Ethics

Ethics is a very important topic that is very controversial in many places and situations, specially when it comes to cultures, religions and tastes.

Many cultures accept many things that for other cultures it may be wrong; for example, Mr. Tomalin explained a situation where once he was working in a place with very different cultural, religious and ethical points of view. Once he was passing besides a classroom and he saw a teacher hitting the students with a ruler. He was shocked by this situation, as for most of us this is an unethical situation. On the other hand, he later found out that in the place he was it was not considered bad hitting students.   Also, in religion for example the bible more or less gives examples for how believers should have ethical behaviours in very specific passages. 

When we were talking about ethics we saw a video about how cows were slaughtered for human consumption, and it gave different points of view, from vegans, vegetarians and meat lovers. It was a really shocking video, as it explicitly showed how cows were killed and it was a pretty violent way. In this way you can see how people can have different points of view about what is ethical and what is not, because vegetarians and vegans find the slaughtering and the eating of meat very unethical, even one of the vegetarians state that he considers it is "just like eating a human".

We live with ethics everyday, and it is a topic that can be very debatable, but there cannot be an universal truth or ethic, because we all think very different, and if we all think very similar, there might be some people who will not think the same as us. Even if we consider something to be a universal ethical truth, maybe a crazy person might think different.

Politics, directed by Gonzalo Serna

Gonzalo Serna has been my teacher since year 9, and since the first class I had with him I had a lot of fun, just because he talks about topics that are sometimes not very common or considered taboos. He has very controversial points of view and he is very honest in everything he says and thinks.

When he started explaining about Politics as a way of knowing, I already had an idea of what he was going to cover in his presentation; how we are condemned to live in a society where in order for us to be happy we have to be productive, or how our ideals make us have our "own little world", and I was not wrong, he covered these topics in his presentations.

He started by stating how politics where everywhere in our lives. Basically we all have very different opinions and ideals about things that surrounds us, this kind of isolates us from other people, I see it as if these ideals and perspectives were a bubble that surrounded us, and in order for us to live, we have to bump into other people's bubbles, or sometimes even share bubbles. We can either agree or disagree with other peoples' bubbles,  and that is where politics happen, when we have to share, express, agree or even disagree with some things.

The last topic discussed was about our role in society, and how society expects something from us, because when we are young we get education and goods, but society expects that when we grow up we provide the same for future generations.

Considered this, society has to make sure we will provide these goods to future generations, and for this, it makes us think that a person who doesn't provide these things for the future generations is a bad person, and it should be judged, but a person who does a great effort to provide them is a good person.

Emotion

For me this was one of the most interesting ways of knowledge; Emotion. It is such a big concept.

The lecture started and we started debating how to be rational and how to be emotional are somehow the opposite. We either think of something with our emotions or with our rational way of seeing things. Diana made a great example of this, in love, we sometimes have to decide if we either go rational (thinking with our barin) or emotional (normally reffered as to the heart). For me, the emotional way of knowledge is the strongest, as we have almost no control over it, it somehow controls us.

The lecture procedeed and we started talking about a very shocking case,about a guy named Phineas Gage. In an accident he got hit by a tamping iron that went through his head, doing serious neurological damage. The curious thing about this is that Mr. Gage did not died, but he only suffered a personality change and some rational issues. This personality change involved a total lack of emotions. With no emotions it is impossible to communicate. I believe for you to hold a conversation, you need to know that when you tell something you expect an emotional reaction, or else why would you tell the story?
Here is the case:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Phineas-Gage-Neurosciences-Most-Famous-Patient.html

As the lecture was ending Ms. Briggs mentioned some EQ's. This are some exams that are pretty important in some parts of the world. It is basically the same as an IQ but in an emotional matter.

For me, it was an amazing lecture, because it taught me that emotions actually are of grand importance for communication.

Truth

Mr. Tomalin started the lecture by showing really great quotes about truth. And explaining how truth is a very big and complex word that causes big problematic.

