Perception Essay B

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYSGXw-5qyRKZGRoaG05NjdfNjZmbnpmNjdocw&hl=en

Matthew French

TOK1 - Period B

5 March 2010

B. How, and to what extent, might expectations, assumptions and beliefs affect sense perceptions? How, if at all, can factors that bias our views of the world be identified? Do knowers have a moral duty to examine their own perceptual filters?

Our expectations, assumptions and beliefs inevitably combine to form personal biases that filter our perceptions. We can only really become aware of our biases and the factors that spawn them through the observations of others. These observers can notice trends in our perception, and from there deduce a bias. If they promulgate this observation, the person with the bias can become aware, and from that awareness they can contemplate this perceptual filter and decide whether or not to abolish it.

Perceptual filters are incredibly common. In IB English, we are reading the book Rashomon, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. In one of the stories, we read about the suicide of a samurai. Growing up in the American culture and the Catholic religion, I have been taught to believe that suicide is shameful. I perceived the suicide of this Japanese man to be of the same character until Mr. McDowell explained to us that this suicide, known as seppuku, was actually honorable to samurai. I was never really aware of my disgust at the thought of suicide until I realized that my perceptions were tainted by this belief. Upon Mr. McDowell's illumination, I realized this perceptual filter of mine and recognized that suicide may have many different characteristics.

This is not the only example of a cultural belief and a resulting perceptual filter. My parents have always believed that the United States of America is the best country in the world, and this became even more evident while we watched the Winter Olympics. I noticed that they would only cheer for the American athletes, and if a foreign athlete won an event they would be disappointed. This can simply be defined as patriotism, which is very common, but is nevertheless a blatant perceptual filter. People are often raised with the belief that their country is better than all others, and so wholeheartedly support their nation while disregarding the success of others. Their perceptions are affected by this expectation, which became especially apparent to me while watching these Winter Olympics. I was able to recognize this trait in my parents because I have always been interested more in world unity than geographic borders. My parents may have been aware of the fact that they have a great love for their country, but they did not realize the extent of their favoritism until I presented it to them.

There are some instances in which our perceptual filters should undergo examination once someone makes them aware to us. The book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, describes an incident in which an innocent man is shot multiple times by police officers. The man, Amadou Diallo, resembled a rapist and was described by the officers as looking suspicious. They perceived his actions and appearance incorrectly due to the perceptual filter caused by their expectations of him to be a rapist. As a result, they shot him 41 times. In this case, the officers are now aware of this perceptual filter of theirs due to a bias of assumption, and are now obliged to examine their perceptions before they act on them, so as to prevent another catastrophe like this from occurring.

Sense perception is one of the Ways of Knowing, but that doesn't inhibit the effects of the other Ways of Knowing as perceptual filters. For example, my sister has a perceptual bias that is influenced very highly by emotion. My sister and I have an unspoken competition. She felt strongly that my success was only a degradation of hers, making her feel less important or intelligent than me, and so her perceptions became tainted. Her perceptions of my interests were marked by negativity, because she expected them to be an attack on hers. These expectations acted as a perceptual filter in which she became opposed to nearly everything that she associated with me, and she only realized this when I observed the trend and expressed it to her. In turn she informed me of how I treated her as inferior because of a related perceptual filter in which I saw her interests as basic and generic, and therefore perceived them as unworthy of my attention. In this case it was essential for us to abolish our biases and resulting perceptual filters because it was destroying our relationship.

I stand by my claim that these biases can only be recognized by observers, and then passed on to the person with the perceptual filter. If a bias is present, would it not act as an impediment of its own recognition? Perceptual filters are truly unavoidable, but once we are informed of our tainted perception, we can decide whether or not we wish to examine it morally. Ultimately, we should abolish it if it is harmful, but otherwise we are all allowed our own perception, as influenced by biases as it may be.

Word Count:

799

Bibliography:

Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: the Power of Thinking without Thinking. New York: Back Bay, 2007. Print.

Akutagawa, Ryunosuke. Rashomon and Other Stories. Singapore: Tuttle, 1952. Print.

TOK Blog Project

The way of knowing that reflects me is language. I find language to be the clearest way of expressing a knowledge claim. Words are usually sufficient for me as a knower. A broader range of language entails broader knowledge; the more words and the more languages a person knows, the more concepts they can understand, due to the direct correlation between language, culture, and therefore meaning. Emotion and perception can be very misleading, while language is far less beguiling, especially in the context of my area of knowledge: history.

