Wednesday, August 29, 2007
My name!!!
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Essay Title!!
"When mathematicians, historians and scientists say that they have explained something, are they using the word "explain" the same way?
Due date: 31st August 2007
Tips: Use examples to illustrate differences in each area of knowledge
Use your personal experiences to reflect your voice as a knower
Develop your essay step by step
Explore all limitations of the knowledge problems
Formulate a thesis statement (can be the prescribed title)
Use counter arguments to illustrate your points
So cheers, get reflecting and posting
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
TOK journal entry
KNOWLEDGE. The central idea for perpetually all discussions in our TOK. Thus the title of the subject, Theory of Knowledge. Our daily living habits and doings rely on our Knowledge. Fortunately, knowledge is a theory with two main components which are truth and belief. In cases, the absolute same, in cases, the absolute opposite.
Truth is a powerful term. Once considered a truth, that perception is undeniable until proven otherwise. Not affected by public opinion, the truth is unchangeable under all conditions. As once said by Giordano Bruno, “It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.” Backing Bruno, I believe (irony!!) that truth is something that can be backed with proof and justification. This however is contradicting truth as I have no proof that something can be backed by proof would be considered true.
Truth apart from being something verifiable, is the limiting concept from distinguishing knowledge from belief. Something that one may believe may be knowledge if it can be justified by proof or justification. Basically, if it can be stated to be true. Until that happens, a belief remains a belief . For example, I believe in God. I believe that there is “someone” who had to be the ( sorry for the cliché) “brains behind the operation.” I believe that he created us for a reason. A reason known only by “him,” undisclosed to the universe. However, someone may believe in the other theories created by men and women around the world. For example, the most popular of them all, the big bang theory including matter and anti-matter existing from nothing but vacuum. Also, there are those who believe in theories put forward by movies such as “The Truman Show” and “The Matrix.” They believe that humans are simply guinea pigs as a part of an experiment. They believe that someone is watching us. Someone, who is superior and gives us human’s different situations to see how we respond to it and to each other. Thus, until proven correct OR incorrect, they may not be justifiable as truth.
There is, however another problem relating to be truth and belief. The lack of acceptance due to strong beliefs. That is, people defy stated facts and substitute with their opinions that they have such great trust in. Once said by Winston Churchill “Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it and carry on..” To sum it up, a belief is made into a truth because of the lack of belief in the truth.
Is Love an Emotion?
Is love an emotion? To answer this question we must first understand what love means to us and does this relate to how we define emotion. Love is universal. Love cannot be measured in terms of quantity. Love is found in many relationships. It can be as personal as a man’s love for his car and as open as love for a country. Love is how the way in which a man and woman or a man and another man and even a woman with another women express their zest for the other. There is also the most common type of love. The love between parents to their children. This type of love knows no boundaries. This type of love is the only type of love that is blind. For every other part, “ Love isn’t blind; it only sees what matters.”
“Love is more than a feeling; it's a state of mind.” Lisa Grude. When one is in love, nothing is the same forever. The cloud of love eternally covers whatever one had ever perceived of the world. This decision, if made from the heart will outlast anything. For any problem for any relationship, although this may sound cheesy, love is the bond that will make any problem disappear. That is, if what the two people have is true love.
However, does love qualify to be regarded as an emotion? Or even, does emotion be a good enough way to represent true love. The specific definition of emotion is difficult to qualify, as it is a completely subjective experience. To me, emotion is any strong feeling. However, does love qualify as a strong feeling? Emotions are always related to words such as happiness, sadness, elation, and irritation. Do these feelings qualify as the same category as love?
To me, the answer is no. I do not believe that love is a category, which applies in the same field as an emotion. These are characteristics one feels, which can alter from one moment to another. However, we cannot change our love for another. Assuming that it is true love, when a person is in love, he or she cannot simply fall out of it in an instant. Usually when we stop to love someone. That is someone we once truly loved, it is only resulting from a radical life change.
In scientific terms, love is not a variable factor. It is the only constant in the experiment of life.
“Truth is that which the community ultimately settles down to” Charles Pierce. Analyze and evaluate this claim.
