28/5/11

Perception:
part two:


It's amazing how we perceive the world around us. Due to our inbuilt, fight or flee response, we tend to notice things as the foreground and background. Meaning, we will notice the object that 'sticks out' because we have been wired. The object that sticks out is due to movement, colour and shape etc. We notice these because they may be of harm to us, relating back to the 'fight or flight' response, which means we have to be able to distinguish the objects that stick out in order for us to make the decision to fight or flight. This means, that our perception is selective because we only notice some things and overlook others. If we noticed every fine detail, our brain would overload with information.


It's interesting to think that not only do we perceive things due to fight or flight, but also depending on our mood. For example, if your having a bad day, your likely to perceive the world in a negative view. However, if your in a good mood, you may look around the world with optimism. My favourite example is


"While an optimist sees a glass as half-full, a pessimist sees the same glass as half-empty"


Another interesting point about perception is that we see the world differently depending on our interests. For example, now that I'm a Learner driver, all I see are learner drivers everywhere! This might be a similar situation to pregnant people, who would see pregnant people everywhere they go! It might not be because there are more learner drivers or pregnant people, but because our interests are focused on that, we seem to notice it.


Something else that I started to think about before reading the textbook was ultimate reality. Not so much about specific terms, but as I was in biology class and learning about photosynthesis and how certain colours are absorbed and others reflected. Also, if 'white' was all the colours of the spectrum, that meant if there were all of these colours being reflected, which is why we see grass as green etc., that means the grass isn't actually green is it? Because its just reflecting that colour so we see it. This lamp below, sums it up in one, that white light is actually all of the colours of the spectrum together.

Spectrum Lamp

Which left me to think, is our world colourless? I later read the tok textbook chapter on perception and saw the remark about how our world must have no colour at all because all different species on the earth perceive it differently. Meaning, we may see the visible colours on the spectrum, however other species will see radar wavelengths. Which obviously means, this species would not see the world as an assortment of different colours like we do. Which leads us to believe that each species perceives the world differently, which is true, but the hard thing to wrap our heads around is that if each species see's the world differently depending on their adaptations, then there is no specific colour of the world. Leaving it to be colourless. This gave me satisfaction because it's a possible answer to my theory.


I could go into the other sense and how in theory, we can't trust much, however, in reality, if we did question everything and try to find an answer for each of those questions, we would get nowhere. People always ask me what's the point of TOK, if all you do is question everything? But to me, I find it very intriguing because you see and think of what's going on around you differently, which I guess is one of the main goals in TOK. 

11/5/11

Perception
is subjective, meaning that every has a different view and thought on how things appear to be. IF perception was objective, this means that everyone would have the same opinion or view on the world..how dull.


I think it's fascinating how we can trick our minds, which are apparently so smart, into seeing things, that are not there. For example, the simple magic trick of throwing the ball up into the air. The magician will throw the ball slowly up into the air three times, then on the fourth time, pretend to throw it up. However, the audience see the fourth ball fly up in the air and this is because there brain predicts what's going to happen, they don't necessarily see what is happening.


This is very similar to how my art teacher says when we are painting to "paint what you see".I didn't really understand the true meaning until now. It's because when we go to paint or draw, we know the basic's of the face shape etc. so we start to draw that. BUT, we rarely draw what is actually in front of us, the structure similar to what we are drawing.


Because our brain's can be tricked so easily with optical illusion's, how can we tell what is, and what isn't? How can we trust that our own perception is reliable? Because we see that fourth ball fly up in the air, does that mean, "seeing believing?"


An optical illusion that makes me laugh is the elephant one below, the task is to colour inside the lines and tell me how many legs the elephant has..

18/4/11

WAYS OF KNOWING
"I know more than I can say" - Michael Polanyi


Ethics
Should offensive language be censored?
In my person opinion, I believe that language shouldn't be censored. This is because, with this offensive language concealed, we don't know the reality behind what's happening. News reporters, politicians etc. use fancy substitute words, which end in the public unknowing to the happenings. Even though it may be offensive to some, like using 'kill' instead of 'neutralize', it at least tells the truth like it is. I understand that news reporters etc. substitute the offensive words to make them less offensive, but they end up concealing the negative truth to the public, so that the war in Iraq, may not sound as bad as it truly is.


History
Is it possible to describe historical events in an unbiased way?
I believe so. This is because historians should be able to find evidence from the many perspectives of war and then with all of the knowledge gained from the evidence, summarize it to be unbiased. This may be hard to do in practice, but it would be ideal. The other possible way for a historical event to be unbiased is expose people to both views, so that they can see the perspectives of others and then make a further judgement. However, they would have to be fairly open-minded if it was for example, an old Jewish lady reading about the Nazis and trying to see it may not have entirely been the soldiers fault.


