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Shubham Parashar

Assignment! - 51 views

Keep Your Head - Article Response Of what value are emotions in the learning process? Emotions affect the way we interpret a lot of things and the way take information into account. However essenti...

started by ty frederickson on 17 Mar 13 16 follow-ups, last by Shubham Parashar on 10 Apr 13
ty frederickson

What Makes Us Moral | Diigo - 8 views

www.diigo.com/...55_1685076_1686619-4%2C00.html

shared by ty frederickson on 27 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • palak29 on 30 Aug 13
     
    Situation based on Heinz dilemma: There has been a shoot out at a college and there has been several severe injuries. The closest emergency hospital is full: all the OR are full, the emergency room and they had to convert that room into an OR. All the doctors are working on every patients. There are still several patients that are coming in the ER and there is no room left. The police and the doctors find out that the doctors in OR 1 are performing a heart surgery on the shooter. What should the doctors do? Should they continue or leave him to help other patients? There several patients who need surgeries and that OR could be used to save them. What is the moral thing to do?
  • ...6 more comments...
  • Himesh Settinayake on 13 Sep 13
     
    Reading through this article, I could only wonder one thing - who exactly establishes these moral expectations? According to Jeffrey Kluger, each group of individuals possess their own set of "oughts", or a set of rules and regulations that the groups follow; this characteristic was proven in a group of apes, also demonstrated in communities of human beings. In such groups of individuals, who sets the moral values? How do we know whether they are the 'right' set of morals values to follow? For example, as Kluger claims, the general rule for helping people is to help those close to home, yet ignore those far away. Is this morally justifiable? This rule states the importance of helping those who are close to you, yet neglecting those who you can't see. Surely, a man suffering next to you is equally as needy someone suffering in say, another country. Taking a utilitarian approach, we should be helping as many people in need as possible, whether on your street, or in a whole different continent. I realise that this is unrealistic: we cannot possibly hope to help every single suffering person in the world. Alas, how do we know who to help, and who to neglect? The subject of morality is based on such uneven ground that it is difficult to even establish what 'good' and 'bad' are, in terms of morality. What is good and bad may boil down to the neural activity in our amygdalae and our dorsolateral prefrontal cortices; but until we can express with confidence that the secret to morality may be within the most complicated organ of the body, we will not be able to wholly understand morality, what is 'right' and 'wrong', or even who decides what is 'right' or 'wrong'.
  • Aleks Vold on 14 Sep 13
     
    I think one of the more interesting ideas discussed by the Author was his meaning upon criminal courts. Since our morality ranges extensively from person to person what will happen within court cases. Are we all the same and deserve the same treatment when being prosecuted by the law? This question was raised by the Author. I believe Individuals suffering from clinical insanity and behavior issues deserve a different set of lighter punishments because of their inability to reason. However not all criminals are suffering from medical issues making a category for cold criminals. But the question that arose for me is; where is the line between being clinical insane and having an extreme side of morality? Are we one day going to be able to find the brain roots of serial murder before they actually do it? If so, is this a correct method of responding to criminal cases. With this technology or method will the police can arrest individuals even before they have committed a crime. But does having a serial murder characteristic actually make you a murderer? All these questions could one day become major topics in the world.
  • Naquib Nasaruddin on 14 Sep 13
     
    After reading this article, I came up with a question, "What if all the moral actions we know as a community is wrong and all the immoral actions is right?". Of course, if this was to happen, our community will be subjected to go chaos. We will end up breaking apart and losing the community itself. That is why a lot of us are often are influenced by morality gained from culture and religion. Though, one of the questions I have arrived from my statement, how do we know if our known moral values is the right one? As Jefrey Kluger said in the How We Stay Good section, people only follow the right morality establish by a group or community just to prevent them from banishment and also just to get food. In a community, something is immoral when it affects other people like the example given in the article where a group of chimpanzees in a zoo is only given food when all the chimpanzees are present, but two were not present and this affects the whole group and made their change of mood to surly. Thus, in a group we have specific moral values to benefit people and ourselves. But then, what if we come across a moral dilemma, such as the Runaway trolley, where we have to sacrifice one person for the benefit of saving five other people. Then, how do we know which moral values to consider? Then, of course a lot of us will consider the utilitarian approach and say there is more good done than harm. But killing a person is considered immoral, but it is moral when saving other people's life. People's life has become objects where one life is equals to another.
  • ty frederickson on 14 Sep 13
     