Before analyzing this claim by Charles Pierce, we must dissect the context to make some sense of the claim as a whole. Firstly, the claim mentions the term “ the community.” This term may have been used to suggest all of civilization, with all miscellanies, which basically defines community as the whole world. Contrariwise, communities could be separate communities with different truths of their own. Religious communities could be implied. However, does that truth refer to one-truth or the amalgamation of all combined beliefs. Moreover, the use of truth in the claim remains ambiguous. Two possibilities would be that the claim would be a definition of truth. That Truth is the “a claim that the community ultimately settles down.” Or could it be the fate of the alleged community and its eventual acceptance of the truth.
Firstly, referring to the previous paragraph about the definition of truth, we can notice that the definition of truth still remains ambiguous in philosophical terms especially when discusses with belief and knowledge. Truth apart from being something verifiable is the limiting concept from distinguishing knowledge from belief. Something that one may believe may be knowledge if it can be justified by proof or justification. Basically, if it can be stated to be true. Until that happens, a belief remains a belief.
When Pierce mentions the word “community,” his point was to leave the claim as ambiguous as possible. A community is a set of people with some shared element. Basically, anything in common. Whether it is a group of people with similarities in religion, location, or even sexual orientation, they all represent a community. Thus the claim implies (also a liberal expression) that these groups of agents settle upon a believe to be true. However, this raises questions on the technicality of the latter. To begin with, do these truth apply to the world outside the community or the community itself or does it restrict itself to the respected communities? Also, what validity do these communities have to hold these as truths?
Moreover, Charles Pierce implies in his claim, he includes the postulates that are both correct and incorrect. For example, a test was carried on the latter on the discovery channel where a group of five men came together for an assessment where they needed to ask a series of questions. Four out of the five men were actors. Only one of the men was chosen at random for the experiment. The questions were to point at the tallest line drawn on the display. Through out the experiment, as instructed, the four actors would always choose an incorrect answer. Along the experiment, the actors kept choosing an incorrect line. Eventually, the one randomly chosen man chose the incorrect answers. The latter story gives us an example of how the complete community settles upon the fallacious claim. This both agrees and disagrees with the claim made by Charles Pierce. It agrees since the “community” collectively agrees with one answer. Although incorrect, the answer was made by the complete acceptance of all members of the community. It disagrees because the answer was untrue. Even though the example proved that that the answer of the majority was ultimately the answer of the whole, the example does not talk of the truth. They only refer to issues of sociology and how a lone party can succumb to pressures of society and agree to something he is not completely in accordance with.
The claim, when relating to natural Science seems to contain flaws. This is mainly dealing with new discoveries in technology and science in general. For example, Yip until someone proved otherwise, the entire world though that the world was that. And up until 60 years ago, the brightest men on Earth thought that the atom was the smallest being until the discovery of sub-atomic particles by John Dalton. One new discovery changed the belief of scientists and mankind in general. This raises questions for the claim, “ the truth,” since we cannot apply the latter if the truth has been proven false. How does the claim apply if the truth is no longer the truth? This situation would emerge many times in the period to come because science has new discoveries by the day. How does this change fall onto the nature of the claim and all its universality? Each new discovery in science or history can cause a deep-seated shift in paradigm. It may be a new phenomenon or a piece of recovered documents. What is true now can be proven false later. Thus in this area of knowledge there can never be an absolute truth. They can only be termed as interim theories constantly being revised and improved from before. Thus we can only claim today that the sub-atomic particles are the smallest beings on earth as the new truth until another comes in its place.
This claim does not seem to find space when talking about different belief systems and the ultimate truth. Taking the question of existence for example. There are several possibilities for them. For example, I believe in God. I believe that there is “someone.” I believe that he created us for a reason. A reason known only by “him,” undisclosed to the universe. However, someone may believe in the other theories created by men and women around the world. For example, the most popular of them all, the big bang theory including matter and anti-matter existing from nothing but vacuum. Also, there are those who believe in theories put forward by movies such as “The Truman Show” and “The Matrix.” They believe that humans are simply guinea pigs as a part of an experiment. They believe that someone is watching us. Someone, who is superior and gives us human’s a different situation to see how we respond to it and to each other. The same people in the same community can have different interpretations of it. However how does the claim compensate for the different beliefs and how would the complete community agree upon such a truth and if so what would it be?
In conclusion, Peirce’s statement is as varying and subjective as the truth itself – while it holds true and can be supported in many cases, the community cannot always decide on the truth, and the truth is therefore never known.
