Psychology – Perception, Science & Reality
Paper instructions:
This paper should represent an attempt by the student to articulate his or her developing beliefs about the nature of human perception and its relation to science and reality. Such a paper would provide the student with an opportunity to decide, at least for the time being, what he or she believes reality is and how it relates to perceptual experience. For example, a perfectly acceptable essay might start with the sentence, “In my INITIAL PERSPECTIVE PAPER I stated that I thought that human perception was about… but, for now, after having thought about it for all these weeks, I have come to believe that perception concerns…”
All acceptable essays should produce a commentary that focuses on the relationship between a particular person’s perception and his or her concept of reality. This commentary should describe the degree to which the student believes that this relationship (i.e. between perception and a concept of reality) is based on a person’s physical/physiological processes of transduction and coding; and/or the culture, sub-culture, belief system, or educational background to which the person belongs. This Final Perspective Paper is NOT intended to be a “research” paper, but our expectation is that the student will integrate material from the readings and lectures into his or her essay. The key issue here is relevance: Your paper does not have to agree with the point of view or ideas presented in the course, but it must be responsive to those ideas and integrate into itself a discussion of them. Again, the final grade will depend on how well the student justifies his or her ideas and how clearly the ideas are presented rather than their agreement with the lecturer’s opinions
