Posted on August 31, 2020
Paradigms
Here is my conceptual understanding that emerges from this story and an explanation of it with reference to the story.
Our perception of reality can be subjective – it is based upon our interpretations, which are often shaped by the unique paradigms we create.
Paradigms are the way that we think, perceive and value the world, based upon a particular vision of reality. They often consist of a set of interrelated ideas for making sense of one or more aspects of reality. They therefore help provide us with a valid set of expectations about what might occur based on a shared set of assumptions. In Mark Twain’s story, we can see that the pilot’s paradigm, or his ‘visual interpretation’, was very different to his friend’s, hence giving us a prime example of different interpretations of the same reality.
Our brains are what let us see and interpret what is in front of us. Although both the pilot and his friend have the same human brain, and the same sensory information, they both perceive what is in front of them very differently. The friend is simply able to see the fact that there is a sunset, as well as water and logs that all look “breathtaking” – he focuses on the aesthetics of the scenery and does not seem to be making any further inferences about what he can see. However, the pilot of the steamboat not only sees the aesthetics of the scenery, but uses what he can directly see in order to deduce more information about the river – he says that the river is rising, and that there is going to be wind tomorrow.
The case study mentions that the pilot and his friend had not been trained in the same way, and this leads a small part of us to believe that it is possible that such a negligible external factor, such as their training, could have an affect on the way that they perceive the world around them. Their experiences and past knowledge is what altogether influences their interpretation of this scenery, which causes them to have highly different perceptions of the reality in front of them. This causes me to question the extent to which our interpretations and perceptions of the real world can be reliable, and also causes me to understand the fact that truths are highly subjective, and can sometimes solely be based on what we want to see, and what our brain wants us to see, rather than what is actually in front of us.
Most of the time, we tend to believe that our senses give us the truth – however, there are quite a lot of good reasons for thinking that every single thing that we might perceive is an interpretation, and that we therefore have no access to reality. This therefore links back to my conceptual understanding, and how our perception of reality can be subjective, as also seen through the case study.
Thanks Advika. Your CU is precise and clear – nicely done. What you have done here is to both summarise and explain the points very clearly. You’ve also made a nice link to perception. Well done.
The next step for you will be to see the implications. Here, that means recognising that the concept of paradigms as you have described it so well, raises implications / questions about truth. How can we know which paradigm is ‘better’? What does ‘better’ mean in this context? How do we resolve differences between paradigms? Do we even need to do so?
And things get really interesting when we apply this idea to ourselves; why is it that say, parents/children see things differently? What are the paradigms? What about brothers/sisters? Teachers/students?
But looking at differences in this light I think we can see that we can come to appreciate the multiple perspectives better. We’ll look at this over coming lessons.
Thank you, and well done.