Theme 3: Research and theory - part 2

Before this seminar I read the articles and interpreted them. I also went through different examples of journals in order to find a relevant research paper for this theme. After the lecture and the seminar I feel that I have got a clearer picture of different terms that are essential when doing research and writing a report.

Among what I feel like I have learnt there is the term hypothesis. During our seminar we held discussions about this term both in a smaller group and then went over our thoughts all together.

The main question was, what is it that sets a theory and a hypothesis apart? We discussed how theory and hypothesis are not the same. To know the difference the conclusion was that a hypothesis helps answer the question at hand. However it is not a question in itself.

Theory on the other hand was not as easily explained. After reading, having written my first seminar post for this theme and attending the lecture and seminar I thought that maybe the term theory would become more of a clear concept. I have realised that it is difficult to pin point or to give a short and precise summary of theory in one single sentence. However I found it easier to understand theory in terms of that it is what means to give an explanation of the information on, and/or hypothesis that we have about, for example a certain phenomenon or object. It is not solely equal to one of the terms that often are presented in a research paper such as method, analysis etc.

Instead these terms can help form a theory and make it seem reasonable. For example data can give a theory examples of situations it is applicable to. However this I believe would mean the perception of theory as “scientific theory” which was presented during the lecture. However this was the definition that made it easier for me to grasp what theory could mean.

To end this blog post:

I think that other keywords for our seminar was paradigm and paradigm shift. The reason being that theory was mentioned not to be equal to the truth.

Theory can be considered to lead to knowledge, albeit not an everlasting knowledge per se. When new theories are presented, and if the argumentation for them being more accurate than old theories seems the most convincing, the new theories will replace the old ones.

An example of a paradigm shift that took place could be when Copernicus developed a new concept about how the Sun stands in the centre of the universe instead of the Earth.

Theme 2: Critical media studies - Comments

1. I think your reflection really captured what we have talked about in seminars and what has been presented during the lecture. I like your explanation of why Adorno & Horkheimer thought of nominalism as something that could be used in a negative manner in movies. I also like that you have written a clear distinction of how Adorno & Horkheimer think that media can affect people versus how Benjamin think that media could affect people. I think that you have understood the terms we have discussed and I think that your last part was very interesting, and would have liked to read more and maybe have gotten some examples of what you mean by us thinking freely by conceptualising what we see.

2. I find your text very easy to follow and you are good at summarizing what you have learnt. I find the last part of your reflection interesting. Especially where you write that media “takes away people’s ambition for change. Just as enlightenment, media fails to question the world. “

I find the discussion about mass media and media in these seminars interesting, because I am curious as to what kind of media we sometimes are discussing. My thought is that media in the form of cinema and media in the form of news are different ways of talking about media. With that in mind, maybe media in some cases is able to raise awareness by mirroring a current situation, and thereby encourage a change?

3. I really like your explanation of Platonic realism, it explains the concept well and is easy to understand. I think it shows that you have a good understanding of it. 

I think that the examples with the paintings in the Swedish university are interesting, and it would have been interesting to hear more about what you think the connection between them and historically influenced perception is:).

4. I agree that it is interesting how time and perception are connected in a sense. I like that you elaborated your thoughts on time and perception with your own example, and not only with examples from the lecture.

Do you mean that:

A nominalist would not question the chair. It is a chair, it stands there and it looks a certain way and that is it.

The realist, however,would look at it as a perception of a chair. It is “not only” a chair to a realist, it is our perception that tells us that it is a chair. There is more to it than we perceive?

If you do, then I think I understood what you meant by the example with the chair.

5. It seems like you had an interesting seminar with an interesting discussion on mass media. I agree that naturally and historically determined perception are interesting concepts!I think your overall discussion and thoughts about historically determined perception is easy to follow and interesting to read. Sometimes I feel that you do not follow through with explaining your thoughts and the structure of the reflection becomes a bit unclear. However you should follow your thoughts through, they are interesting to read :)! For example in the beginning where you mention eight questions that helped you understand clearly. What were the questions? What did they help you understand?

Theme 4: Quantitative research

Online conversation and corporate reputation: A two-wave longitudinal study on the effects of exposure to the social media activities of a highly interactive company

1. Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
2. What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?
3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?

In this paper Dijkmans et al. (2015) have a hypothesis concerning how companies communicate via social media. They write that:

“… we hypothesize that conversational human voice mediates the effect of exposure to a company's social media activities on consumers' perceived corporate reputation.”

