Does reason have enemies?

After watching the videos on Richard Dawkins (including the one with Bill O'Reilly), can you say that reason has enemies? Can atheists be angry like religious fundamentalists? What is wrong with believing in a God, in the stars, in pseudo-science, in superstition, in magic, etc.? Whether all of these things are wrong or right is beside the point. Can they really be harmful to man-kind?

Of course reason has enemies, reality sometimes is really hard to believe; sometimes we simply don't want to.
For some reasons, human beings need to believe everything has a meaning. We are struggling every day to find meaning to our lives. Reason is of course a way to find meaning of things, of natural phenomena, for example. What human mind can't really easily accept is that certain things happen just for a coincidence. It is something scary, because we can't have control over chance. And we want to be in control of everything. We want to see order and meaning, we are so scared of the unknown that our minds is willing to believe literally everything, from tea leaves to stones, from planet positions to people charmingly claiming to have paranormal powers. Can all these believes be harmful?
History have taught that people that have strong believes that go against reason have the tendency to impose them on others, usually in very violent ways. Dawkins, at the beginning of the video, says something very important: that we live in dangerous times when superstitions is gaining ground and rational science is under attack. That makes me think of the Medieval times, when superstitions had many fellows and the scientists were persecuted. Is this happening again? I don't think that the situation is now as bad as it was, but yes, superstions and believes can be harmful: let's just think of all the people that spend lots of money and become addicted to this "magician"  that claim to solve their problems.

But, after all, is there something that men can use without being harmful? Science can be harmful as well if used for the wrong purposes. 

In what I disagree with Dawkins is the fact that he wants to "get rid" of the superstitions. This is impossible and useless because, as I've said, humans need to have a faith and worship something. There was a South Park episode in which there was a future that, thanks to Dawkins himself (and miss garrison - by the way) was now completely atheist. The thing was that people still managed to find ways to argue and kill each other because atheism was the new faith and Dawkins the new god. 

I perfectly agree on the fact that they impoverish our culture and undermine civilisation, but humans are imperfect and all of us have our own weaknesses... For some it's chocolate, for other it's the horoscope...

School of lateral thinking

From mr. Philpot's blog: "Edward de Bono (1933 -) came up with the notion of lateral thinking as an alternative route to the truth. It's the kind of thinking that happens 'outside the box', using less conventional means of argumentation. Some techniques to make this magic happen included:
challenging the current models of problem solving for the subject of concern,
randomly relate seemingly unrelated things to our problem solving session by looking to objects in the room or pulling labels from a hat, or
being provocative and discussing that which we take for granted, like circular wheels or mugs with handles. These take the form of 'what if' statements.
Applying all of this to education is fun. A school in Texas started offering students financial rewards for graduating and their success rates increased. Needless to say , the results were as contentious as their method, but it got an interesting debate rolling on the nature of motivation at school that went much further than the examples on iductive and deductive reasoning as put forth above. And speaking of financial rewards, what if we lived in a world where teachers received exorbitant salaries, like those of football stars or CEO's? Would the quality of lessons increase or decrease? This kind of thinking is not only provocative though. It sheds light on the nature of education. Here are some more examples of lateral thinking on education.
What if every student who failed an academic year had to do community service to make up for society's lost investment in him/her?
What if there were no attendance requirements and students were free to come and go as they pleased?
What if students assessed themselves?

Can you add to this list?"

What if teacher were paid based on the academic success for their students?

What if students with good grades could go on school trips for free?

By the way, I remember when I was in primary school and some of my classmates were given money based on the grades they had. However, my parents always said that the motivation should not come from material rewards, but from the sake of learning for yourself, because it is going to help you in life. And if you decide not to study, it's your problem and you'll deal with the consequences. So what if there were no grades and no rewards, but only the philosophy of studying for your own sake?

bad argument and syllogism

The assignment for this week is to go out and find a bad argument. Write it out in the form of a syllogism. Discuss whether it's true or false.

Bad argument:  Bishop Williamson denies that six million Jews were killed in the holocaust, and claims that no Jews were killed at all in gas chambers. In fact, he says, there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. The convicted holocaust-denier David Irving makes the same claims, and the bishop draws on some of the same alleged "evidence" presented in Irving's writings. In this interview, Bishop Williamson acknowledges that making this case "is against the law in Germany". 

Syllogism: "(introduction)Some believe that Jews were killed in gas chamber. (I premisis)There are studies that deny the existence of the gas chamber.(II premisis) I believe these studies to be true. (conclusion) Therefore, no Jews were killed in the gas chambers."

