domingo, 25 de septiembre de 2011

Sense Perception

For our second assignment we talked about what was sense perception was and how do we use it.                     

 We began the class by talking of 9/11 and all the after effects on the people that were directly affected and to those that affected but not on such a direct way. We began to ask our selfs who belonged to each one of these, for directly affected are places that have a big population like capitals in Europe or mayor cities and for the other one is for small cities. We talked about the secury sense and how it changed for everyone because of everyones experience at the time. This made us question weather we had the right interpreation of what sense perception is.

From this the teacher gave each one of us a number, then proceded to show the four senses we were to loose that next friday. The options to loose were sight, hearing, feel (by using 3-4 pair of gloves), or touch (by tying the hands in the back). For this excersise i had to loose feeling. The aim of this activity was to spend an entire school day with the chosen sense and answer four questions:
  1. How does the loss of a sense impact your learning?
  2. Was it frustrating?
  3. To what extent do our sense give us knowledge of the word as it really is?
  4. How, and to what extent, might expectations, assumptions and beliefs affect sense perception?
Many may believe that loosing a sence like feel is something that can easily be controled or ignored but its defenetly not easy because you use your sensibility to grab, move objects that help your learning, for example i couldn't use pencils or pens because i couldnt feel them so i couldnt grab them the way you´re supposed to so you can write and therefore i couldnt write. If you cant write it affects your learning because then there are no notes no help you later on when you need to go over things learned. For this there was a "solution" that was to use a computer, maybe you believe it will become easier and yes it is easier to write but its very slow because you dont know exactly what key you were pressing so you are unable to have all the notes needed.

It was very frustrating not being able to feel because thanks to it you guide yourself, you enjoy and experiment with new things. Like touching new surfaces, or touching your hair. Maybe this sounds superficial but thouching your hair feels reassuring and not being able to do it felt uncomfortable. 

Our senses give us a complete knowledge to everything that exist in this planet, for example by feeling without looking you are able know what object you are touching. Because of feeling we know the different type of surfaces there are things like sand; feel helps us know that its rough but soft at the same time. Many times you over look people that dont have one of this senses and that is because you simply dont know what it's like, and we go around thinking this simply because of the fact that you have all the senses, so if you can't see, hear or touch something then it means it's not real or it does not exist?
I worked all day with my new disability and tryed to over come it and for a while it worked ok but when it came to eating it was really hard because grabbing the pizza was extremely hard and not only that but i also tryed to help my friends and was very complicated because i had to guess were the pizza was. I was only able to have succesfull moments because of my sight; my sight helped me guide my self whenever i was unable to feel.

Sense perception is 100% affected by assumptions and believes because everything you do is based in the senses. You assume things that should't be just because you don't know what it is or how it works, your belives are one before having to loose a sense and change drastically once you understand the sensation.

Another thing that happened that day was that everyone laughed at us or stared everytime we passed next to them. This made me feel uncomfortabe at first because you feel judged when you dont understand why sinse its "normal" its not that you have some kind of mutation growing in your face but it felt as if everyone else tougth that. The moment people stared the most was when we had to eat, they looked at us very strange when i tryed to help my friends to eat weather because they were blind or had their hands tied up. As the day when by i started to ignore these looks and became something normal.

After doing this i know that humans do not have full knowledge of things because those that have all senses dont know how it is to not have one and how hard it is to adapt when you are different. But not olnly those that have all senses dont have full knowledge because a blind person doesnt know what it is not to be able to hear. What i learned from this day is to never take anyone for granted and specially never think you are better than them because you have something they don't have, since you don't know what they may have that you don't.

What I believe Theory of Knowledge is...

To understand what theory of knowledge i will be explaining what we discussed in class and the questions i posted earlier.

We questioned our selfs by asking if we were the only ones that have acces to it. I believe that we are defenetly not the only ones that have knowledge, it has been proven that many animals have a wide range of knowledge, aking us only one of the many species that use what we, humans call knowledge. As mentioned it the previous post knowledge doesn't make human being superior, so how is it that we classify species, i believe that by doing this human beings think they have a superior feeling over all living things.

But are we not confuing knowledge with things like instinct; is instinct something you are born with or you learn how to have it, so if knowledge is instinct then humans are not the "leaders" of knowledge since humans is the most inmature species because us humans, we dedicate our wholes lives to learning, to experiment yet we all die without knowing everything there is to know. While every other species dedicates it self to learn how to survive on their own and thats all they need.

What if instinct and knowledge are the ones that have made us what we are. How do we identify it, how long ago was it created, that is if it was created. Another thing that must be taken in a count is the kind of place we have created, wich is a place with certain cultures and society's. So is culture a bi-product of knowledge? Human beings use knowledge to create culture based in necessity. And what about society? Our society knowledge is what we call codes and rules. We use these to shape a culture.

Is there such thing as individual knowledge? this is something ver complex since knowledge is something social.

After reflecting and questioning knowledge we looked at a diagram of what ib believes knowledge can be divided. We were set to do a drawing based on the different parts. For me to completely understand what knowledge was and to know what i was going to draw i had to think beyond my normal thoughts and dig inside the things i know and those i think i know.

The different categories are:
  • knower
  • ways of knowing: emotion, reason, language, sence perception
  • areas of knowledge: ethics, maths, natural sciences, human sciences, history, art
This was my drawing:

 

lunes, 19 de septiembre de 2011

What is Tok?

Is knowledge exclusive to humans? how can anyone determine who has knowledge and who doesn't? Knowledge doesn't make human being superior, so how can any human being decide if they are the only ones capable of having knowledge if human knowledge is limited by a very important and insignificant factor that is language. is this determined by human arrogance? doesn't this make it become subjective? Are we born with knowledge or like animals do.. do humans learn how to have a knowledge? 

Humans are not the only ones capable of knowledge, every linving organism has a bit of knowledge.