Is your sense of perception or interpretaton of events more likely to mislead you into acquiring true knowledge?

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George Nyarko

Grade 11

IS MY SENSE OF PERCEPTION OR MY INTERPRETATION OF EVENTS MORE LIKELY TO MISLEAD ME INTO ACQUIRING TRUE KNOWLEDGE?

Humans and other species, make decisions based on their perception. Our judgments momentarily depend on what we perceive at that particular time. Perception deals with the use of our senses to acquire knowledge and this is also termed as Empiricism. To me, in order to acquire knowledge, I have to perceive something and then pass my judgment. But in my quest of finding true knowledge, it might be possible for my sense of perception of interpretation of events more likely to mislead me. This essay therefore is about how my sense of perception or interpretation of events more likely to mislead me into acquiring true knowledge.

Firstly, I believe perception and interpretation move together as a single unit and one can’t work without the other, since you can’t interpret something when you don’t have anything to interpret or perceive something without interpreting it your way. Therefore, if one of these is wrong, then the goal of acquiring true knowledge is tantalized. Perception depends on senses, and senses depends on the environment, health etc. In a case where I was in my room one night, playing a video game in the dark, I had a strange sensation I wasn’t the only one in the room so I started looking around to see if this sensation was true. At that moment, I thought my sensation had been justified by the looks of long thing object lying under my bed. My first impression was that this was probably a snake so I panicked, jumped off my chair and run to the switch to have a better view of the situation. I switched on the light with the intention of having a closer look to what I thought was a snake, only to realize it was my belt which I lazily dropped after undressing from school. Even though I did perceive something under my bed (which was true) my interpretation of the event was wrong, and this made me panic therefore true knowledge was not achieved at that point until I switched on the light.

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“Naïve realism is a   of .Until people start reflecting philosopihcally they are termed as naïve realist.This theory is also known as “direct realism or common sense reaslism” .A naïve reaslist, sees  the world as it is to be; objects have mass and occupy space etc. Therefore to me, when I wear a blue shirt, I perceive I’m wearing a blue shirt and know I’m wearing a blue shirt. But this is different when I get into the dark, because then I loose my sight of color and then what looked blue in the light now looks kind off black. This shows ...

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