Psych Discussion Response

Course Text:

Goldstein, E. B. (2017). Sensation and Perception. 10th edition. California: Cengage. 

Original Question:

Think about and respond to the intriguing questions at the end of this section.

Background: A story has circulated for years about an eccentric philosophy professor gave a one question final exam after a semester dealing with a broad array of topics.
The class was already seated and ready to go when the professor picked up his chair, plopped it on his desk and wrote on the board,
"Using everything we have learned this semester, prove that this chair does not exist."
Students wrote feverishly, erasers erased, hands cramped, and notebooks were filled in furious fashion.Some students wrote over 20 pages in one hour, attempting to refute the existence of the chair. One member of the class however, was up and finished in less than a minute.
Weeks later, when the grades were posted, the rest of the group wondered how he could have gotten an "A" when he had barely written anything at all. Word soon spread when it was learned what his answer had been. It had consisted of only two words: -- "What chair?"
The triumph of the student over the stodgy professor notwithstanding, consider and respond to these sensation and perception (not philosophy) questions: How can we know whether others actually see the same things that we do? We may have learned to use the same words to label things, but how can we tell if what we see is different? How does this impact the scientific study of perception? Note: The answer to the latter portion of this question can't be "It doesn't affect" or "I don't know." It might help or hinder research if we don't all actually see the same things in our world. Think this through and suggest possibilities.

Reply to the following response with 200 words minimum. (please make response as if having a conversation, respond directly to some of the statements in below post.)

We live in a world that places the stimuli in our environment into categories. We place them into these categories based upon our recognition and familiarity. In this case, the stimulus is the chair that was placed on the professor's desk. Goldstein (2017) explained how the ending steps of the perceptual process enables us to perceive the stimulus, recognize it, and ultimately take action. This would be considered a conscious experience. It is safe to say that everyone in this professor's class should be familiar with the appearance of a chair, and should be able to use top-down processing to conclude that the stimulus is indeed a chair. 

However, whether or not it can be scientifically proven that everyone in this class in fact sees that item as a chair can be debatable. This relates to the controversial black and blue dress that was circulating around in the media. Some people viewed the dress as black and blue, while others viewed it as white and gold. The differences of this visual perception ties in with how we correspond to different colors when light hits our eyes. Similar to the chair example, we can attempt to discover ways to determine how we can tell if what we see is different or the same. 

This can be determined by conducting various methods to distinguish what is perceived and what is physically present. Goldstein (2017) discusses the phenomenological report technique, which pertains to providing a description of the stimulus. We can try to figure out if others are seeing the same things by describing what is seen. This includes describing colors, textures, shapes, patterns, and space arrangements. Another technique is recognition testing, which emphasizes on identifying what the stimulus is typically recognized or categorized as (Goldstein, 2017). Measuring what we perceive by using different techniques can help explain the perceptual responses we have to certain stimuli. 

This impacts the scientific study of perception because it enhances the idea that perception is complex. It illustrates that physical and perceptual are not always similar. If only one perceptual response existed, this world would appear very limited. For instance, "If changes in physical stimuli always resulted in similar changes in perception of those stimuli...there would be no need for psychology" (Goldstein, 2017). The fact that we are able to view things differently from one another enables additional possibilities and more knowledge for the world to acquire.