Assignment 6: Perceiving and Believing

Assignment 6: Perceiving and Believing

Assignment 6: Perceiving and Believing

To relate the material in Chapter Four, “Perceiving and Believing,” to the assigned film. Your paper (3-4 pages) will consist of three sections as follows.

• Introduction Paragraph (2 pts.)
• Briefly summarize the film in five sentences or less.
• Thinking (6 pts.)
• What was the event that inspired the film
• What caused the event
• What was the response
• How did different points of view include factual reports, inductive inferences, evaluative judgments
• How do perceptions and beliefs of others influence awareness of our “lenses?”
• Conclusion Paragraph (2 pts.)
• Briefly explain how the text relates to the reader in Chapter Four, “Perceiving and Believing.”
• What was the event that inspired the film
• What caused the event
• What was the response
• How did different points of view include factual reports, inductive inferences, evaluative judgments
• How do perceptions and beliefs of others influence awareness of our “lenses?”
• Conclusion Paragraph (2 pts.)
• Briefly explain how the text relates to the text in Chapter Four, “Perceiving and Believing.”

Chapter 4

Things aren’t always what they seem! This “Mae West Room” in the Salvador Dali Museum illustrates the complex and surprising nature of perceiving and making sense of our world. How do we develop clear and accurate perceptions of the world that are not biased or slanted toward one perspective?

Perceiving is actively selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensations: selecting to pay attention to, collecting sensations into a design or pattern, and interpreting what this pattern or event means.

Experiences shape our perceptions. We view the world through our unique lenses, which shape and influence our perceptions. We construct beliefs based on our perceptions. We construct knowledge based on our beliefs. Thinking critically involves understanding how lenses influence perceptions, beliefs, and learning.

Thinking is how you make sense of the world. By believing in an active, purposeful, and organized way, you can solve problems, work toward your goals, analyze issues, and make decisions.

Your experience of the world comes to you by means of your senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. These senses are your bridges to the world, making you aware of what occurs outside you; the process of becoming aware of your world through your senses is known as perceiving.

In this chapter, you will explore how your perceiving process operates, how your perceptions lead to the construction of your beliefs about the world, and how your perceptions and your beliefs relate to your ability to think effectively.

In particular, you will discover how you shape your personal experience by actively selecting, organizing, and interpreting the sensations the senses provide. We each view the world through a pair of individual “eyeglasses” or “lenses” that reflect our past experiences and unique personalities.

As a critical thinker, you want to become aware of the nature of your lenses to help eliminate any bias or distortion they may be causing. You also want to become aware of the lenses of others so that you can better understand why they view things the way they do.

At almost every waking moment of your life, your senses are bombarded by many stimuli: images to see, noises to hear, odors to smell, textures to feel, and flavors to taste. The experience of all these sensations at once creates what the nineteenth-century American philosopher William James called “a bloomin’ buzzin’ confusion.” Yet to us, the world usually seems much more orderly and understandable. Why is this so?

First, your sense equipment can receive sensations only within certain limited ranges. For example, animals can detect many sounds and smell that you cannot because their sense organs have broader ranges than yours.

A second reason you can handle this sensory bombardment is that from the stimulation available, you select only a small amount on which to focus your attention. To demonstrate this, try the following exercise.

Concentrate on what you can see, ignoring your other senses. Focus on sensations you were unaware of and then answer the first question. Concentrate on each of your other senses in turn, following the same procedure.

1. What can you see? (e.g., the shape of the letters on the page, the design of the clothing on your arm)

2. What can you hear? (e.g., the hum of the air conditioner, the rustling of a page)

3. What can you feel? (e.g., the pressure of the clothes against your skin, the texture of the page, the keyboard against your fingers)

4. What can you smell? (e.g., the perfume or cologne someone is wearing, the odor of stale cigarette smoke)

5. What can you taste? (e.g., the aftereffects of your last meal)

Compare your responses with those of the other students in the class. Do your classmates perceive sensations that differ from the ones you perceived? If so, how do you explain these differences?

As you perform this simple exercise, it should become clear that for every sensation you focus your attention on, countless other sensations are ignored.

You would be completely overwhelmed if you knew everything is happening at every moment. By selecting certain sensations, you can make sense of your world in a relatively orderly way. The activity of using your senses to experience and make sense of your world is known as perceiving.