Perception is part raw uncensored sensory input, and part interpretative translation to "printed symbols" to be able to cognify said sensory input. Part of this is focus, or being able to block out certain aspects of perception to rationalize things into understandable components.
Without knowledge, language, culture, or memory, its all uninterpretable chaotic sensory input. However, an unquantifiable amount of sensory input gets lost in translation, its a cold hard fact. Language is a crude attempt to communicate a direct subjective experience that is infinite, and thus inherently flawed. Not useless, but crude and flawed. Progress can always be made to enhance communication/language.
To me, better understanding how to use language, and communication to transmit encoded data to another subjective interpreter, is the ultimate goal. That requires continuous commitment and mindfulness of the process on both ends though.
Sensory input is interpreted by knowledge to make perception, which is translated/encoded (for better or worse) through language/communication to try and replicate the perception received by the person relaying the message. The result of this process is culture imho.
I think its chasing after infinity, whether its scientific observation, effective communication, or trying to understand exactly how the mind interperets sensory input. Worthwhile for the pursuit of knowledge, but there is no end in sight.
"let those who have talked to the elves, find each other and band together" -TMK
In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy.
In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, etc. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers...
The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.โ - Wendell Berry