Although the syllogism is not technically correct, I believe this to be the reasoning behind Bishop Williamson statement. I think it makes sense from his point of view.  He's trusting historians that say that in order to work, gas chambers have to be made in a particular way and there were no such things in the concentration camps. The premises have a questionable degree of truth but they are valid, and so is the conclusion .

The real question, and the weak point in his reasoning, is: why is he trusting these studies and not all the other people, either witnesses or historians? This leads many people to assume he is anti-semitic... which is probably the case. 

It's hard to see the matter in an objective way because emotions in this case play a huge role, as so many human beings have been killed (by gas chambers or other means, it does not really matter, does it?) by other humans "in cold blood", in an accurate, systematic, premeditated way. 

[However, I don't think Europe should feel guilty towards Jews so much to be "blind" to the crimes that the state of Israel is perpetuating against the Palestinian population. In denouncing those crimes, people shouldn't feel afraid of being called "anti-semitic", because it does not mean to be against a religion or a "race", it means to be against a government. It's time to learn from the past and prevent other people from being killed, tortured and humiliated because of their religion or their race. And it's astonishing that these crimes are committed by the same people who suffered them in the first place] [btw, yes, I know this is not really relevant to the topic I should discuss]

Inductive or deductive

'Contemplation is the greatest good,' was stated by Aristotle. What do you think he was referring to? Was it inductive or deductive reasoning. How does this lead up to Descartes' 'cogito ergo sum'?

For Aristotle contemplation means the theoria, the intellectual knowledge, opposite to action or praxis. When Aristotle talk about philosophy he uses the term metaphysics, the "first philosophy", the main science that could investigate "the knowledge of immaterial being". By saying "contemplation is the greatest good" Aristotle refers to the importance of knowledge.

However, how can I tell if it was inductive or deductive reasoning? it's just a sentence! It's talking about the search of knowledge in general, without specifying which method to follow: it's both inductive and deductive, depending on the situations. 

Still, this lead up to Descartes 'cogito ergo sum': for Descartes "cogito" refers to that part of the spiritual substance that can never be doubted. It represents the foundation of the subjective certainty of being alive and the measuring unit of every other possible certainty. Descartes give to "cogito", the action of thinking, the supremacy of knowledge, which is exactly what Aristotle meant with "contemplation is the greatest good": to them, reason is the most certain way of knowing.

Optical illusions as metaphors

In the TOK book, we see that R.van de Lagemaat introduces optical illusions as metaphors to explain how we often perceive life poorly. For this blog assignment find an optical illusion on the net, post it on your blog, and explain how it acts as a metaphor on how we simply get things wrong.

Which circle is bigger, the one on the left or the one on the right?

At this point in life, I don't think someone can still be teased by questions like this one, because we all know about the existence of optical illusions and the tricks they play with our minds and our senses. Only if you're younger than a ten years old you can answer "the one on the left". Otherwise, you will probably know that the two circles have the same size, the one on the left only looks bigger because it's surrounded by little circles and, on the other hand, the one on the right looks smaller because it's surrounded by big circles.

Most perceptual illusions have to do with the sense of sight because, though it's one of the senses we most rely on, it's also the one who's most likely to be misled.

In the case of the optical illusion above, the image plays tricks on our sight and on our mind because of its context. In fact, the way we see something usually depend on the context in which we perceive it. We do often judge the size of an object by looking at its overall context. If there were no other circles surrounding the middle ones, we could have clearly seen that there are no differences in their size. 

This should teach of how sometimes is not advisable to rely on your senses, but i still think that they are the only way we can feel reality. Though I know I can't always trust one of them, the five of them together, along with the sixth, which is the ability of reasoning - my mind-, can often give me an accurate perception of reality. 

Do animals use language?

On pages 79-82 you can read a discussion between Dolly and Guy. The question of concerns is whether or not animals have language. In your blog, summarize the arguments that both make and give your own opinion on the matter. 

In the dialogue it's discussed the topic of language, communication and animals. What is the difference between language and communication? Is there a difference? Do animals use language or it's just communication?

