TOK presentation

Touch and Perception

Presented By:

Krish Raveshia Aditya Khosla

Introduction

 Much of our knowledge, it seems, does come to us through our senses, through perception.
Perception, though, is a complex process. The way that we experience the world may be determined in part by the world, but it is also determined in part by us. We do not passively receive information through our senses; arguably, we contribute just as much to our experiences as do the objects that they are experiences of.
How we are to understand the process of perception, and how this should effect our understanding of the world that we inhabit, is therefore vital for epistemology.

Perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. Touch is a ‘way’ of acquiring this sensory information. It is a medium of perception.


Introduction

Touch is the stimulation of the sensory neurons under our skin. Touching another person is a form of physical intimacy and non-verbal communication: both sexual and platonic.

There are two forms of touch: Active touch and Passive touch.

‘Touch is the way

To find out if they’re metro or gay’

Active Touch

Active touch, referred to as "touching" is an exploratory sense in which the impression on the skin is brought about by the perceiver himself. Examples of active touch include voluntary actions such as kicking, conversely kissing, hugging, handshaking and boxing.

Passive Touch

Passive touch is a sensory stimulation brought about by another party other than the perceiver himself. Examples of passive touch include getting slapped and getting a massage.

How we perceive touch?

Perception involves interpreting and organizing sensory information. Hence, whatever data is obtained by means of touch is correlated with past experience and areas of knowledge within our brain. By means of this analysis, we are able to comprehend the implications of “the touch.”

Significant Ways of Touching

Running your hand through someone’s hair
Hugging
Kissing
Spanking
Patting
Who? How? Where?
Every touch depends on more than the touch itself. Contrariwise, it depends on:
who is touching
how they are touching
where they are touching.

End


THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME

ANY QUESTIONS????

Does math function in the same way as our daily and written language?

Mathematics is often considered tool in many of the fields of science and business and economics. Mathematics, therefore, by itself does not provide any relevance. Math is also often considered the language of science. However, whether this meaning is metaphorical or literal is dependant entirely on the person.
I have always been a keen mathematics student, primarily infatuated by the relations and manipulations of numbers in many types and forms. However, these numbers and figures always were an accessory to an underlying objective in what the problem was. Mathematics always pursues its own criteria in conveying its message. For example, in mathematics higher level, we use the differentiation method to find the gradient of a curve at any point on the curve. Differentiating is not the objective, but what this presents to us is what matters.
Furthermore, the basic level at how one learns mathematics is also what matters. For example, many math teachers have their students do journaling on the math learning experiences and their math use experiences. Some math teachers make use of an environment that encourages students to communicate mathematical ideas through group discussions. Some math assessment instruments require that students explain what it is they are doing as they solve the math problems in the assessment. Both methods are helpful in their own right. Some teachers do not
I believe that Writing and mathematics are brain tools--they are powerful aids to the human mind. The abilities to use both written language and mathematics are so useful to people that these are "basics" in our formal educational system. The written language is fairly different from daily language for the reason of their distinct purposes. Daily or colloquial language focuses on merely getting across a message in its most literal meaning. Written language in poetry or prose acts as a tool to convey a message unable to be said in daily language/speech.



Mathematics does not always show the same attributes as other languages. However, the two are alike in many ways, not always at face value. Technically speaking, math has rules pertaining to its writing in order for it to make sense.

In my opinion, math is a tool for displaying and proving theorems. It is often not always evident in its content since the “numbers and symbols” don't always mean something concrete enough to provide the information necessary. In conclusion, I don't believe that math functions in the same way as our daily and written language mainly due to its lack of uses evident to the general public. If the use of math was explained in more detail to people who are not only directly related to the topic, math may be percieved as a language.

The Simple-Minded use of the notations “right and wrong” is one of the chief obstacles of the progress of understanding: Alfred North Whitehead

In accordance with Whitehead when he basically says that distinguishing between right and wrong is one of the basic problems of “the progress of understanding.” I believe that when we lay out a clear line between what is right and what is wrong, we are eliminating the plethora of possibilities in between. We eliminate the “buts” and “howevers” from all speech and everything becomes a “yes” or “no” answer.

As humans of social conscience, we always make an instantaneous judgment of something either being right or wrong. Acceptable or Unacceptable. This instantaneous reaction, according to me is one of the root causes of problems in the world and ironically for solutions as well.

Whenever we need to make a decision, our sub-conscience clearly and easily makes a decision whether a choice is correct or incorrect. It is up to our conscience to decide which decision to carry out. For example, for many teenagers in countries in basically all continents of the globe excluding Antarctica, they make a decision everyday (or at least every gathering they go to). It is to either drink or not to drink (or to engage or not to engage in narcotics/drugs and other depressants). Our sub-conscience, with knowledge of the effects of the latter would forbid us from consuming it. However our conscience; the decision maker decides whether to engage or not. The conscience looks at the moral aspects of the action and its effect on reality thus makes a decision. The conscience is thus the ultimate decision maker for something that is right or wrong.