    Reading through these responses, I notice a trend towards the hypothetical what ifs that often dominant ethical discussions and applications. While I genuinely applaud this tendency and feel it generally reflects a healthy, developing mind capable of critical thought and reflection, I also fear an intellectual quagmire that results in a great deal of philosophical musing and little actual action. Some of you raise relevant points situated in actual ethical schools, and this is good to see as well. Finally, I am comfortable with the argument that morality is as much a projection of human thought as it is an inherent characteristic of an action, (is an act within itself moral or immoral, or is the perception of the act what deems it so?) but that does not seem to resolve our need for a behavioral compass. The beauty of this potential conflict is that how we come to know of the inherent value of an act is equally important to the value itself.
  • Dylan Adcock on 14 Sep 13
     
    "Sometimes we can't help it, as when we're suffering from clinical insanity and behavior slips the grip of reason." Above is a quote taken from the article 'What Makes Us Moral' by Tiffany Sharples and Alexandra Silver, in my response I would like to discuss this idea and give my own opinions and thoughts. I would like to start off explaining a little about my background because I feel it's relevant to this response due to my own bias. For a majority of my childhood (up the age of about 10) I grew up in South Africa and I was exposed to crimes which include murder, rape and theft on a daily basis. In South Africa it is common, if not an 'unspoken mandatory commodity' in all houses to have full alarm systems for all doors and windows, sometimes guard dogs, big gates and fences on top of walls to make it even more difficult to enter, and sometimes even electrical fencing around your property. With that said, and all of these security measures, the crime rate is still extremely high. This made me, personally very scared of crime and extremely against any idea that people who commit murder, rape or theft getting a 'lighter' sentence for prison time, I believe for premeditated murder or rape, death penalty should be given and for theft, a very large prison sentence. The article I have mentioned above brings up a very interesting point about what if the criminal has a mental disability or is doing these crimes without their reason in place. This really made me question one of my most moral thoughts about server punishment for criminals, more so than is given in some countries. To what extent is it justifiable for people with a mental disability to get a less severe punishment? After contemplating for a while, my opinion on this would be that even if they have a mental disability, if one was to sentence a less severe punishment, what would stop that person from doing this punishment again? I feel the conclusion to this is very situational. If a ment
  • Baqar Mirza on 14 Sep 13
     
    What interests me most about this article is the author's discussion of the use of morality in court cases. Since the court requires a severe disability to exempt criminals from the normal punishment, it is safe to say that those courts think that everyone without a severe disability has the same moral compass. However this may not be the case and like Aleks points out, our sense of morality can differ extensively from that of others. There were clear examples of this in the article; the outrage among the delinquents upon discovering that two of the other delinquents in the treatment center had mugged an old lady. Clearly there was a difference in the sense of morality between the two who mugged the old lady and the others who were outraged. My favorite example of this differing sense of morality though comes in the form of the trolley dilemma discussed in the article. While 85% of people said they would not push a man in front of a train to save the lives of five other people, 15% of people said they would push the man. So clearly there's a differing sense of morality between people. And this brings me to my point; the use of morality in courts. Would you punish someone for not saving the lives of five others at the expense of one? Or would you punish someone for pushing one man in front of train to save five others? If the statistics collected in the survey represented judges and juries then you would have an 85% chance of being found not guilty in court if you did not push the man, and you would have a 15% chance of being found guilty if you didn't push the man. Clearly there is an inconsistency, so is morality an exact enough science to be used in court cases?
  • Sasha Sethi on 16 Sep 13
     
