In this week’s TOK lesson, we moved past narrow sense-perception and considered the concept of perception and interpretation on a different level; how paradigms we hold can influence our understanding and interpretation of things we perceive as “true”, but may not be a universal truth. To be honest, I hadn’t really understood what a paradigm was until this week, but from what I understood from the textbook and from conversations, I came up with this conceptual understanding.
The fact that we “construct” an interpretation of the truth suggests that we will never truly know an objective world. The paradigms we hold are developed from evidence and our sense-making of that evidence, which in turn affects our ability to remain objective if we already have preconceptions hardwired into our thought processing.
When it comes to the way we “construct” our interpretations of the truth, this would relate to the River Boat story (Life on the Mississipi) as the novice steamboat pilot appeared to have very different interpretations of the scene around him compared to his untrained friend. Without trying to repeat the textbook, this seems like a straightforward example of one truth and two outlooks on this truth, presenting a good case for how our view of the world can never truly be objective even if we try. This made me think of the pilot and how he might think his lack of emotion and eye for beauty might make him more objective, when in reality he’s missing out on an entire narrative that is still very valid, even if it doesn’t serve him any purpose. For the second part of the CU — I’m aware there shouldn’t be a second part but I like to consider it as an extension of the first — the pilot must have gone through training and learnt how to take in the evidence around him to draw conclusions that would be more useful and informative than superficial claims about the aesthetics of the scene. It wasn’t always like this though, “I had lost that which could never be restored to me while I lived…I still kept in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me”. He had been able to see the purely aesthetic paradigm of the world around him and use that as a method of interpretation, however because he had essentially “relearnt” how to interpret the world and the river, this new paradigm was much more useful to him and perhaps disregarding the ‘less useful’ one became second nature to the point where he had lost the ability to call upon the aesthetic paradigm.
This makes me wonder if there are paradigms stronger, more dominant than others. If there’s something in human behaviour related to survival instincts causing us to automatically assume the most ‘useful’ paradigm to us if it helps us survive. But then this wouldn’t make sense as we can still see beauty today… Maybe-no, our perception has changed definitely since the time when we heavily relied on our survival instincts. But then you could argue that people who specialise in survival and activities in the wilderness, or even the Sentinelese (maybe) would have kept and maybe even refined this paradigm.
One more thought I had about the River Boat Story was that he, the pilot, had once seen the paradigm of beauty, but had been replaced by the other. His friend, on the other hand, had only known the paradigm of beauty and had no clue what the other was like. This could perhaps be implying that we shouldn’t choose ignorance if it’s purely for fear of losing that initial and ‘innocent’ way of interpretation. I don’t know what to think about that.