To simplify: How companies communicate on social media affects the way they are being perceived.

The company they contacted in order to do their study was KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

1. They used different quantitative methods to answer different questions. However they were all based on using Likert-type scales in order to answer their questions on for example corporate reputation, which means how the participants perceived the company. They had a method to divide this perception in to six dimensions (emotional appeal, products & services, vision & leadership, workplace environment, social & environmental responsibility, and financial performance) accordingly to earlier studies. There were 18 statements to collect data about the 6 dimensions; each dimension was represented by 3 of the 18 statements. The participants answered by choosing alternatives from a Likert-type scale that ranged from 1-5 where 1 = “strongly disagree” and 5 = “strongly agree”.
    
   Benefits:
   This method provided numbers to perception, which for example makes correlations between how something is perceived with for how long it is being perceived possible. As in this case, where the participants also answered a question of how exposed they were to the company´s social media activities.
    
   Limitations:
   In this case there was a limitation in that they asked if the participants had been exposed to the company´s activities on Facebook and Twitter, meaning that these were the only representatives in the data regarding social media sites. Furthermore how the participants had interacted with the companies, actively by communicating with the companies or passively by being exposed to the companies messages, was not reflected in the data.
    
2. That they can enable a mathematical representation of more “abstract” data, such as how a corporation is being perceived.
    
3. A part from what I wrote in “Limitations” above:
    
   When presenting their discussion it says that there were implications concerning a question on the participants’ appreciation of the company’s activity on the different social media sites. To answer this question the participants were able to choose from a scale of 1-11. However there was an error and not all of the participants could view the alternative that meant “I do not follow KLM on this site” and afterwards there was an unexpectedly high percentage of answers that corresponded to a negative appreciation of the sites in the data from the first year.

Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play

I thought this paper had an interesting discussion on virtual body ownership illusion and I thought that the method of collecting data was interesting.

1. Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

Quantitative methods use mathematics to represent and interpret data. They make it easier to find potential correlations or differences between data. Another example is that quantitative data enables collecting data from perceptions and movements (Kilteni, 2012). However these types of data are also being limited by being quantified. Not all aspects of movements or perceptions are possible to quantify. This data cannot explain the meaning of an action or what the intention behind it is.

1. Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

Qualitative methods enable researchers to gather data to questions like why people act in certain ways or what intention they had with their action. To collect qualitative data means to ask people about what they perceive to be the answer. Therefore it is not necessarily easy to find correlations in the data and generalizations can be more difficult to make.    

 

References:

Dijkmans, C., Kerkhof, P., Buyukcan-Tetik, A. and Beukeboom, C. J. (2015). Online conversation and corporate reputation: A two-wave longitudinal study on the effects of exposure to the social media activities of a highly interactive company. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12132/full

Kilteni, K., Bergstrom and Slater, M. (2012). Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play.

https://www.kth.se/social/files/56000bc9f2765448c25c5279/Drumming%20in%20Immersive%20Virtual%20Reality.pdf

Theme 2: Critical media studies - part 2

For this week's theme I read the texts and interpreted them to answer the questions related to them. I had not been able to make as much time for reflecting or reading the texts over again as I had wished for. However I found the lecture and the seminar helpful to get a clearer view on how to interpret the texts.

From the seminar I feel like I got another perspective of “myth” in Adorno & Horkheimer’s text.  My new perspective is that it does not refer to an outdated method of describing the world. Instead myth meant that in order to try to control the nature we try to mimic it.

I think that an example would be that we through history have different ways of mimicking nature. In Greek mythology natural phenomena are presented in terms of Gods, because that was a way to make an understandable concept of nature for humans. Nowadays natural phenomena, for example gravity is mimicked in terms of mathematical formulas. They are both different concepts from humans to try and mimic and explain nature.

In the seminar we discussed the question about superstructure and substructure in terms of capitalist order of production. And the explanation for these terms were:

Substructure – The components of a production that affects the production itself directly. (Such as: resources and workers.)

Superstructure – The components of a production that affects the production itself indirectly. (I think that the more administrative professions would be an example of that.)

We also discussed that Benjamin and Adorno & Horkheimer had different perspectives on how culture (or more specifically the cinema) could make an impact on people, which I feel I had misunderstood before attending the seminar.

