The Link Between Our Minds And Our Environment

Sense perception is one way that allows us to interact and communicate with each other and the world. This is our primary way of knowing because our senses live experiences that we go through. Based on our senses we are to make interpretations of the world. For example, in class, each pair was given a box. Inside the box, there was one metal ball, but you had to figure out the structure or the form of a maze inside the box. We couldn't see inside the box, and we couldn’t touch the inside of the box. By using our sense of hearing and another way of knowing, imagination, we were able to make an educated guess of what the inside structure of the box looked like.

René Descartes thinks that the senses can deceive us about reality (Descartes, 25). This can be observed by

In Micah White’s “Mental Environmentalism”, the author emphasizes the detrimental effects imprudent and pervasive commercial advertising has on society and compares it to a dystopia where we are captivated by consumerism. White explains that we must maintain a healthy mental environment because our external reality is essentially a reflection of our internal world and with the way advertisements have plagued our minds, it has resulted in devastating global issues like climate change. With constant exposure to advertisements daily, our ability and potential to be imaginative and think freely is limited, both traits that are vital for a society to thrive and flourish.

There are six senses in total and these are known as languages of the mind, or ‘modalities’. These are Sight, hearing, feeling, smell and taste, although the last two can be put into the ‘feeling’ category. We use all of our senses in a particular situation but all of us will have a favourite which we are more comfortable with and are likely to fall back on in times of crisis. (Chrysalis pg. 4)

Emily Gilbert Mr. Dewey TOK Essay- Prompt X Oct 24, 2016 In order to gain knowledge of how the world really is, we need to use our senses to capture it in our own perspective. However, this is only to an extent. Everyone uses their senses when they are going about their daily lives, and since everyone is different, each person gains different information from each sense than the person standing next to them.

A person’s thoughts, feelings, emotion, and beliefs often shape ones decision-making process. Other components, including perception, memory, introspection, and reasoning also assist in the formation of opinions, shape our knowledge, and transform an individual’s viewpoint (Feldman, 2003, p. 3). Perception is how one sees the world around them, the sights, sounds, smells, and other senses creates an understanding of the external environment creating a mental image and often places an attachment to it.

Three reasons for believing in the accuracy or inaccuracy of sensory information is perception, interpretation, and knowledge. Perception is our sensory experience of the world around us and involves both the recognition of environmental stimuli and actions in response to these stimuli (Bagley, 2004). Through the perceptual process, we gain information about properties and elements of the environment that are critical to our survival. Perception not only creates our experience of the world around us, and it also allows us to act within our environment. Interpretation is a communication process, designed to reveal meanings, and relationships of our cultural and natural heritage, through involvement with objects, artifacts, landscapes and

This author ascribes to the empiricism paradigm. This paradigm is similar to empirical knowing in that it is based on the premise that what is known can be verified through the senses, or

Knowledge is what our society is based on and it can be obtained through numerous ways, including the three ways of knowing: emotions, reasons and sense perception. ‘An emotion is an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness’. ‘Reasons are statements presented in justification or explanation of a belief or action’. Last but not least is the sense of perception: ‘the understanding gained

The last point about mindfulness’s impact on environmental issues is a special one, for it focus on how mindfulness can facilitate the work of environmental activists. Hanh once said that “The best way to take care of the environment is to take care of the environmentalist” (Hanh, DR:87), and mindfulness can help us to achieve that from the following ways.

You have possibly known since elementary school that we have five senses: smell (olfaction), hearing (audition), vision ,taste (gustation), and touch (somatosensation). It turns out that this concept of five senses is overgeneralized. We also have a sensory system that gives information about balance (the vestibular sense), body situation and movement (proprioception and kinesthesia), pain (nociception), and temperature (thermoception).

Our senses help us interact with the world. Smell, hearing, sight, taste, touch, and external stimulus play a major role in shaping our perceptions of the surroundings and the world. To trust our senses means that we have justified belief of what we perceive is “true”. To what extent can our senses give us truth? In order to obtain a better understanding of under what conditions we can rely on our senses, we need to compare circumstances where they have most been true with circumstances where they most have not.

Psychology is the “science or study of the thought process and behavior of humans and other animals by their interactions with the environment”.(The Columbia Encyclopedia,2015) Studying sense perception, thinking, learning, cognition, emotions and motivation, personality, abnormal behavior, interactions between themselves and the environment are all vital to the interpretation of Psychology. With the formulation of the Hypothesis, based on casual observations, a systematic scientific testing procedure begins in order to obtain a resolution or determine if further test needs to be done. Psychology is considered to be a science in that it has many disciplines organized around them. Also data collection through “observation and measurement, using scientific research methods, and the research gathered in a controlled approach by sifting through all the information to derive all the descriptive, and measurable data needed for justification of the hypothesis” realizing that results may vary due to different factors.(Feist & Rosenberg, 2015, p.6)