In The Anatomy of Judgment, M. L. J. Abercrombie explains how information is gained through our perception. Abercrombie argues that interpretation is a very complicated task which we have been learning to do ever since we were born. Each of us has a different way of interpreting things we see because we often relates our past experiences when we are interpreting; so everyone has a way of interpretation according to his/her own experiences. In her discussion, Abercrombie explains two important concepts: schemata and context.
The author defines schemata as how our mind relates our past experiences and reactions to the new things we perceive through our sight. Sometimes when the things we see fit our expectation and our schemata, our past experiences help us to interpret. But when we see things that are different from our experiences and unexpected, our schemata can sometimes confuses our minds and causes misinterpretation - seeing things the way we want them to be. The function of schemata can be illustrated by the following example. Some people cannot swim or even hydrophobia because they have been pushed into the water or drowned when they were small, not because they didn't learn. For these people, the first interpretation they have when they see a swimming pool would probably be "it is a very dangerous place where you might be drowned, so don't go near it!" For some of them, no matter how hard you try to make them understand that swimming doesn't equal drowning, they will never try to go into the swimming pool. But for some of them who might be persuaded to try to overcome this challenge would find out that swimming pool is actually not dangerous if you know how to swim; after that, they will have a completely different interpretation of swimming pool. In this example, people who remain terrified of the swimming pool are making a misinterpretation by selecting the wrong schemata which relates to their past experiences. People who later learned not to be afraid of swimming have selected new schemata to interpret swimming pool.
Context is defined as that the way we interpret a part of the pattern is depended on the rest of the pattern. During our process of interpretation, isolated parts that affect our interpretation the most (known as "clues") guide us in selecting the right schemata to interpret this specific pattern; and when we find the right schemata, the rest of the pattern becomes the "context" or "background.
In life, what we perceive tends to show misconception in how the thought plays out. A good example would be the character Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American classic: The Great Gatsby. Gatsby was unable to distinguish between his love for Daisy, a reality, versus the illusion that he could recapture her love by establishing and inventing a fraudulent past. He believed he could repeat the past, and acquire a flaunting wealth. In the novel, Jay Gatsby seems incompetent in establishing a difference between the realities of his life versus the illusion he made out.
"The fact is that white-collar criminals are, in general, incredibly good at deluding themselves that they’re good people, even when they clearly aren’t." according to Felix Salmon on white-collar crime. The definition of a criminal is a person who has committed a crime but if you were to ask a white-collar criminal they wouldn't consider themselves a criminal. Many of the convicted white-collar criminals contrast their actions with "real" criminals who commit street crime. First I will summarize "Denying the Guilty Mind:Accounting for Involvement in White-Collar Crime" written by Micheal L. Benson. Then I will use information from my criminology class to better define white collar crimes. Lastly, I will define Strain Theory and how it relates to white-collar crimes The increase of certain strains that cause negative emotions such as frustration and anger better known as Strain Theory is the cause of white-collar crime.
In today’s society people are constantly judged, and a lot of the time this judgment is completely wrong. In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Curley’s wife is called a flirt and a “tart” (Steinbeck 28), but she is more than that. She is lonely and just wants someone to talk to, but that gets portrayed as something it is not. Curley’s wife is a woman who has been misjudged by everyone on the ranch. Through misunderstandings she is given a bad reputation, but this perception of her is completely wrong.
The primary issue that was addressed in the Journal article, “Moral Reasoning of MSW Social Workers and the Influence of Education” written by Laura Kaplan, was that social workers make critical decisions on a daily basis that effect others. They influence their clients’ lives through giving timely and appropriate funding to them and their families, through deciding should a family stay together or should they have a better life with another family, or connecting the client with appropriate resources that can enhance their lives. The article addresses data from an array of students from various universities. The researcher posed these questions; “Would social workers use moral reasoning (what is right and what is wrong) more prevalent if it was taught through an individual class during your MSW graduate studies, or if you obtain any other undergraduate degree, or if the ethic course was integrated in the curriculum?”
While Descartes believes this to be incredibly fundamental to human knowledge, there have been several critiques of this over the years. One example that goes against mental transparency is Freud’s idea of the unconscious min...