How to post
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Can a machine know? (Essay)
Answering this question is not easy and we must start at the beginning. We must start with the very fundamentals as to what is ‘knowing’ and what is ‘knowledge’? Some people think it would be best to represent knowledge in the same way that it is represented in the human mind, which is the only known working intelligence so far. The Merriam Webster defines the term ‘know’ as:
- 1 a (1) : to perceive directly : have direct cognition of (2) : to have understanding of
We see this definition as a sort of a bias and is described in very human terms. We have to take the universal truth of what knowing is. It is in my believe being aware of something based in information fed in through an array of methods. Keeping this in mind, we can go on to begin answering the prime question.
Human beings are ‘complex machines’. We modify energy and use it to perform tasks. Yet we are said to ‘know.’ If we can, why can’t an electronic machine? We have seen or read Isaac Asimov’s I,Robot. It is a story of how robots have been created to serve us humans keeping in mind three laws:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
This would only be possible if the robot knows what injury is and what can harm a human being or only if the robot knows how to protect its own existence. Yes, robots today are not as ‘intelligent’ as the ones described in these sci-fi novels but we must not confine ourselves only to the present. Half the work in innovation is done through picturing the future.
Our current developments in robotics and Artificial Intelligence have been very successful in creating the Honda Asimo©, the Sony Aibo©. These are machines are pre-programmed with information as to what to do when something happens. The Asimo can distinguish between music, noise and voices- just as a human being can. Machines hence, ‘know’ what is happening through sensors but their knowledge is limited to how they have been programmed. The human brain took millennia to evolve and become intelligent. Evolution for machines has just begun. Time passes, and with it so does what we know. Someday we will understand our brains. And the better we understand ours, the more efficient ones we can create.
We as humans would say, our thoughts seem to be infinite, a machine is highly limited. It doesn't have the ability to take in information, and process it to acquire further 'knowledge' which could be true as no robot till now has been able to acquire knowledge on its own. A machine's potential is limited to its programming dictated by its creator.
Some people believe that a machine cannot know because it cannot think. It is true that thinking cannot be programmed into a computer. If one cannot think, he/she cannot reason, believe, perceive or judge and thus cannot obtain knowledge. We are thus heading towards a more conclusive answer. Descartes said, “I think, therefore I Am.” It is ok for us to say that but a machine cannot say it because it doesn’t know what it implies by that statement. A machine cannot think or feel. It is not even self aware! It experiences what man has experienced. What we find new, a machine can never find new. It knows what it has been told and superficially that too. Technology has allowed computers to become more sophisticated over the years, they can store mass amounts of data, perform specific operations and calculations as desired but can’t ever learn anything themselves as they don’t have a mind that allows them to think and wonder as humans and animals do.
I came across a simple test for this question over the internet a couple of days ago. It was a game where 10 pencils were lined up and turn by turn I was to eliminate 1-3 pencils. The objective was to make the opponent (in this case the computer for me) pick up the last pencil. Whenever the computer started, it managed to win but this was possible only because the programmer had fed in an ingenius algorithm for the many possible moves of the human. This is knowledge and intelligence of the programmer and not the computer. The computer in this case is just a representation of the programmer. When I went first, the computer always forfeited. This was also pre-programmed. The computer did not know that forfeiting was the best option or whether it could still have won. It did what it was told.
Another simple example is human conscience. Do the robots designed today have a conscience?- No! It is our conscience that tells us what is right and what is wrong and so we know what to do but a machine is not conscious of what it is doing. It’s like a slave following a master’s orders without question. Everybody I am sure has seen the most popular action sci-fi movie ever to be produced by Hollywood- Terminator. A bicentennial man who can think and is 99% human is sent back in time to try and change the course of the future. He follows instructions yes but can think for himself also. He knows no emotion but knows what causes harm, what doesn’t and knows what he has to do. Could this be the future for artificial intelligence also? Technology is potentially limitless.
Humans can think to themselves- “I know that I have knowledge”- and can believe in it but a machine does not even ‘know’ what information it holds. We obtain knowledge through 5 senses which are vital to us- sight, smell, taste, touch and sound. Although machines can sense these also, it is very abstract. Emotions in humans are more than just electrical impulses sent through nerves and cannot be achieved in machines which also work merely through electrical impulses in their wires. A machine cannot perceive what a human can perceive.
