The Nature Of Logic And Perception
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Introduction
Thinking is done effortlessly by most people and is often influenced by our emotions or stimulated by factors within our environment. Thinking is activated by the things people see, hear, taste, smell and feel and this reactive thinking is often void of logic or reasoning — a simple sensory reaction to stimuli. More than just a simple reaction to stimuli is perception, which is our sensory experience of the world around us and involves both the understanding of environmental stimuli and actions in response to these stimuli. Through the perceptual process, individuals acquire knowledge about our environment that is critical to our survival and perception not only creates our experience of the world around us; it allows us to act within our environment. Thinking that involves comprehending, analyzing, evaluating, internalizing and application, is described as Critical Thinking. Critical thinking occurs when individuals or groups seek logical, relevant and reliable knowledge and values about their environment. One of the bases of critical thinking is logic and logic is described as a perspective discipline which involves methods and principles used to distinguish correct from incorrect reasoning.
Perception
The environment or the world around us plays a vital role in developing or ability to think and think critically through exposure to and interaction with stimuli. Perception is the primary source of knowledge about the world around us. The perceptual process is hard to understand or identify as it takes place in the brain at a pre-conscious level of cognition. But somehow, it organizes the input such as sight, taste or smell into objects and events. For example, one may be able to tell, by the smell of certain foods cooking, that the time of is either lunch or dinner time. The process continues as perceptual organizations are then taken over by higher cognitive levels and complemented by existing knowledge, so that one can become aware of and safely navigate through the environment.
Some would argue that people take the perceptual process for granted, but how many people truly understand the processes that take place within their brains to differentiate black from white or a whisper from a shout. However, the perceptual process may usually succeed in delivering a clear organization. The constant and ever-changing incoming perceptual information is organized and reorganized in a multitude of ways, but may be affected by perceptual blocks depending on ones level of perceptions.
Perceptual Blocks
“Perceptual Blocks are obstacles that prevent the problem-solver from clearly perceiving either the problem itself or the information needed to solve the problem.” The US Department of Justice (2007). Perceptual blocks include:
Seeing what one expects to see: stereotyping — one cannot see clearly if one is blinded by preconceptions and information that does not fit ones stereotype may be devalued or disregarded.
Paradigm-the way we see the world, affect very powerfully how one interacts with other people. As clearly and objectively as we think we see things, we begin to realize that others see them differently form their own apparently equally clear and objective point of view. Paradigm shifts – need to make adjustments as we learn more about culturally, ethnically, or racially different people. This may be like a conversion from one belief system to another.
Difficulty in Isolating the Problem — this may occur as a result of inadequate clues or misleading information or improper problem-identification and isolating the problem.
Tendency to Delimit the Problem Area Too Closely. Placing/imposing too many constraints on possible solutions creates tunnel vision and blinders.
Inability to See the Problem from Various Viewpoints — the way or no way mentality. One needs to see the problem form the others point of view.
Saturation — the trickiest aspect of saturation is that one thinks one has the data, even though one is unable to produce it when needed. The data arrives only occasionally or in the presence of large amounts of distracting data.