Christopher:

Unfortunately it appears that you are using the terms "sensation" and "perception" in essentially the opposite way to the way I tend to think of them. So I looked them up.

Since we are talking about light and color, here, I chose the "Lighting Design Knowledgebase". Sensation: (Term of physiology) The immediate result of the stimulation of the sense organs; as distinguished from perception which involves the combination of incoming sensations with contextual information and past experience so that the objects or events from which the stimuli arise are recognised and assigned meaning.

Perception: (Term of psychology) A meaningful impression obtained through the senses and apprehended by the mind. Perception goes beyond plain sensation in that it includes the results of further processing of the sensed stimuli, either conceously or inconceously.

These are actually more closely aligned with my concepts that what I understand your definitions to be, judging by context within your post. Of course I may simply be misunderstanding what you were saying.

To me there are at least three levels, involving increasing amounts of processing within the brain, with increasing degrees of consciousness, or the extent to which the conscious mind is engaged: Sensual stimulus, to sensation, and on to perception.

Just so we may understand each-other's use of terms.

David

P.S. I looked up sensation and perception in other dictionaries as well, and found nothing to contradict what I have expressed, though most didn't do it as directly as what I quoted above. However, I certainly found definitions that muddy the waters, even to the point of stating that these two terms are synonyms of each-other.