Logic And Perception

Logic and Perception

A human's ability to think constitutes the human's ability to live. Though life can and does go on without thought, thoughtless life would hold no meaning for most of us. Our thoughts fill our days and give meaning and purpose to our days to come. Through perception, we become aware of our environment through physical sensation (Merriam-Webster, 1997, p.546). Every single experience and observation, every smell and sound, that enters our mind through perception is then fused together and associated with other related fusions to become thought, ...our very lives as we know them.

The ability to sift through our thoughts and peel away the individual facets of those sensations and perceptions which make up our thoughts is called critical thinking. More specifically, critical thinking is the act of combining various, associated thoughts and perceptions with logic and reason to form educated assumptions and answers which speak to that which we did not know before. Critical thinking, just as its name implies, is absolutely vital to life and ensures that the world around us operates in an orderly fashion. Without critical thinking, the world would be full of experienced and seasoned people with a vast sea of knowledge at their disposal, but no way to apply it to any part of daily life.

Whether we are aware of it or not, we all think critically on an extremely regular basis, so much so that thinking critically often comes, well, "without thinking". Even so, we could all stand to become better and more frequent critical thinkers. Too often, we rely purely upon perception to lead us to assumptions and answers. We tend to perceive situations with a mind which is closed by personal barriers which block the process of critical thinking. Instead of delving into the "why's and how's", we simply take things for their face value. At this point, we are usually ready to apply a sound logic to hasty and incorrect perceptions, an application which typically leads to false inferences. Logic is defined as, "a science that deals with the rules and tests of sound thinking and proof by reasoning" (Merriam-Webster, 1997, p. 436). Logic is much like a scientist's experiments and rules by which he/she turns an unfounded hypothesis into a theory or law based upon observed tests. Logic, while sound and reliable by nature, when applied to unfounded perceptions, will typically produce compromised results. Herein lays the real power of critical thinking. It seems to me that, logic, when applied to thoroughly objective critical thoughts, will produce a correct and well-founded answer.

Therein also lays the problem: thoroughly objective critical thoughts. Our open-mindedness and objectivity are too often undermined by personal barriers which stem from "our exposure to cultural and genetic forces" (Kirby & Goodpaster, 1999, p. 13). These personal barriers include enculturation, self-concept, ego defenses, self-serving biases, expectations, emotions, and stress, among others. I have noticed that I tend to be most susceptible to enculturation and expectations/schemata.

For example, I had never researched the role of the Pope before, and for that matter, I did not know much about the Catholic Church either. I was raised Protestant, mostly Baptist and Methodist. Even today, my family and I attend a Church of the Nazarene, which is somewhere in between the two. I always subscribed to the ethnocentric idea that Protestant was right and Catholic was wrong, but not because of any particular reason other than that this is what I was taught. If I were to be asked a question like, "What kind of role does the Pope play in the foreign affairs", I would have replied with a quickness, "none". Up until about two months ago, I thought that the Pope was simply a figurehead of the Catholic Church, a figurative mascot with no real power or sway. It was much to my surprise when I learned that Pope John Paul II was a veritable leader in the field of foreign policy, not with his own country, but for every country on the globe. I was amazed to find out that he was a linguistic genius who had all but mastered at least ten different languages so as to more easily promote peace in different regions by all but eliminating the language barrier which so often exists between foreign