Learning
👉 We build models of the world based on information we gather from the world, through our senses.
Here’s a thought experiment:
Imagine you’re in a spaceship in outer space 🚀. The ship is a hollow metal tube — no windows, no viewing screen, no computer, no instruments. Your job is to get yourself safely back to earth. What do you do?
Inside the ship you have no information — you could just as easily be in an amusement park on earth, as you could be orbiting around Neptune 🪐.
What would you do? Different organisms would respond differently, but a common kind of response would involve problem solving and testing different things out — hoping to learn something through trial and error that would get you closer to earth, or even know where you are now. This testing behavior would be pretty inefficient and unlikely to get you back home any time soon.
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The brain basically has this problem — it’s locked inside a spaceship (your body) and doesn’t actually have any access to the outside world.
If the brain is going to help you act to meet your needs, it needs more information to make better predictions and decisions.
The solution is…your senses! Senses are portals to the outside world, conduits for information.
Each sensory organ traffics in different, specialized information. Your eyes respond to light waves, your ears to sound waves, your nose and tongue to chemicals, your skin to pain, heat and contact.
Without information from your senses, your brain would be locked inside your head, helpless to guide you in navigating the world. With sensations, we have someplace to start…
🤔 Reflection of the Day:
Let’s take a moment to pause and appreciate our senses with a common mindfulness technique. Name:
5 things you can see.
4 things you can feel.
3 things you can hear.
2 things you can smell.
1 thing you can taste.
Are any of them pleasant or painful? If they are pleasurable, what needs are they meeting? If painful, what needs aren’t they meeting?