Try to write a Conceptual Understanding that you think emerges from this. You might like to use nouns such as story,  sense-making, information,   narrative,   perceptions, construction, interpretation,  subjectivity, reliability valid, truth, explanation, paradigm evidence. Explain your CU with reference to the River Boat Story:

I think the concept of a paradigm is subjective. We are disparate to one another, meaning we interpret things in different ways. For instance, we may be watching the same movie but I find it sad while you find it humorous. Sometimes we can get wrapped up in our interpretations and forget that we see the world through our own paradigms. Although it was difficult for me to grasp, I now understand that the world is simply invented in our brains, and each place, event, idea is just a figment of our imagination. We can use colour as an example to explain this. Perhaps there is a rose, what I would describe as a crimson colour. However, when we take a look into our eyes, there is no colour that actually passes through, there are simply electrical signals. If we take a look into our brain, there is no colour getting into our brains, it is instead, created within our brains. This suggests that the rose is colourless but we create a colour within our minds. This alludes to the profound idea that our perception of the world is a creation in our minds. Our brain tries to construct our perception. What we see gives us ‘truth’ but it is hard to discover what truth really means when everyone’s is different. We seem to create our own realities, our perception of the world fabricates knowledge that we hold true to ourselves. It is not true, but it makes sense. It works for us because as humans, we like to make sense of things as it brings us comfort and security.

A paradigm could then be described as a way to make sense of things – a form of tidiness where we can order our reasoning and knowledge. Perhaps we can’t control our paradigms, they are controlled by nature and nurture: our biology, development, culture, and upbringing. It goes beyond what we see, smell, taste, and touch, maybe proposing how we ‘create things’ rather than ‘find things’, that what we experience, depends on us. This could explain how when someone is brain dead, they are considered dead – regardless if their heart is still pumping and lungs working at full capacity. Life is created within our brains, and once this life is taken away, we are no longer living.

The idea of paradigms can be explained through the riverboat story. It is where one person appreciates scenery of the sunset, majesty of the waters, nature’s curves, where the other person sees no more than a grim, earnest geological formation. Although they see exactly the same scene, they interpret it completely differently. I can connect this to something I have experienced. I’ve been to various holiday destinations and having had traveled a lot, I constantly compare one destination to the other saying how one is lacking in an area where the other is not. If I think back to one of my first travels to Japan, I appreciated it wholly, similar to the first person in the riverboat scenario. I saw the fluffiness of the snow, the crevasses within the hills, the bareness of the trees. I experienced it for the experience. I feel that now, whenever I travel, I experience it for comparison matters. No matter how hard I try now, I am unable to detach myself from past travels and experience something with a new pair of eyes. Frankly, the realisation that – the more I know, the less appreciative I become – scares me, but it is what makes me-me.

I wonder if there are ways that I can shape my own paradigms. Perhaps my increased consciousness and attention that has been drawn to it is a starting point. Maybe realising my plumb rooted convictions and considering my empirical reasons for believing what I believe will allow me to reflect and think critically about the world I have created within my mind.