Review: "The Anatomy of Judgement" by M. L. J. Abercrombie

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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.

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