The technological replacement of human senses: Is the mind creating a novel reality?

“ Science generated technology, which dramatically affects the outcome of human effort.
The second component factor in the transition to the pragmatics of the civilization of illiteracy is the efficiency of our preparation for commanding these new tools, new forms of energy, and new forms of human interaction. Learning how to operate simple mechanical devices is different from learning how to program new tools capable of commanding sophisticated technology and of controlling tremendous amounts of energy. ”

“ Today's revolution in information and communications technology offers us powerful new tools to expand employment and training opportunities for people with disabilities. Whether translating web pages aloud for people who are blind or visually impaired, creating captioning for those who are deaf or hard of hearing, or enabling people with physical disabilities to control a computer through eye movement and brain waves, these technologies show enormous potential for increasing access to employment and full participation in society. ”

“ Visually impaired users can set up their own parameters (size and type of fonts, color of background, etc.) to surf the web in an optimal way, by creating and modifying their own visual profile. Any user can correspond in Braille with blind users through the website. 2 million visitors used the services of the portal in 2006. Handicapzero intends to demonstrate “that, with the respect of some basic rules, the internet can finally become a space of freedom for all.” ”

“ As we stand at the dawn of the 21st century, new technologies are rapidly changing and improving the lives of Americans. For one group of Americans in particular-those who are blind or visually impaired-these technologies have opened doors to unparalleled opportunities. Blind Americans now can more readily access information of all kinds, and these advances have brought important improvements to the education, careers, and daily lives of blind and visually impaired people. ”

“ Accessibility includes the provision of accommodations and modifications to ensure equal access to employment and participation in activities for people with disabilities, the reduction or elimination of physical and attitudinal barriers to equitable opportunities, a commitment to ensuring that people with disabilities can independently access every outward-facing and internal activity or electronic space, and the pursuit of best practices such as universal design. ”

“ Today, opportunity for all requires something new: having access to a computer and knowing how to use it. That means we must close the digital divide between those who have these tools and those who don't.
Connecting classrooms and libraries to the Internet is crucial, but it's just a start. My budget ensures that all new teachers are trained to teach 21st Century skills and creates technology centers in 1,000 communities to serve adults. This spring, I will invite high-tech leaders to join me on another New Markets tour--to close the digital divide and open opportunity for all our people. ”

“ There was, however, the whole matrix of mental gadgets, hypnotic beams, educators and other gewgaws of the alien culture. The old thought patterns could easily be erased and replaced by a new system. That would—despite theological arguments to the contrary—result in a new person. For all beings are what their experiences and their training makes them.
A sentience produced in a humanoid body on a remote planet and mentally hurled into a human brain will change the human to an alien in thought and deed—but capable of living as a human! ”

“ This is a topic, therefore, in which the profounder and more philosophical sceptics will always triumph, when they endeavour to introduce an universal doubt into all subjects of human knowledge and enquiry. Do you follow the instincts and propensities of nature, may they say, in assenting to the veracity of sense? But these lead you to believe that the very perception or sensible image is the external object. Do you disclaim this principle, in order to embrace a more rational opinion, that the perceptions are only representations of something external? ”

“ The Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolours the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it. ”

“ It is now, or was to begin with, the result of an outward thing ‘actually operating upon us;’ for ‘of simple ideas the mind cannot make one to itself:’ on the other hand, it is a ‘perception,’ and perception is an ‘operation of the mind.’ In other words it is at once a modification of the mind by something of which it is consciously not conscious, and a modification of the mind by itself—the two sources of one and the same modification being each determined only as the contradictory of the other. ”

“ For whereas the work of art makes the artist’s idea tangible, an idea is never an exact copy of a phenomenon of the external world. Before it can become an idea in a human consciousness every phenomenon experiences two very essential modifications—one in the afferent and receptive organs of sense, the other in the centres elaborating sense-perceptions into representations. ”

