Human Perception, Behavior, and Language: Key Insights

Posted on Dec 18, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

Item 6: The Gestalt

It is a word of Germanic origin which means image or form. This is a school of thought or a psychological perspective that was originally dedicated to the study of perception in humans. The prevailing school of this slope in the middle of the 19th century was associationism. Gestalt suggests that images are detected in full at a moment or as a globally unique and not as a sum of constituent parts. Associationism says that we perceive the parts and unite them to identify the object. Gestalt says the opposite: we see the big picture and divide it into detailed parts. But the problem with associations is that the same pieces may belong to two different realities (ass or elbow).

Gestalt contextualizes images.

In the context of perceptual configurations, it plays an essential role. Perceptual learning laws were formulated by Gestalt by 1910, making clear the system of analysis and learning of associations. Thus arise such terms as “field theory” and advance the study of perception in terms would tell those who came of atomism. Since the beginning of the investigation of the perceptual process, specialists have tried to differentiate innateness of learning; It has been used for infants or young animals to which they were put in position by projecting visual cliffs. However, these theories were refuted by other researchers. Diagnosis that is innate in the perception many factors are involved. There is agreement that our brain receives an overall picture. The visual cliff experiments serve to demonstrate that our brain perceives innately whole space-images that are linked to multiple physiological and neurological experiences. Although a newborn has no visual experience, other skills contribute to sensory perception of depth and do not depend on a number of light energy reflected by objects. For this, newly discovered cells, especially in amphibians and mammals, detect disks and rings with a particular configuration and store them as symptoms of motion.

In short: we have cells by which we perceive innately ways through certain mechanisms. This allows us to better distinguish the shapes by color, light, shape, relief… It is thought that this is why humans prefer the curved line to the straight line.

Mirror Neurons

Mirror neurons were discovered in 1996. They are located near the insular cortex, the area F-5. They are nerve cells that allow us to put ourselves in the shoes of another. Through this complex neuronal network, we have been able to develop social behavior and to establish the knowledge of our culture. This is to psychology as big a shock as it could be the DNA for biology.

A key principle of our behavior is based on the ability to have and develop empathy and imagine what might be feeling or imagining another person. With mirror neurons, we anticipate, per milliseconds, what a person may be feeling with a low margin of error. Through them we can, for example, feel compassion for someone when they have a problem.

Mirror neurons are part of our social nature because, thanks to them, we can empathize with another person and without this dimension of empathy, we would not have a proper development of our personality and we would not know how to connect with the needs and emotions of others. In fact, one of the reasons for the unhappiness of our species is to have no social contact, and this is developed from a proper functioning of these neurons. Moreover, sometimes the proper functioning of these neurons is important in our relationships. The psychological profile is well developed the ability to identify with the ideas and motivations of another person, hence falling well in life is often the beginning of a certain success in various fields. The study of these neurons is accomplished by means of electrodes that can observe the neural activity responsible for movement control.

Frustration and Defense Mechanisms

Frustration is understood as that unpleasant emotional experience (undesirable) induced by the withdrawal of rewards and therefore causes us sadness, disappointment, and anger.

The defense mechanisms we use are:

Affective-Insulation: Consists of fleeing an emotional conflict by separating the ideas of the emotions or feelings. Also called rationalization. Example: A student of biology enjoys going to the lab over a dissection. They download their frustrations rationally about the poor frog.
Compensation: Consists of hiding a failure in an activity by winning in another.
Displacement: Consists of downloading hostile feelings about people or objects that did not elicit emotions.
Fantasy: Consists of doing in the imagination what we cannot achieve.
Identification: Consists of incorporating into my personality a characteristic or more alien to me, that is, copied from another.
Reactive Training: Consists of adopting or expressing sentiments contrary to the true or authentic.
Disclaimer: This consists of not ignoring unpleasant realities to deal with them. “There is none so blind as those who do not want to see.”
Projection: It consists in attributing our faults to others. “Think about the thief who are all of his condition.”
Rationalization: This mechanism is intended to justify the ideas or behavior for fear of not being accepted by others.
Regression: Returning to an earlier stage of development in situations of stress or anxiety.
Repression: Consists of preventing certain thoughts or feelings from entering dangerous or painful consciousness.
Sublimation: Channeling or direction involves sexual impulses toward activities or lifestyles “higher”, i.e., sublime, which can be artistic, intellectual, religious, or social assistance… because it is willing and able.