    Honestly morality is such a vast principle. We all might share the same connotation on what morality is, but at the same time it might differ. This is because we have all belong to different cultural backgrounds and when we make a decision about whether it's morally acceptable/appropriate or inappropriate, those factors influence our decision. As aleks and baqar mentioned, the sense of morality differs within people. In my culture, some people might think love marriages are immoral and go against cultural values. I've inherited the same cultural background and values but my sense of morality has been influenced by other cultures. Therefore, i think love marriages are definitely moral. Like discussed earlier, who really decides what's morally right? Will there ever be a mutual sense of morality? Referring to one of the principles mentioned in the article, Altruism. I could relate it to one of the quotes i strongly believe in. 'As you sow so shall you reap' - stated in the Bible.
  • Laiqa Madhavji on 22 Oct 13
     
    The article i decided to reflect on is "What Makes Us Moral" because I interestingly realized that the article made me raise more questions than give me answers, that exactly makes us moral. The article explores two kinds of people, which are basically the bad and the good, and tried to link up morality to the actions of certain people. Sometimes morality plays a big part in a person's life and towards what actions they may commit, but sometimes, a person's badness or goodness, can over shadow universal morality. Examples were given at the bottom of page 30 and 31, which both famous and infamous people who have acted and changed the world, whether it was positively or destructively. In the article, there was a very interesting observation made about an example of a child at school. The example was about how the child would react to him having to obey the rule of not eating in class, and of him listening to his teacher if she told him to push another student off his chair. This shows that morality is part of everyone's school of thought, and then determines the actions one will decided to make. Unless someone decides they want to be bad, and want to hurt other people, morality overshadows any kind of bad though, just like the teacher's request of pushing another child of his chair made made the student hesitate, and realize that he had no valid reason to do that, but his teacher's demand. Most people's intentions are good because we all feel like we have a certain standard to live up to, and a limit of a particular behaviour we owe to each other and the people around us. On the other hand, there are always people who aren't as stable, people who suffer from clinical sanity for example, as stated under the section of "Why We Turn Bad". Where morality comes from is still to be researched and understood, because there was never a rule book or "morality" book made in order to mentor the human society, but that hasn't stopped the vast majority of people having common thou
ty frederickson

Sam Harris on "How Science Can Answer Moral Questions" - 4 views

www.ted.com/...nce_can_show_what_s_right.html

shared by ty frederickson on 27 Aug 13 - Cached
  • ty frederickson on 27 Aug 13
     
    Required Viewing
  • ...3 more comments...
  • palak29 on 01 Sep 13
     
    The idea of looking at moral values from a science perspective has truly been valuable to the world. It may have answered several questions on what is right and wrong, as from the beginning, we have always related morals with religion and culture, more like morals and values have come from religion mostly. This idea of moral value that have been derived from religion has always intrigued me, the idea of what is right and wrong in the perspective of religion always went against the idea of right and wrong from a science background. This has led me questioning my moral values that do not make sense in a developed society. I guess what I am trying to say here is that, morals that have been derived from religious perspective have always been constrained and inflexible with progress of the world and modern ideas whereas the morals from the science perspective are based on facts that are flexible with the development of the world. Like the example mentioned by Sam Harris about Muslim ladies wearing burkha in a hot weather does not make sense. Religion have a limited boundary which may not be crossed, they already know what's right and wrong like Sam Harris mentioned in his speech, the morals experts know everything, which does allow them to explore more in the world and what it has to offer. On the contrary, science continuously tests its boundaries and if people had followed the moral codes according to religion they most probably never would have found answers to so many questions especially in the area of science such cure to so many diseases. It also justifies the moral reasons we believe in. However, morals based on science perspective have liberated the world of any social and basic moral obligation to the world and its society. Where religion has kept people within the boundaries of moral obligation towards the society, science may have liberated them form any such obligations, cases such the rape, murder, terrorist attacks and bombing nuclear plant
  • Dzafran Azmir on 13 Sep 13
     
