Class Notes: 8.25.12

We zoomed around many thoughtful ideas and concepts.  Your thinking opened the discussion to many of the themes that will emerge throughout this semester.  Here are just a few that stood out for me.  Please post your own thoughts and questions, ideas and ruminations.

Perception: objectivity or subjectivity?  "Did that really happen, or did I just perceive that it did?" (Rachel's insight) -  How do we recognize how much the view of experience I have is limited and fallible, shaped by desire and prior understandings (schema; patterns and conditions; background, cultural capital)?

To what do we pay attention?  Why?  What do I filter out, as noise?

The mind plays tricks (Jacob's Rule)

We observe and discover patterns (are they true, real or created?)  Our schema functions as regulators

- we ignore and filter that which do not already fit into our perceptions

- we are conditioned to notice certain things, based on experiences and lifeworld

Becoming self-aware of awareness

The mind as intentional - we can pay full attention to only one thing only at a time; what does this mean for teaching?

Confirmation bias: the cognitive error of finding/seeing exactly what I expect to find/see; the error of ignoring that which does not already conform to the way I understand the world (for example, if I lack the schema to make sense out of some new source or phenomena of data)?

Same space/place = same experience?  How much difference do small deviations matter?

Data sources can help lead from subjective perception to more or less objectivity (though alternative perspectives and potentially novel information is always, always, always available) by reminding us how much of an experience or phenomena we do not pay attention to.

"inattentional blindness" the fact that we perceive only a fraction of everything going on around us

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For our next class
Read: Plato, The republic, Book VII, or, a section of "The Allegory of the Cave"

Data collect:

• Spend time in the grocery store at which you usually shop, and one in which you are entirely unfamiliar (preferably an alien part of town).
• Watch people and note to what you find yourself paying attention.
• When you notice that you have uncovered a pattern, stop recording that pattern; the idea is to keep your observations continually open to new data by not locking in certain habits and tendencies of attention.
• Spend time in a public space (like a park or cafe) in which you are comfortable and in one at which you are unfamiliar.
• Email me a reflection on your data collection by Thursday, September 6, 5pm