Weird Personal Experiences
We can often hear people say that they saw something with their own eyes or heard something with their own ears. Moreover, those people experienced a lot of extraordinary things. However, their eyes can lie. Sometimes people do not know that their experiences can mislead them in the most unexpected ways. This happens for some reasons. Mainly, people's perceptual capacities and states of consciousness are believed to have natural powers and limits (Schick, Jr. and Vaughn 96-153).
A lot of people do not know about those powers and limits. However, these weird features of our minds have a great influence. Some psychologists state that people must expect to have a lot of different natural experiences, which can be considered as something supernatural. As the result, sometimes strange things happen to people (Schick, Jr. and Vaughn 96-153).
The main point of the claim is not that every weird experience means a natural phenomenon. It is also not about that every strange event must be considered as something supernatural. However, the main point of the claim is that people should discover some ways of thinking about their personal experience in order to have higher chances of getting to the truth of the matter and to see things as they really appear in life (Schick, Jr. and Vaughn 96-153).
If people's minds have some features that influence their experience and the way of judging that experience, people must know about those features and realize how to think their way through them. It means to think in order to make conclusions, which are meaningful. This step requires critical thinking. However, it is also necessary to use creative thinking, which provides the opportunity to find the best solution among possible variants (Schick, Jr. and Vaughn 96-153).
The claim seems to be very logical because we really cannot believe in everything we see. People cannot know for sure whether the phenomenon is not imagination even though it appears as objective reality. Very often we can see some sort of illusions and hallucinations (Schick, Jr. and Vaughn 96-153).
There are some perceptual constancies in the claim. Firstly, it is a color constancy. People tend to perceive the object as a certain color. It happens because they know that an object is supposed to be a certain color. There was one experiment where people had to look at cutouts of trees and donkeys. The main point was that people perceived those objects as green and gray as they actually they had to be. However, those cutouts were made from green material and lit by a red light in order for them to appear gray. This experiment shows that people can be wrong when they remember colors. The second one is size constancy. People perceive a size of objects and it does not matter how far they are. The third one is the role of expectation. It means that people can perceive what they expect to perceive. It does not matter whether it is real. A lot of people have experienced such hallucination in their lives. For instance, sometimes people can look at the clock and they see that second hand is moving. However, later they realize that it is the illusion and the clock is not running. Another example of the role of expectation is when people walk alone during a dark night and it seems to them that someone is standing in the shadows. However, later they realize that there is no person because it has been a hallucination. Such examples show us that we cannot always rely on our eyes because some things that we see can be a result of one of those constancies (Schick, Jr. and Vaughn 96-153).
People are prone to ignore evidence that conflicts with their views, but they also for evidence that confirms them. There is a number of studies that have established this kind of confirmation bias. People also have a tendency to confirm but not to disconfirm their personal beliefs. Moreover, we can see the examples of this tendency in many areas of our lives. For instance, members of political parties are prone to read books, which support their positions. Moreover, a lot of people are prone to have a relationship with those who share their beliefs about them (Schick, Jr. and Vaughn 96-153).
People make attempts in order to comprehend the world. This attempt is guided by some rules of thumb also known as heuristics. These rules can speed up the process of decision making and give people an opportunity to deal with a big amount of information in a short period of time. However, in this case we lose accuracy and draw wrong conclusions. Availability error may occur when people base their decisions on vivid evidence. For instance, it occurs when people buy something due to friend's recommendation instead of searching reliable evidence. As the result, people draw wrong conclusion, which can have meaningful aftermaths (Schick, Jr. and Vaughn 96-153).
That is why sometimes people really cannot believe their eyes. There are many factors, which show that they comprehend something mistakenly. It can also result from absorbing too much information at once. Heuristics can also be a result of mistaken comprehension. Availability error also plays a great role in supporting the claim. It shows that people can rely their decisions on unreliable evidence and that is why they can regret about it (Schick, Jr. and Vaughn 96-153).
The claim is definitely true because the evidence shows that people really can consider weird things to be true, according to what they see. Sometimes, they must not believe in what they see because it is not true.
Works Cited
Schick, Jr., Theodore and Lewis Vaughn. "Looking For Truth In Personal Experience". How To Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking For A New Age. 7th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2014. 96-153. Print.