Progress is being made in creating artificial tissue and an endless study is being carried out on the functionality of the human brain (which is by far the most developed one). Once this is fully achieved, scientists can create a brain and integrate that with machinery and probably create the robots we see in movies, robots that are self-aware and those whose artificial intelligence is more natural. It is only a vision now but who’s to say it cannot be fulfilled?
We can say that machines now ‘know’ what has been programmed into them but this is not the ‘knowing’ we as humans are concerned with. Will it ever know? The question as of now has no definite answer. We can only imagine.
Language
Yet, it is today the commonly held belief that children acquire their mother tongue through imitation of the parents, caregivers or the people in their environment. Linguists too had the same certainty until a then relatively unknown man, A. Noam Chomsky, put forward his theory that the capacity to acquire language is in fact inborn. This revolutionized the study of language acquisition, and after a brief period of controversy upon the publication of his book his theories are now generally accepted as largely true. Experiments have clearly identified an ability to discern syntactical nuances in very young infants, although they are still at the pre-linguistic stage. Children of three, however, are able to manipulate very complicated syntactical sentences, although they are unable to tie their own shoelaces, for example. At only the age of three, most children, bred in a good environment have a word power of 1000. Indeed, language is not a skill such as many others, like learning to drive or perform mathematical operations – it cannot be taught as such in these early stages. Rather, it is the acquisition of language which fascinates linguists today, and how it is possible.
Language is the most powerful tool that we can use throughout out lives. Everybody has a language. Blind have Braille, deaf and/or dumb have sign language and to think, even animals have a language- each to their own understanding. Any means of communication can be considered a language and any language is a way of knowing. Well, if you see language can result in gaining information as well as giving information (something in Physics were Newton’s third law informally states that “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction” and so you give and gain at the same time). This is however, my opinion only and has been the base of a debate for many, many years. People still question whether language is really a source of knowledge and how the 2 are related. Hans Reichenbach said that “if you can’t say it then you don’t know it” but in agreement with Michael Polanyi, I believe that “I know more than I can say.” How can somebody describe all of his / her emotions, how can somebody describe an experience which he/she feels only he/she has experienced? I may not something but not put it in words, I have felt this and I am sure everybody else has too.
Language in essence is related to almost all other factors of knowledge. Say for example truth, we need to understand what a sentence means before we can decide whether it is true or false. It is true that a great deal of language is ambiguous and there is an element of interpretation built into all communication. The following cartoon given to us is suggestive of this last statement and shows how “it started after they learned to talk”:
Since there was man, there was language. Since there was language, there was war (in some form or the other. In this case even referring to a simple argument). It is all about your own belief and your interpretation of what the other person is saying. If you don’t agree and/or have misunderstood the meaning of what the other person has said, it could lead to fights. Language can be used for the negative. Adolf Hitler is the most appropriate example for this. Through all his speeches he seduced the Germans to believe that Jews were not worthy of living.
True, ‘language is power’ and the ‘pen is mightier than the sword’ but that is only in its effect. It can be for good and for bad. We have seen the bad. Now let’s look at the good. On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech regarded as one of the most famous in all of history. A speech that has inspired, uplifted, and challenged humans throughout the world to dream of a more perfect world... for all people.
Swami Vivekananda opened his address to The World’s Parliament of Religions with the most humble “Sisters and Brothers of America” and this earned him wide applause. It showed the Western world that the ‘other side’ is human. It conveyed a powerful message of oneness and ignited a fire of brotherhood amongst not only the Americans but the world. Yes, there are wars, terrorism but there is also love in this world, love for each other, love for the world, love for knowledge and love for the word! “ As the different streams having there sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.” All people are ultimately one, made of the same dust that planets are made of. They are different in having a different language but they language conveys the same thing except in a different form.
Of the many well delivered and influential speeches I have read, former U.S. President John F. Kennedy. He brought together the states of the U.S.A. and brought equality to each. He spoke of the need for all Americans to be active citizens. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country", he said. He also asked the nations of the world to join together to fight what he called the "common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself." He motivated the world to unite through his words.
