Extended Essay Update Presentation

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0Ae8XxiT97IXDZGZyNXNwdDZfNTAyZ2R2bXc2&hl=en

Emotion and Knowledge

1 Identify a personal knowledge claim, using emotion as a way of knowing.
2. Identify a global knowledge issue that includes emotion as part of the 'knowledge construct'.
3. Can there be 'correct' or 'appropriate' emotional responses? For example, is it correct to he horrified by accounts of torture?
4. Is the knowledge gained from an emotional construct influenced by culture? Are concepts such as patriotism and racism examples of collective emotions?

Answers:
1. I guess for me it would be dealing with death. When someone close to you dies, it's very emotion and have you put your knowledge to the test to try to understand something some complex yet as simple as dying. In my own personal experience losing my best friend would be a good example of emotion. It left me depressed and that was about the only emotion I showed for weeks, though inside being the knower that I am I was left still to this day thinking I knew about death but realizing even though I am a knower, I don't know very much. I know they put you in a box that's it, but what happens to you, some say heaven others say hell Are any of them real? I guess you'll never know until you die which leaves me I guess emotional because I worry that she may be in a worse place then here and not knowing leaves me even more emotional.

2. A global knowledge issue that constructs emotion is definitely the Arab-Israeli crisis, because of tension can is a emotion can be derived from human emotion. I think its a knowledge issue that causes so much emotional response because it's easy to solve, since both sides refuse to negotiate, their doomed to keep attacking each other which is leading to high tensions of the emotions of scared and anger throughout the Middle East because both sides are letting their emotions get the better of their knowledge thence leading to war.

3. For me as a knower I think that all emotional responses are correct for that particular person, though this is not the case for all cultures. For example people in the United States during the Cold War had a emotional response of fear for the longest time that the Russian's were going to nuke all major cities, once the Russians had placed the nuclear bombs in Cuba, while the the Americans had nuclear bombs on Turkey pointed directly at Moscow but the Russia people payed no attention and went on fearless of nuclear war (so history tells us).Though the American one seems more appropriate then the Russia response though either are correct nor wrong, because this is due location and cultures, I think that in this example emotional responses differ due to government. Americans live under democracy meaning the government doesn't control all media, leaving ways for media to slip in fearful messages to alter peoples perspectives and make them scared. While in Russia the people lived under a single party state meaning the government controls all media, which means it gives the power to hide these potential fearful things which doesn't alter the emotional responses of their people.

4. Yes because as I knower I feel knowledge and emotions go hand and hand which both are derived from what culture you are from. It has to be influenced by cultures because different cultures are brought up with different ethics and knowledges of things which would lead to different emotional responses. I don't think so, I think things like patriotism and racism are essentially peer pressure that people fall into but in doing so it unleashes collective emotions from everyone even if some of the people in the group don't believe in it.

Logical Fallacies

1)Fallacy: Appeal to Tradition

It's not even about a tradition you may truly believe in it's a tradition that has been along forever and passed along even if it's not believed in.

Example: Sure anyone with a huge beard from the middle east can be a terrorist. All people have believed this to be true for almost 10 years so it must be true since the belief has been around for 10 plus years.

Fallacy: Composition

It's basically a conclusion based on all facts surrounding a event.

Example: 18 wheelers are bigger than mini vans, therefore when making a turn a 18 wheeler may need to go into both lanes on a road to turn while a mini van will not.

Fallacy: Questionable Cause

Since A and B are seen as possibly related, therefore A leads to the cause of B

Example: Gabe plays boxing video games. When Gabe went to school he broke his nose. Therefore because Gabe played boxing videos now he blocks so the game character doesn't break his nose.

2)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGx8PfT61cQ (Accessed on May 13th, 2010)

Questionable Cause fallacy. Let the penny be (A) and the car be (B) because he found the penny (A) he died of a car incident (B). Therefore A causes B. Finding pennies leads to being hit by cars

Hidden Assumptions

Results of RACE: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/Study?tid=-1

Results of Abled-Disabled:https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/Study?tid=-1

1) I was surprised by the results only because I didn't like the test at all, I agree with most of it but I think that verbal administration of these types of tests are better because of reaction times. I didn't feel much besides confused by the test in some aspects since it isn't a 100% self explanatory and I think that I truly felt this way because it was the first time I've ever taken a test like this this.

