I completely agree with Alexander’s comments about the active nature of perception.

If you want a quick walk through regarding a ToK and modern perceptual model of perception, see this blog on Perception and Perceptual Illusions. This helps with concrete examples to “see” how active perception is:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201305/perception-and-perceptual-illusions

Also, here is a blog I did on the mind and the concept of informational interface:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/theory-knowledge/201804/the-human-mind-informational-interface-approach

Best intentions,
G


From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Alexander Bard
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2019 10:19 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The perceptual and socially constructed Nature of Reality?

If the assumption is that perception is a passive phenomenon, then it is best to walk out of one's chair blindfolded and just wait how many seconds it takes before you stumble into a wall and hit your head big time. Perception is anything but a Cartesian theater as anybody except an autist in a wheel chair experiences every minute of their lives. The world is not frozen for us to passively observe it at a distance. We are involved as agents in our own perception. So perception is fundamentally active and not passive. And it is constantly interactive, involved with the world within which it exists. So any comparison with say virtual reality and computer games becomes instantly irrelevant as Heidegger would agree. Perception then walks off and fantasizes about itself in the world but as soon as hard reality ("the real" in psychoanalysis) hits us again we are forced to alter our models of the world (and our own place within it). If we get a really hard hit, and it is collective, then that is called a paradigm shift. We change world view because we are forced to when the old world view no longer works or makes sense.

Best intentions
Alexander


Den mån 29 apr. 2019 kl 16:11 skrev Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>:
Hi TOK List,

  The “thought of the day” is the question: To what extent do we perceive reality and to what extent is reality a construction, either at the level of perceptual consciousness or at the level of the social construction of reality?

Brent’s point below is to remind us that our experience of reality may well be likened to a virtual reality or information interface. Here is a clip from the article Brent shared, which argues our perceptual world is a virtual informational representation of the outside world. [It is worth noting that the basic question regarding the distinction between how things appear to us and the actual reality outside is, of course, a very old one in philosophy]. Here are some key quotes from the Wired article:

“Not only do perceptual systems not evolve to capture the details of the real world, he argues, there's no reason to believe that the objects that we see have any correspondence to things that exist outside our minds.”

 "When you click a square, blue icon to open a document, the file itself is not a blue, square thing," he says. In the same way the physical objects that we see are just symbols, and the space-time in which they seem to exist just on the desktop of our specific interface to some objective reality beyond. Like any interface, it must stand in causal relationships to an underlying structure, but it's all the more useful for not resembling it.

Let me add to this question perspectives on the linguistic-social-cultural construction of reality. This is related to Brent’s comments and the wired article, but it is also different in that the focus here is more on linguistic concepts and those kinds of meaning making structures (i.e., systems of justification), rather than sensory-perceptual phenomena (i.e., experiential consciousness) although, of course, there are relations between these domains. What follows are two articles that raise interesting reflections on the social construction of reality.

The first is on Mayan culture and their conception of “personhood”. This gives rise to the question of “To what extent is our construction of personhood constructed and how might it be constructed differently in different cultures”
https://aeon.co/ideas/a-rock-a-human-a-tree-all-were-persons-to-the-classic-maya<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__aeon.co_ideas_a-2Drock-2Da-2Dhuman-2Da-2Dtree-2Dall-2Dwere-2Dpersons-2Dto-2Dthe-2Dclassic-2Dmaya&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=djw7CMADEzR_jBqJCMb_pQZUTaveP2GD-fbP_wBw3mQ&s=zgGfTYdvlTUHZhigc-kzPmyFxhYmtMAojvhCBTDa2W4&e=>

The second is about the cultural conceptions and constructions of fatness, gender and sex:
https://quillette.com/2019/04/26/the-sad-truth-about-fat-acceptance/<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__quillette.com_2019_04_26_the-2Dsad-2Dtruth-2Dabout-2Dfat-2Dacceptance_&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=djw7CMADEzR_jBqJCMb_pQZUTaveP2GD-fbP_wBw3mQ&s=Du-JerxReAoqt2hwXzN-5KdjQvZAtM22OsSXDo-pGGw&e=>

Best,
Gregg


From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> On Behalf Of Brent Allsop
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2019 3:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: use ToK to understand subjective phenomenology and objective science


Hi Gergg,

That looks nice.  I’m obviously kind of biased, but it seems to me you are glossing over the qualitative nature of reality, like redness and greenness.  It seems to me everyone needs to understand that the qualities we think are qualities of stuff “out there” are really qualities of stuff in our brain.  We have no ability to perceive qualities of anything ‘out there”.  For example Donald Hofman really understands this very important stuff, as you can see in this wired article<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.wired.co.uk_article_the-2Dreality-2Dof-2Dsurvival&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=OjN5xOiTickcRLf-6DkJ56wcoEKyrYt1wkGyZVFMias&s=PqCFeHwcFLerbCAm8Nn5y7EmBna03vmBH-9G0PPV89s&e=>.

Anyway,  my very biased 2 cents worth.

Brent

On Sun, Apr 28, 2019 at 9:14 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Hi Lists,
  I am working on a blog or general document that attempts to explain how the ToK System provides a new way to understand both ourselves in the world and provides a scientific account of the world and our place in it. I don’t think there is a [synthetic natural scientific humanistic] philosophy that really does this in a successful way. Some, like Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory get close. But I think the ToK does this better than any other system. And that is one of the reasons it is valuable. It offers a much greater picture of consilience between humanistic and scientific modes of thought. Attached is a draft. I welcome thoughts if you have them.

Best,
Gregg
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