Benjamin was said to believe that it made the portrayal of the “ordinary people” possible and give them a sense of hope. It was said that he meant that art before had only been a privilege for rich people and therefore when a person who was not rich was portrayed and could be seen by everyone in a cinema it could give them a sense of having the same privilege of someone who was rich.

Adorno & Horkheimer on the other hand discussed mass media and how cinema could be used a negative way to present to people how they should live and tell when people should not try to stand out above the crowd. They meant that cinema uses nominalism in the sense that people are being categorized under certain names and are being portrayed after that characterisation. 

An example was given with the portrayal of how secretaries in cinema were female, and that Adorno & Horkheimer meant that such a portrayal was to tell female secretaries that they should not have ambitions to work in any other profession.

Other terms we discussed were naturally determined perception and historically determined perception. This discussion gave me a new perspective on what the terms mean. To summarize and to end this blog post:

Naturally determined perception – This means how we perceive an object, that is our naturally determined perception.

Historically determined perception – This refers to that how we perceive an object is partially determined by when we perceive it. For example what we find beautiful today may not be considered beautiful in 20 years, so time has a saying in how we perceive objects.

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science - comments

1.
Hi, During the seminar I attended a discussion was made on the differences between Kant’s and Plato’s view on objectivity in knowledge. (I came to think of it when I read about what you had discussed about the metaphor of God’s point of view and the conception of scientific knowledge.)

In that discussion it was said that Kant means that we cannot ignore our senses when we try to develop knowledge. However Plato means that we are able to find a way to not let our senses be a part of the knowledge we develop and that we should strive for that objectivity.

I like that you both mention the different terms you have learnt and also show that you have learnt them by having explanations and/or examples for them.


2.
I think that you have asked an interesting question with “is a priori = an analytical judgement?”

To add to earlier comment I have an example:

During a lecture these words were discussed. And as far as I understand they mean the same thing, even though they are two different ways of saying the same thing.
An example that was mentioned was:

“There are pupils in this class” = analytical judgement.
“There are 39 pupils in the class” = synthetic judgement.

An analytical judgement means that what is being stated does not need for someone to see if the statement is true. As in “there are pupils in this class”, because the word “class” is a word that in itself means “a group of pupils”. So we know without double checking that it is true that there are pupils in a class.

A synthetic judgement means that we can only know that the statement is true by experiencing/testing. To know if the statement “there are 39 pupils in the class” is true we have to calculate the pupils in the room to see if the statement is true.

Now I believe that to say “to have knowledge a priori” means the same as the knowledge being an analytical judgement. We do not have to have experience to know a priori to be true.

To say that a knowledge is “a posteriori” means that it is a knowledge that requires experience before we know the knowledge to be true. It is therefore equal to a synthetic judgement.

I hope I did not misunderstand your question!


3.
Great summary and I also think that it can be difficult to understand the different concepts at times.


I agree with you that it is a whole new way of approaching a question, to sit and discuss it without really having a clear answer in the end. In the seminar I attended we entered the topic of “is a table actually a table?” And that discussion ended with “it is, because the majority can accept the concept of the object being a table. But some might not agree on that concept and perceive the object as something else”.


To add to the comment on getting to know what you thought before and after the seminar: Seeing that you mention different concepts that you have discussed I think that it would be interesting to read what you learned about the concepts from those discussions :).


4.
I do not think you are alone about feeling that the texts are confusing (at least I felt the same way). Sounds like a good thing to mark words and concepts in the texts while reading them!


I think that maybe you can use some examples or further explanations about your thoughts in your blog posts? It seems like you have thoughts about the different concepts in the texts, and it would be interesting to read what they are :).


I have a question about where you wrote:

“Things like analytic judgement, where you will know after investigating something (aposteriori knowledge), sounded quite intriguing.”
Do you mean that an analytic judgement = aposteriori knowledge?

I might be mistaken but I interpreted it to be that:
Analytic judgement = a priori knowledge
And
Synthetic judgement = aposteriori knowledge


5.
Your reflective text is easy to follow and I too found that I felt like I got a deeper understanding of the texts after the seminars and the lectures.


I also think that when you say that you tried to “simplify something very complex” you are not alone! These texts share some complex thoughts on knowledge and how we perceive things, and it is hard to understand it all at once.


However I liked the fact that you tried to “simplify” things in your first blog post in terms of you writing examples on how you understood the texts. They made it easier to understand how you interpreted the texts.


