Minggu, 11 Oktober 2009

Theory of Knowledge Prompt: Culture

What is the role of culture and language in the perceptual process? Given the partially subjective nature of sense-perception, how can different knowers ever agree on what is perceived? Do people with different cultural or linguistic backgrounds live, in some sense, in different worlds?

The role played by culture and language in the perceptual process is an important role as the way that the education a young child recieves will affect the way that he sees the world. Culture and Language will also affect this proces due to the child recieving different styles of education from what he reads and what he hears will affect the perception processes. But language also affects perception as words within languages will represent different meanings (e.g. Anjing, in Indonesia, this word means dog, whereas in Chinese it means be quiet). Thus this explains how the language will affect the perceptual process of the person.
But also Culture affects perceptual process, as different cultures may have clashes because of the differences. These maybe caused as different cultures have different do’s and taboo’s which affect the “rules” of how someone may interact with another, yet another culture may have another do and taboo which can be on parallels with the other cultures.
The agreement created between different knowers will often come from the many arguments and solutions within the process of creating general knowledge which would be known by society. These pieces of knowledge may come from the compromises that may have been met or created during the creation of general knowledge.
People with different cultural or linguistic backgrounds, may live in a different world in another culture as they may not be able to understand the language or cultural processes. This may occur due to the culture clashes that have occured during the time in which, these cultural processes that you have learned during the childhood will cause a person to live in a different world when they are placed in an environment where they are not comfortable or knowledgable about the culture being interacted with.

Plato's Cave and Matrix

Theory of Knowledge Prompt: Matrix – Plato’s Cave Comparison
The movie the Matrix and the picture of Plato’s cave share huge similarities, which could even possibly said that the matrix itself was based on Plato’s drawing of the cave. The cave which houses people tied to see only the front, and cant see anything else are only believing what they see on what seems to be a “movie” wall. The great fire being kindled behind them used to constantly trick them to make them believe only what possibly the authorities will want them to believe. These projections on the wall of a puppet show, constantly shown to the chained people, show how the human mind can be tricked into presuming that what they are currently seeing is the true reality in which they are living in.
The Matrix shares this theory of having people chained and only able to look at the projections in front of them and turn them into the reality that the victim is currently living in. Within the story presented by the movie, similarities between Plato’s cave and the movie itself can be seen, most obviously shown during the beginning, but the whole movie in its entirety of the virtual reality created by the computer system is the show that is being put on in the “cave”. These two pictures show that the mind can be tricked into believing that we see can be false, and there may be other truths lying out there that need to be discovered. But as well as being critical of what we see and what we believe, we should always try to create a 2nd mind set as a path that our mind can go down should it want to try to decipher another mystery and create another truth.

“By Doubting we are led to Enquire, by Enquiry, we percieve Truth” – Peter Abelard.

“By Doubting we are led to Enquire, by Enquiry, we percieve Truth” – Peter Abelard.

This statement or quote mention by Peter Abelard states that if we doubt, we will soon be curious to enquire about the topic, and after we start enquiring about the topic at hand, we will be able to learn and know about the truth. What made famous philosophers think about complex problems and try to create a solution or find the “truth” that could be linked with the problem they were dealing with, was their constant questioning. With this constant questioning of theories, and possibly realities, these philosophers soon became led to knowing the truth that is often taken as realities in the lives of modern day people.

“By Doubting we are led to Enquire,...” this statement shows the above, but means overall that not only doubting, but also questioning the theory could lead us to the inquiry. The inquiry part of the statement relates to how other people, or ourselves find a way to percieve or obtain the truth. Thus “...by Enquiry, we percieve Truth” has been fulfilled, and we have finally been able to come to terms and percieve the truth.

But there are some problems which prevent us to see the perfect truth, this is mainly due to the absence of a perfect truth. But the truth is not always the problem, as the way we inquire and find a solution or a “truth” that can be linked with the question at hand can always be mislead, misguided, or completely wrong. Some of the ways that people observed to gain a truth, was through methods of Empiricism, with this method of Empiricism, we know that sometimes our senses can trick us, thus the truth that we percieve at the end can be wrong.