HUMAN SCIENCES
Is language unique to human beings?
If this question means, do only human beings find language important, then I say no. Animals, for example, have their own way of communicating through their language, through sounds and behavior. They may not have symbols to represent 'words' as we do, because they can't write, but they can communicate through their own language. What isn't clear is if Japanese people managed to translate the English language vice versa, how come we can't translate the animals' sounds into English, vice versa? Because animals are said to have the same brain capacity, if not more in some species. If we developed from cavemen, who grunted at each other, to people with a system with symbols that represent different sounds in our language, how come animals can't develop a similar system? It's odd to think that animals can 'talk' in a different language, but if you think about it in reference to the cavemen idea, it might be possible! Like cavemen started off, animals use body language to communicate, like sign language. But why haven't they developed a symbolic system of some sort to represent their language as fast as human beings?


MATHEMATICS
How is mathematics like a language?
Like our own language, words and meanings are represented by symbols. Maths can be considered a language because it also has mathematical grammar. It is similar to English, something will not make sense if it isn't in a specific order. If it's not in that order, it will then not make sense and be a mathematical error. However, unlike other languages, we can not write mathematical symbols to make sense of the formal way to write phrases like "How are you?". These mathematic symbols only apply to maths. An advantage to maths is that it's universal. Meaning all over the world, if educated, we can understand the mathematical symbol system, no difference to what language we speak.


EMOTION
Does the way you describe something affect how you feel about it?
Al Gore's quote "Blocking your child's access to objectionable material on the Internet is not called censorship, it's called parenting", is a perfect example of how describing words change the way you feel. Using the word parenting instead of censorship changes the views of people who believe that children should have the freedom to explore the Internet. If it was seen as censorship on children, then they would object, but because it's called parenting, they can relate or understand that is apart of their job in keeping their child 'safe' from the dangers of the Internet. Another example of how changing words may change your opinion is through military terms like 'neutralize' instead of 'kill'. If there was a report on the TV that the army was going to neutralize the opposing side to settle the issues, most people would think of this as acceptable because they wouldn't understand what the reporters actually mean. If the reporter's said the army is going to kill the opposing side to settle the issues, there would be outrage among most. Therefore, the subjects feelings has been altered, due to the alteration of the descriptive word.

25/3/11

LANGUAGE, MEANING AND TRANSLATION:
We use language to describe things, express our feelings, persuade people, tell jokes, observing things around us and to write. We don't just use language in the form of speech or writing, but we use body language to convey a message. If you think about how cavemen or two people who don't understand each others language, they will use their hands or body to try communicate their thoughts.


What I find interesting about a language is how did we get from A to B? Meaning, how did we get from grunting at each other, to creating symbols, that meant something? How did an English speaker determine the exact meaning of a Japanese word? This really interests me because yes, I do understand that there were three of the same phrases in three different languages on a plate written by the Egyptians around 3000BC and yes I understand that to translate Hyroglifics, Greek scholars used the second phrase, which was in Ancient Greek. What gets me, is how did someone of and English decent, start to translate for example, the Japanese word 言語 (language) into English, if they have never spoken or heard Japanese before? How did we first find translations for words in other languages that use characters? I'm asking so many questions, but finding it hard to answer them because I don't understand, but want to know more!


Not only are there problems understand our own language with so many meanings allocated to one word, but we have other 'meanings' and ways of putting a sentence together using idioms or metaphors or euphemisms, which makes it almost impossible to translate from another language to mean the same thing!


It's hard enough to communicate our thoughts into words clearly in our own language, so imagine how meanings must get lost in translation. Context is such a major part of our understanding in other language. If we are just given a few words in say spanish, we may not be able to make much sense of what the message is trying to convey. But with some background information in the sentence, we many be able to translate it back into English, so that we can understand it. Another problem with translating back into English, or from English to Spanish, is that if you translate a phrase literally into the other language, it will not sound normal! For example, "My friends house" in Spanish is "Mis amigos de las casas". A literal translation of that would be 'my friends of the houses', which obviously is not grammatically correct in English. So when we start to use things like idioms, other languages may not have the same idiom. For example, "tongue tied", which means you can't speak properly from mixing words together, may mean in another language there tongue is literally tied together. Hence, the loss of meaning in translation.

21/3/11

The Problem with Language and Meaning
is that information can be miscommunicated because people have different meanings for words, which leaves us with an wide variety of meaning. Information can also be misinterpreted if the person communicating the information does not make sense. Therefore, we must not be too vague when describing or giving information.