    The ideas presented by Sam Harris is the TED talk is quite intriguing, and the point that he had brought upon religion's role in today's views upon morality is surely true. To a large extent, the modern society's thinking contain remnants of religion's former dominance upon approaches to life and of morality. As in the case of the large Abrahamic religions that are rooted rooted in the world, their static nature almost hinders with relevant questions that are more relevant to be rectified today, as Harris pointed out, the question of gay marriage and to that of nuclear proliferation.Where in the lack of religion's preponderance in people's moral compass, staggeringly imminent issues that have a wider set of impact upon the world may undoubtedly be solved more efficiently through a wider popular agreement of its urgency and importance. Perhaps, a logical pathway to morality as is with science would offer a more pragmatic solution to the problem of determining moral dilemmas, or of weighing the importance of issues over others.
  • Aishwarya Leen on 14 Sep 13
     
    This TED talk was actually very interesting. He brought up the idea that science can be the ultimate guide to answering moral questions and that this could be more accurate than religion. To an extent this could be true but I do see some loopholes in this claim. Science can't take things into account such as - intuition, overall context of the situation and its possible impact on society, instinct or even extrasensory perception (information that is not acquired by the usual sensory perceptions but instead with the mind). And even if there is scope for science to gain hold of these aspects as well, such technology has yet to develop. He did give examples of faults he found in religion and spoke about how we shouldn't blindly rely on religious beliefs. For instance, he pointed out that Muslim women wear burkas even when the weather outside is hot but what he has failed to point out is that - why do these women do so? He has looked at this situation from a very narrow point of view. Not all woman are forced to wear the veils and some insist to wear it themselves. In France a few years ago, when the French had planned to ban the veils, there were large protests lead by Muslim women. This clearly shows that many of the women choose to wear the burka and have their logical reasoning for it. I agree with Palak, because of religion and it's teachings of morality some of our actions have been somewhat restrained. There is always some 'fear' element when we do something we aren't supposed to be doing. I am not so sure about other religions but in my religion for instance we have always been told that "God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent" But if all of a sudden we rely on science to answer our moral questions, our actions could become more liberal because of this lack of fear. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not so sure. To conclude, I'm not quite convinced whether science can answer all of our moral questions. Maybe because there are some aspects of m
  • Azat Kasimov on 14 Sep 13
     
    I found the ideas presented in Sam Harris' TED talk extremely intriguing and thought-provoking. I was very captivated by his concept of moral-genius in the same fashion as it applies to genius in any other scientific subject area. I found that his ideas accurately applied to the real-world, where people's subjective opinions of morality, fueled by cultural stimulus, interfered with the goal of human well-being. This led me to wonder what the causes of such ideas and actions. I came up with a possible explanation for the phenomenon. Moral questions rely heavily on social aspects which is expected since our sense of morality is shaped by our interactions with our community and ourselves. When we talk of the subject of morality and what we perceive as morally right and morally wrong, we encounter several different distinct, morally correct answers to solve moral problems. There is a certain range of actions that we would distinguish as morally correct. In a scientific-based subject such as physics, as Harris discussed in his presentation, the answers to questions are concrete and precise. This is due to a lack of social interaction in order to achieve an answer, the range of correct answers which is present in moral questions is now eliminated. I believe that this is due to the fact that social interactions are not part of the journey to reach the answer. This allows physicists or people in general to dismiss incorrect answers to questions without hesitation, if an answer is incorrect, a clear demonstration of the faulty logic that caused the deduction of the incorrect answer may be explored. Morality however, may not be explored using the same procedure. People are afraid to point out the faultiness in the deduction of moral answers of other people because they do not want to dismiss the moral beliefs of other people in fear of insulting them by discounting their beliefs. I find this similar to what occurs in a subject such as English. English is also a subject which
  • Shubham Parashar on 14 Sep 13
     
