Learning through our senses

Lately, we have been learning about how humans learn through their senses in TOK classes. We had a lecture about senses our teacher talked to us about them for some time, she said that we, humans, rely almost completely on them and she showed us an example in which two people were having a conversation about an earthquake. Person “a” said that it had reached the cost of certain island and person “b” said that it was not probable, because scientists had said the earthquake didn’t have the magnitude needed to reach that island, however when person “a” affirmed that he had been there and he had actually felt the floor move, person “b” didn’t contradict him and immediately believed what he was being told. Then the teacher asked us why we are so happy to believe the information we gain through our senses. Some people said that it is because other people can confirm the knowledge we gain through them, for they gain the same information. Others said that it is because our senses are the most direct interaction we have with the world we live in.

  
I believe that the first reason can be valid to certain degree. It is true that some of the things we perceive can be confirmed by other humans, like when you hear a noise and you ask the person next to you if she also heard it, but the truth is that you don’t know if the information they are receiving is exactly the same as yours, there is no way to be sure if you hear the same sounds, see the same shapes or the same colours. In fact I have wondered a lot of this last one. Are the colours that I see the same ones others do? Maybe other people see in colours that would be absolutely unknown for you if you saw them. But you cannot know it, because there is not a way, at least for now, to enter other person’s head and see what they are seeing. This is the reason why I believe the second argument is the most valid one, after all, the closest thing we have to what we call reality are our senses, and we have to rely on them and on what others tell us to try to understand our world.

We also made an exercise in which we were shown a painting by Picasso. Our teacher asked us to look in detail to the image for a few seconds and then she made some questions. When we shared the answers, we saw that there were small variations of them depending on who had answered them, and we realized that being exposed to the same piece of information doesn’t necessarily mean that we all gain the same knowledge. People don’t always focus on the same elements when they are exposed to a piece of information.

After this, we saw a diagram that showed the small range of colours and sounds that humans can see compared to the ones that other animals see and to the ones that we know that exist. It was shocking to realize that there’s so much we cannot see or hear. Those colours and sounds are there, but our senses are limited and even though they exist, even though others can perceive them and are used to doing so, we cannot. It is frustrating to be aware of all these and know there is nothing that can be done for the moment. The connection between what is “really” there and what we perceive is far from being true. Nevertheless, this does not mean it is incorrect. Our vision is correct, it’s just too incomplete.

But of all the things we learned, the one that interested me the most was synesthesia. They are people with a condition which causes them a “confusion of their senses”, their modalities (touch, taste, sight, and hearing) are crossed. This means that they can, for example, not only see colours, but also taste them, or they both see and smell words. There are different theories to explain why it happens. One theory suggests that it is a normal state of a baby’s developing brain and that synesthetic people do not grow out of it. Another theory says that we all have some kind of synesthesia, but we haven’t noticed. Before this class, I had already heard about this condition and I found it really interesting. Again, it is socking to realize there’s so much most of us cannot perceive. 

In addition, we learned that lots of people talk about “what scientists say” as something truer than what people sense, but in reality, scientists depend on their senses to obtain data from what their measuring tools obtain. All these ideas have made me think that maybe all what I have been learning for the past years is not completely true. And not only in sciences like biology, but also in knowledge areas as history. Actually, I remember that some years before, I was learning about the Inquisition both in History and in Religion class. Each teacher taught it in an entirely different way. The funny thing was that while my religion teacher was really catholic and defended the church in every aspect, my history teacher was an atheist and she critiqued the Church a lot. Then, all what we learn from other people differs from reality depending on the way they see the world, their experience and their knowledge. 

Martin, Victoria. "What Causes Cross Modality in  Synesthesia?" eHow.com

<http://www.ehow.com/info_8558839_causes-cross-modality-synesthesia.html?ref=Track2&utm_source=ask>

Images taken from:

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/openFITS/overview.html

http://simplificate.es/2011/09/30/sonar-por-ultrasonidos-dyp-m007/