Oratory is designed to persuade, to provoke action and reaction. For perceptual theorists, persuasion operates by altering the person's perception of any object or of his attitudes. Advertising can be seen as a subvariety of oratory. In oratory words - language - are obviously powerful. Examples of successful oratory are hardly necessary: Khomeini, Luther, De Gaulle, Churchill, Hitler, Danton, John Wesley. Given the power of oratory, there is something to explain. How does the orator through the power of words succeed? How can words mould the minds of individuals and form them into a group, and then control the action of the group? What is the power derived from?
Although language may not determine our experience of reality, it certainly can influence it- Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It is through words that the United Nations comes to decisions for the betterment of our world. Even the United Nations has fiery debates in different languages but people perceive it as one- the language of negotiation and peace. They learn of other nations and of their own and know when to initiate what kind of action through this. The significance of language as such in the evolution and development of human beings and human societies has been immense.
Language is the activists’ tool against injustice. With such a power, we are capable of stirring up the emotions of people. We are capable of making them passionate about an issue. We can give people the motivation to change themselves and change the world. So challenge yourself to take a speech class, or facilitate a meeting in your district. Read a book on public speaking or maybe even study the speeches of some famous leaders. Anything. Speak up and speak out loud. Learning these tools and becoming a better leader, makes us one step closer to the world that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. so boldly envisioned on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 40 years ago. We have to continue the legacy and motivate people for the next generation.
We have thus seen that language has been existent as long as man. A child is born with a the blue-prints and just needs the tools provided by its environment to acquire a lingual sense. That child can then use this knowledge to perhaps change the world- for good or for worse but that does not matter. It only shows that language is a source of knowledge and knowledge is a source of power and thus in essence- language is a source of power.”
Can a therapist can know more about your behaviour than you do?
Let me take a simple example to illustrate this. In a football game, a player is tackled very hard by an opponent and is fouled at the same time but the referee says play on. It is only by seeing the player limp that the referee knows he is injured. Yes, a therapist will know about your behaviour but he cannot feel in the same way. Part of the behaviour is the stimulus but a greater part is the individual response. Behaviour comes from within and can be based on past experiences. Let’s take for example fear- it is a behaviour wherein one tries to stay away from whatever he / she is afraid of. Would a therapist have all the same experiences as you have had to know exactly how you feel and behave in certain cases? I think not. Everybody is different in terms of behaviour. The therapist has studied human behaviour patterns in general and maybe more aware on the subject as he has observed the behaviour of many people but how much can he/she possibly come to know within that limited time.
It is basic human nature for the behaviour to change when being isolated and being observed. The conscious mind makes the person act in a different way which might be more acceptable to the observer. This change maybe little but it completely falsifies the statement in question. It can be hence concluded as Mrs. Balan said- “The therapist is just a catalyst” for you to realize your own behaviour and change it if necessary.
Another issue discussed in class was the relation between evidence, belief and what is true. In my opinion, one may believe in something, even if it does not have any proof. The main reason for this is because people believe only what they want to. Beliefs come from ideas and ideas come from within. The most common example for this is religion and to be more specific- GOD. GOD has been the belief of over 99.9% of the world’s population since the beginning of mankind. Till now there has been no real evidence of a GOD. It is more like a rumour. Rumours can flair up from anywhere viz. recently, there was a scandal about a man walking into a cave and seeing Lord Hanuman. At this sight he was blinded and it has been said that all others who have ventured there have been blinded too. Is there really evidence of this existence?
Astrophysics deals with many theories put forward but there is still not sufficient evidence for most of these. It was only recently that the existence of black-holes and dark matter was confirmed due to X-ray radiations. Science is hence another great example of this. People believed that the world was flat and this was knowledge to them until Columbus sailed west to and reached America and soon discovered that the world is indeed a sphere as it is confirmed today. It is hence concluded that evidence is needed to validate a belief but a belief is independent of anything else. GOD may or may not be true.
A sentence which we did not really discuss in class, but caught my eye was that if something is true, then we know it. This can be interpreted in 2 ways. It can mean that a person knows everything that’s true in this world or it can mean that all that’s true is knowledge. The latter is true but the first is not. It is humanly impossible for somebody to know everything factual in this world. It is however true that anything factual is knowledge if one is aware of it.
Thus, this TOK class was a very interesting one as different people expressed their individual opinions and although they may or may not be right, it is their belief and hence can be regarded as knowledge.
