The stance of immaculate perception is a false one. Immaculate
perception describes a pure and untainted perception, one that has
no bias. Bias is acquired with experiences and teachings, both of
which create expectancy, which taints perception with bias. One may
argue that a newborn baby has immaculate perception, a clean slate
with no expectations or sense conditioning. However, this point
cannot be proved because where is the division between the
experiences of the mother and the baby, or is there even a division
between the two? Does the baby’s formation count as an experience?
With no clear answers to these questions how can immaculate
perception occur in reality? This question leads to another one.
What is reality and how does it relate to perception?
Reality is the truth that we try to ultimately reach through
perception as we sort through our sense datum. Yet, this truth can
vary between people. The conclusion or truth that people search for
through perception analysis can be determined by one’s own needs
and expectations. Though two creatures may be exposed to identical
stimuli and sense datum their inferences achieved through
perception will vary greatly because each has a tainted or biased
perception. For example, a human and a dog are both put in a forest
where they are lost and must find their way home.
The person will rely highly on sight to sort through the
wilderness and arrive home safely because he has conditioned
himself to rely heavily on the sense of sight while, the dog may
rely on scent more so then sight to track his way home. Both have
perception that has been flawed or somewhat polluted. Both the
human and dog are exposed to the same stimuli yet they each
perceive their situations differently. This is due to their biased
perception, the human through previous experiences has conditioned
himself to perceive his experiences mainly through sight while the
dog has done the same but with smell, neither has an unprejudiced
perception because both have been conditioned through
experiences.
Perception is controlled and created by experience. The goal of
perceiving is to know your surroundings. However your surroundings
control your experiences. Therefore perceiving is a way of
analyzing your experiences. But if this is true then there is no
such thing as immaculate perception.
Every individual’s experiences are each unique. The way in
which they are accepted or rejected depends on cultural
conditioning as well as previous experiences. With this bias no one
can claim to have untouched or virgin perception because it has
been trained to only acknowledge certain elements of the
surrounding. For example, I have been trained to rely on sight to
gain the bulk of my knowledge of my surroundings but a blind person
would have trained their senses or perception tools very
differently having no sight. Therefore each experience and the
sense datum gained from it would be different.
The stance of immaculate perception claims that since the act
of perceiving has no bias each experience for every person results
in the same knowledge. This is false because it is impossible for
two beings to infer the same information from a protocol. In a
world made of unique creatures it’s impossible for immaculate
perception to exist.