Intro to Cognitive Psychology Week 3

Zach Tran

Intro to Cognitive Psychology

Week 3

Perception

    An example in which I believe illusion was very imaginatively and powerfully used to alter one's senses of perception with the aim of deceiving them was in the movie Inception by director Christopher Nolan. In Inception, characters are able to control with great detail and power what takes place not only in their own dream but the dreams of others. The protagonists of the film build a team made up of specialists with the goal of constructing a dream that is so illusive and detailed that it fools their target's sense of perception and actually fools them into believing that their dream is real life.

    The first sense of perception in which one is fooled in Inception is visual perception. A member of the team focuses entirely on constructing a detailed world for the target. The world must be so detailed and realistic that the target believes they are actually in the real world and not a dream. In this way, our visual senses are an extremely important aspect of our perception that grounds are senses and helps us differentiate from what is real and what is not. As discussed in lecture, Bayesian Inference is relevant when we instinctually determine what is the most likely scenario that is taking place before us. When a fake physical world and an illusion is so realistic that we cannot tell the difference between and reality, our sense of perception is fooled and we ourselves are fooled.

    The other sense of perception that are utilized to fool the target in Inception is physical sensation. The specialist who creates the world in the dream ensures that the world is realistic and cannot be found out as an illusion by ensuring that this world can be perceived both through sight and physical touch. When these two are both not only present but match with each other, i.e., an object like an apple not only looks like an apple but also feels and tastes like one, the illusion is truly complete and extremely hard to tell from reality. Furthermore, physical sensations such as pain are also perceived in the dream world just like they are in the real world. These final pieces to the puzzle in fooling one's senses of perception are what come together and make it extremely difficult to tell apart the dream world from reality and see past the illusion.

    In conclusion, replicating the very many complex aspects of perception and making sure they work in tandem just as they do in reality are the key to fooling someone in a carefully crafted illusion.

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