2) In my case, no because I think these questions of words and photos should be based on personal experiences of people and should be based on by what culture/country you live in. For example Americans view Jewish people differently then any Arab countries like Egypt so the tests should be different for each culture and showing the same picture over and over again doesn't accomplish the point I though the test was trying to get across.

3) These tests are no valid for what they are trying to see, which is a test takers reactions to seeing certain things and then seeing their reaction time, human error is a huge thing that plays a role especially when things are switch upon us, which then hurts the computer validity.

4) This is definitely hard to answer because either way your taking a side. For example the KKK feel they are "good" and "superior" to mostly black people in present America while black gangs in American are seen as "bad" and "inferior" to them because of the gangs crime that is aired on the news etc.. Yes they can be considered stereotypes but once again this depends on what side the knower is on. For example a knower can say that southerns are KKK members while decedents of German immigrants are Neo-Nazis trying to pick up where Hitler and the Nazi regime left off. The only way to distinguish generalizations from stereotypes are to not take sides you cannot be bias you must take in both sides and then decided from there.

5) Well the obvious answer is to THINK! Everything in life must be thought through for many reasons; one because if we make one decision without thinking it through we might wonder for the rest of our lives "what if I did this?" Two its a psychologically healthier in my opinion as a knower because not thinking absolutely everything through doesn't make you a knower but someone who is bias and truly mental undecided. We don't have to listen to our sub conscience but that always isn't wise since our mind does think everything out, some just choice not to listen but in my eyes the only way to get past this is truly think from every aspect like a mapping diagram to truly be able to not jump to false conclusions.

Proposal—Save a Language!

Israel http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=bjf

Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic

It was spoken among 8 Jewish families in the 1950s in Israel which eventually decreased in the number of people speaking since it was such a small amount of speakers to begin with.

The language is considered extinct because the last speaker died, but branched from this language was many other http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barzani_Jewish_Neo-Aramaic#Origin_and_use_today and these, but since there is no original speakers left its hard for them to relate to the dialect of the original language. This is a effective and ineffective method, because if they are able to somehow use new the languages that branched from the original they may able to get understanding of Barzani Jewish Neo-Aarmaic languages though and hopefully be able to read the surviving documents. Though it seems ineffective and unlikely that they'll ever be able to speak it since the dialect is so different from most languages.

The image above is a original document that is surviving of the language: http://img.search.com/thumb/b/b9/Targum.jpg/320px-Targum.jpg

Investigation—Knowledge in Symbols

http://www.symbols.com/encyclopedia/54/5432.html (could not find another image)

1. What is(are) the cultural origin(s) of the symbol?

The symbols origins date back to the guardian of the underworld which who was Pluto and this symbol now refers to that of the planet Pluto.

2. Describe the knowledge portrayed by the symbol.

The symbol portrays that of Pluto (planet) its a short hand type thing to use the symbol since it's a abbervation of the word.

3. Is the symbol emotive, ambiguous or vague?

I say its ambiguous because when using it someone may refer to the god Pluto rather than the planet even though the symbols origin's were for the planet mostly rather than the god, some still might use it for both since the planet name came from the god.

4. What are the problems of knowledge you identify for the symbol?

Humans like to use the symbol as other meanings rather than the planet Pluto, they were used in all time which make sence, the planet wasn't discovered until 1930s. Hence why there are problems with identifying with the symbol because over the years many ambiguous meanings had araised from it.

TOK perception essay

Gabe Roderick

TOK G1

5 March 2010

B. How, and to what extent, might expectations, assumptions and beliefs affect sense perceptions? How, if at all, can factors that bias our views of the world be identified? Do knower’s have a moral duty to examine their own perceptual filters?

Expectations, assumptions and beliefs affect our sense perception by causing us to have predetermined our outcome on how we perceive. However this isn’t the case for those who can identify with the biases faced with looking at views on the world. Knowers that can identify with these biases are able to examine their own perceptual filters but this isn’t always the case so it is not indeed a moral duty.

