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Perception And Perception Of Perception

Decent Essays

Perception has played an immense role in shaping what it means to be human. Our ability to perceive has given humans the ability to cognate at a higher level than any other animal and has given us the evolutionary advantage needed to progress our species. However, as technology has advanced and caught up to humans in the ability to think, it presses us to think of another dividing line that makes us into humans and leaves technology behind as just robots. This line is our ability to react emotionally to what we perceive. We are able to feel, which is the ability to have an emotional response to the environment we are perceiving. Any robot can now interpret its environment and make adjustments based on what the input was, but while doing this, robots are not able to sense what they are perceiving. In Sherry Turkle’s "Selections from Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other", she discusses what it takes for a computer to be close enough to be alive, and brings up the question of what is missing to make them the same as humans. Oliver Sacks also brings up interesting stories of how people’s experiences can bring them to question what it means to be alive, in his story “The Mind’s Eye”. Also in Ethan Watters’ “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan”, he brings up that going through tumultuous emotions associated with things such as suffering, love, and death are what it means to be human. While the ability to perceive is not a unique

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