PSYB51H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Heraclitus, Human Echolocation, Panpsychism
Document Summary
Week 1 may 8 th , 2015. Real: electrical signals interpreted by your brain: this is the world that you know. Plato"s the allegory of the cave (380 bce): our conception of reality is critically dependent on information gathered through our senses: we are like prisoners who are born and chained to a cave wall. We can only see the back wall of the cave where shadows are cast by fire. Negative view of what a person perceives: our understanding of reality is restricted to what we can perceive, scientists view plato"s view of perception as wrong. Perception and your sense of reality are the products of evolution: survival, importance of type of energy in the environment determines which senses have developed. I. e. , we might not sense the entire reality but we probably don"t need to worry too much about that. E. g. , venus flytraps perceive vibrations: some animals are able to sense stimuli that humans can"t:
