Perceptions are not the result of a physiological process by which our eyes somehow trasmit an image of the world into our brains, but rather, they are the result of a psychological process that combines what our eyes see with what we already think, feel, know, want, and believe, and then uses this combination of sensory information and preexisting knowledge to construct our perception of reality. "The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing," Kant wrote. "Only through their union can knowledge arise." The historian Will Durant performed the remarkable feat of summarizing Kant's point in a single sentence: "The world as we know it is a construction, a finished product, almost -- one might say -- a manufactured article, to which the mind contributes as much by its moulding forms as the thing contributes by its stimuli." Kant argued that a person's perception of a floating head is constructed from the person's knowledge of floating heads, memory of floating heads, need for floating heads, and sometimes -- but not always -- from the actual presence of a floating head itself. Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist's hand every bit as much as it reflects the things portrayed.
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