Perception is a dynamic conflict between the attempts of an outer world to impose an actuality on us and our efforts to transform this actuality into a self-centered perspective. Perception is a confrontation between an inward directed vector of external reality compelling awareness and an outward-directed vector of physiological, cultural, and psychological transformation. Where these vectors clash, where they balance each other, is what we perceive. This in sum is my view of perception.

As a way of unpacking the complexities and explaining the nature of this view, I will begin with a simple rough sketch of perception. This sketch will treat perception as the end of a sequence of psychophysical processes, invested with meaning and orientation by a cultural matrix. The whole process can be presented in commonsense terms, and its description will serve as a useful springboard to understanding perception as a balance of power between inner and outer-directed vectors or powers.

To begin with, initially assume a reality outside our minds and bodies containing potentials and dispositions. Any aspect of this realm with the power to stimulate our senses (for example, sounds, heat, color, motion) may be called a determinable. Figure 7.1 shows a determinable within the external reality represented on the figure’s right margin.