Schemes are individual mental representations of the world and one’s understanding of it. Through an organized set of related information stored in long-term memory, a schema arranges cognitive patterns developed from experience into
Chapter 3 introduces an idea on confirmation bias. This is when people who have already concluded their thinking is accurate and correct, finds evidence to support what they have already known or believe. This occurs especially when an individual is so focused on an idea or object, which correlates with chapter 40 on inattentional blindness. Inattentional blindness draws our perception away from surrounding details because the majority of us choose to focus on one particular detail that causes us to be thinking in a confirmation bias way for what we favor is to be the “right” answer in the world.
Imagine a researcher requesting you to copy a picture. It's a simple task. You move your instrument of illustration across a sheet of blank paper with ease, glancing from the given picture to your own sketch in progress. When you are finished you observe a satisfactory replica and feel a sense of accomplishment and proficiency with the similarity you have achieved between picture and sketch. Then the researcher queries whether you can tell him what you have drawn. You search the interconnected lines, the edges, and the shapes of your sketch but cannot answer what the picture represents. Finally, an explanation is given. You have just drawn a house- a simple triangle resting on top of a square. Your sense of accomplishment is quickly replaced with a feeling of despair.
“Because we use and rely upon symbols, we do not respond to stimuli in a direct or automatic way. Rather, through drawing on symbols we give meaning to stimuli and act toward them based on that meaning”, (Sandstrom, Page17, 2014). As a reader it becomes apparent that author Sandstrom will be discussing how our minds have the ability to process our daily actions and interactions without causing for interruptions or pauses in our daily routines. The formation of symbolism and connecting meaning is so minuet, that; without placing thought towards the subject one would never know such a thing
In Beau Lotto’s Ted Talk “Optical Illusions Show How We See” we could appreciate how our perception can vary based on the context. He explained the importance that color has in our lives and all of the factors that can alter how we perceive a color, such as illumination. Lotto showed how the light that comes through our eyes could mean anything, however it is our brain’s job to give meaning to that information by using patterns, associations, knowledge from past experiences, etc.
In “The Moral Instinct”, Steven Pinker argues for a sixth sense that humans have that is morality. This sense, just like the other five, can be skewed and mislead by evolution and culture of humanity. If humans can remove these illusions, Pinker believes that a universal morality can be achieved. He believes that people are born with a basic knowledge of morality and eventually learn to apply moral reasoning. Pinker explains how secular and evolutionary psychology are corrosive to morality. Ultimately, He agrees with the theory that Anthropologists Richard Shweder and Alan Fiske propose of a universal morality that divides into five themes of harm, fairness, community, authority, and purity. Pinker believes that these themes can be interpreted
This theory observes how people interact with each other and consider symbols and details of daily life. Theorists of this perspective support the idea that people associate symbols with a subjective meaning. Different people who see the same symbol will interpret it differently thus peoples perceived realities are different.
The way that each individual interprets, retrieves, and responds to the information in the world that surrounds you is known as perception. It is a personal way of creating opinions about others and ourselves in everyday life and being able to recognize it under various conditions. Each person’s perceptions are used as a kind of filter that every piece of information has to pass through before it determines the effect that it has or will have on the person from the stimulus. It is convincing to believe that we create multiple perceptions about different situations and objects each day. Perceptions reflect our opinions in many ways. The quality of a person’s perceptions is very important and can affect the response that is given through different situations. Perception is often deceived as reality. “Through perception, people process information inputs into responses involving feelings and action.” (Schermerhorn, et al.; p. 3). Perception can be influenced by a person’s personality, values, or experiences which, in turn, can play little role in reality. People make sense of the world that they perceive because the visual system makes practical explanations of the information that the eyes pick up.
“Context, in analysis of the humanities, refers to factors that surround a work of art or literature but may not be stated explicitly. This background information informs our deeper understanding of the work in question and allows us to analyze, rather than summarize, what we are studying. It is important to be aware of what the artist was experiencing in their time and reacting to or reacting against.” (https://valenciacollege.edu/west/arts-and-humanities/writing/historical-cultural.cfm )
Cognitive science focuses on how people structure their experience and make sense of them and how they relate their current experiences with the past ones that have been stored in their memory. Meanwhile, a person fits new information in an organized network of already accumulated knowledge known as schema. A person’s behavior is governed by the stimuli present in the environment, how one perceives and interprets the information according to the sc...