Published By: Sreyanshi

How to turn perceptual knowledge into logical thinking

We all have our own perceptions, true. But how do we turn that into knowledge?

When we look at the process of forming knowledge we'd see oftentimes, our subjective experiences and learning from each of those experiences add to the formation of knowledge. It's all about how each of us experiences a specific incident, and how we process it, beyond its external aspects, behaviors and such. We definitely form our primary perception with the information of our instant experience. But then we analyseanalyse the internal relation between the things to have a deeper understanding. This entire process is followed when our brain takes us through the process of cognition. It's a very interesting process if we can learn, if we are up for it.

In the process of cognition, the subject first experiences a phenomenon – sees, hears, captures other sensory data and then follow through with forming what we call a first impression. This is the very stage where perceptual knowledge is gathered.

At this point, the separate aspects of each experience become noticed, and the structure gets visible, so the brain has a broader idea, but it needs to go deeper to understand all these sensory observations and data it is capturing. These evoke a sense of perception in our mind which we connect to a broader theory to have a wholesome understanding of the phenomenon, beyond its limitations of particularities.

Then comes the next stage of cognition where our mind leaps forward in its understanding of a phenomenon, comparing it with similar phenomena and attaining a more specific and efficient analysis of it. Our brain can put together all the different characteristics of the phenomenon and sketch out, roughly, beyond the external relation between all things, a deeper understanding of how they work together, and forming better-rounded concepts of the phenomenon.

When concepts have already started forming in our minds, it slowly grows beyond the bounds of the specifics of the phenomena it correlates to and sees them through the lens of the totality that is shaped up with the formation of internal relation between all the elements that work together in forming the said concept. This is how when we finally reach at the levels of concept formation, our brain can finally grasp the essence of the phenomenon. Another important thing is that while concept formation majorly depends upon sense perception, the opposite is equally true. Sense perception is also based on already formed concepts of the sense in itself. We can say that the relation between perception and concept formation which leads to knowledge is utterly and absolutely interdependent.