LOGIC AND PERCEPTION

The concept of Logic and how one perceives Logic is a personal opinion that is intertwined with personal experiences. Understanding how people think and make their daily decisions is a factor to their Logic. Logic will work as a guide that will help with the critical thinking process. Critical thinking process will not start until a question is asked. Critical thinking invokes asking several questions.

Most of society does not realize the amount of logic that goes into the critical thinking process. Each person has their own perception to any situation and it is received through visual, audible, and individual perception. There are several factors that will come into being that will influence individual perception. Perception is influenced by a repetitive process that is developed over time. For example, I was recently involved in an automobile accident.

Upon talking to each witness there was as many different stories as to what happened as there was witnesses. Some of the witnesses said that I was racing the other individual, some of the witnesses said that the other individual was acting in a road rage manner, and some of the witnesses said that I was stop at a light and was struck from behind. Each witness had seen the exact same incident and each one perceived it differently.

 Another perception is that by listening to the national press our society would believe that we are doing bad things in Iraq. Stories that are not told by the national press is that farmers have irrigation for their crops that they have not had in over 20 years, Villages have power that they have not had in over 20 years, Tribes have local schools to teach all children regardless of race, sex, and

religion. The press tells us how there were car bombing after car bombing and it killed innocent people, and how the people of Iraq do not want us there at all. Surprisingly on both of my trips over there we were welcomed by the local tribesmen, because they felt safe with us there and worry what will happen to them when we leave. So the press gives people a sense of hatred toward American’s when this perception is not quite accurate.

 I think that “Creative Thinking” states it best with the idea of creating. “Creating is taking the old and mixing it, moving it, breaking it, or building it into newness” (Kirby, G, Goodpaster, J, Levine, M; Creative Thinking). The critical thinking process can affect all of us in out every day life. Critical thinking process is not determined by home, school, or work. This is why it is important to identify what critical thinking is and how critical thinking can be manipulated. The process to critical thinking is determined by questioning the situation, analyzing the situation, defining the problem of the situation, and finally asking more questions to determine if the solution was a good solution.

 Logic and Logic as it relates to critical thinking is the reasoning of information to come to a truthful conclusion. Critical thinking is the process that one uses to come to that truth. I have listed some examples of how there is more to critical thinking than the average person could imagine. I listed some examples of how a group of individuals who all saw the same incident occur, but there were vastly different recounts to the incident. I have given example of how individual perceive images, how the press can manipulate a situation to develop the outcome they want and how there is more to every story being told than what we know. I have defined how logic play a small role in the critical thinking process and how critical thinking starts with just one question to find the best possible solution.

Reference

Kirby, G, Goodpaster, J; (1999); Critical Thinking; Prentice-Hall; UoP EBook.