From Brain to Mind: Using Neuroscience to Guide Change in Education by James E. Zull

Author:James E. Zull [Zull, James E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781579226060
Publisher: Stylus Publishing
Published: 2015-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

Other Symbolic Traps

There are other symbolic traps that may lead us to overestimate our own or others’ understanding. In language, for example, if we encounter someone who has a large vocabulary, we may believe that the individual is highly intelligent. Or, if a person can tell us a complex story or idea, we may be deceived into believing that he or she possesses deep insight. Or we may meet someone who can carry out a complicated mathematical calculation, leading us to think that he or she must be a good problem solver in general.

We can fall into these traps throughout our lifetime, but with experience we become more aware of them. This awareness leads to a healthy skepticism of symbols and their influence over us. This apparently was the case with Cardinal Newman who, as quoted at the beginning of this chapter, understood that all our perceptions and symbols of perceptions are actually only shadows of the “true,” and hoped to find the truth in an afterlife.

The more experience we have in using symbols to represent the real thing, the less we trust the symbols. As we mature, the struggle to explain what we “really mean” can become frustrating. The inadequacy of symbols, by themselves, for describing reality is a powerful and compelling discovery in our journey toward mind.

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