Should a knower’s personal point of view be considered as an asset in the pursuit of knowledge, or an obstacle to overcome?
Points of view, therefore, are developed by people from time to time due to various reasons, one of which in the above example is experience. Perspectives are also built with variations in history, cultural background, age, social environment [which includes our peers] and field of study. These perspectives give us our identity, and make us who we are – then why would one consider them to be an obstacle in the quest of knowledge?
It can be said that this argument may have different implications according to the area of knowledge in question.
Natural Sciences require a very thorough process when it comes to acquiring knowledge. Scientists all over the world follow this process very rigidly. Science demands objectivity in its pursuit. It demands reasons. In Science, falsification plays an important role. A new theory comes into place as it displaces the previous one. It is due to the Scientists’ different points of view that old theories are falsified and new ones are proposed. In this sense, the knower’s point of view is an asset in the proposal of new theories, and hence, development in science.
On the other hand, one would counter that statement saying that it is due to these different points of view that new theories sometimes are hardly accepted. Take the example of Galileo when he proposed the theory of the Sun being in the center of the universe. He wasn’t exactly appreciated for that and was even sent to jail. The society found it difficult to break the paradigm, which they were very much emotionally attached to instead of accepting the new knowledge. In this context, the society’s point of view is considered to be an obstacle in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. But with the development that Science is making today, it is becoming easier to accept new theories as long as it passes the experimental test.
Whereas theories in Science portray one definite scientific truth, artistic truth in the arts differs from people to people. The Arts is that area of knowledge that works because of the existence of different perspectives. What a person may see as the most exceptional piece of painting, another may see it as plainly a waste of time. The Arts is about freedom of speech – freedom of speaking one’s point of view and appreciating others’ perspectives at the same time. And these perspectives help the artists to see where the world stands and how they can better their work of art, their knowledge.
However, if we look at History, we may be tempted to say that its perception on the different points of view is rather opposite of that of the arts. Let’s take the example of the Second World War. An Austrian would think of Hitler as a ruthless and unethical German dictator who took away many innocent lives. On the other hand, a political leader who believes in good leadership may think of Hitler as a very effective leader who led his people well and never let them down. Let’s say that both, the Austrian and the politician are novelists. If we were to read their novels, we would get two completely different perspectives of World War II through their own way of exploiting language. Where would we find more truth? Whereas one of them could be vague in his explanation but true, the other could be an exceptional writer but wrong. How would we be able to tell the difference between the two? Hence here, it becomes difficult for us to pursue knowledge with the different opinions that exist.
Nonetheless, one would say that it is an added advantage to have different perspectives that helps us get a broader understanding of the war. That can be taken into consideration, and does speak the truth in itself. Then again, if we were to read two different books that gave us two entirely different statistics of the war, it would become difficult to determine which book holds the correct information, the truth. And that would be one obstacle hard to overcome. It could be said that in these circumstances, the different points of view arise due to the limitation of knowledge that each individual has, which differs from one person to the other.
Speaking of statistics, mathematics is that area of knowledge that would not appreciate the idea of having multiple points of view. After all, math is about getting the right answer, the only right answer, then where would the different points of view arise in this concrete aspect of knowledge? 2 + 2 = 4, and there are no questions about that, no dissimilar perspectives because any other answer besides 4 is wrong. Yet, topics like statistics in mathematics may carry different answers. If we were to give the statistics of the number of black cars that passed a certain street over a given period of time, and each one of us came up with a different number after the end of the activity, who would be to blame? Our statistics could be wrong. But our memory could be blamed to. It is possible that some of us may have been distracted during the activity and may have made mistakes in counting. It could be possible that some of may be color blind, mistaking black for blue and vice-versa. That means that the process of mathematics does not have different points of view, instead the way we obtain knowledge in it may lead us in having more than one correct answer, more than one point of view.
