- Discoveries: Isaac Newton
- Inventions
What aspects of our life can we trust ourselves to understand the true reality of what we believe is happening?
Explain the biological level of analysis and how senses react to different hormones and neurotransmitters which process information to the brain which makes us certain that what is happening is the actual truth.
Perception: (sight)
Topic Sentence: Moreover, perception is a way in which our senses help us introduce and process information in order to grow cognitively socially and culturally
- Eyes; apple falling from a tree saw it, smelled it, taste it. Put interpretation of the apple may be different than any other
- Objects can rarely be described without the use of sensory perceptions.
- What we see is true: part of our culture
- Learned to recognize and see what wrongs is what is not.
- Part of rules of society
Counter claim
- Stimuli to perception ; unclear vision light angle
- Effects on perception interpretation: These interpretations can be affected by many different factors. Are we sleepy? Are we in a bad mood? Have we consumed any hallucinatory inducing products? Furthermore different sort of shapes and colors can distract our perception abilities and we might see something that is really not there.
- Loftus and Palmer description of Eye witness testimony ( describe how emotion affects perception)
Language: (hear)
Topic Sentence: Language has evolved so we are able to communicate in our society to understand how our senses are used in a better way to inquire better knowledge
- GIVES US KNOWLEDGE; our society communicates with language
- Language is created and open ended ( technology revolution)
- Animal dialogue; how it has helped throughout history in evolution
Counter claim
- meanings for words and we are only able to arrive to some sort of approximation of the meaning the other participant of communication is trying to convey to us
- language yet its specific definition is rather elusive
- language cannot ultimately define what truth is
Reason: (processing data)
Topic Sentence: Our senses withhold information which helps us process and reason into our brain true knowledge or bad reasoning.
- We can acquire knowledge about the world by processing the previous and new information used.
- This information leads us to make decisions in life which helps us grow and mature in the different stages of our life.
- Assumptions: give us certainty and trust which makes us involve every aspect of the senses where knowledge is acquired through; hearing seeing touching smelling and tasting
- Ex: Education. Well, that involves learning, which can really only be done through hearing or seeing or experiencing things that simply cannot be known without the use of our senses
Counter claim
- Truth and validity: fallacies which involve reasoning
- Example of a fallacy
- Understand how important to construct and process different premises both true or false in order to not fool our brain with bad generalizations
- Causes of different bad reasoning.
Conclusion
- What would nature history and understand if it wasn’t for our senses?
- We are not born with innate understanding of the world.
- We gain this understanding and the only way is our senses.
- By using the senses we must trust them and this is how we survive
- “Seeing is believing” or “seeing is knowing”
- Possible to be fooled by our senses because of their limitation
- Maybe? Many things in our world that could change our lives completely forever
- We live in a world that we have to trust our senses to tell us the truth.
- Maybe it really is all just some false reality. But it is OUR reality. And our reality relies on our senses.
Essay Criteria
A: Understanding knowledge issues
Throughout this essay outline I was able to fulfill the first criteria because it constantly refers to the senses, its reliability and truth. The essay connects directly with its knowledge issue by clearly restating in every topic sentence the important of our senses and the debate on why we should trust or not our senses. We are able to discuss different ways of knowing each with its counter claim in order to process and understand how each way of knowing affects our senses and how we rely on them and trust them. The three paragraphs involve logical fallacies inventions, example from radio lab and case study which show evidence to demonstrate the knowledge issue and the importance of our senses in our ways of knowing.
B: Knower’s perspective
The essay includes information from other courses such as psychology and the different levels of analysis in the biological cognitive and socio cultural level of analysis and it is able to be connected in the process of TOK understanding. Questioning myself throughout the essay and evaluating with pros and cons helped me explore the idea of true and be more conscious and reflective of the different perspective of knowledge. Even though looking back into the essay some examples may not be completely developed there is a main idea and should be completely developed in the actual essay.
C: Quality of knowledge issues
Throughout the essay the arguments are coherent and complete. We are able to evaluate and discuss each subtopic in order to have a better understanding of the ways of knowledge and their connection to truth in each sense. There are examples for each subtopic and its analysis is in depth. On the other hand, the main points could be more clearly explained, the information is there and I believe that since it’s an outline it doesn’t have to have that much information, however the essay would.
D: Organization of ideas
In my point of view assessing this outline I am able to describe that there is a paragraph at the beginning missing explaining the truth. Separate in senses and truth and having a detailed explanation of both would help the reader have a better understating of the knowledge issue in order to discuss its reliability of the problem. However overall I believe it’s very well structured and each point has different subtopics with its own explanations. Facts and information and their explanations were correctly added in each paragraph in order to understand its point and what it’s actually trying to transmit.
