Perception and knowing

Asking questions. How do we know anything? What is the role of our senses in allowing us to know?

Proposals: ways of knowing

• panpsychism - the entire universe is fundamentally composed of mind. Since we are part of the universe, we automatically know.
• faculty of knowing - humans have rationality or intuition or a knowing soul (non-material component of a person) that has the function of knowing.
• Human brains process information recieved through the senses, store memories and construct a mental model of the world.
• Ancestors have molded warnings into our mind. We are born with some phobias.
• ..add more

Testing the proposals

• Sensory deprivation. If our senses are what makes it possible to learn about the world, can we study the process by selectively depriving test subjects of sensory experience? Can we take advantage of natural cases of sensory deprivation and sensory disruption to learn about the role of the sense in learning?
• Neuropharmacology. How can drugs be used to alter brain function and probe how learning takes place and memory functions?
• Transcranial magnetic stimulation. Brain functions can be blocked by transcranial magnetic stimulation.
• Disease. Disease processes such as viral infection can result in the destruction of particular brain regions. Sometimes strokes, the treatment of epilepsy, degenerative nervous system diseses or removal of tumors results in damage to specific brain regions. What can be learned about how memories are stored from such selective destruction of brain regions?

Reading

Search the Entrez database for information about the topics listed above. Add useful sources of information to the list, below.

• Clinical studies of Speech/Language Delay, Hearing Loss and Learning Disabilities
• Activation of the prefrontal cortex in the human visual aesthetic perception

Discussion

• What are some things that people know without having to learn them by making use of their senses?
• What evidence exists for a human capacity to remember events that took place before birth?
• What evidence exists for Extra-sensory perception?
• If human knowledge comes from learning and the storage of information in the bran, is it possible to make artificial intelligences that would rely on computer technology as a medium for learning, memory and construction of conceptual models of the world?