THE THOUGHTS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTUAL LEARNING

 NEW LOOK AT LEARNINIG

We all learn throughout our lives. We learn how to tie our shoes, the best route to get to the mall, which friends we can trust, how to find the area of a circle, and how to write a research paper. Surprisingly, very few people are taught how to learn.

    1. Knowing how our brain learns

All learning begins with sensory information. Our brains are constantly bombarded with information from the body's sensory receptors. Continuous data reports flow from specialized sensory systems (hearing, vision, taste, touch, smell) and from the sensory nerve endings in our muscles, joints, and internal organs. When we review or practice something we've learned, dendrites actually grow between nerve cells in the network that holds that memory. Each time we review that knowledge, this mental manipulation increases activity along the connections between nerve cells. And that makes the memory stay in your brain.

    2. Knowing which strategies bring about the most learning

Learning strategies are operations and actions that students use in order to optimize the processes of obtaining and storing information and course concepts. Learning strategies refers to a set of skills that students use to understand different tasks.

Highly Effective Techniques

• Practice testing
• Distributed practice
• Interleaved practice
• Elaborative interrogation
• Self - Explanation

    3. Knowing under which circumstances optimal learning occurs

Students learn best when they're challenged with novelty, a variety of materials, and a range of instructional strategies. Effective learning takes place when students receive immediate and specific feedback on their performance. We can learn most readily about things that are tangible and directly accessible to their senses-visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic. Concrete experiences are most effective in learning when they occur in the context of some relevant conceptual structure.

THE ELEMENTS AND BASIC KINDS OF PERCEPTION

Perception is the sensory experience of the world. It involves both recognizing environmental stimuli and actions in response to these stimuli. Through the perceptual process, we gain information about the properties and elements of the environment that are critical to our survival.

    1. Perceptual belief 

Perceptual beliefs are those concerning the perceptible features of our environment, and they are beliefs that are grounded in our perceptual experience of the world.

Ex: When we see a ripe lemon in a supermarket, it seems eminently reasonable for us to believe that a lemon is there. Here we have a perceptual experience since we consciously see something yellow

    2. Perception, conception, and belief

"Perception" is a source of knowledge and justification mainly by virtue of yielding beliefs that constitute knowledge or are justified. Perception is the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses and "conception" is the ability to form something in the mind and to develop an understanding. This is the key difference between conception and perception. For instance 'perception' could mean just simple visual perceptions or it could mean how the mind perceives emotional or conceptual phenomena. "Belief" could mean beliefs that are independent of stimuli (that you think about at a random time) versus beliefs a person forms from current incoming stimuli.

KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY

our knowledge of true propositions must be about real things. these real things are Their nature is such that the only mode by which we can know them is rationality.

    1. Of the origin of Ideas

Ideas often originate from dialogues in which an individual hears about a challenge and recognizes a new path for solving it. It is therefore crucial to create a space in which challenges are discussed openly and without fear, stimulating new solutions. Next, Hume discusses the distinction between impressions and ideas. By "impressions", he means sensations, while by "ideas", he means memories and imaginings.

    2. Of the association of Ideas

Association of ideas, or mental association, is a process by which representations arise in consciousness, and also for a principle put forward by an important historical school of thinkers to account generally for the succession of mental phenomena.

There are three principles of connection among ideas: 

• Resemblance
• Contiguity (relationship in time or place)
• Cause and effect

    3. Skeptical doubts concerning the operation of the understanding

All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matter-of-fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic; and in short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. That the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides, is a proposition which expresses a relation between these figures. That three times five is equal to the half of thirty, expresses a relation between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for ever retain their certainty and evidence.