Knowledge in Symbols

The symbol that I chose was for the letter S, for Shannon, and chose to work with the zodiac sign Sagittarius.

1. This symbol seems to originate from around the time when ancient Greece came up with a similar symbol to this one, meaning the same thing.

2. The symbol represents a centaur most commonly, which is a being with a lower body or a horse and the upper body of a man. In this symbol, the centaur is holding a stretched bow with an arrow that is in place ready to be shot.

3. This particular symbol is overall vague because the first thought when looking at this symbol, one's first thought would probably not be a centaur holding a bow and arrow, or Sagittarius, unless it is a symbol that has been learned before. 

4. For this particular symbol, there doesn't seem to be a contrasting meaning to this symbol for Sagittarius, it seems very straight forward and if it has been learned, is very recognizable.

Language as a Way of Knowing: Perspectives on the Brain, Thought, and Culture

If people speak more than one language, is what they know different in each language? Does each language provide a different framework for reality?

     In some ways, what people who speak more than one language know is in fact different in each language. For example, in my SL Latin class, the other day my Latin teacher taught us a new saying "do ut des" which in Latin means "I give to you so you give to me" and is used in the Aeneid in Book 4 to say that Iarbus did a lot of work to make Jupiter happy, but Jupiter did nothing in return resulting in Aeneas ending up with Dido instead of Iarbus ending up with Dido. In English, this saying would mean "I give so as you give" which could mean the exact same thing as it did in the sense that it did in the Aeneid, but it also could mean something completely different. As Americans, some people feel very strongly about karma, and I am one of those people. I know that I am someone who tries to do really good things in life so that I won't have bad karma. The way I take the quote "do ut des" is that I do good for others so that the world will be good to me so it can be taken differently than the way ancient authors took it.
     Language can absolutely provide a different framework for reality. I know a lot of people that came to Cape Cod directly from Brazil, so their native language is Portuguese. When kids come over from Brazil, they take an English class to learn the language. This can make it very difficult for them to have to learn to adjust to how the language works. Learning English can be difficult because of the amount of idioms that we have in our language and a lot of people who are not native speakers have trouble picking up anything that is not literally translated. On the other hand though, when they go back home, the kids typically go home to speaking their native language. A lot of my friends speak Portuguese at home and when they are at home they understand their surroundings much better than they do when at school where everyone around them speaks a language that they have not yet adapted to. This can happen in any language. Every culture has different types of language that they speak. For instance, in Nicaragua, the way they speak Spanish is different from the Spanish spoken in Spain because of the culture they are surrounded by. Should someone from Nicaragua go to Spain, or vise versa, the Spanish they are speaking could easily get lost in translation because their cultures differ so they have differing idioms and understand different concepts in different ways.


Word Count: 449 Words

Sense Perception Knowledge Issues

Patients in a vegetative state- For years there have been what a community defines as "vegetables"- people who cannot feed themselves, nor speak, nor communicate, and in some cases, are unable to breathe without assistance. Recently, researchers monitored brain activity and found patients responded correctly to 5 of 6 questions, sparking the thought that perhaps these people are not as vegetative as thought to be, but in fact are fully able to communicate.

Here is what can be called a sample TOK question on the matter:

If the justification for taking people off life-support is because of their supposed vegetative state, and the common cultural belief has always been one of "he felt no pain," then how much is the surrounding community (doctors, medical staff, researchers, family of the 'vegetative people') held accountable to the deaths of these people, and is it ethical in any situation to let a person die?


Synthesis, en extraordinary condition where people mix senses, such as seeing sounds, or tasting colors, or any other mix therein, has been researched and more cases are becoming apparent. This may be useful for science, because these people tend to notice extra details to their special sense, or outperform to those that do not have this sense.

Here is question that can be asked about such a matter:

Would the people who have these "mixed senses" have better sense perception, therein making them more open to knowledge affairs? How does extra sense perception change the way the world is seen?