Almost contradicting my last paragraph, I would like to analyze the relevance of something being right or wrong. Excluding for the moment all aspects of knowledge that are proved to be factually correct, “Is there a Right or Wrong?”. Taking the issue of capital punishment. Some are for and agree in incorporating it for they believe that if a crime committed is as grave as the life of another, then death is the only option. Others , on the other hand believe that humans make mistakes and for them, a second chance would be a better option. These conflicts are moral dilemmas. Each individual in the world has a right to make that moral decision. However, for a sensitive issue such as the above, what is right for one person is not necessarily right for another. From this we can assume that there is no absolute moral principle in society.

In conclusion, I would like to say that rather than looking into the black and white of things, venture the gray part of aspects.

“Truth is that which the community ultimately settles down to” Charles Pierce. Analyze and evaluate this claim.

Before analyzing this claim by Charles Pierce, we must dissect the context to make some sense of the claim as a whole. Firstly, the claim mentions the term “ the community.” This term may have been used to suggest all of civilization, with all miscellanies, which basically defines community as the whole world. Contrariwise, communities could be separate communities with different truths of their own. Religious communities could be implied. However, does that truth refer to one-truth or the amalgamation of all combined beliefs. Moreover, the use of truth in the claim remains ambiguous. Two possibilities would be that the claim would be a definition of truth. That Truth is the “a claim that the community ultimately settles down.” Or could it be the fate of the alleged community and its eventual acceptance of the truth.

Firstly, referring to the previous paragraph about the definition of truth, we can notice that the definition of truth still remains ambiguous in philosophical terms especially when discusses with belief and knowledge. Truth apart from being something verifiable is the limiting concept from distinguishing knowledge from belief. Something that one may believe may be knowledge if it can be justified by proof or justification. Basically, if it can be stated to be true. Until that happens, a belief remains a belief.

When Pierce mentions the word “community,” his point was to leave the claim as ambiguous as possible. A community is a set of people with some shared element. Basically, anything in common. Whether it is a group of people with similarities in religion, location, or even sexual orientation, they all represent a community. Thus the claim implies (also a liberal expression) that these groups of agents settle upon a believe to be true. However, this raises questions on the technicality of the latter. To begin with, do these truth apply to the world outside the community or the community itself or does it restrict itself to the respected communities? Also, what validity do these communities have to hold these as truths?

Moreover, Charles Pierce implies in his claim, he includes the postulates that are both correct and incorrect. For example, a test was carried on the latter on the discovery channel where a group of five men came together for an assessment where they needed to ask a series of questions. Four out of the five men were actors. Only one of the men was chosen at random for the experiment. The questions were to point at the tallest line drawn on the display. Through out the experiment, as instructed, the four actors would always choose an incorrect answer. Along the experiment, the actors kept choosing an incorrect line. Eventually, the one randomly chosen man chose the incorrect answers. The latter story gives us an example of how the complete community settles upon the fallacious claim. This both agrees and disagrees with the claim made by Charles Pierce. It agrees since the “community” collectively agrees with one answer. Although incorrect, the answer was made by the complete acceptance of all members of the community. It disagrees because the answer was untrue. Even though the example proved that that the answer of the majority was ultimately the answer of the whole, the example does not talk of the truth. They only refer to issues of sociology and how a lone party can succumb to pressures of society and agree to something he is not completely in accordance with.

The claim, when relating to natural Science seems to contain flaws. This is mainly dealing with new discoveries in technology and science in general. For example, Yip until someone proved otherwise, the entire world though that the world was that. And up until 60 years ago, the brightest men on Earth thought that the atom was the smallest being until the discovery of sub-atomic particles by John Dalton. One new discovery changed the belief of scientists and mankind in general. This raises questions for the claim, “ the truth,” since we cannot apply the latter if the truth has been proven false. How does the claim apply if the truth is no longer the truth? This situation would emerge many times in the period to come because science has new discoveries by the day. How does this change fall onto the nature of the claim and all its universality? Each new discovery in science or history can cause a deep-seated shift in paradigm. It may be a new phenomenon or a piece of recovered documents. What is true now can be proven false later. Thus in this area of knowledge there can never be an absolute truth. They can only be termed as interim theories constantly being revised and improved from before. Thus we can only claim today that the sub-atomic particles are the smallest beings on earth as the new truth until another comes in its place.

This claim does not seem to find space when talking about different belief systems and the ultimate truth. Taking the question of existence for example. There are several possibilities for them. For example, I believe in God. I believe that there is “someone.” I believe that he created us for a reason. A reason known only by “him,” undisclosed to the universe. However, someone may believe in the other theories created by men and women around the world. For example, the most popular of them all, the big bang theory including matter and anti-matter existing from nothing but vacuum. Also, there are those who believe in theories put forward by movies such as “The Truman Show” and “The Matrix.” They believe that humans are simply guinea pigs as a part of an experiment. They believe that someone is watching us. Someone, who is superior and gives us human’s a different situation to see how we respond to it and to each other. The same people in the same community can have different interpretations of it. However how does the claim compensate for the different beliefs and how would the complete community agree upon such a truth and if so what would it be?

In conclusion, Peirce’s statement is as varying and subjective as the truth itself – while it holds true and can be supported in many cases, the community cannot always decide on the truth, and the truth is therefore never known.

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