This takes us to the concept of subjective approach to knowledge where a person may have opinions according to his/her own limited understanding of the concept and self-made generalizations. Let’s look back at the example of the abortion. Both Tom and Jenny have a different perspective of abortion. To Tom, it is ‘unethical’ to abort a child while to Jenny it is a ‘need’. Both look at abortion through their point of view developed as a result of their circumstances. Everyone for that matter will have a different perspective on abortion depending on their circumstances. Some may agree with Tom but understand Jenny’s situation too. Others may disagree with Tom and yet not find Jenny’s reason for adoption convincing. Where would the truth then stand? Ethically, that is indeed hard to tell. Everyone sees the world differently and has different opinions as to where the world should stand. We can not say that the way he sees the world is better or worse than the way she perceives it because their perception depends on the way they lead their life and no two people share exactly the same lifestyle today.
This question, therefore, is too generalized and vague to be given only one answer. It is impossible to have the same answer for all the different areas of knowledge. Yet, all these areas universally seek for one definite thing – the truth, although they may vary in their way of seeking that truth. However, we can generalize by saying that most of these areas of knowledge, besides mathematics, more or less do appreciate different points of view, after all, if everyone saw the world through the same eye, we would still believe that the earth is flat, paintings would always carry only one message and historians would definitely be out of business. In the end, it’s not what you look at but what you see that matters.
Movies and TOK
The Matrix- After seeing previews of the movie ‘The Matrix’ a LOT of questions came to my mind and an uncontrollable blast of uncertainty has sprouted in my mind. Could it be possible for The Matrix to exist? Further, could it be possible that we are living in a world similar to The Matrix- what if the world is not what it seems to be? There is no way to prove it but there is no way to disprove it either. But that means that the ‘real’ world (that we don’t know, and maybe can’t know) might also be ‘unreal’. That may seem ludicrous, but we can never prove it isn’t like that (although this may seem to be a weak counter-argument when asked to prove it). If we truly do exist in the world like that in The Matrix, this would negate all the knowledge claims of the past based on evolution beginning at a certain time. It would totally prove that evolution began much before as technology has advanced to create an illusion this good. If the illusion is so good and we don’t know what ‘reality’ really is, then maybe it isn’t really an illusion at all – it becomes our reality. Since we are living our lives, continuing with our beliefs, it shouldn’t really matter but it somehow does- I don’t want to live my life inside a computer program! Everything I have known, believed, lived could be a lie and I don’t know it. Sounds strange but it is true.
Gladly, there are also things that are ‘normal’. Take the Universe. Again, it is something we think we know however, not completely. The Universe is the big black visual in the sky with all the lights and stars in it over your head. It is in essence, what we believe to be everything around us. We know for a fact that the Universe is expanding. First, there was a huge explosion in which the Universe expanded to 1050 times its size in 10-33 seconds (called the ‘Big Bang’), and from that moment on, the Universe has been growing bigger and bigger.
However, the theory of multiple universes is thrown light upon in another movie.
Men in Black- A secretive agency based in Manhattan deals with the immigration of aliens on Earth. It’s what we believe to be science fiction but is it really fiction? There is no way to prove it but we cannot disprove it either. At the end of the movie however, the camera zooms out of the earth, the solar system, the Milky Way Galaxy and outside our Universe showing the WHOLE Universe as we know, to be enclosed within a marble- one of many that a supreme being (an alien in this case) is playing with. This suggests that the alien also must exist in a place outside these universes meaning in essence that there is one giant universe with sub-universes in it.
To ask- What is ‘outside’ the Universe?- seems to be a meaningless question. According to me it is not. It is not like asking what is ‘outside’ our planet because we have seen and confirmed what there is. ‘Outside’ the Universe there are no dimensions, and there is no time as we know by scientific proof. The Universe is best seen as an expanding bubble of dimensions in a sea of nothingness – although ‘nothing’ isn’t really a word you can use to describe what is outside our Universe. If nothing is faster than light then where would the light at the edge of the Universe go? What does the Universe exist in? How can something exist, when it needs for it’s existence and beginning, something it must create? The Big Bang happened somewhere…where? The questions are endless!
The Truman Show- Is it possible that our reality is actually made by some other civilisation, in some other Universe? Jim Carrey in the movie The Truman Show is presented with a truth that is not actually a truth. His hometown is a stage on which his life is just an act. He is a puppet in the hand of a director who has created a world for him. His world to him is true but eventually he realizes the actual truth- why could he never leave this town? How did everybody know where he was at certain times? How was he so popular with such an ordinary job? He sails to the end of his world and finds out the truth.
It can hence be concluded that truth is different for different people. Many truths may not even be true and these movies are just examples of this.