“ The [155] brain of the race is so permeated with colour that it dyes even the speech of the blind. Every object I think of is stained with the hue that belongs to it by association and memory. The experience of the deaf-blind person, in a world of seeing, hearing people, is like that of a sailor on an island where the inhabitants speak a language unknown to him, whose life is unlike that he has lived. He is one, they are many; there is no chance of compromise. He must learn to see with their eyes, to hear with their ears, to think their thoughts, to follow their ideals. ”

“ Through braille, a person who is visually impaired is given the key to unlock the power of the written word. Braille enables blind individuals to achieve the many rewards of literacy, including educational advancement, personal independence, and economic opportunity and security. Braille also enables its users to enjoy the full form, structure, and beauty of printed poetry and prose. ”

“ Many young people suffer from vision-related learning disabilities that jeopardize their academic success. However, with early intervention, such sight problems are often easily correctable. Senior citizens, too, are particularly vulnerable to eye difficulties, but we are fortunate that advances in medical research are improving our understanding of the diseases that often rob older Americans of their sight. ”

“ There is hope as well for people who suffer from low vision. Affecting 1 in 20 Americans, low vision is an impairment that cannot be corrected by standard glasses, contact lenses, medicine, or surgery, and interferes with one's ability to participate in everyday activities. While it can occur in people of all ages and backgrounds, low vision primarily affects the growing population of people over 65 years old; other higher risk populations, including Hispanic and African Americans, are more likely to develop low vision at an earlier age. ”

“ We’ll measure progress by the reforms we make and the results we achieve -- by the jobs we create, by the energy we save, by whether America is more competitive in the world.
Today, I am announcing a few key parts of my plan. First, we will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that. We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won’t just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. ”

“ We perceive a thing when the thing is actually at the time affecting some one or more of our sense organs. A perception, then, results from the stimulation of a sense organ. Perception is the process of perceiving, sensing, objects in the external world.
Ideas are our seeming to see, hear, smell, taste things when these things are not present to the senses. This morning I saw, had a perception of, a robin. ”

“ A considerable portion of my last Lecture, Gentlemen, was employed in illustrating the corporeal part of the process of perception, which, though less immediately connected with our Science than the mental part of the process, is still, from its intimate connexion with this mental part, not to be altogether neglected by the intellectual inquirer. The importance of clear notions of the mere organic changes is, indeed, most strikingly exemplified in the very false theories of perception which have prevailed, and in some measure still prevail ”

“ In neural terms, we can only repeat what was said before, that perception is the next response after sensation, being a direct response to a certain combination of sensations, and being in its turn the stimulus, or part of the stimulus, that arouses a motor adjustment, as it may also be the stimulus to recall of previously observed facts. In more psychological terms, we can say that sense perception is closely bound up with sensation, so that we seem to see the fact, or hear it, etc. ”

“ If a thing were never perceived, or inferred from perception, we should indeed never know that it existed; but once perceived or inferred it may be more conducive to comprehension and practical competence to regard it as existing independently of our perception ”

“ PERCEPTION, COMMON SENSE, AND SCIENCE I
Nothing would seem easier, at first sight, than to give a general description of the ordinary beliefs of ordinary people about our familiar world of things and persons. It is the world in which we live; it is for all men a real world; it is for many men the real world; it is the world of common sense, the world where the plain man feels at home, and where the practical man seeks refuge from the vain subtleties of metaphysics. Our stock of beliefs about it may perhaps be difficult to justify, but it seems strange that they should be difficult to describe ”

“ Our intellect criticizes, evaluates and corrects the data of sense-perception, it discriminates between objective percepts and illusions and hallucinations, it distinguishes dreams from realities, it associates and dissociates imagery for purposes of comparison, contrast, illustration, or analysis. ”

“ He has to re-translate his perception of a thing in space into a flat coloured surface. The difference between his flat picture and a real object in space is a rough measure of the difference made by interpretation or implication in the datum of sense-perception when we say, judging by sight only, “That is a table.” All the experiences of touch and motion, from which we have learned to perceive the solidity of the object, are, theoretically speaking, put into the judgment by us. ”