For me, history is a very important area of knowing. History allows me to reflect upon the present, using deductions based on past events to influence my future decisions. Language is essential for the comprehension of history. Language allows a knower to understand different viewpoints of a wide variety of people regarding any historical event. For example, in history class we have been studying various aspects of modern history. As we read the book, Mastering Modern World History, by Norman Lowe, we are often introduced to revisionist views on historical events. These different historians use their language - which, don't forget, has been influenced by their culture - to express new points of view. Franco was originally seen as a terrible fascist dictator in Spain simply for being aligned with Hitler, but revisionist historians have read historical accounts and then used their own language to describe their analysis of events, creating the idea that Franco actually solved a lot of problems in Spain in the mid-90's. Often these revisionist historians are native Spanish as well, so their culture and their different language provides a different twist on the interpretation of events. Another example of language facilitating knowing history is in my Spanish class. I am reading the book El Laberinto de la Soledad, by Octavio Paz, a book which tries to decipher the character of the Mexican. Because it is written by a Mexican, and because I am reading it in Spanish, I have these different perspectives expressed by the language I know it in. The fact that I know it in Spanish helps me understand it better; instead of needing a translation into English, I learn the history in the way it was presented, in the words whose meanings are inexplicable in English. My comprehension is greater because of this. In TOK class, language and history were used when we read Weekly World News. They discussed historical events in far-fetched articles such as a female movement to take over the world. They discussed historical events that were "obviously" plots of women, but because of the absurd language used I was able to discern the history to be false. Language really allows different viewpoints on history, and because of the varying language us knowers can analyze and interpret differently.

Of course, fallacies occur when language is used as a means of "knowing" history. When history is read from a book, as it is in class, the language is generally straightforward and unambiguous. However, when history is dictated or viewpoints are expressed in speech, the guile of language becomes visible. Language can be subject to some of the other ways of knowing, especially emotion and perception. For example, when speaking with any person about a very recent event, the tone of their voice and the language they use may cause doubt in a person regarding what actually happened. While written history is more direct and the knower can usually evaluate the language from the exact words that are written, the variety of spoken language makes oral history more apt to be misunderstood. It is difficult to comprehend when a person talks to you about an event sarcastically - they could simply be sardonic, or the language they are using, while dry, is actually an expression of what happened.

Polysemy is another interesting facet of language. A word that is polysemous has more than one meaning. When speaking about history, a word used to express an event can be confused because of these multiple meanings. This is evident in oral and written history. For example, in the book Santa Evita, the author, Tomas Eloy Martinez, writes: "Mito in my native tongue is not only "myth" but also the name of a bird that no one can see, and story means "search," "inquiry": the text is a search for the invisible, or the stillness of what flies." p.54. This Spanish word with different meanings can create vastly different connotations based on the interpretation.

History is very interesting, though, because language can completely alter what actually happened. We can make as many interpretations as we want based on the language that presents the history to us, but we truly can never know what happened. History uses language as a means of reinventing a past reality. In the book I am reading, Santa Evita, the author writes about how Eva Peron was changed throughout time. Eloy Martinez writes: "She ceased to be what she said and what she did to become what people say she said and what people say she did." p. 13. There may be a basis of truth to what she did, yes, but the language of people created Eva Peron as an infallible structure of hope, a saint, which she probably was not. Our language dictates history. Our varying expressions dictate how historical events are recorded, and in turn the evaluations we make based on them.

I would like to leave you with a final quote from the book Santa Evita that I think sums up this idea nicely:

"That, I thought, is where written language falls short. It can bring back to life feelings, lost time, chance circumstances that link one fact to another, but it can't bring reality back to life. I didn't yet know - and it would take longer still for me to feel it - that reality doesn't come back to life: it is born in a different way, it is transfigured, it reinvents itself in novels. I didn't know that the syntax or the tones of voice of the characters return with a different air about them and that, as they pass through the sieves of written language, they become something else." p. 73

Glossary:

language - communication of meaning in any way
knower - a person receiving information and knowledge claims; "knows" an area such as history
knowledge claim - a claim made by a knower that they "know" something, whether it be by acquaintance or by the description of other knowers
emotion - any sort of feeling - happiness, anger, sadness - usually expressed
perception - an awareness or knowledge derived from the senses
culture - the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a certain ethnic, social, age, collegiate, etc group; it can be said that everyone has a unique personal culture


Bibliography:

Unidentified Weekly World News articles
Lowe, Norman. Mastering Modern World History. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print.
Paz, Octavio. El Laberinto de la Soledad. New York, N.Y: Penguin, 1997. Print.
Martínez, Tomás Eloy. Santa Evita. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print.


Final note: this video we watched in history is another example of how varying language is used to express different views on past events, due to the range of culture and opinion, manifest in language, of the many historians
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-554458576098159340#docid=-2736111333508202187