Second Order Perception

When we think of perception, we think of something being "picked up", or sensed, and then a process that is somehow induced within a system as a result of that stimulation. In other words, there is an initial stimulation, and then a process occurs that gives meaning to that stimulation. In visual perception, this may manifest itself when the stimulation of our retina leads to the phenomenological sensation of seeing a ball.

Certain practices within human culture demonstrate that the processes leading up to the phenomenological state of perceiving something may take as a part of their input other phenomenologically perceived states. Number provides a good example. If I stand by a pond and count out a group of 25 geese swimming in front of me, a perceptual process has occurred that used the perceived geese (which were already the output of another perceptual process) as its input.

A pattern of activity in the brain led to the perception of the geese, and another pattern of activity led to the perception that there were 25 geese. This demonstrates that it is possible to create meta-perceptual systems that may be quite useful. While the practice of enumeration demonstrates this, the entire field of statistics also exemplifies it. The goals of that field are none other than to create second order systems of perception.

Even though numbers may be very powerful tools for us, it is clear that there is much room for improvement as far as systems of perception go. THe perceptions furnished by numbers are very one dimensional. I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb when I say that second order systems of perception are now in the stages that first order perception was in with the emergence of light sensitive cells that only later developed into vision. The question is, what can be done to expand the dimensionality of these new forms of perception?