Wednesday, 22 January 2014

Is History A Science? O.o

We humans tend to define History as, "the study of past events, particularly in human affairs." However Science tends to be defined as, "Knowledge about or the study of the natural world based on facts learned through observations and experiments." Science unlike history can be predicted on the whole however, who are we to predict what will happen in the next 2minutes and if it goes down in the historians book? I feel like scientists have the edge over the historians, as the historians are always dealing with information that could be incomplete, as we loose a lot of information about the history every minute that passes from the incident itself.
As history rotates and is energised around the evidence methods like books, internet, etc, this show the truth or sometimes only half the truth. However science which is straightforward can be measured   but history cannot. You can never know for sure if a event actually happened or is true until you experience it FIRST hand, and that is hard considering that the event has already passed. But in history everything can be re evaluated and analysed to figure out what the real story is! In conclusion I believe that science can be history, but history cannot be a science, as a great historian once said,
"History is written by the victors." Winstone Churchill


Monday, 2 December 2013

Moral Dilemma

Moral Dilemma is a situation that requires a choice between "justice" or "empathy"which are two equal alternatives. A moral dilemma can therefore be defines as a situation that will often involve and apparent mental conflict in which each possible course of action will breach some binding moral principle.
There is a difference between "justice" or "empathy", justice is the process or result of using laws fairly to judge and punish people who have committed crimes. However empathy is the ability to understand and share feelings of one and another.

I chose this Dilemma as I have been in the steps of this comic, where I either go with my intuition and choose to use empathy, and feel bad because I haven't done the work , or to be fair and do the right thing which does not include plagiarism. Many problems in the world are a result of people paying too much attention to their desires rather than to other factors that actually affect their future, and although I was using empathy instead of justice I was wrong to do so, because I didn't think about the outside factors that could actually affect me or others around me.

  • Ethics of justice
  • Denotolgy
  • Kantanianism
All the words listed are acts of duty, however the next words are consequences for the greater good:
  • Utilitarianism 
  • consequentialism 
Using the two different sets of words can you identify what I used for my moral dilemma? 

Mark Twain once said,
          "Make it a point to do something everyday that you don't want to"
You should try this as it helps in making decisions in future moral dilemma's.

Check this link for many Moral Dilemma's that happen around the world.
http://psychopixi.com/misc/25-moral-dilemmas/

Saturday, 19 October 2013

Is seeing believing?

Although everyone has their own opinion of this matter, what I think of this matter is not that relevant at the moment because everyone interprets the information they receive differently depending on past experiences that the brain might have gone through. For example, in our daily lives we study a lot of things, whether at school, at work or home, but the things we study about are things that we have not seen before and may not see them ever. We hear of so many people and so many things but "who are we to say that they are not real?" The question that comes to my head after thinking of the existence of things that I have never seen or experienced is, "should I believe only what I see?"

You don't have to see something to believe it, although there are many things in this world that we cannot touch, feel, see or hear, but "does this mean we shouldn't believe that they exist?" For example, many people believe in Ghosts, there is no proof that they exist and I personally don't believe in them, however some people have seen them, should we believe what they have seen, or should we go with our instincts and believe in only what we have seen?

Illusions play a trick on our minds, they basically confuse our brain. They make us believe in what we see, but when we find the solution somehow we seem to change the way we see the illusion as a whole. Take this example,

Try to say the colour of each word!


In the first word, although our mind sees the word PURPLE we see RED, our brain responds to previous encounters with the colour, it memorises the colour and interprets it where it can find a similar match.

In conclusion believing should only come from intuition, for a sense of right and wrong comes from God himself. Seeing is not believing, as so everything that exists usually tends to not be seen and everything that cannot be seen tends to exist apart from in our minds.

Word Count 351.


Wednesday, 9 October 2013

Language.

Firstly what is language?
       "The free dictionary" defines language as, "Communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols."
Firstly we have to distinguish the difference between, "communication" and "language". Language falls under communication as it is like a type of communication with other humans.


The way we use language, allows us to understand the way we communicate very differently, whether it is what the sender is trying to say or not. The way the current world uses language confuses some people, as there are many ways of communicating, for example:
1. Verbal communication, when you are talking to someone or people in person.
2.Written communication, emails, reports etc
3.Visual communication, television and video clips.
4. Sign language communication, used by people who are unable to communicate naturally.
5. Non-Verbal communication, non physical communication.
       There are very many other ways.

There are 4 ways of receiving language as Shulz Von Thun said,
 Self revelation: MUM:What a chaos! You're a slob! How can you live in such a mess!
                                SON:  Did you have a bad day Mum? 

 Factual Information: When facts are communicated to others.
 Relationship: expresses how the sender gets along with the receiver and what he thinks about him.
 Appeal: Saying or understanding something that is said "indirectly" 
    
       Depending on were and how we use language we can understand it differently. The word 'shit' can be used negatively, when cursing at someone or when something has gone wrong. But however its true meaning is 'FECES'. What is the difference between saying 'feces' and 'shit'? There is no difference however the way we interpret words is different around the world and this can cause problems to some people. 





Monday, 23 September 2013

1984 By George Orwell.

 Question: Why is the ruthless totalitarian regime, described in Orwell’s novel purging Oldspeak and imposing Newspeak? What assumptions are being made about the relationship between language and thought?

       The book 1984, by George Orwell, chapter 5 is telling 'us' the readers how the totalitarian regime is changing the words that are old in the old speak and puts in the new words into the newspeak, trying to make the language simpler and easier for one to speak. The totalitarian regime wants to make all humans to the use the newspeak as they believed that it would benefit them in the long term, by allowing ones vocabulary and thought to exceed what is expected. Words like synonyms and antonyms have been removed from this language as the author thought that the less word in a language the less people had to think and the less people had to think the less people were stressed and tensed.



Monday, 9 September 2013

My Real Life Situation.



The situation: Some people, wether family or friends have led us to thinking that if other countries try to act towards the Syria crisis then World War 3 could erupt!

The Concepts: The concepts are, Knowledge and Reason.

Poor Question: Do you think World War 3 is possible in this situation? 

Intermediate question: Can the knowledge we have justify this statement?                      

Good Question: Even though we don't have accurate predictions about World War 3, using Knowledge and Reason, to what extent are we made to believe that the syria crisis will lead to it?







Wednesday, 4 September 2013

The ladder of abstraction.

Real Life Situation: Mr Moussay's grandfather used to think that fruits would ripen earlier than they would normally because of global warming

Knowledge Claim: This is a belief
Topic: Heat, Global warming.
Poor Question: why does Mr Moussay's grandfather believe that fruits ripen earlier than usual due to global warming?
Intermediate Question: As global warming is increasing why does Mr Moussay's grandfather think that fruits are ripening earlier than usual?
Good Question: Using memory, experience and intuition, to what extent does Mr Moussay's grandfathers statement persuade you in believing it?