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 Last class we established that the neocortex is essentially a story-teller. It takes information from all the different parts (that communicate with each other and the outside world) to create a single, coherent story. So everything we know, everything we have ever known is a construction. There are no truths and nothing is for sure. Philosophers such as Descartes, have been playing with this idea since the 1600s. He believed that everything should be doubted and that everything (including what we perceive from the senses) is unreliable. There is a also plethora of psychological studies about the unreliability of perception and memory. E. Loftus, for example, demonstrated how easy eye witness accounts are to manipulate by the way questions are asked and supplying subsequent information. Zandy and Gerard also did a study on how personality and different life histories perceive the same thing in starkly different ways. Biology tells us the same thing. But where does that leave us? We can take either end of the spectrum - either there are an infinite number of truths/realties/equally valid constructions or there an no truths at all - but both are equally problematic. If there are no truths then there is no right or wrong and society falls apart. If all constructions are valid, then which ones do we adopt because surely we apply all of them to society (some, for example, might contradict each other but that doesn't make them any less valid). Sure, we can have a shared construction, but then who decides which construction is right and the best one to follow? The majority? The bourgeoisie? The past/the way things have always been? Moreover, if nothing is true, what are we teaching/should we teach our kids?