T.O.K Presentation: Ethics and Emotion

In a society where each individual is determined to think and act in a certain way, new ideologies and principles may be molded in order to satisfy the needs of the society. Although this may feel as a rather indiscreet and direct statement, in our presentation group we felt that each ideology (including those that may sound quite harsh) had to be accepted in order to understand more about this concept of ethics and emotions.

This assignment was conformed by three groups of (give or take) 7-10 people and each group had to choose an area of knowledge and a way of knowing in regards to their respective areas of knowledge. I was in group 2 and for our area of knowledge we chose ethics and for our way of knowing in regards to ethics we chose emotion. I believe that the way we presented our ideas linked directly with what each one had to say in regards with the subject, although we did this in an outstanding way, I also believe that the way of knowing (emotion) wasn't expressed sufficiently as our group focused on ethics; leaving unexpressed all of our ideas based on emotion. For example, I talked about Nietzsche's beliefs on morality whether good and evil referred as a whole or rather relied on individuality and in order to further demonstrate this, I also planned an exercise based on our current society. All of the ideas in regards to this area where clear, although I could've expressed my ideas on emotion and link them to ethics in order to show a distinct relationship between them.    

Personally, my work within the group was sufficient since I could've worked further upon my presentation in order to correct any errors, this includes both time issues and ideas expressed. The work that I did based on Nietzsche was an excellent idea and if I had spent more time focusing on the presentation it would've been better.

In general, all of my teammates were excellent and we all worked as a whole within our group since we knew when each one had to talk and we respected their time management and ideas about the topic.

If I were to do this again I would spend more time working on the presentation and apply a clearer view on our group's way of knowing, but apart from that, I wouldn't have changed anything else in our group. (Although a little organisation on our last exercise would've helped a lot on our overall presentation.)

This experience taught me a lot of things that I didn't consider in regards to each groups subject  but as a whole I learned that many ideas have to be taken in consideration in order to apply knowledge in our life. It also taught me or rather demonstrated me that working on a team helps in order to achieve an objective with sufficient time and effort applied within each member of the group.

It was indeed a grateful and well welcomed experience.

 

Areas Of Knowledge- History

"History is a science, no more and no less."
J. B. Bury

The past is a concept that is well known in history and perhaps it is a philosophical concept that history itself is trying to understand. In our studies, we are given the general idea that we must study the past in order to understand the present and what is currently going on in the world; as the past contains generalized information on our actions and therefore we can understand the reasons for our current actions by studying the past. 

Although the past may determine why we act in a certain way in our present society, sometimes the past contains many shameful actions carried out by the countries such as the world wars, the civil wars and other errors that were simply made due to misinformation or grudges that were maintained over several years. This reason may lead countries to rewrite their own history in order to hide their moral errors or shameful defeats, one clear example that is still present today is North Korea.    

Here I will post a link to North Korea's creative story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3096265.stm    

According to the information presented on this link, North Korea (in 1950-1953) tried to forcibly unify itself with South Korea resulting in the Korean war which ended in a stalemate, but according to North Korea, the war ended in a "glorious victory" by the North Korean forces. This misinformation is what every child that lives in North Korea is being taught and their also being taught that the United States started the war by influencing the South to attack first. This brainwashing method was also utilized by Nazi Germany as Hitler usually influenced young people as they were the most volatile and also the most influential. 

I believe that rewriting history in order to achieve personal goals is like brainwashing people into believing what is most beneficial for the country, not the individuals and therefore I believe that rewriting history is wrong in any perspective as it is forcibly implementing an idea which is not correct and that will only be an "obstacle" in the path of knowledge for the individuals in a country.                  

Can Science Answer Moral Questions?

Science as a way of knowing is inclined to believe in reason rather than faith, this implies that science is a way in which logic states every reason for our existence and (in general) how everything works in our plane of existence.

Both reason and logic are what defines the scientific method but science also needs other ways of knowing in order to learn certain truths about our world such as our senses, as scientists conclude truths from experiments and they certainly need to see, touch, feel, hear and (sometimes) taste in order to get raw data and consequently implement reasons and thesis of how everything around us works. Therefore, science doesn't preach morality but it rather defies it, as science will always need some sort of justification in order to validate its acts and these justifications have to be based purely on logic or else it won't be even considered in the scientific world.

