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.  

Emotions

From the image above, we can see that we can classify emotions according to the basic emotions that we had from the beginning and this emotions are: Rage, Loathing, Grief, Amusement, Terror, Ecstasy  Admiration and Vigilance. From this basic emotions, other more complex have derived. I believe that this theory about emotions is correct, yet it is a scientific way of putting emotions but not understanding them truly.  Humans have always tried to find a reason for everything that surrounds us and always found that there is more to understand, more logic behind and therefore we may not be able to understand emotions entirely at least not yet.

Phineas Gage

Phineas Gage was an American railroad construction foreman that was working on September 14th 1848 by gang blasting rock whilst preparing the roadbed for Rutland & Burlington Railroad.

In order to set a blast, it involved boring a hole deep into a body of rock; adding blasting powder, a fuse, and sand; then compacting this charge into the hole using a tamping iron—a large iron rod. Apparently, Phineas forgot to set sand, which was used as means of protection against the explosion, and this set a forehand the explosion causing the iron rod to go straight into his head and damaged the left frontal lobe.

Amazingly, Phineas survived the accident without much damage physically, but emotionally, he was a completely different person as he now lied, gambled, bullied and generally became more aggressive  something that he never was before the accident.


   (Picture of Phineas Gage after the accident.)

From this case, we can see that our senses can be changed and therefore our perspectives of the world changes with it as well, but also that our emotions are crucial for our humanity and without them we become into something completely different, as in the case of Phineas Gage.

Cultures

Many of our different perspectives are determined by factors that are external to us, such as the way we were raised or the different countries we live in and one of the main factors that contribute for our different perspectives are the cultures of our families or the cultures we grew up in. For example in Papua New Guinea, there's a tribe called Lars Krutak and for every young male initiate, they undergo a ritual which is held in a "spirit house". The ritual is basically cutting the skin of the young male in patterns which symbolizes power within their culture. This ritual to us it might seem as unnecessary and especially very painful, but to that tribe, they find pride in their young male bearing this skin patterns as it represents not only power, as mentioned above, but also it is of vital importance in their economics and their politics. 

From this example, we can determine that each one of us has different perspectives thanks to the different cultures that we were raised in. 

TOK Seminar

Sensory perception was a common idea we touched during the first and second class of TOK, we asked ourselves this intriguing question:

Is it possible to know anything, based purely on sensory perception?

and this is what i responded:

No, I believe that knowledge is not purely based on the sensory perception, due to the different perspectives of different people and the different emotions that each one has about the world that we live in, therefore the knowledge that we gain through sensory perception is biased. But I also believe that the sensory perception is necessary for our human condition and for us to “survive” in this world.

Later on during the class, we learned of descartes a philosopher which reasoned not to rely on sensory perspectives because he thought that it was incorrect and therefore he only used reason to try and gain knowledge, but according to my answer I thought that this way of seeing the world is not the most accurate because we need both our sensory perceptions and our reason to try and see the world in a scientific way and also in a more sentimental way. We need our humanity to reason and we need our reason for our humanity, or else we would just have a constant way of seeing the world and other perspectives would be vanished such as any artist that expresses its feelings through any means. 

TOK First Class

Theory Of Knowledge or TOK is a way of learning about knowledge that surrounds us and it can be applied in any subject including science. In the first class we learned what was empiricism which is the study of knowledge we experience and that it will conform one of the key words throughout this TOK course. We also learned that we rely on our senses when we experience the world but we also questioned ourselves if this is truly the right way of experiencing the world around us, because of the different perspectives and emotions that each one has of the world. The world is biased when we compare it with every individuals point of view, but then again we wouldn't be able to see the world if we didn't have our senses to permit contact with everything that surrounds us and that is what I beleive that this first TOK class has taught me.