6.
I think that both of your blog posts are well written and I think that your first blog post showed that you understood Kant’s and Plato’s texts really well! I did not think of reading study guides or text analysis, but they seem to help give a good understanding of the texts.


I found it interesting that you mention that you think that you after the seminar and lecture no longer agree with your previous answers to the questions. (I felt the same way about my own blog post)


It would be interesting to read how your answers differ now compared to the answers in your earlier blog post.


7.
Did you discuss Plato’s text in the seminar? Did you learn anything new about Plato’s ideas concerning knowledge and perception after your first blog post?


Side note: In your first blog post you switch between using quotation marks and colon when you quote a person, the quotation marks made it easier to read. (I am referring to the sentence that starts with “What he says is: since metaphysics hasn’t been able to enter upon…”)


I did not think of reading the texts referred to in our texts. That sounds like a good way to understand their thoughts better!


8.
I like your blog design and the fact that your reflection is easy to follow. It sounds like you had an interesting example to explain a priori and a posteriori knowledge. Before reading your blog post I had only heard explanations in the form of “bachelors” and “pupils”. It would have been interesting to hear how the discussion about “E.T.” and a “rabbit” discussion went and how it helped you in order to understand the two concepts :).


9.
I like the fact that you use the terms presented in the texts when you are discussing the answers to the questions.
I think it would be interesting to read some more about what you feel that you have learned or what concept you think of differently after the seminar and lecture. It would also be interesting to hear some examples of what you discussed during the seminar :).


10.
I think that both of your blog posts had very well explained thoughts in them and were easy to follow. I think that you did a great job on giving examples and explaining the concepts a priori and posteriori knowledge. And in your first blog post I think that your method to do research on what Kant opposes to in order to get a better understanding of his ideas is really interesting.

Theme 3: Research and theory

For this theme I chose a journal called Communication Research and it has an impact factor of 2.493. This journal publishes articles about communication in societal systems.

I read the article “Redefining Media Content and Structure in Terms of Available Resources: Toward a Dynamic Human-Centric Theory of Communication”. In this article Sungkyoung Lee and Annie Lang examines the moment by moment memory processing of television messages as a function of the difficulty of processing the message.

Their aim is to give an introduction to how to be able to predict how the memory process works. In order to answer their hypotheses their method was to include 3 variables that they examined. Furthermore they presented different television messages, in the form of news reports, to their participants in their study and then asked the participants questions about what they could remember afterwards. To see how much memory it takes to gather the information in the news reports they used a method of presenting the participants with an assignment to react to a signal given during the television message by pushing a button.

As a conclusion they present their data and discuss how it is related to the predictions they made in their hypotheses. They had 4 hypotheses that were predictions of events and outcomes, and they were proven correct based on their data.

Based on what we have read in terms of theory I think that there is a theory in the article, as to not having a theory at all. In general they explained their thought process and the data that was presented. At times there were references to earlier concepts that I found lacking of an explanation to certain statements. For example it is said that:  

“Humans have not evolved since media were invented. Therefore, to some extent, they process media as real environmental stimuli (Reeves & Nass, 1996).”

Although this might be a fact, I was not able to find any explanation as to why humans have not evolved since media were invented.

Overall the article had a good composition.

The following statement is to give a brief explanation as to what theory is:

A theory is what can make it possible to develop our knowledge.

It is the theory that gives an article, or report, its value.Theory is not what will huge amounts of data presented in order to answer a certain question, or hypothesis. Instead it would be the explanations and generalisations that can be made with the help from the data. In other words data are ways of finding a pattern during observations and theory would be the explanations as to why there is a pattern. Theories can be based on former theories, however only if they are able to present something new given the former theories that exist in the field. Neither are hypothesis or predictions alone a theory, they will only introduce what the article is aiming to answer.

I think that the article I read is of theory type IV (explanation and prediction). Because it holds information on what is to be expected and when it is to be expected. It is explained that the memory in a “human processing system” have a limit. That not all messages given will be stored, and predictions on how the memory will act in terms of when different difficulties of messages are presented. However they continuously aim to explain the different memory processes with terms of “resources allocated and required” which I consider to be their explanation of the phenomena of memory processing.

Benefits with this type of theory is that it is a way of theory building or theory testing (Gregor 2006).

The limitations witht this type of theory is that at times the hypotheses in these kinds of articles might lead to observing changes with a lack of a answer that they try to answer.

