When people need even more proof of reality than via the naked eye, they intuitively try to touch the to-be-analyzed entity (if at all possible) in order to investigate it haptically. The assumed link between perception and physical reality is particularly strong for the visual sense-in fact, we scrutinize it only when sight conditions have been unfortunate, when people have bad vision or when we know that the eyewitness was under stress or was lacking in cognitive faculties. Indeed, it seems that there is no better, no more “proof” of something being factual knowledge than having perceived it. Most obviously, you can experience this with eyewitness testimonies: If an eyewitness has “seen it with the naked eye”, judges, jury members and attendees take the reports of these percepts not only as strong evidence, but usually as fact-despite the active and biasing processes on basis of perception and memory. Sensory perception is often the most striking proof of something factual-when we perceive something, we interpret it and take it as “objective”, “real”. Gregory (e.g., Gregory, 2009), by discussing specific visual illusions and how they can help us to understand the magic of perception.Ībout the Veridicality of Perception The Relationship Between Reality and Object The present paper strengthens this line of argument, strongly put forth by perceptual pioneer Richard L. The main task of human perception is to amplify and strengthen sensory inputs to be able to perceive, orientate and act very quickly, specifically and efficiently. Illusions in a scientific context are not mainly created to reveal the failures of our perception or the dysfunctions of our apparatus, but instead point to the specific power of human perception. Furthermore, they let us analyze the cognitive sub-processes underlying our perception. It may be fun to perceive illusions, but the understanding of how they work is even more stimulating and sustainable: They can tell us where the limits and capacity of our perceptual apparatus are found-they can specify how the constraints of perception are set.

2Bamberg Graduate School of Affective and Cognitive Sciences (BaGrACS), Bamberg, Germany.1Department of General Psychology and Methodology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany.

Perceive perception definition