Prescribed Titles Number 7

"We see and understand things not as they are but as we are." Discuss this claim in relation to at least two ways of knowing.

This quote can be related to perception a lot, because the things that we perceive are based upon the way we interpret things. In TOK class, we were given pictures of people, and we were told that there were people who were from the city, and who were not from the city. We had to pick which people were from the city, and which were not. Based upon our perception, we chose the people who had baseball caps on as city-people, and the others, who were dressed differently, as not city people. However, in reality, they were all the same people- nobody was from a city because they were all the same people. However because of our experiences, and our perception, we saw these people differently and immediately grouped them into categories, basically without realizing it. Therefore, this shows that the way we are, everything that we are made up of, completely effects how we perceive and understand things. If we were from a different country, and we were given this type of task to complete, we probably wouldn't interpret them as city people, or not city people, because instead we would find something else that would fit into our schema. Maybe we would focus more on their hair style, or their height, and we would group the people based upon that. Regardless of what we would be grouping people as, we would group them as something, because we need an explanation for why something is the way that it is. We gravitate towards an explanation that we can relate to best, which is what we did in this situation, which was that because they had different clothes on- they were from a different area.

Reason is another way of knowing which relates to this quote. As human beings, we are constantly using reason to justify how we feel about a certain thing. If we don't believe that a thing is a certain way, we try to justify it and make it seem right for our own life. We always think that what we think is right, which effects how we may interpret certain situations. We sort of block out other views, which limits what we see, or if we don't do that, we create syllogisms to make what we think seem right. For example, in TOK class we studied Karazdick, and argued whether or no he was a monster. Some people believed he was a monster, and used reason to justify how they felt. A syllogism of this would be "All people who kill massive numbers of people are monsters. Karazdick killed massive numbers of people. Therefore, Karazdick was a monster." Therefore, even though this may not be true that he is a monster, the person is interpreting it this way because of their own personal feelings, and they are using reason to justify it. Another person could say that "Humans can not be monsters. Karazdick is a human. Therefore, Karazdick is not a monster." This is another view of Karazdick, both views are correct, and it is based solely upon the person who is saying their viewpoint as to what is right or not.