The Brain's View of the World Depends on What it has to Know

It is argued that perception is a highly constructive process and that the way in which we perceive the world and ourselves depends on a priori knowledge. Sources of this knowledge are evolution, early developmental imprinting and life long learning processes. Much of this knowledge is implicit and therefore there is no conscious recollection of the fact that perception is determined and constrained by priors that are genetically transmitted and acquired through early experience. Moreover, these priors are adapted to the mesoscopic scale of the world in which life has evolved and therefore cognitive abilities are to be seen as the result of evolutionary and developmental adaptations to an extremely narrow segment of the world as it is known to us to date. This has far reaching consequences for epistemic considerations and perhaps also for the management of cultural conflicts. If the perception of social conditions is also dependent on priors and if these priors are acquired early during development, they will exhibit culture specific traits but will remain implicit because episodic memory develops only several years after birth (childhood amnesia). In this case subjects cannot realize that their perception of social conditions depends on idiosyncratic, culture specific priors. What is perceived will be taken as absolute truth, acquire the status of convictions and cannot be altered by arguments.