Man Is The Measure

7. What does Abel mean when he says: "to perceive is to solve a problem"?

When Abel says "to perceive is to solve a problem" he means that once the mind embarks on the desire to see something, it also embarks on the ability to try and solve the problem. And once you perceive anything, such as the sky being blue, you solve the problem of what color the sky is. You may not solve why, but if you perceive it enough, the perception will translate into knowing it. Stepping back from the equation allows you to know what exactly is going on.

8. What is the role of social conditioning in determining how things "naturally look"?


Society determines how you see things. It determines what is normal and what is not, and therefore, it conditions your mind to believe as the community around you believes. In turn, anything perceived as its "natural look" is what has been determined by the community, and does not necessarily translate into other cultures, times, or locations. For instance, the African tribes with their insane piercings or the Native Alaskans who chew food for their parents and spit it into their mouth is considered not natural or right in this society. But in theirs, it is considered perfectly natural and nothing is said about it. 


9. What is significant of the Durer rhinoceros story? How was the influence of convention demonstrated when some tribes were given a photograph?


-


11. What does Abel mean when he writes: believing is seeing? How might this point be seen in the study of the natural and the social sciences?


If you have faith in an object, you believe in it. Therefore, if you believe in theories projected by natural sciences, you see a light of it, and a possibility. Perhaps you see the truth. But you do see something, that is certain. In the social sciences, the same goes. If you believe something, you are truly seeing it. Furthermore, people, once they believe in something, will strive to prove it and defend it until it is visible to others.

Reflection Blog Post

 Describe a specific example from any area of knowledge (AOK) where you feel that deception may be necessary to knowing. The example may or may not relate to your direct personal experience, but make your views as a knower clear; it may be the case that person(s) involved in the example you relate have a different perspective on truth and deception than you do.

      Of all the Areas of Knowing, there is one group where deception may be necessary- history. History is a subjective matter, as well as current social events. Where math is very straight forward, history is not. Instead, the professor must build off of what the historians, primary documents and society says about it. They may leave things out, or like the packet suggests, teach things that are lies told by people to them, such as those very historians. Like in chemistry, any equation has a certain amount of uncertainty, and in history, where everything is judged by the current opinion, uncertainty is at it's greatest. Sometimes, when telling history, it is necessary to elaborate, such as in World War I when the president said the Luisitania was sunk by the Germans, when in fact it was sunk after many warnings, and after cooperating with British ships, and carrying illegal cargo. My belief is that deception is wrong, but in cases like these, where the public has a hard time understanding the gravity of these Great Wars, it is necessary to describe events as much as possible and stir up the nationalism of a country. The deception is an altruistic one, not one sparked my self-indulgence, but by the fact deceit is necessary because people do not understand until they are put into such a situation. Therefore a teacher may exaggerate a story to attempt to sway their views to views similar to theirs. However, history is not something learned from one source, after multiple sources are found, you glean the information and come with your idea, hence leaving out or disregarding important factors. This deceit comes with the practice, the swaying of views should not, yet it appears quite often. All in all, history is the one area of knowing where deceit can be accepted. 

"Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for Light Skin compared to Dark Skin" is the result that I got during this assignment for the Skin-Tone IAT. IN my personal opinion, I don't believe that this statement is true but I think I understand how the result could be there. I know that for most of the tests where I quickly had to choose, I know that I have trouble with complexity in my brain so having the multiple categories to put the words and pictures into was a very hard task for me to complete. I'm not completely sure that the way I answered them would make it so I had a strong automatic preference for Light Skin compared to Dark Skin though. Also when answering the post questions, I understand that there were a couple of questions that could have been looked at as I preferred one group to another, but I don't believe it could show which group I preferred over another. I think the test was made to make people look like they were "racist" against one group so that people thought about how, culturally, there is a common belief that people prefer one group to another. "Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Straight People compared to Gay People" is the result that I got during this assignment for the Gay-Straight IAT.

Why TOK?

We take TOK because it broadens our views of knowledge and why people think the way that they think. It opens up our minds to help us realize and understand people./We take TOK because it is a way that we know how people connect to the world and the other people in it.