This is an example of how information can be miscommunicated

Is What Your Saying, What You Mean?
In contrast, if you are trying to define where hair ends and baldness begins, it's such a wide range that it is hard to pinpoint the beginning an end. If you are trying to explain information in depth, you may end up not meaning to say what actually came out of your mouth! I actually find this to be a major problem for me, especially when it comes down to writing essays. I understand the information, but I find it hard to put all of this information onto a page, which will then make sense to the reader. For example, if I'm writing the essay, my brain may be ticking over all of the information and thinking that I am putting it down on paper, however, I may end up only writing down half the stuff I think of, making it a difficult task for the reader to understand. Unfortunately, when for example, a teacher reads my essay, they think I don't understand the topic. Whereas, I do! I just don't know how to communicate it clearly whilst getting my ideas through. Therefore, if you go into too much detail, you can end up contradicting yourself, or making no sense.


How Can You Make Sense of a Sentence If You Don't Understand a Word?
Earlier, I mentioned this. What I mean is, if you don't understand the meanings of some words in a sentence, it will still affect the way you understand it. It may end up with a different meaning! For example, I'm in spanish continuers, but I still find it hard to understand sentences because there are words, which i don't know. It's not necessarily a 'vocab' word, meaning like the word "chair", but more of a verb that changes its meaning with the conjugation. So not only in foreign languages is it normal to have different meanings for one word, in English too, there are multiple meanings for one word. This is also similar to the poem, Jabberwocky, in "Through the looking glass". People describe his poem as a jumble of meaningless words, but the truth is Lewis Caroll uses a combination of English words to create one word. Novels are also made up to a certain extent. The plot's are created from life, but theories may be made up. Therefore, Caroll's combination of English words are fictional, but not nonsense.


This can become quite complicated when you narrow it down to:
How Do I Know What You Call Red, Is What I Call Red?
Because everyone has different meanings of one word, understanding someone else's language, in the same language, can be a challenge. Not only are people's definitions of words different, but of course, their perception. Their perception will then affect their definition. The simple way to think about it is:

RED

PINK

The ink on the left (red) is darker compared to the ink on the right (pink). If the person you have stated to this agrees, then you know that you have similar definitons of the colour 'red'. If they disagree, then you know that they have a different perspective or definiton on the colour 'red'.




The other problem that then arises is, What Are the Limitation's of Definitions?
How are we meant to describe to someone without the sense of sight, the colour red if it doesn't connect with the other senses. What I mean is, if you can't hear, feel, smell or taste the colour red, how are you meant to describe what it is? A way of describing the colour difference to a colour blind person would be to compare the intensity of the colour's. For example, because red is darker than pink, it would have a stronger intensity. The way I would describe colour to a blind person, is possibly through their other senses. For example, describe the colour through different textures, so the blind person could feel different textures of objects and relate them to colour's.

25/2/11

Class Discussion ¿?¿?¿?¿
After watching the movie momento, a few questions were raised..


How important is memory?
Memory is important because without it, how would you understand terms like irony?

"He is as smart as a soap dish"

Irony is the saying of one thing in order to mean the opposite. It contradicts itself.

Without a sense of memory,you can't understand irony. This is because if you have no recollection or understanding in an area of knowledge, how can you simply make jokes about it? If you can't connect irony, that means you don't understand the basic knowledge you need to understand. This shows how problematic language in action, can become. However, in every culture, there is irony. The problem may arise when trying to translate this.

Some Problems of Knowledge..

what is a knowledge issue?

A disagreement on knowledge

how trustworthy are our senses? more reliable than our emotions and language, however we should not rely completely on our senses, but a mix of perception, language, reason, emotion. 

how can we justify logic? by comparing our logic to other sources such as people's opinions and finding the right way of justifying our information and knowledge. 

how reliable our are feelings and emotions? they are not certain reliabilities, however they do have a part in our judgement. A mix of emotion, perception etc. will help us find a clearer understanding.

The list of questions we can ask ourself goes on..However we have to find a balance of questioning, to not become to skeptical. We then base our questioning on reality.

Source; Google Images,
Catfish Movie

CATmeowFISH

How do we know something is authentic? Is it real or not?

You know what is real through your own experiences and what you have been told or found out for yourself. You rely on sources such as your experiences, language, perception, culture, internet, media and 'experts'. The problem is that these are not reliable sources on their own, so you have to take information from each source to gain a deeper understanding. If you really think about it, you don't know if something is real. That is, if you're willing to question reality. How do we know that we aren't in a dream right now? Because we feel..however, in dreams, we can still feel and it does seem real. It's only when we wake up, that we realise we were in a dream. How do we know we aren't in a dream within a dream? Like the movie 'Inception' provokes? We don't know. But to keep ourselves not too confused, we believe we exist and we believe we are living, that we are in 'reality'. Otherwise, we would end up in a spiral of unanswered questions, that not even 

'experts' can answer. So for our own reassurance, we know something is real if we have evidence from experts or if we use our judgement the right way and can prove it right.