Item V: Behaviorism

It was drafted by the Russian neurologist Ivan Pavlov, who developed a theory that initially called psychic secretion because he observed in dogs that salivation was caused at the sight or smell of food. This response could lead to a stimulus that had nothing to do with food, but which had been submitted in time and space so associated with the natural or unconditioned stimulus.

Means reflection or conditioned response to one that is not innate to a stimulus, and that individuals learn by contiguity.

A stimulus is an innate response. This stimulus can be modified giving rise to the same answer. Example: You feed a dog and touch a bell. The dog salivates when seeing food. After a while, when you touch the bell, although the dog has not seen meat, it will salivate by associating it with food.

Through the partnership in time and space is replaced by one unconditioned stimulus conditioned. A conditioned response conditioned stimulus.

According to Pavlov, when associated with the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned response is much stronger than just one. Food + Bell = very strong reaction.

Thus, if the stimulus is not reinforced or exercised, the reflection will eventually weaken and disappear. This behavior modification system is based on reactions from the animal expresses baque mechanisms is instinctive and is common in animals and people. Pavlov found that our behavior is generated at the social level in a high percentage in terms of these mechanisms (stimuli + positive reinforcement/negative. The variables that influence this learning are:

Contiguity
Repetition or test
Unconditioned response-intensity
Intensity of the conditioned stimulus
External-Gate

Basic Tenets of Psychoanalysis

Personality is like an iceberg in which stands a small portion of which Freud called consciousness. The hidden part is called the unconscious.

The personality is the result of the interaction of forces and intrapsychic mechanisms, especially the sexual drive (Eros) and the aggression (Thanatos). Thus the structure would be divided based on 3 areas: Id, Ego, and Super-Ego. The psychic energy that is trying to satisfy every impulse of survival, reproduction, or aggression. The id is governed by the pleasure principle. Nice for everything and anything violent.

The ego is the rational and realistic body whose function is to arbitrate which calls for it and what makes the super-ego. It expressed the defense mechanisms and is also responsible for ensuring the conservation and adaptation to standards.

The superego is the third instance of our personality or assume responsibility to internalize the rules, need for affection, recognition, or by fear of punishment. The super-ego in the ego raises feelings of guilt and inhibiting aggressive sexual rebuffs it.

The different levels of mind are:

Conscious Level: Thanks to which we have perceptions, thoughts, memories… and is governed by the reality principle.
Preconscious Level: A short-range area also has thoughts and memories. You also learn some things we learn unconsciously and can easily access them. There’s the emotional lability, which is the level of presentation and overt manifestations. This, for example, is further developed when we are in altered states (out, drinking, always roll…). Generally, the tone of light to its external influences. Here is involved the pineal gland.
Unconscious or Subconscious Level: There are harbor unpleasant or dangerous experiences that have been repressed throughout our lives. There are access consciousness, and when they do occur covertly, or symbolic. The subconscious is dynamic and is in full swing. It is based on the principle of pleasure (“it”).

The convulsions are the forces by which we translate into thoughts, reactions, and decisions determined needs generated by the libido or vital energy. These drives are two:

Eros: Life, togetherness, harmony… Impulses of love, companionship, recognition, and understanding. It is governed by the pleasure principle and seeks to avoid at all costs any sensation of pain. Seeks to reduce tensions and avoid suffering.

However the reality principle uses the “I” to regulate the individual role of culture, giving up immediate pleasure in favor of a future pleasure. Our social order develops between these two principles, pleasure and reality, through self-control harmonic of the two drives and its infinite variations. If not hysteria would be harmonious, omissions, psychopathy.

Thanatos: Involves the pursuit of death, the separator or divisive instinct, manifested in physical or verbal aggression or destruction (self or others). It is governed by…

Item 7: The Basics

The term “language” is complex by its multiplicity of forms: oral, written, musical… all within a cultural and intercultural and also gives a diachronic and synchronic (linearly and at the same time).