References:

Sungkyoung L. and Annie L. (2015). Redefining Media Content and Structure in Terms of Available Resources: Toward a Dynamic Human-Centric Theory of Communication - http://crx.sagepub.com/content/42/5/599.full.pdf

Gregor, S. (2006). The Nature of Theory in Information Systems - http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~petterog/Kurs/INF5220/NatureofTheoryMISQ.pdf

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science - part 2

To this week’s theme I read both texts and tried to interpret them. I was present during the lecture and the seminar.

During the seminar we discussed the meanings of the two texts. We had a discussion on the preface to Kant’s book Critique of pure reason. Something that I found interesting during our discussion was that we discussed how everything around us is concepts of objects. One of the discussions was about how a table did not have to be a table, but it is considered to be a table because most people are willing to accept the concept of the object being a table. It is based on our own experiences how we perceive objects in different ways.

Plato’s text, we discussed, is also about how we interpret our surroundings with the help of our experiences. Our discussion about Plato’s text concerned how we are not able to simply register what we see and then come with an “objective experience” of what we have seen. Even though human beings have eyes and ears, this does not conclude that we are experiencing objects the same ways when using our senses to observe them. That was our discussion on why we thought that we experience through our eyes and not with them.

Another interesting thought that was brought up was how Kant and Plato’s ideas differed. It was said that Plato, in his text, suggests for us to try to ignore our senses in order to be able to develop our knowledge. Meanwhile Kant is trying to say that we are not able to do so. Instead Kant wants for us to realize that our senses are highly present in our concepts that we develop in order to try to explain our surroundings and to not try to ignore them.

When the discussion on Kant and Plato was more or less over, we discussed the difference between knowledge and concepts. To summarize that discussion and to end this post it was said that concepts and knowledge are related in a sense, but they are separate terms. To be able to develop our knowledge we create concepts. In other words concepts are necessary because they lead to knowledge.

Theme 2: Critical media studies

Dialectic of Enlightenment

What is "Enlightenment"?

I found the following definition in the text:

“Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought”

What is "Dialectic"?

Dialectic seems to be a method to think from different perspectives when trying to rationalize a thought or concept.

What is "Nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?

Nominalism seems to be concerning the fact that a name is only a word referring to something, or at times several things. Names are not specific markers on any specific being or thing. Since myths are discussed in the text, I think that nominalism is important here because it is a term that shows that we only have names on our explanations of the world, but they are not actually the answers to our observations, just words for them.

What is the meaning and function of "myth" in Adorno and Horkheimer's argument?


I interpret myth to be the word that refers to the outdated ways humans have tried to interpret and explain their own world before they had any other concepts on how their surroundings work.

The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity

In the beginning of the essay, Benjamin talks about the relation between "superstructure" and "substructure" in the capitalist order of production. What do the concepts "superstructure" and "substructure" mean in this context and what is the point of analyzing cultural production from a Marxist perspective?


Superstructure, I interpret, is a word that has to do with the structure of a hierarchy. A superstructure seems to be a structure where there is segregation between different people based on classes.

Substructure seems to me to be the opposite of a superstructure where there is no clear segregation into different classes.

In his essay Benjamin is talking from the perspective of the masses. And with his essay I think he is trying to discuss how politics and culture can be related, and that art often mirrors the perspective of the masses themselves. In other words Benjamin writes through the eyes of the masses and I think that is why he has a Marxist perspective.

Does culture have revolutionary potentials (according to Benjamin)? If so, describe these potentials. Does Benjamin's perspective differ from the perspective of Adorno & Horkheimer in this regard?

Benjamin talks about art as a way of mirroring the present situations in a time and place. He mentions how conventional art, art that we are more used to, is looked at and appreciated on a far less reactionary level than, to us, surrealistic art. I think Benjamin is trying to say that art can have an impact on people, it can mirror and/or criticize our reality and get a reaction “from the masses” by doing so. I think that Benjamin would consider art to be able to create reactions in the masses so that a wish to revolutionize their own reality would grow. To summarize I think that Benjamin’s perspective is that culture can have revolutionary potentials.

As for Adorno & Horkheimer I would say that they also discuss how culture has revolutionary potentials. In their text they, among other subjects, mention how mythology affected the people living by it. Now by saying that culture, as in the presentation of our perception of the world, affects how we live and act I would say that they would believe that culture can have revolutionary potentials.