“ We have seen that science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common-sense rounded out and minutely articulated. ”

“ The Self is the illuminator, and the mind is the instrument in Its hands, and through that instrument It gets hold of the external instrument, and thus comes perception. The external instruments get hold of the impressions and carry them to the organs, for you must remember always, that the eyes and ears are only receivers — it is the internal organs, the brain centres, which act. ”

“ Then perception is distinguished from sensation, and the brain itself, as the subject of sensation, becomes the outward in contrast with the understanding as the subject of perception. [2] Then perception, from being simply a reception, is converted into an ‘operation,’ and thus into an efficient of ideas. The ‘understanding’ itself, as perceptive, is now the outward which makes on the ‘mind,’ as the inner ‘tablet,’ that impression of its own operation in perception which is called an idea of reflection. ”

“ In its application to the ideas of sensation it gains popular acceptance from the ready confusion of thought and matter in the imaginary cerebral tablet, and the supposition of actual impact upon this by ‘outward things.’ But in the case of ideas of reflection, it is the mind that at once gives and takes the impression. It must be supposed, that is, to make impressions on itself. There is the further difficulty that as perception is necessary in order to give an idea of sensation, the impress of perception must be taken by the mind in its earliest receptivity ”

“ Science and technology play into one another's hands. The processes of nature with which science deals and which technology turns to account, the sequence of changes in the external world, animate and [Pg 18] inanimate, run in terms of brute causation, as do the theories of science. These processes take no thought of human expediency or inexpediency. To make use of them they must be taken as they are, opaque and unsympathetic. Technology, therefore, has come to proceed on an interpretation of these phenomena in mechanical terms, not in terms of imputed personality nor even of workmanship. ”

“ In order to illustrate what I mean by contrivance, adaptation, and design, let me refer to a familiar example—the human eye. Made up of three coats and three humors, of solids and fluids, of nerves, blood-vessels, and muscles, and rivalling the most perfect optical instrument, it must have required the most consummate contrivance to give the requisite quantity and position to parts so numerous and unlike, for producing the phenomena of vision. Yet how perfectly it is done! How few, out of the hundreds of millions of eyes of men and other animals, fail of vision through any natural defect! ”

“ What we see depends not merely on what there is to be seen, but on our eyes. What we hear depends not merely on what there is to hear, but on our ears. Now, eyes and ears, and all the mechanism of perception, have, as we know, been evolved in us and our brute progenitors by the slow operation of natural selection. And what is true of sense perception is of course also true of the intellectual powers which enable us to erect upon the frail and narrow platform which sense perception provides, the proud fabric of the sciences. ”

“ In a very deep sense all human science is but the increment of the power of the eye, and all human art is the increment of the power of the hand.8 Vision and manipulation,—these, in their countless indirect and transfigured forms, are the two coöperating factors in all intellectual progress. It is not merely that with the telescope we see extinct volcanoes on the moon, or resolve spots of nebulous cloud into clusters of blazing suns; it is that in every scientific theory we frame by indirect methods visual images of things not present to sense. ”

“ As Professor Baldwin points out, there is no radical separation between these two aspects of human thought and action. There is no imitation that is absolutely mechanical and uninventive—a man cannot repeat an act without putting something of his idiosyncrasy into it—neither is there any invention that is not imitative in the sense that it is made up of elements 272suggested by observation and experience. What the mind does, in any case, is to reorganize and reproduce the suggested materials in accordance with its own structure and tendency ”

“ There is however one question which touches our subject, and which only a psychologist could answer. But let us ask it. Will the creative process itself alter? Will the mirror get a new coat of quicksilver? In other words, can human nature change? Let us consider this possibility for a moment—we are entitled to that much relaxation.
It is amusing to listen to elderly people on this subject. Sometimes a man says in confident tones: "Human nature's the same in all ages. The primitive cave man lies deep in us all. Civilization—pooh! ”