The great advantage of the language is that we can abstract from the current reality and onto reality at this time only in our mind (economic advantage of language).

Human language is a system of signs produced and socially agreed that serve to shape the communicative fabric of material realities, psychological or spiritual.

We understand all that, communicative purposes, represents or replaces another reality, so that the sign has 2 faces: Significant (S), which is anything that makes us believe exists in another, and referent (R) that is what they sent me the signifier. The sign only exists when there is a mind that interprets it.

Within linguistic signs must distinguish the perceptible (audible or graphic) and is studied in linguistics parsing. Then there is the referent, studied by semantic analysis. We must also take into account the user: sender or receiver.

Any linguistic system is characterized by the following guidelines:

Double articulation: A few words with meaning and other nonsense
There must be a medium or channel: air, paper…

Our language system is creative, not evolve, because:

Integrating communication improvise new words or giving a new meaning.
A cultural level is stipulated new words

Furthermore, all language system is conventional or arbitrary, that is, a group of people agree to this.

This system requires dialogue, and there must be a sender and a receiver.

It is self-reference, i.e. we use language to study the linguistic system itself, and despite our many differences there are some common links: gestures, icons… for which we dedicated support what we consider useful, and thus satisfy our needs (Maslow’s pyramid).

The Sign is Linked to the Referent in Different Ways, Basically 3:

In terms of the relationship that exists between the signifier and referent.

Vestige or hint: In it, the relationship between signifier and referent is causal-natural. Example: I see smoke -> Fire
Images or icons: The relationship between signifier and referent is similarity. Example: When you see a sign of smoke quickly associate it with meaning.
Symbol: The relationship between S and R is arbitrary conventional. Example: A coat of a football team, a flag… you see and know what it means. It differs with the old in with no elements indicating the meaning, as the cigarette cartel strikeout. The relationship between S and R is conventional artificial, indeed, the linguistic sign depends on the context and tone that is used to change the referent. “The tone makes the song” The monkey likes bananas

Language: Artificial, Animal, and Intelligence

The logikon zoon (animal endowed with reason) is the only carrier voice their thoughts and reflect on which investigates and advances or evolves, that is, human beings are capable of intellectual understanding that manifests and is based largely because we speak the language of reasoned way. There are groups of thinkers who believe that language is a unique human being (comparative ethology) to those who considered their own language and artificial intelligence autonomous, but both admit that their languages are not raisonnante.

According to Darwin the qualities of an organism are the result of specific developments, and given that the evolution of humans is different from that of other animals are also our strength, therefore the same primates that robots have been trained to speak, i.e. to develop a certain type of communication, or what is the same, their coaches are those who speak through them, but man does when he speaks putting into practice its constitutive power. To wit:

With Freedom: We talk because we are free to do so
We put in place an overall understanding of the world through concepts.
What we talked about has an impact on emotional life, emotions. For more impassive than we ever have feelings that are more or less as always affects.
What we say, speak and hear generates, recognizes and enhances our self-consciousness (I), i.e., we speak from what we are.

We speak from what we are and we are an evolving entity.

In short, our exercise is about thoughts, feelings, volitions and consciousness of self. The claim that, like humans, primates and robots talking faces the following objections:

No equal qualities fit various substrates.
Do not speak if there were no previous training
Human language includes all facets of human experience (we use a wide range of communication codes)

Aesthetics and its Problems as a Metalanguage

Generally speaking cultures are built on the basis of a functional mechanism that articulates diversity of values and their opposites: ethical, moral, patriotic, philanthropic, pleasant, useful and useless… But there are other things not cave easily fit them in these classifications: health, holiness, family, beauty (natural and synthetic) and has no immediate use or commercial.

There are at least 3 ways in which man can relate to beauty:

With the nature (passive). It is an inexhaustible source of natural aesthetics.
His own creation: Art of your own creation.
As a viewer of both together.

