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ty frederickson

Truth: Can You Handle It? - 8 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2008042500922.html

wiki research problems truth generation

shared by ty frederickson on 19 Oct 12 - Cached
Amal Waqar liked it
  • ty frederickson on 19 Oct 12
     
    Welcome to diigo ToK All-Stars! This interesting article from the Washington Post is relevant to our developing discussion on truth, belief, information, and knowledge. You might relate to the research-related conflicts which get discussed In this easy-to-access article.
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

Reasons for Reason - 5 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...reasons-for-reason

shared by ty frederickson on 05 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Hareth Al-Maskari on 05 Dec 12
     
    My challenge to the other commenters-tell me why I must believe the truth. To be frank, although I think this was a nice piece that summed up skepticism in a nutshell, it really does not give me something I think I want- why I must believe the truth? It sounds like a logical fallacy of some sort, and maybe in the cold logic that our society follows it is a paradox, but that is the glaring question that I got out of this blog. To believe something and for it to be true is what constitutes knowledge, but why must I attain knowledge? Will it help me- obviously not according to the skeptics, as the truth of something is not something I can really determine on a large scale. We all like to think we're Heck, I could write a long essay on this and not produce a good answer to my question and that is my challenge to the other commenters-tell me why I must believe the truth. Truth is something we debate endlessly, but what is its value? Can I truly know something, if so then does that mean I understand it? I seriously doubt it, and that is because our definition of understanding is too narrow to constitute what I believe understanding is. I don't think I understand anything in its true form (a cave reference haha) and therefore I don't think I know anything but I do know that if I say "I don't know anything" I am saying a paradox as I know that I don't know anything. The real challenge is realizing how little I know, and figuring out what I do know Hope you guys can scratch out what I was trying to say in that mess.
  • ...3 more comments...
  • Amal Waqar on 07 Dec 12
     
    While I understand everything (not in it's entirety ;) ) and have many thoughts to share, I struggle with putting these thoughts into words, so bear with me! ☺ Hareth, I'm incredibly excited by the notion you put forward regarding our extent of knowing. If we don't understand anything in it's entirety (which I believe, too) then we don't know much, do we? If we said we knew nothing, we would know that, so like you said it would be a paradox. I find it fascinating. I'm consistently reminded of a scene from this book I'm reading (or attempting to read!) called Invitation to a Beheading. In the text there's a reference to an extremely talented violinist who plays on a street corner. He plays this incredibly beautiful piece, but no one is there to hear it. Did it actually happen? He played the piece so it would be a truth, but if no one is there to appreciate it, does it lose its integrity? Does a truth lose its value if it's not immediately recognized as being a truth? As for why you should believe the truth, Hareth, I think beliefs make up a person. If we believe in nothing then what are we? It doesn't matter what you believe, but I think beliefs are the driving force behind people, they give us something to fight for and nurture. It gives us our 'humanity' if you will.
  • Ash Maher on 07 Dec 12
     
    Hmm this is a tough one, nevertheless tally ho. What I obtained from the article is that not what we believe in is important but as long as we can reinforce it. This to me is the epitome of the way life is right now. From international politics to marketing a brand, it's all what one believes in and how they can reaffirm it to either themselves or others. But what I ask is how can it be that our views stand on the same equal foundation yet we can still argue amongst each other? If they were on the same level then surely we would be capable of seeing that we each have our own faults and success? If we deem ourselves as smart as we seem how come we haven't recognized this fact and mobilized onto it? In the article it states the need for a civil common currency in order to exist with different ideas. Yet as we can see in our world today that isn't working out as nicely. Perhaps the individual is more influential then we really presume.
  • aleksvold2014 on 08 Dec 12
     
    Overall as Hareth mentioned this Article was good however I believe that the width the author chose to explain this topic was simply to narrow. The writer does a good job connecting the idea between scientific creationism and religious creationism and explains their issues within themselves that seem to be quite vital. However the author talking about the "skeptical challenge" raised some questions within my mind as how can something so vital for proving debate points, not only the creationism issue, but within political means go on within a spectrum of possibilities? Is this fair for societies? If we humans need to justify our epistemic principles from a common point of view because we need shared epistemic principles in order to even have a common point of view, wouldn't this mean that the religion is a book telling you how to follow a bunch of point of views the same with our science books? And why are we asking ourselves how the world was created? Shouldn't the real question be how did something come from nothing? Seriously how it is actually possible that all this came from nothing… it only breaks a few major laws in science.
  • william doughty on 13 Dec 12
     
    Our strongest beliefs (truths) stem from our core epistemic principles; which are what tells us what is rational to believe. If a person believes that god created us, then his core epistemic principles is god, Christianity. His religion will tell him what is rational and what isn't, what to believe in and what contradicts his belief. He will view anyone who doubts his principle as irrational. It all comes down to the fact that no one can fully defend their most fundamental epistemic principles. Since we can't obviously prove out principles using the same method that we believe in, and we can't use another method because we would then have to validate this other method and we would just be going in a circular motion with no meaningful endpoint. Science is another core epistemic principle. It is taught by schools worldwide to millions of students every year. Science and religion cannot ever be compatible because the rationalisms of both are contradictory and sometimes paradoxical to the other. Did god create us? Or are we a product of natural evolution? Science is believed to be leading this battle, because through research and evidence collected would point it to be the more logical. Based on my core epistemic principles. I believe neither God nor Evolution explains how we came to be here, because there are so many unexplained variables that contradict both beliefs. For example if we are to entertain that we are product of Darwinism; then how come there is a huge gap in the evolutionary chain around 2 million years ago? In which after this period "primitive hominids appeared" out of nowhere…and also from a scientific standpoint, how can we really justify that the ancient Egyptians could build the pyramids without some divine intervention. I wont go into specifics but these points are large holes on both Darwinism and science. In terms of god, there is just no tangible evidence god exists. God is belief and belief has no meta
  • ty frederickson on 02 Feb 13
     
    Hareth, I have thought a great deal about the question you proposed regarding whether or not knowing the truth is of any value. I certainly cannot convince you of the value in the pursuit, nor will I try; in fact, I offer that this search (or its value) is something that rarely can be instilled in another. You formulate an interesting hypothesis insofar that if discovering truth is unattainable, then "why bother?" Maybe a rejection of individual or societal purpose is the point. Uh oh. Now we have carved out another paradox. If rejection is the point and I reject the notion of finding a point, have I, in fact, found the point? When I was younger, I tended to believe that the purpose of life was undefinable (see without value) but not in a dark or macabre sort of way. I found this liberating actually and still do. This ideological subscription to a vast nothingness is at the heart of absurdism, and, as Camus tells us in the "rediscovery" of the Myth of Sisyphus, the moment we discover that the universe does not care about our needs, we find freedom. So, reject any sort of obligation to pursue the truth. Transcend the quagmire of philosophical "bleh" and embrace "life." Tell Socrates and his wrinkled old mantra "the unexamined life is not worth living" that the unexamined life is for amateurs. Wait, if you do that, aren't you actually examining life? Dang. Back to where we began.
Amal Waqar

Reasons for Reason Handout - 6 views

truth science research problems philosophy

started by Amal Waqar on 03 Feb 13 no follow-up yet
Yukiko Saito

Wrinkles on our Brain - 18 views

Interesting link Yukiko! You brought this up in class the other day, and, actually, I had not read the article yet. I will catch this next time. I notice the brain on the site is the same image I h...

started by Yukiko Saito on 20 Oct 12 4 follow-ups, last by Yukiko Saito on 06 Nov 12
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
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