Key words
ad hominem, belief bias, deduction, enthymeme, fallacy, hasty generalisations, lateral thinking, loaded questions, post hoc ergo, quantifier, rationalism, rhetoric, syllogism, vested interest, vicious circle
Key concepts
Besides the traditional five senses, We have also a sense of balance, pain and temperature and also a kinesthetic sense
What is in the mind and what is in the world? Our senses are an important source of knowledge about the world; but rather than passively reflect reality, they actively structure reality.
The mental construction of reality - an example would be that what we see is affected by a large number of factors and the light into our eyes is only one of them.
Perceptual illusions - 'Perception' is a complex process which can be thought of as consisting of two distinct elements - sensation, provided by the world, and interpretation, which is provided by our minds. Perception consists of two elements, sensation and interpretation, but we are often not consciously aware of the latter element.
Context - The way we see something depends partly on the context in which we see it. In everyday life, we are constantly making contextual judgements, without being aware of it.
The role of the unconscious - Many of the interpretations we routinely make about the world happen at an unconscious level.
Selectivity of perception - We only notice some things in our perceptual field and overlook others.
Psychology of perception - While our five senses give us valuable information about the world, they each have a limited range of sensitiviy, and capture only certain kinds of data in their net
There are three main theories about the relationship between perception and reality:common-sense realism, scientific realism and phenomenalism.
Despite its immense power to extend our observations, our technology has potential, paradoxically, also to block them.
Argues that current parenting trends that emphasize early learning through memorization and repetition are actually harmful for children, stifling their creativity and preventing them from learning basic problem solving skills and focuses on the importance of letting children play and have fun and understanding the learning experiences offered through creative, unstructured, independent play.
A psychologist describes the quirky ways the human mind works, discussing everything from speed dating and signs of lying to decision making and what shapes a person's sense of humor.
A nonfiction graphic novel that explores the development of the levitation trick and how it traveled among three early-twentieth-century magicians: John Maskelyne, Harry Kellar, and Howard Thurston.
A collection of classical philosophical thought puzzles and experiments that push language and reason to their logical limits.
Presents approximately two hundred color optical illusions, puzzles, conundrums, and other sorts of brainteasers, and includes solutions
Studies the psychology behind pictorial representation, including theories on the imitation of nature and the role of tradition, and discusses artworks of the ancient Greeks, Renaissance painters, impressionists, and cubists as examples.
Contains an examination of synesthesia, a condition in which one sensation conjures manifestations of another, based on a study of a man who felt physical shape in flavor, and includes information on how this affects the understanding of human ability to perceive reality.
Selections that demonstrate how and why rationalism and empiricism came about, also examine the disparities between the two schools and the similarities of their common assumptions.
Contains 225 brainteasers, including logic tricks, number games, paradoxes, puzzles, and other , presented in the form of a nightly riddle presented to the king by Scheherazade of "The Thousand and One Nights."
How can we know if our senses are reliable? What is the role of expectation or theory in sense perception? What is the role of language in sense perception?
Sense perception is the process by which we can gain knowledge about the outside world. Traditionally, there were believed to be five senses: sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing. However, many now argue that there are others such as a sense of heat, sense of pain, sense of movement, sense of balance and the senses of hunger and thirst, or a sense of where our body parts are.
Historically, the view that the senses provide the basis for all our knowledge was challenged by the idea that prior concepts might be needed before any perception takes place at all. Indeed, it is common now to view sense perception as an active process of interpreting the world according to prior expectations, conceptual frameworks and theories. There is, therefore, some disagreement as to whether we directly perceive the world as it is, or whether perception is an active process where we supply much of the content of our experiences ourselves.
from the IB 2015 Study Guide
'We hear and apprehend only what we already half know' Henry David Thoreau
'The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend' Henri Bergson
'A fool sees not the same tree that the wise man sees.' William Blake
'Things do not seem the same to those who love and those who hate, nor to those who are angry and those who are calm.' Aristotle
'We sometimes get all the information, but we refuse to get the message' Cullen Hightower
'You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus' Mark Twain
'Two thirds of what we see is behind our eyes' Chinese proverb