WOK

• Language•Perception• Emotion• Jim Carey

WOK: PerceptionSensation and Interpretation

From Last week: Cultural Perception

• What did you think of the video• Do you perceive the world culturally/

geographically?• What if this happened in Lukuni?• Who does not perceive the world culturally/

locally?• How can you change this?

WOK

• Language•Perception• Emotion• Jim Carey

Crime Line upEye witness testimony

Perception

• Is an important source of knowledge• 3 fundamental problems– We may misinterpret what we see– We may fail to notice something– We may misremember what we have seen

• Think of an eye witness account

How we distinguish between appearance and reality in everyday life

• Confirmation by another sense• Coherence: it does not fit, i.e I saw a pig flying,• Independent Testimony: if 10 people saw

something it must be true

Ultimate Reality

• We have 5 senses• Give an example of an animal that has

completely different senses that carry out the same function?

• 3 min• What would reality be like if we used our

senses differently?

Other Senses

• Sharks in the water• Turtles use magnetic fields• Birds use magnetic field to navigate• Dogs and smell• Elephants and hearing the vibrations in their feet• Ants use the position of the sun• Bats use sonar to see• Lemur tapping on trees to hear

What is really out there

• Take these examples• You burn your hand – where is the pain• You drink some coke- where is the taste• You see blue in the sky- where is the colour

The tree in the forest

• Is the sky blue?• If not what is sound?

Crime Scene

• A police officer comes up to you and asks you what did you see?

• What did you notice?• 1 min to tell the person beside you

Key terms/points1. Our five senses are an important source of knowledge about the

world; but rather than passively reflect reality, they actively structure it.

2. Perception consist of two elements Sensation and interpretation.

3. Looking at visual illusions can help make us aware of the role that interpretation plays in perception

4. If we accept that pain and taste are subjective, we might conclude that colour and sound are also subjective

5. The fallibility of perception is relevant to issues in the real world such as eye-witness testimony in criminal crimes

6. Although perception cannot give us certainty, if the evidence of our senses is consistent with what reason and intuition tell us, it can still provide a good foundation for reliable knowledge

Perception and reality

• Common-sense realism• Scientific Realism• Phenonmenalism

Common Sense Realism

• Already covered, • We perceive the world the way it is• We rely on our senses• Plenty of problem here due to the nature of

our sense-organs

Scientific Realism

• What is a table?• A table does not belong to the world previously

mentioned- that world which spontaneously appears around me when I open my eyes.. My scientific table is mostly emptiness. Sparsely scattered in that emptiness are numerous electric charges rushing about with great speed but their combined bulk amounts to less than 1 billionth of the bulk of the table itself…. Page 100 TOK

Phenomenalism

• All knowledge is based on experience• We are humans so experience the world as

humans• To be is be perceived

What should we believe

• Common-sense realism– What you see is what is there

• Scientific realism– Atoms in the void

• Phenomenalism– To be is to be perceived

Conclusion

• Perception plays an important way of knowing which plays a key role in most areas of knowledge

• We cannot take the evidence of our senses for granted

• Sometimes we use a second sense• Still to cross the road do not ignore you eyes