How do we know what we know?

We know, what we know again through perception, language, reason, emotion etc. We rely on the mix of sources to give us a balanced answer. Through language, we listen to people's stories [authorities] and believe them most of the time without second thought. These authorities are teachers, family, culture, news and so on. We believe what they say because they are wiser. However wisdom is just uncertain knowledge. So really, we come back into this loop of not knowing the full certain truth. So in reality, we don't actually know the 100% truth, it's constantly changing. Although, we can find the answer that is most probable to be the right answer.

How well do we know people? How we know them?

If we are talking about people as in presidents etc., we can know them through a variety of sources e.g books, internet, language and perception. If we are talking about people as in friends, family, acquaintances, we know them through perception, language and in some cases, the internet. Most people judge others through appearance and language. In the movie 'catfish', Nev judges his thoughts on Angela and Meg by their photos on facebook. The question is, how can he be sure that these people he has never met, actually look like the photos they have posted of 'themselves'. In the real world, you are attracted to a person through a 'physical action', which is appearance and the way they act [body language], however Nev didn't get to experience this. SO , how did he know if their was actually was a connection? Well his first 'connection' with Meg was through he phone [language]. In reality, moving onto the next level of a relationship is through an emotional bond, but with Nev and Megan, it was using words like 'babe' and 'cutie'. During their nine months of contact, they built up this anticipation of meeting each other and they felt based on their minds projections [unreliable and false].

Gaining knowledge from the internet? Is it reliable?

Even though the internet is said not to be the most reliable source, we still use it. WHY? Because its fast, accessible and simple to type in some key words and get pages of answers! However, these answers may not be right, we still read them, take it in [or not] and use these answers. Another problem with using internet as a main source for information, is that there is so much of it, we may not take it all in! therefore, we are not gaining knowledge in an area, but information in bits and pieces. Information isn't so valuable to us if it doesn't connect in our brains and become knowledge. BUT! We can build knowledge from bits of information stored in our brain during later experiences. This is similar with facebook or any other social networking website. We gain information [it may be false] about someone, which is then stored in our brain. The more we look at their profile and pictures, we learn more about them. HOWEVER, similarly in 'Catfish', all of this information we are learning through their profile etc. MAY NOT BE TRUE. So we are teaching our brain, false information! THREE BIG DOTS FORMING A TRIANGLE [therefore], the internet is not reliable, but we still do gain knowledge, true or false.

I Say No More.

19/2/11

THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE

"A man with only one theory is a lost man" - Bertolt Brecht, 1898-1900

Bertolt Brecht

The three elements that make up Knowledge as Justified True Belief are; truth, belief and justification.

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Truth brings up the questions of 'How can we ever be sure that what we think we know is true? 

and

What if our knowledge is based on lies, how can we tell what the truth is?

The main difference between truth and belief is that truth is objective and belief is subjective. This means that belief is personal and not as certain as truth is. The main difference between belief and knowing is that, when you know something you're certain, but when you believe something, you're not.

The three beliefs are vague, well-supported and beyond reasonable doubt. Your belief must be justified in the right way. A persons belief may be true, but we cant say that they know because their belief have not been justified the right way. Therefore, in order to say you know something, you must justify your belief in the right way.

H-O-W - - D-O - - Y-O-U - - K-N-O-W - ?

You can't know for sure, can you?

the four ways of knowing in dialogue:

"Someone told me" - Language

"I saw it" - Perception

"I worked it out" - Reason

"It's obvious" - Emotion

There are different LEVELS OF KNOWLEDGE; what we claim to know is usually second-hand knowledge. This means that is has been passed down and less reliable because we don't know the original source.

Albert Einsten

There's a difference between knowledge and information. Information, if pieced together properly can help us gain knowledge. However, if we do not have previous knowledge or an understanding of the information we are told, we will not gain knowledge. Someone who has a genuine knowledge of a subject, means they have an understanding of the information together, not just memorized information. Today, with the amount of internet access to all the information can be overwhelming and even though there is a lot of information to read, we may not understand it, resulting in us not gaining knowledge in that subject.

Another fact to remember is that just because we be an 'expert' in one subject, does not make us an expert in all subjects. E.g Albert Einsten; he was a wizz at maths, but not so much in other areas of knowledge.