"Necessary truths" are truths that can't be debatable, just like "triangles have three sides", or "all opthalmologistst are doctor". Then we passed to the phylosophical field, and started talking about how Kant talks about two types of truths syntethic and analitical. Synthetic truths are ones where there is not much to debate about, while analitical is where you can actually think bigger and debate more about the topic.

We then got some situations to analyze and determine if it is truth or not, like are they married? Or the one where was mozart was a good composer, you can't actually tell, it is too subjective.

Then Diana and Domenica read a debate in between a a relativist and a non-relativist person. The Relativist was stronger argument, as the non relativist was close minded. As well this happened with my debate with  Cosima, we each read a paper of relativist and non relativist ways of thinking.

The most important thing I have clear about truth it is that it is such a big and complex word that it is hard to be described, explained and demonstrated. 

In conclusion I think we may all see different truths, and in most of the situations, almost all, there are no certain truths. We all may have a different perspective of truth, so everyone in the world would have to agree  that something is truee for it to be a global true.

We talked about lot of topics in truth, to get to a conclusion of truth, even with almost 3 classes of just seeing true, it was really hard for us to get to conclude something, at least for me.

Classification

Classification

The lecture started with a small "game" which consisted in classifying some objects shown in the screen. You had to divide them in a given number of groups. First we had to clasiffy them all in one group. Then we had to divide them in 3 or 4 groups, and finally each of the objects in one group, but no other object could fit in that category. This was the hardest, as most of the objects share characteristics, we tend to classify things and person in general, terms, very superficially.

This exercise was great to make me notice how we humans tend to classify everything that quickly.

As the lecture kept going, Ms. Briggs explained how classification began. It all started when Carl Linneus, the first person of the world to actually begin classifying specimens. His classifications for the creatures were: classes orders, families, genera, and species. The problems with this classification is that it was only based on the physical appearance, so now a days biologists and classifiers use DNA to be more precise when it comes to classifying.

Then we talked about how classification is interpretative and how it is almost instant, you don't even think about it sometimes.

However classification can lead to serious discrimination issues, like chauvism, sexism, racism. Classification should be moderated, as it could get you to false conclusions.

Language

In this lecture we learned about language as a way of knowing.
It started by an uncommon activity, where Mr. Tomalin asked us to guess which language was the one sang in a song he played. He then proceeded to asked as a question that shocked me, "what would happen if we were stripped off any language?". It actually made me think of how important language is. Even if we have corporal and body language, we would not be able to communicate wholly and as clear as we would want to  if we had no idea how to communicate by language. Language is the base of communication for me.

Another very interesting topic Mr. Tomalin mentioned, was the tourette syndrome, a neurophysical problem that happens to people who have suffered a trauma or were just born with it. It consists in basically a tic where people normally curse and release their stress by screaming bad words.

I found it a very interesting and debatable topic, where you can debate how language is actually necessary to transmit a message. As well you could use body language and the other ways of language we have already learned in TOK to transmit a message.

Reasoning

In yesterday's lecture we talked about reasoning.

I actually had a pretty good time in the lecture, as I learned different ways of reasoning, and it was a lesson where we were not just listening, but also thinking.

The lecture started as Mr. Tomalin explained the different meaning of "reason", like "There is no reason why I should be here", or "I should reason about my behaviour". I think there is a connection in between the two meanings, whereas for me reasoning involves also finding a REASON for your thinking. I also really liked a quote Mr. Tomalin showed us, from Albert Einstein:

“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.” For me that is true reasoning and I think it gives a very hypothetical and realistic point, referring to the people who love God only because of the fear of dying or suffering in life.

As the lecture went on, we started talking about logic and its relation with reasoning. Mr Tomalin mentioned two types of logic, inductive and deductive. He also stated there was a big difference between truth and validity, where validity is more about a possible truth, while truth is a fact.

As the lesson proceeded we then did an exercise, where we had to do a deductive logic reasoning, for example:

-I am a human

- you are a human

-we have something in common.

The next topic covered was inductive reasoning and its issues. Inductive reasoning is the opposite of deductive reasoning, because you don't involve certainty in the same way as deductive logic.

It could be an issue also, because it can cause people to make stereotypes and hasty generalizations.