Aesthetics or Aisthesis (beauty in Greek) is a branch of philosophy that studies both the beautiful as its opposite. The question: What is beauty?. All artistic creation is necessarily beautiful? What type of reaction creates beauty in me?

It is innate to man the search for beauty (harmony + symmetry + ratio).

It teaches us that our tastes are a certain. We have the Greek canon of beauty. The harmony and beauty of a person (symmetry, height, width…) can also be moved to buildings, clothes… Aesthetics is a meta-philosophy that goes beyond words and can recreate naturally or not.

Our image has an impact on us immensely, even more than our ways or our personality. In all there are aesthetic art and vice versa. Our definition of beauty is more relevant to “harmony” and we tend to find it.

Harmony/beauty does not always have to please everyone because there are exceptions.

The beauty does not have a utilitarian function or mercantilist, because when you buy or sell it loses its charm because it is reified. For example: The sea is something harmonious, however when we feel strong about him lose interest. The sea is sublime because it captivates us. For example we love is beautiful because we are captivated by it. The sublime is that dimension of beauty, the natural thing that attracts and wins. It is only natural sublime. Adjectives of wonder created by man is called masterpiece, exalted or artificial beauty. The ultimate expression of beauty created by humans is love.

The fees so far appointed are not attributable to the sacred or religious. Beauty is a higher dimension that gives us humanity. Without it we would be closer to “good men”.

The taste is cultural education, family and personally.

Notion of Ancient Art

Today, studying philosophy in creating beauty, both natural and in the artistic or artificial, which was not the case in antiquity. Plato was a scientific concept of art. He believed that art is or was a know-how and/or say what it is for any thing or sort of thing comes to its perception, being the artist the connoisseur theoretical and practical know how to handle these realities. In summary: The beauty has to be perfect.

The artist is the knower theoretical and practical know how to handle these realities. At the time of Plato the word artist was reserved for the gods. His replacement was “artisan.” To be perfect is to be practical. That vision was strictly rational, so it was logical to pass forming disciples. The student of a master craftsman became to create a masterpiece (one that meets the criteria for your guild).

Instead today the arts covering all fields of realizable as the projection of the human mind, including the world of the unconscious and, therefore, goes beyond the merely rational.

What we understand today as “fine art” in its origins were born with a purely religious function (Greek theater to worship statues, paintings of gods…)

Nature as the Supreme Artist

The Greek concept of nature was considered under 2 dimensions:

Entire order
His own life autonomy or self-regeneration, which exempts it from any explanation, because man himself is part of it. This conception gave nature a character independent from the whims “creators of the gods” because the very nature was able to create the different lives and cyclical rhythms, hence be regarded as a supreme artist in the sense of be the specialist who handles all the laws in this regard, i.e., from life to death.

The natural purpose of each species is its own beauty and the world is to reach harmony and understanding, and this is an evolving force. If we consider that the difference between man and the rest of creation is his reason, so this must be the perfection of it, and it is beautiful, and what we must put all its vitality. We speak of a purely utilitarian. Beauty is a means for the exercise of reason and the pursuit of knowledge Good, Beautiful and Absolutely True (BBVA). So beautiful and good in man must match unless his own free will decides to seek the opposite, i.e. reverse or seek impolución. So since Plato’s time the theater was used to improve the human person.

It was useful over the beautiful Greek thought but never considered that human thought could ever reverse or pervert the ends of man, and therefore did not believe that nobody would distort the harmony and beauty to the alleged tendency natural should point to.

When there was bad, beautiful or the anti-anti-useful was only a necessary law of contrasts to estimate more precisely the positive (i.e. a single event was to take as a negative reference). To summarize: The aesthetic is totally absorbed by the ontological and ethics.

Humans have evolved through “theft” light the fire… being capable of translating art beauty in his works. The human being strives to capture the light on works of art, that is not just about seeing, but of learning to see beyond what the senses provide us (watching), that is, all is learning to master light, beauty, well… which is an endless cycle, and we need to do, because without this there is no progress. The opposite is a process of dehumanization, so the transcendent beauty is a metalanguage that is manifested in art.

Thanks to the beauty generate reason to master nature and ourselves