    I think that what Harris has presented is an interesting point of view, but I think that his viewpoint on moral topics are quite narrow minded, because of the fact if that morals are not determined through scientific concepts. I feel that when he continues to think about these topics he only considers the points of view out of practicality, instead of looking at peoples emotions and the morals that they have based them of off. Personally I believe that morals are based of not only religions, but also the community that people reside in, as often we base what we do on our surroundings, as we don't want to be ostracized by our community. For example, one of the theories Harris offers it to look at the idea of moral leaders just like we have leaders in religion, but I think that what he might fail to understand is that morality, is much more fluid and abstract than basic science, as there are many variables which differ at the same time. I think one of the main problems with having "moral leaders" might be the fact that they will not take the culture into consideration.
rahul datta

Response to The Biological Basis of Morality - 7 views

This article explored two ideas surrounding the origins of morality, a discussion that turned out to be extremely convoluted. I think I lean towards the empiricist view on morality, simply because ...

Morality

started by rahul datta on 11 Sep 13 no follow-up yet
ty frederickson

Fractals at the Heart of African (Community and Art) Design - 6 views

www.ted.com/...glash_on_african_fractals.html

shared by ty frederickson on 22 Oct 13 - Cached
  • Amal Waqar on 26 Oct 13
     
    I found this argument and concept very exciting. I've always been passionate and interested in learning and developing understanding of different cultures, and what different cultures find sacred. In the two main cultures I was raised in (American and Omani), mathematics plays an important role in education and careers. It had never occurred to me that individuals around the world could view mathematics in a religious and holy light. The Bamana priests found their sand divinations so sacred that they wouldn't share their "secrets" with Eglash. Only his initiation into Bamana priesthood allowed him access to the secrets. The fact that the Bamana priests guarded their divinations so much demonstrates the significance they believe mathematics has, and correlates with the spiritual qualities they believe mathematics to have. While this belief of math having divine qualities is new to me, it has been recurrent in mathematical history. Funnily enough, it sounds like Cantor believed himself to be a "mathematical prophet". Whether we believe his claim to be true or not, he also considered math a divine matter, and provided us with mathematical concepts that have come to shape our technology-driven, modern world. I've struggled with math as an academic subject, consistently viewing it as something that "needs to be done" rather than something that is fascinating and representative of culture and identity. What Eglash is doing by connecting individuals with their "mathematical cultural heritage" is inspiring. It is providing a new backdrop for mathematical education and is (I believe) fundamental to developing deeper understandings of mathematics in cultures.
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Himesh Settinayake on 26 Oct 13
     
    I found this video interesting because it reminded me of the golden spirals I believe they were called, and how they could often be found all around us such as in the simple patterns in the petals of a flower. Personally, this made me think about where else in the world, whether man made or natural, that different forms of mathematics can be found. Referring to Jean-Baptiste Michel's "The Mathematics of History", there is even a simple mathematical proportionality that can be found in the regularizing of verbs over a period of time. So then, can we use mathematics to derive any other lingering mysteries in the world, such as the proportionality of an empire's size to its period of reign? How reliable will this strand of 'historical' mathematics be? In Ron Eglash's "The Fractals at the Heart of African Designs", can it be proven that the African tribes were whole-heartedly attempting to create fractal patterns, or were they simply trying to create patterns that satisfied aesthetically? In that sense, we can never know what the tribesmen and women of the time were thinking, or whether they were even conscious of such beautiful fractal patterns. In my opinion, it would be interesting if one could personally question one of the tribesmen who designed such patterns in order to determine their thought processes. Perhaps there is a deeper, more fundamental meaning to these recurring fractal patterns in the architecture in these African places that we have yet to understand.
  • Mariko Makhmutova on 26 Oct 13
     
