Positive Perception

What is good?

What causes a perception of positivity in a person or animal?

If something being perceived as good, is considered to be subjective to the individual, based on their psychology, then that which causes certain things to be perceived as good would be dependant on that individuals instincts, subconscious influence, and conscious comprehension.

Instincts would be the default triggers gained from birth, which cause the individual to perceive certain aspects of life to be good or bad. Typically, with animals, natural selection causes instincts to give positive reinforcement for occurrences which help that animal survive. When the animals’ sensory input receives general resemblances of these occurrences, the instinctual triggers cause it to perceive that occurrence, as good. Negative reinforcement instincts, of occurrences which harm the individual, cause the opposite perception, of bad. Based on instincts, the perception of good, basically depends on what helps that animal survive and reproduce.

Experience can alter what an animal or person perceives as good. Experiences cause the subconscious to to influence the individual on what is good. As an animal experiences something beneficial for its survival, and receives the positive reinforcement from instincts, that positive reinforcement can associate other things which the animal sensed at the time, even though the alternate factors were not a direct cause of the positive reinforcement. Say a raccoon sneaks into a yard at night, and after exploring, finds some tasty dog food in a dog dish. It will receive positive reinforcement from instinctual triggers, because the food helps it survive. After this experience, from that point on, the raccoons subconscious will associate positive feedback with the sight of a dog dish. The dog dish was not perceived as good before the experience, but the raccoons perception of good has been altered by those memories, to also include the sight of a dog dish.

Conscious comprehension can make things more complex. When a person actively accesses memories, making new connections based on comprehension of the interaction of different concepts or factors within memories, this can alter subconscious association between various factors and past positive feedback. With comprehension of how a factor (which is connected with positivity), affects alternate factors, those alternate factors can then also become associated with positive reinforcement, and therein perceived as good.

Since food causes positive feedback for a person, if they comprehend that money can cause them to acquire food to eat, money then becomes associated with positivity. Furthermore, if a person comprehends the connection of concepts within memory, that winning the lottery would allow them to acquire lots of money, they may then alter their subconscious to associate lottery tickets with positivity. Lottery tickets would then be perceived as good by that person, whereas without conscious comprehension of concepts, a ticket would be virtually perceived as a useless piece of paper.

If the goal is to achieve a maximum quantity of what is perceived to be good, then perhaps finding a positive instinctual trigger which can be implemented the most (without reduction of other positive feedback), or can be associated the most by subconscious influence, using available factors. Finding an overall balance of environmentally available factors, associated with positive feedback, might be the key. Making the best use of available factors, would additionally allow the conscious comprehension association between the factors, to make more positive connections based on comprehension of cause and effect of those factors. Generally, keeping overall good health, should be a common and effective balance of positive reinforcement based on survival. Using various factors associated with health, conscious comprehension of function can associate those factors with the instinctual positivity of health.

The core cause of the perception of good, seems to be instinctual feedback triggers. But experiences and memory access can influence additional factors to be perceived as good, based on factors that are caused by those reinforcement triggers which are acquired from birth. Since conscious, active memory access can cause the perception of positivity and good, by accessing memories of factors and connections to particular positive aspects, conscious comprehension seems to be an effective tool in orchestrating a comprisal of positivity.