At the beginning of the dialogue Guy say that the question is badly formulated, because the word 'animal' covers a spectrum of living beings from amoebae to apes and human beings. Since human beings are animals, and since our mean of communication is language, then is "trivially true that animals have language". But he doesn't think amoebae have a lot to say for themselves. Then the two, Guy and Dolly, discuss whether or not it can be said that some animals have a "rudimentary form of language". Dolly bring up such examples as dances bees do to "talk" about nectar, differents alarm calls vervet monkeys use, chimpanzees being taught American sign language or how to communicate through a keyboard with more than 200 symbols on it representing words; Guy main counter-arguments are that animals can exchange only information relevant to their own survival, that by teaching an animal to use a form of language you get too emotional to be objective, that no animal can talk about abstract things such as the past, the future or the meaning of life and that is because animals which are not human beings are simply not built for language.     

My opinion on this topic is that language it's surely a form of communication, but not all communication is language. Communication is an exchange of information and it can happen between things and living beings, for example when we buy something from a vending machine, but in order do be defined language, a form of communication has to be: rule-governed, intended, creative and open-ended. Animals doesn't use such thing. They can't even think of such thing as language! Even though a monkey taught by scientists can learn some words, it can teach this words to other monkeys, which proves the point that they can't understand what language is all about.I think that the people who say "how do you know that the can't talk between each other? you have no evidence to disprove it!" are just using an argument ad ignorantiam, which does not help to go far in discussions of any kind. 

I also think that scientists who spend their life with monkeys trying to teach them a language should do something more useful for the human community such as looking for cures to cancer instead of projecting human qualities into animals. They should also let animals free of living their lifes instead of making experiments on them depriving them of the joys of the jungle. 

We all need to accept that human beings are extremely different from the other beings of the animal kingdom, that if other animals could think just as similar as an human being does, they would probably have more advanced forms of society. 

Somewhere in the bible it's written "Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s". Give to animals what belongs to animals, which is communication, and give to human beings what is human beings', which is language.

The Sapir-Whorf conjecture

In class we discussed the Sapir-Whorf theory. Another word for this is 'language determinism', which means that our language determines the thoughts we think. In the book by Richard van de Lagemaat (pages 68-70) you see evidence that supports and refutes the hypothesis. Here is software programmer writing on the matter:

< Whorf were correct. I can look at code written in Objective-C, and see from the habits of the coders what programming languages they started with. LISP hacks use recursion, even when it's silly. COBOL coders can't seem to shake the "batch" processing mentality, and people who started with Visual Basic are hopeless.

I've always been amused by the "reverse Sapir-Whorf conjecture", which proposes that the Inuit settled above the artic circle *because* they had so many words in their language for "snow".But in all seriousness, I find the argument that language shapes thought to be quite convincing.>>

Do you agree or disagree with him? Do you have evidence that supports or refutes the hypothesis?

The nature of language is a topic that have always fascinated men. Ancient Greek philophers already questioned themselves about that. Plato even wrote one of his dialogue about this topic: in the dialogue, Socrates asked by two men, to tell them whether names are "conventional" or "natural", that is, whether language is a system of arbitrary signs or whether words have an intrinsic relation to the things they signify. Plato believed that the language is the instrument for which men can get closer to the knowledge of the things: "the creator of words uses letters containing certain sounds to express the essence of a word's subject". So, in his opinion, the reality determines the language. 

But what about the way we think? The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis claims that language determines the way we think. I think I disagree. Language is a conventional system of words that are created by men. So the way we think determines the language. In our textbook a book by the anthropologist Peter Farb, that discuss an experiment in which bilingual (Japanese- English speaking) women express different opinion when asked the same question in the two different languages, is quoted to support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. However, in my opinion, this can be used to disprove their theory. One of the example was: "Real friends should..." - "... help each other" (Japanese) / - "... be very frank" (English). But "...help each other" is just a translation so it can't really express what these women were thinking. If I apply the same experiment to myself, at the phrase "Real friends should..." I would say, in italian "...be frank", in english "...be loyal", but only because the italian word that translates "loyal" can be applied more to a dog than to a human being. What I mean to say is that "Real friends should... be by your side" and I can think the same in italian too. Language determines the way we express our opinion, not the way we think.

Can computers translate?

"Will machines ever be able to translate perfectly?" 

As the technology develops, scientists are trying to improve machine translators' performances. A perfect translator device would be very useful as language and communication is such an important part in men's life. 

Babelfish, a web-based application on Yahoo!, is one of the most popular machines translators. If we human beings weren't so lazy, we wouldn't need such thing as babelfish: we should just look up the words in the dictionary and use our common sense or/and basic knowledges to do the translation. 

