Summary - Response Paper

Section 1: Perspectives: Ways of Seeing, Not Seeing, and Being Deceived & What is a Human Being

Instructions:

Your paper should be roughly 750 - 1,000 words –three to three-and-a-half typed pages, double-spaced, using 12 point font.

These writing assignments are to be submitted through Canvas. Click on "Assignments" located in the left hand panel on the course page. Next, click on the appropriate Section - i.e., for this assignment you will click on Section 1 under Assignments. After clicking on Section 1 you will see a Turnitin Assignment Inbox where you will submit/upload your paper.

Question/Prompt:

In our lectures (see reading and viewing assignments for Section 1), we argued that perspectives – ways of seeing – both facilitate and constrain what we see when we examine the world. In so doing we presented the analogy that perspectives function like flashlights in a dark room: they illuminate restricted – and therefore incomplete – segments of a dark room. Since no one perspective can either describe or explain the totality of the world, there will always be a plurality of perspectives, each with their distinctive strengths and blindspots.

To highlight this, we presented materials focused on four different key points: (1) The Burke Theorem: “A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing - a focus upon object A involves a neglect of object B,” (2) Maslow’s Hammer: “It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail,” and the phenomena of (3) “believing is seeing,” and (4) “seeing could often be deceiving.”

Briefly discuss each of these and, after being certain to define each one, use both psychological and sociological examples discussed in class and in the lecture notes to illustrate how each might affect one’s analysis of human thinking and behavior across the lifespan.