Benjamin discusses how people perceive the world through the senses and argues that this perception can be both naturally and historically determined. What does this mean? Give some examples of historically determined perception (from Benjamin's essay and/or other contexts).

Naturally determined perception is based on how we by an aura can perceive the natural objects, which I give an example of in my answer to question 5.

Benjamin discusses the authenticity of a reproduction of art. He says that if there is more history to a work of art it has more authenticity. He mentions changes in physical condition and various changes in ownership as examples of historically determined perception.

What does Benjamin mean by the term "aura"? Are there different kinds of aura in natural objects compared to art objects?

I think that an aura, according to Benjamin, would be what one would have removed from an object after trying to reproduce it. For example Benjamin mentions film as a tool to reproduce an object. He writes that actors are only able to build an artificial personality on stage.

With this example he seems to mean that the original personality that an actor is trying to portray may never be exactly like the original personality behind the character (or person) in mind. What the actor is not able to reproduce is the aura of that original character (or person).

If an art object can survive the test of time that will be a part of its authenticity. When reproducing an art work the proof of it having been part of a historical period of time and a specific place may no longer exist within the reproduced work of art. This would define the aura of an art object. However this does not concern the aura of a natural object.

A natural object, I interpret, is described as a something unique with a distance from the observer, no matter how close they stand. If we are experiencing a natural object, for example a branch, we can be affected by it from afar, by a shadow for instance. What we then perceive is the aura from that natural object.

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science

1. In the preface to the second edition of "Critique of Pure Reason" (page B xvi) Kant says: "Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects. On that presupposition, however, all our attempts to establish something about them a priori, by means of concepts through which our cognition would be expanded, have come to nothing. Let us, therefore, try to find out by experiment whether we shall not make better progress in the problems of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition." How are we to understand this?

In the article Kant is presenting a way of perceiving the object that is to be examined. From what I interpret he is discussing an alternative way of thinking when cognizing of things a priori. In other words he is, with his article, saying that it is not easy to try and define knowledge that is meant to be presented solely by rationalization or by theoretical explanations. For example it can be problematic if a new concept is introduced and then it becomes treated as the one and only truth about an object (the object is what the concept concerns).  To me his proposition is to see that theorizing and developing concepts might lead to us having to push our limits on how to perceive knowledge. In order to expand our knowledge it might be necessary to adapt a concept to the knowledge we have from earlier and not to adapt our knowledge of the world to the new concept. To summarize I think that Kant wants to focus on point out the importance of having an open mind in order to be able to expand knowledge.

2. At the end of the discussion of the definition "Knowledge is perception", Socrates argues that we do not see and hear "with" the eyes and the ears, but "through" the eyes and the ears. How are we to understand this? And in what way is it correct to say that Socrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call "empiricism"?

Socrates is discussing how the human body, in a way, can gather the information from the world around it. With the help of eyes and ears we can gather information of colors and sounds. However it is not the eyes and the ears themselves that process the information on their own. It is with our minds that we have learned for example to perceive different signals from our eyes as colors and it is with our mind we can register them. Empiricism can be explained as learning by observing and experiencing. In other words empiricism tells us that knowledge is reached via our experiences. Among other parts in their discussions about knowledge Socrates summarize their thoughts in the following way:

“SOCRATES: ...And now, what are you saying?—Are there two sorts of opinion, one true and the other false; and do you define knowledge to be the true?

THEAETETUS: Yes, according to my present view.”

This I found similar to empiricism and how empiricism can be explained. To be able to gather knowledge one way is to observe continuously while experimenting. If the experiments and observations lead to the same perceiving of the “opinion”, or theory, that is being examined then that “opinion” may be perceived as the truth and in the end as knowledge. Then again if future knowledge would come to contradict that “opinion” then it may cease to be perceived as knowledge or the truth. I think Socrates means that to learn from experience is to expand our knowledge.

Through Socrates and Theaetetus discussion on seeing and hearing Socrates says:

“SOCRATES: And you would admit that what you perceive through one faculty you cannot perceive through another; the objects of hearing, for example, cannot be perceived through sight, or the objects of sight through hearing?

THEAETETUS: Of course not.”

This part stood out to me because it reminded me of a TED Talk. A man who cannot see any color talks in the video linked below about, and demonstrates, a device that can register light and send him audible frequencies that represents the colors the device is facing. This made it possible for him to use his hearing to perceive color.

 https://www.ted.com/talks/neil_harbisson_i_listen_to_color