Gabe Roderick
TOK G1
5 March 2010
B. How, and to what extent, might expectations, assumptions and beliefs affect sense perceptions? How, if at all, can factors that bias our views of the world be identified? Do knower’s have a moral duty to examine their own perceptual filters?
Expectations, assumptions and beliefs affect our sense perception by causing us to have predetermined our outcome on how we perceive. However this isn’t the case for those who can identify with the biases faced with looking at views on the world. Knowers that can identify with these biases are able to examine their own perceptual filters but this isn’t always the case so it is not indeed a moral duty.
As a knower, I face many expectations, assumptions and beliefs that affect my personal sense perception, sometimes this predetermines our outcome on how we perceive. I hear from other IB students that CAS is hard to do, so when I began my junior year I had the expectations that CAS will be a hard requirement for me to do. Due to my senses as a human this expectation made me feel as if I would see CAS as hard from hearing it was hard which hearing is the other sense involved. Another example is our own personal racism; is incident where two Sturgis students were accused of spraying racial slurs, myself began to believe it was a Neo-Nazi type thing but more importantly someone of German decent knowing the history of Germany. Those were my expectations and I assumed my expectations and assumptions had to be true but once I found out this wasn’t the case and they weren’t German I realized what had happen and tried desperately to avoid these expectations and assumptions from resurfacing again. However these assumptions and expectations of a place can be avoided, though its human nature and nature of perception to try to predetermine expectations on something and come up with assumptions that may or may not be true, to overcome this it’s possible for someone as a knower to keep an open mind about things and try their best not to predetermine these things before experiencing them.
It is very difficult to identify our bias on something, it involves a great about of thinking that a knower must do a lot in order to be a better perceiver then the usual amount of people when thinking. A personal experience with overcoming my own personal bias, is going to a school with a minority, even though the majority of the schools children where the minority. To elaborate on my example, I went to school where the minority of children were either, Mexican or African American, and they were always getting suspend, gang battles, drug deals, had no intention of learning etc. It felt like the cops were a part of the population of the school. Then upon coming to Sturgis this wasn’t the case, I had come in with an open mind to learn but a closed mine on the minorities do to my own personal bias. It took me about 3 months into Sturgis to learn that it wasn’t the case about the minorities and they were here for the same reason I was to learn. I had seen that it was my own bias that stopped me from seeing this earlier. It is hard to identify because change isn’t something we like to do especially when it comes to older people as well. Though some can identify with biases don’t always believe it’s a moral duty to admit to them. Look at the AOK science and ethics. In the science part people have been arguing for years over evolution people, with faith vs. science. Over the years with this debate I’m sure personal bias have been surfaced in a knower though they might have not felt it a moral duty in a sense to examine it rather than ignore it and go along with what they believe and perceive, even though both sides had “evidence”. The quotations are around evidence because it may or may not be true due to us being blinded by personal biases such as fossil records which species do it represent one may see it to represent the species they are looking for due to the visual observations and the brain telling the person what they are truly seeing or what it wants you to see not just what you’re eyes are seeing. Also for ethics, is it morally wrong to kill someone in a vegetated state because their brain responds “yes” when you ask them, human bias definitely play a role in this, since we have technology and science to prove that this is happening we can overcome our bias to know were doing the right or wrong thing. I personally agree and believe in this because I’ve seen family and friends suffer through pain when I wished it was as easy for them to end it by saying yes. So if scientists are able to extensively prove that a vegetated patient is able to respond “yes” to wanted to die then they have every right to as a human. I know it’s a personal bias because of personal experiences and I know due to these experiences I assume as patients like this with no chance of recovery want to be killed when this isn’t the truth in all cases. As for examining the perceptual filters I don’t believe personally as a knower that it’s our moral duty.
However it truly all depends on the knower and their overall perception of WOK. For example people who can reason we’ll and can remove emotions which are WOK from the perceiving it is their moral duty overall others to examine the perpetual filters of themselves.
Word Count- 916
Glossary-
Ethics- the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.:medical ethics; Christian ethics.
Natural Sciences- a science or knowledge of objects or processes observable in nature, as biology or physics, as distinguished from the abstract or theoretical sciences, as mathematics or philosophy.
Knower- to perceive or understand as fact or truth; to apprehend clearly and with certainty: I know the situation fully.
Perception- the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding.
Bibliography
Company, Houghton Mifflin. Know. 2009. 26 February 2010 .
—. Perception. 2002. 26 February 2010 .
Mifflin, Houghton. Natural Sciences. 2002. 26 February 2010 .
The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Ethics. 2002. 26 February 2010 .