    Ron Eglash's talk about fractal patterns in African villages was very intriguing. The perspective that people in Africa are not educated seems even more bizarre after finding out about some of these patterns. Eglash mentioned something about knowing things about mathematical fractals because of algorithms that were applied for practical purposes. I find it to be rather interesting that in seemingly developed communities, we learn mathematics and then we create ways to apply it. However, in these villages, the people are posed with problems and then they use mathematics to solve them. I wonder how this approach changes the different societies' perspectives on mathematics. We often hear students complaining about how 'finding x won't help them in the future', but if people were presented with practical issues that were only solvable by maths, maybe their perspective would change. Another thing that I found to be fascinating was the almost subconscious mathematical relationship between the length of the straw and the strength of the wind in the windscreen example. It would be interesting to see what practical mathematical relationships other cultures have established.
  • Yukiko Saito on 26 Oct 13
     
    What I thought was interesting was that he brought up that mathematics is in nature and it is there consciously however we are unconscious about it. All the examples from Africa explains mathematics in real life and in their culture however they do not take it as "mathematics", they just do it. They know about the mathematics that goes into the process though Englash went back the process to see the mathematics in it. This was interesting people with more developed technology goes back to understand the mathematics behind what people in Africa do in their daily life. I never thought mathematics can connect to nature or some people's daily life. To me, mathematics seemed very abstract and I just couldn't see it connecting with mathematics because I believed things that happens in nature are more spontaneous and without any particular patterns. Now I think I understand when people say "we need mathematics for everything" and "we cannot live without mathematics", though we need most subjects that we learn in school. We tend to just think about a subject in the particular class room when we should paying more attention outside of class to see how it connects to us and how most things in life is from what we learn in school.
  • Maha Kabir on 29 Oct 13
     
    I found this TED Talk very interesting, and after watching this and especially after today's TOK class, I am starting to realize the mathematical concepts in different situations and environments around me. One things that Mr Eglash said that really intrigued me was the function of the fractals in the villages of Cameroon. He explained and showed a diagram illustrating how the houses in a village all circle the leader's home in the middle, who is in the middle of his family within the bigger circle. Even the houses on the outside are surrounded by other houses in a circle, and I found the reason behind this mathematical layout very interesting. Eglash explained how when people went deeper and deeper in the cirles, they had to be more polite and respectful. Also the more important people were in the centre of the circles. These two factors highlight how mathematics is used as a form of representing social hierarchy/discrimination, as social class and importance in the society is reflected through one's position in the multiple fractals. Also, another thing that I found interesting goes back to a central debate we discussed in class: was mathematics invented or discovered? Eglash told us how the people in these various African tribes had told him that they had not known what fractals were, they had just shaped their villages this way because they looked attractive and interesting, and in my opinion fulfilled their social representational needs. But we have made something out of shapes within shapes, we have given thm names, applications and intellectual importance. But these African villages have given them applications and importance as well, without even knowing what they were. But a question arises: do we even know what they are? We have given them meaning through our interpretations and perceptions, but how can we know whether 'our' fractionals are the same as 'their' fractionals? Do we need to mathematically understand what something is in order to find it useful
Ash Maher

Resistance is Futile - 28 views

After much thought I think I have processed this and have to say. You know what I think the issue is with "can or can we not make a difference" is. Its because we are so aimed at finding an answe...

started by ty frederickson on 11 Nov 12 3 follow-ups, last by Ash Maher on 13 Nov 12
Amal Waqar liked it
ty frederickson

Follow-up Thoughts - 8 views

I really enjoyed our exploration of various topics during our unit on Art as an AoK. Your questions and insights were inherently (and explicitly) valuable to the upcoming Prescribed Title Essays. A...

started by ty frederickson on 22 Oct 13 no follow-up yet
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