I wanted to see if the made up story below is a good example of a perceptual knowledge shortcoming and then strengthening of sensory knowledge.
Big Bobby gets his driver's license, hops in his car, and drives off on to the cluttered roads of Indianapolis. Happy as can be, he drives along (pretty quickly) with other traffic, avoiding the cars he can see around him. He keeps driving until he no longer has traffic around him to worry about. He approaches a blinking red/yellow stoplight with trees all around, proceeds to go into the intersection, and SMACK!!, Big Bobby gets hit by another car...
Why in the world did he get hit? Poor, hospitalized Bobby is colorblind (a special red/yellow case) and he could not tell the color of the light. He later learned that he could have known because the red light is on top and the yellow light is in the middle. Does using the Driver's Manual pictures count as a way to strengthen his sensory knowledge? or is this knowledge not relevant to the visual sensory knowledge being strengthened. Experience could be said to be the mean by which he learned his lesson, but does that tie into strengthening sensory knowledge as well. I think that Driver's Manual is the "strengthener" because, even though he hasn't fixed his colorblind problem, he knows the patterns and regulations on the stoplights set by other people so that he will not have another accident.
I also wanted to talk about the topic people were talking about at the end of class about if emotion is a way of knowing. Certainly humans develop emotions by the perceptions of our senses. But what about if there was a matured human who was sheltered from any sort of society, and was then suddenly placed into fierce combat. What would the reactions of the human be?
Gunshots (audio), wounded people (visual), immense vibrations (tactile), smoke (smell), all of these are occurrences that we can detect, but what about the human in the experiment? The human starts hiding, hands over head, looking around crazed. Where did it learn fear? I think that humans are hosts of these complicated mental phenomenon naturally, no matter what. However, our mind could experience these things so quickly that all of the phenomena are pieced together so amazingly that humans actually develop emotions subconsciously. There are always more than one possibilities for this subject. I view emotion as a natural reaction, from our senses, but not as a method of gaining knowledge.
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Your story is a great example of sensory knowledge and how it can be strengthened. I would agree that the learning from the Driver's Manual about the placement of lights would be a strengthening agent. You could add the words of an instructor as well.
Your example of the mature human who was not reared in any society is a well-known way to explore a number of issues. If it could be shown that he would walk around the combat zone curious, but unfazed, this might suggest that emotion is purely learned and entirely based on culture. Your assumption that he would react with stereotypical motions of fear suggests that emotions are hard wired into us.
One thing that would support your view is actual medical conditions, such as some forms of Asperger's Syndrome in which people appear to have no concern for other's feelings. They seem incapable of feeling emotion, despite that they are reared in environments where others develop emotional responses.
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