Philosopher Emanuel Kant suggested that there exists two main structures which house human perception. The first of which is Sensibility. This is the low-level sensory input we take in constantly via our retina, ear drums, etc. It is like the tape recorder or video camera which receives input but does nothing with it. He thought that sensory perception was uninteresting.

The second part of perception is that of deriving meaning from the sensory information. This is considered “high-level processing,” according to Kant and Hofstadter. For many reasons this view of the human thought process makes sense. However, for some reasons it still does not. For one, it does not explain the fundamental, physical, internal structures necessary to actually do the storing or processing of the information.

In reality, this is all just a philosophical exercise. We don’t know for certain what biological elements store memories or even how we conjure up meaning when we view real-world objects. Additionally, since these are mostly subconscious processes, it is difficult to define what is actually taking place since we aren’t aware of what is going on. At most we can do a little guesswork and/or relate these processes to those we are already familiar with. For example, where does object recognition fall? Is it sensory-input alone, or is it mostly internal in our brain? Some would argue that we need to know what an object is before we can recognize it. But, how did we come to recognize it in the first place; and where is the object stored in our brain?