The advantages that this way of knowing has towards our world is that it actually benefits us directly as science leads the way to more comfortabilities and apparent truths that in the past may have seemed as impossible, although one major problem with science is the fact that it is cold inside and unable to understand some ideas implemented by both faith and morality.

So now we may ask ourselves, can science answer moral questions? Well, since science and morality have always been distant from each other, we might tend to believe that science is just purely based on logic and therefore it cannot motivate us to act in any way or even reach into our morality, but based on a TED talk video me (and my class) saw, science may reach into morality under certain areas. These areas are based on facts and values such as health issues in which science and (good) morality do agree that saving a human life is required either for our continuous species existence or because we feel morally obliged to save lives.

I also believe that science may answer moral questions under certain areas but it will always have its limit under morality as it is unable to answer questions that are required for the inquirer to learn and specifically analyze.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/280/5367/1200.full 

Persuasion And Propaganda

 Everyday and everywhere, we seem to find ourselves surrounded by advertisements that only promote or showcase a product or a way of living. It is quite interesting when we start to believe that we may not think at all like we want to but that we may be influenced by these kinds of propaganda that constantly persuades us to act in a way that follows the advertisement and not what we may believe or reason.

One example of persuasion and propaganda is seen with the recent creation of the new I phone 5 which seems to attract everyone's attention thanks to the incorporation of new features and the constant display of media that "orders" us to buy it. As opposed to this urgent need to buying it, I have found an article which uses examples of persuasion in order to reason with all of these advertisements.

Here's the link: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-57512927-233/why-you-should-wait-a-few-months-to-buy-the-iphone-5/

The main title of this article is "Why you should wait a few months to buy the iphone 5" and I believe that this article is quite persuasive from the beginning as it states a common phrase which we seem to use and that is "living under a rock" or in other words, without the necessary knowledge of technology and then it effectively cuts this humor when we read "don't do it." It also states good reasons in bold and then it explains them in great detail which is quite persuasive as people (as myself) need good reasons in order to be persuaded.

The constant use of propaganda and persuasion I believe it has corroded our minds and our way of thinking which has actually blinded the truth from those that let themselves be influenced, as most of the propaganda is biased and for one benefit; money.



                 

Truth And Relativity

Our modern lives are surrounded by ideas, concepts and actions that have truths in them. For example, when we study mathematics or any science we see that logic is the truth that is applied and therefore any idea or argument that isn't based on any level of logic, is discarded as it doesn't contain any certified truth. But when we consider the multiple aspects surrounding theory of knowledge ,such as language, reason, emotions, etc., we start to acknowledge variations into what we first believed and we start to see that truth is a difficult term and therefore it cannot define that an idea, concept or action is completely right.

According to philosophers, two types of truth are present which are necessary truth and contingent truth. A necessary truth is true under all circumstances and therefore must be true for everything, whilst a contingent truth is true only when applied to a specific subject and we arrive to this different types of truth by using propositions and these propositions are also categorized by two different terms. According to Kant, The first proposition which is analytic is defined as a proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its subject and therefore this specific proposition is commonly seen in necessary truths, one example is : "all triangles have three sides." The second proposition is synthetic and according to Kant too, it is a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject, therefore this proposition is commonly found in contingent truths, one example is: "all bachelors are happy."

After analyzing all of these truths along with its propositions, what theory of knowledge has taught me is that there will always be different opinions or ideas that will contradict those presented by the necessary truth, for example, if we use the statement mentioned above which says that  "all triangles have three sides" ,we may conclude that this is the finite truth but, are all objects or drawings that have three sides called triangles? And this is when we may question ourselves if what is a necessary truth for the majority of us can be a general truth for "all" of us. Different cultures are also implied, such as a tribe in India or in Africa that may not share our definite truths and what may seem as a contingent truth for us, may be a necessary truth for that tribe or ,without our knowledge, their finite truth may even be applicable truly for all cases.

Relativity is also heavily applied (note that we're not using the same relativity concepts as Albert Einstein but a more philosophical approach) as this concept is also used to understand and determine truths. One relativity ideology which I believe is very interesting is cognitive relativism which states that any system of determining truth cant be more valid than another system and thus none of the truths present in our society are "correct." This would mean that science as a truth is no more valid than religion or vice-versa. The main problem with this is that no absolute truth can be reached and therefore we may not apply any of our ways of knowing in order to reach a verdict that is true for ourselves and possibly true for all of us.

