness is left and we go to heaven. When we die, it is not the end of everything. We have consicousness. Consciousness is basically energy. Everything around us is energy. We are made of energy and are called consciousness or mind.



Perception is how individuals perceive things through our senses of sight, touch, taste, hearing etc. Perception is limited to each individual's belief. Whatever individuals believe is how they perceive circumstances. There is no limit to consciousness but it is perception that is the prison of people. Chaning negative perception of life make people attract positive things in life.



Consciousness is primary of everything. We are all made of energy and we are capable of making things happen for us if we only perceive and belive it. People should realize that everything is made of energy including our thoughts. Positive thoughts attract good things while negative thougths attract bad things.



I don't think neither is dependent on each other. Just two different things.

Answer 6

I don't know if I'd say that one depends on the other. Sometimes I'm inclined to say that consciousness is a trick of the mind but I haven't thought perception to be.



What do you think?



They depend on each other? They are the same? They are inaccurate concepts? What can be done with these concepts? What do they do?



Edit: To the one below me. You say that "Ego" is the "go-between." I would like a solid definition of what ego is. Where exactly in the brain is the ego? I feel like we're using words that label something that doesn't really exist. It's like the psychoanalyst's answer to the soul. Where is it? I'm probably wrong. I go off into a deep end and drown myself now and then.

Answer 7

We hear many spiritual teachers talking about Enlightenment as being the awakening to the fact that we are all Consciousness itself. Of course, it depends on how they are using the word consciousness. When I have read what most of these teachers have to say it seems clear they mean the normal use of the word. If that is the case, then they are missing the mark as to what Enlightenment is.



There is a great deal of difference between being conscious and being aware. To most of you there will seem to be little or no difference. To be conscious one has to have a picture, idea, concept, image, memory or history relating to what one is conscious of. When you look at a tree, you know it is a tree with different qualities, size, color, and genus. But to be truly aware of what it is, you need to see directly, with your total being, without any abstract ideas of what it is.



The mind has put together its own reality, or what it calls reality, from abstractions from reality. This is not Reality. So, to say we are all consciousness is missing this Reality. To see we are Awareness Itself is far more accurate.



This may all sound like I am nitpicking over the use and meaning of words. It goes much deeper than that. If we don't start to see how the mind as ideas works, we will miss the true meaning of that which is beyond this conceptual process.



more...........



http://friendsofreality.org/ESSAYS/Consciousness_Perception/consciousness_perception.html



http://coursedocs.slcc.edu/psy/hingle/connection_between_consciousness.htm



http://www.tamiu.edu/~jbrown/Links/Sensation%20Perception%20and%20Consciousness.htm

Answer 8

I think perception is more fundamental. Consciousness is what-it's-like-to-be, and be what? Perceiving, even perceiving one's own consciousness. A conscious point of view is always being "about" some perception. Imagine if you had total sensory deprivation - a brain in a jar, let's say. How long would your conscious point of view, your sense of yourself, persist? I say it would persist only as long as you your previous perceptions were reverberating, so to speak, in your brain's activity - not very long. But would "you" still "be"? Note that perception develops, and conscious awareness of self does, too, only afterwards. We're born with only very basic perception; perceptive ability is developed through experience, and our awareness is limited at first to the present perception, until more perceptions accumulate to form patterns and memory to make a self aware of itself and its being.



I won't say that I think individual conscious point of view, that of being perceptions, is definitely the whole of what consciousness "is." But I could not rationally support an argument that consciousness is more basic than perceptions. That would be to say there "is" a soul or "something" like it, and such "things" are ineffable (refractory to representation in language). So there'd be little point in going on about it, like waxing mystical about the sound of one hand clapping and whatnot. If consciousness were more fundamental in some sense, that sense would not be a suitable topic for analysis.

Answer 9

The state of consciousness is the brain's interpretation of the neural response to sensory stimuli. The neural response to sensory stimuli is perception. Consciousness is dependent on perception and therefore perception is the more fundamental process.

Answer 10

They are inter-related. They both need each other to function. That which has individual perception possesses consciousness and averse.



Neither is more basic or fundamental. They are of equal importance and equal stature.

Answer 11

The most fundamental and basic is the empty vault that is the mind.