I don't think computers will ever be able to translate or, at least, I hope so: translating is an activity that requires a lot of different skills: a very good knowledge of the languages, an understanding of the topic of the test you have to translate, the ability of recreating the same style of the test but in another language. These skills are a human mind prerogative, and that's the way it should always be.

I don't think be should rely too much on the machines. What makes mankind different from other animals is the ability to think: we have survived in this world so far thanks to that. Teaching a machine to think could be dangerous and is pointless, because it's something we human can do pretty well. 

My mother is a translator and she actually enjoy translating. It's harder than it seems, though. I remember her wondering about the perfect italian word to describe an english one. I learned from her that translation is a hard work because you have to think. "Think" is such a short word to describe such a complex action and that's the whole point: words alone can't perfectly describe reality or feelings: the human mind needs to do some work with them to deliver their meaning to other people, and that's something a machine can't do.

Myth Buster

TOK blog assignment: do some research and try to determine whether a commonly held belief is true.

"Human beings are the only animals that kill their own kind" 

I was intrigued in this belief because, even though my first reaction was "I don't think so", I couldn't think of an example to disprove it, so i decided to do some researches. The website I think I can trust most is the one of the Time newspaper, because it's a trusted newspaper and it quotes a book written by an anthropologist that recently made researches about that topic.. that's enough for me to believe it =)

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,912086,00.html

school curriculum

As a lot of us had criticised school, our next TOK task is to write our own school curriculum, probably with the purpose of making us understand that it's really easy to criticise, but can we think of other alternatives?

School, like every other human invention, can't be perfect and never will be. We'll always study some subjects we don't like, we'll always find a teacher we can't relate to. But, still, that's something school should teach: how to deal with things we don't like, how to get the best from the worst circumstances. The main thing schools should teach is how to use our brain and that we should always be interested in what happens around us because the world is bigger than we can image. We have to be prepared in learning everything, because life is so unpredictable we never know what skills or knowledges we'll need in the future.

But I now I have to make up an "ideal" curriculum. I believe that at first everyone should have the same core education, and then one should deepen the knowledge he/she is more interested in. So my school curriculum would be divided into "core" and "additional" subject. This curriculum should be attended by 6 years old 'till 12 years old, starting the additional subjects after the first two years. These additional subjects should be optional, but at least two of them should be studied. After completing this path of study, at the age of thirteen, it should be chosen a High School where to complete our education, studying subjects we're really interested in. 

Core  

• Native language (grammar, literature)
  
• English (grammar, literature - because it's the easiest language to learn and it's spoken almost everywhere)
• Maths (being able to do calculations and understand the principles of geometry)
• History (we should all know a little about every culture, focusing more on our own history *american in the americas, european in europe, asiatic in asia, african in africa*)
• Geography (what's the world situation nowdays)
• Sciences (a basic knowledge of how our body and the forces of nature works, or, at least, we think they work)
• PHILOSOPHY (How and what the philosopher think - to teach people that trying to find your own answer to your questions is much more useful and satisfying than accepting the truth that religions give)
• History of Visual Arts (to know what and why other people did something in the visual arts field)
• History of Music (to know what and why other people did something in the music field)

Additional options

• Other language 1 (Spanish, French, German - grammar, literature) [choose b/w one of them]
• Other language 2 (Russian, Chinese, Arab - grammar, literature) [choose b/w one of them]
• Music (how to play an instrument)
• Visual Arts (how to express your creativity)
• Physical Education

-please note I'm writing from an european point of view-

is school a cave?

This is my comment to mr. Philpot's blog: 

Plato's myth of the cave is a smart analogy of what we think "reality" is, but I don't think that the school is comparable to the cave because, in the myth, the cave it's a prison where ignorant people live in. For Plato, the one the goes outside of the cave is the wise one, the philosopher, and his purpose is to come back and tell the other people what's outside of the cave: THAT is, in my opinion, the role of the school. School is teaching us an idea, a vague idea, of what the world is like, and that should give us the will and the curiosity ti break free from the chains of ignorance and go outside in the real world to see for ourselves and look for the knowledge. School is something very dynamical, a place where a continuous exchange of opinion take place, and that's why it cannot be considered a cave, where everything is dark and fixed. The importance of the role of the school does not rely on the things it's teaching, that may be as well true or false or incomplete, but on its purpose of making people interested in what happens around them, of going outside their little world, and being prepared to explore and investigate everything that surrounds them. Plato also said that it may be that we are not ready yet to face the outside world, because the truth is sometimes incomprehensible to our minds: our role is to find our truth, our answers between the shadows and the lights. As Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living.