In conclusion, I believe that in order to reach an absolute truth, we must use all of our ways of knowing in order to truly understand everything that surrounds us and therefore we must look beyond our barriers of truths and explore every little aspect that may define a truth. Although im also more inclined to a factual knowledge which is science, I also understand that what science may not understand or explain, other areas of knowledge may provide an answer for what science cannot determine.


Interesting christian approach on cognitive relativism: http://carm.org/secular-movements/relativism/cognitive-relativism                                          

The 7% rule

I found a very interesting article that shows some research about language and two interesting and both applicable ways of how we interprete language.


The first way or point is in fact the 7% rule which seems to imply that only 7% of the actual message from the speaker is interpreted by the receiver, the other 93% is conformed of body language, the looks of the person, etc. This initiall statement is supported by two investigations that were made in 1960 by professor Mehrabian and colleagues at the university of California. This investigations was that: 


"Subjects were asked to listen to a recording of a woman's voice saying the word "maybe" three different ways to convey liking, neutrality, and disliking. They were also shown photos of the woman's face conveying the same three emotions. They were then asked to guess the emotions heard in the recorded voice, seen in the photos, and both together. The result? The subjects correctly identified the emotions 50 percent more often from the photos than from the voice."

"In the second study, subjects were asked to listen to nine recorded words, three meant to convey liking (honey, dear, thanks), three to convey neutrality (maybe, really, oh), and three to convey disliking (don't, brute, terrible). Each word was pronounced three different ways. When asked to guess the emotions being conveyed, it turned out that the subjects were more influenced by the tone of voice than by the words themselves."

From this studies, it was concluded that the rule was certainly true and that it applied to any form of spoken language, but in this article, the writer is contradicting this rule by stating further research upon this case in which he found that in scientific terms, this cannot be called a rule as only two investigations are not enough to imply this term. Also he refuted that the research had nothing to do with giving speeches, because it was based on the information that could be conveyed in a single word.

I believe that the writer has enough facts and therefore I beleive that this rule isnt true as it is absurb to think that only 7% of the message is understood by the receiver whilst 93% is conformed of trivial things such as body language and the looks of the person. Although I also learned through this TOK classes that body language can be as strong to show a message that (in some cases) words are not necessary to show a message as body language can be sufficient. So, I believe that we must always see all the perspectives from a story and therefore make an opinion from all the ways of knowing being emotions, senses, reason, language, classification, etc.

Link to article:  http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2043156

Emotionless State- Reason, Language and Emotions

Happiness, sadness, rage, terror are all emotions that we experience on our daily lives. Sometimes, this emotions controls us and blocks our reason and knowledge, but yet, humans dont know how to live without emotions and often display them to others in an overly exagerated way.

When we think of how essential emotions are to us, we start to believe that they are what makes us human and in perfect correlation we unite this two and find that we don't comprehend what is being without emotions or moral judgement.

I found an interesting story or more of a character that implements this idea of being without emotions and this is Kazuo Kiriyama from a novel called "Battle Royale." To understand this character, we must first see a very basic summary of the novel. The novel is about a group of teenagers which are assigned by a totalitarian government (located in Asia) to kill each other until only one is left as a form of research by the government. The character i'm writing about, Kazuo Kiriyama, suffered from a great trauma which damaged his capacity to process basic human emotions ,especially those of empathy and remorse, making him a perfect candidate of this killing game but he was also very intelligent as he was capable of learning anything extremely fast and mastering it, but due to his lack of emotions he found that he didn't care about this nor found a reason to continue and so utterly discarted them.
 
This example clearly shows how emotions can be related with judgement and with reason, also this affects the way we communicate and see the world, refering back to Kazuo Kiriyama, he didn´t found a reason to talk and prefered to act with reason and since he found himself without emotions, had to act with reason. The way he talked and the language he used was always centered into the main point without using any terms such as I or believe. No one trully understood him and only had friends for his own benefit not the emotional fact of having a friend.

In conclusion, being in an emotionless state trully affects your way of seeing the world and understanding it, it also affects the way you communicate with others and your moral judgement. Finally it can free you from many moral judgments, yet it can make your language less effective as you no longer feel sympathetic towards other people as you don't understand how they feel and therefore no longer relate to them.