As a knower, I face many expectations, assumptions and beliefs that affect my personal sense perception, sometimes this predetermines our outcome on how we perceive. I hear from other IB students that CAS is hard to do, so when I began my junior year I had the expectations that CAS will be a hard requirement for me to do. Due to my senses as a human this expectation made me feel as if I would see CAS as hard from hearing it was hard which hearing is the other sense involved. Another example is our own personal racism; is incident where two Sturgis students were accused of spraying racial slurs, myself began to believe it was a Neo-Nazi type thing but more importantly someone of German decent knowing the history of Germany. Those were my expectations and I assumed my expectations and assumptions had to be true but once I found out this wasn’t the case and they weren’t German I realized what had happen and tried desperately to avoid these expectations and assumptions from resurfacing again. However these assumptions and expectations of a place can be avoided, though its human nature and nature of perception to try to predetermine expectations on something and come up with assumptions that may or may not be true, to overcome this it’s possible for someone as a knower to keep an open mind about things and try their best not to predetermine these things before experiencing them.

It is very difficult to identify our bias on something, it involves a great about of thinking that a knower must do a lot in order to be a better perceiver then the usual amount of people when thinking. A personal experience with overcoming my own personal bias, is going to a school with a minority, even though the majority of the schools children where the minority. To elaborate on my example, I went to school where the minority of children were either, Mexican or African American, and they were always getting suspend, gang battles, drug deals, had no intention of learning etc. It felt like the cops were a part of the population of the school. Then upon coming to Sturgis this wasn’t the case, I had come in with an open mind to learn but a closed mine on the minorities do to my own personal bias. It took me about 3 months into Sturgis to learn that it wasn’t the case about the minorities and they were here for the same reason I was to learn. I had seen that it was my own bias that stopped me from seeing this earlier. It is hard to identify because change isn’t something we like to do especially when it comes to older people as well. Though some can identify with biases don’t always believe it’s a moral duty to admit to them. Look at the AOK science and ethics. In the science part people have been arguing for years over evolution people, with faith vs. science. Over the years with this debate I’m sure personal bias have been surfaced in a knower though they might have not felt it a moral duty in a sense to examine it rather than ignore it and go along with what they believe and perceive, even though both sides had “evidence”. The quotations are around evidence because it may or may not be true due to us being blinded by personal biases such as fossil records which species do it represent one may see it to represent the species they are looking for due to the visual observations and the brain telling the person what they are truly seeing or what it wants you to see not just what you’re eyes are seeing. Also for ethics, is it morally wrong to kill someone in a vegetated state because their brain responds “yes” when you ask them, human bias definitely play a role in this, since we have technology and science to prove that this is happening we can overcome our bias to know were doing the right or wrong thing. I personally agree and believe in this because I’ve seen family and friends suffer through pain when I wished it was as easy for them to end it by saying yes. So if scientists are able to extensively prove that a vegetated patient is able to respond “yes” to wanted to die then they have every right to as a human. I know it’s a personal bias because of personal experiences and I know due to these experiences I assume as patients like this with no chance of recovery want to be killed when this isn’t the truth in all cases. As for examining the perceptual filters I don’t believe personally as a knower that it’s our moral duty.

However it truly all depends on the knower and their overall perception of WOK. For example people who can reason we’ll and can remove emotions which are WOK from the perceiving it is their moral duty overall others to examine the perpetual filters of themselves.

Word Count- 916

Glossary-

Ethics- the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.:medical ethics; Christian ethics.

Natural Sciences- a science or knowledge of objects or processes observable in nature, as biology or physics, as distinguished from the abstract or theoretical sciences, as mathematics or philosophy.

Knower- to perceive or understand as fact or truth; to apprehend clearly and with certainty: I know the situation fully.

Perception- the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding.

Bibliography

Company, Houghton Mifflin. Know. 2009. 26 February 2010 .

—. Perception. 2002. 26 February 2010 .

Mifflin, Houghton. Natural Sciences. 2002. 26 February 2010 .

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Ethics. 2002. 26 February 2010 .