Phantom Limbs

Another situation in which reality only exists in one’s mind is a dream. Um… I don’t really know how to evaluate it…. but I do know that when you sleep you’re body is paralyzed to prevent you from actually acting out your dreams, and that sleepwalking is caused to a deficiency in the gland that controls the paralysis….. so when you’re dreaming it is reality to you because you want to act out what is going on in your mind. Yes, this has happened to me. Not the sleepwalking part, but the other part.

If something lies outside our realm of perception, then how can we know it?

Certain concepts lie outside our personal realms of sensory perception, but are within the realms of others. These other people may use language to share this information with us, and thus we are able to know things such as those that are listed on the Harding TOK blog. However, we will most likely never know whether those claims are true. So, my answer is that we CAN’T know these things for ourselves, we can only believe them.

A few years ago, my friend Ben Obernolte and I decided to demonstrate our debating skills and proceeded to convince a large group of naive children between ages 12 and 14 that Japan does not, in fact, exist, and that it was only a conspiracy to cover up the secret actions of China. It was quite fun.

Propaganda

I believe nearly all propaganda takes the form of art because it is easiest to manipulate people’s emotions with art. The purpose of propaganda is to stir up the emotions of people in order to turn them against a certain idea or to convince them that a certain idea is superior to other ideas. In order to have someone commit his or her self completely to a certain cause, they’re heart must be in it, and in order for their heart to be in it, their emotions must be somewhat involved.

Knowledge Issue Associated with North Korea

A knowledge Issue associated with North Korea would be whether hearing something over and over will make somebody eventually believe it, even if they originally know it to be false. This is a knowledge issue because it deals with the human mind in ways that only psychology will begin to explore. It is impossible to determine if every single individual succumbs to the brainwashing, which then makes it impossible to get a definite answer, thus making this a TOK knowledge issue.

History

I honestly neither know nor care if we are learning “fake” stuff in History class. It makes no difference to us, the learners. We aren’t able to tell the difference. For example, in class, if Mr. Gullickson hadn’t told us that all but one of the statements about April 8th, 1974 were made up, almost nobody would have been able to tell which ones were false. I don’t think the facts are what is important in History class, I think it is the process we use when we analyze the facts to draw meaningful conclusions. So, even if we are learning fake stuff, is it really all that important?

Oh, and just for interest, the Aerosmith album was released in April 1975, so I was off by a year. I should have used Queen’s hit “Bohemian Rhapsody” instead.

Language

I believe that written language would be the most effective form of language to use to convince someone that the world is round. That way, if the person is confused by your explanation, they can go back and try to understand it later. Written language helps to reduce the chance of being interrupted and losing your train of thought, which would result in a garbled explanation that is almost impossible to follow.

Basically, process of elimination leads to my conclusion that written language would be the best type of language to use to convince someone that the world is round.

Art

I believe that the value of music is diminished every time somebody provides a review for it. For example, Metallica recently released the album Death Magnetic. I personally love this album!! Especially since I got it for only ten bucks. This album received many skeptical reviews from people who had access to the tracks before they were released. It is disappointing when people attempt to force their opinion of art on somebody else, as many of these people did by including phrases in their reviews such as “anyone who buys this album is a proven idiot” etc. I believe that when art is critically analyzed its value diminishes.

Mathematics

I think that mathematical constants are natural, but they aren’t as significant as some people would like to think. The only reason that they are such a big deal is people make them so. So we know that the golden ratio applies to the human body’s various proportions. Ummmm…………. so what? Does this radically change our life? I understand how knowing pi would help us in production of things because we use wheels so much, but other than that one, mathematical constants have little significance. So, to answer the question more directly, mathematical constants are natural, but their significance is man-made.

Human Science

I do not believe that religion is a human science, but I do believe that the study of religion is. Religion itself simply defines what a person believes. In order to see what the effects of that religion have on a person and that person’s actions, one needs to actually study what the religion entails. I guess what I’m trying to say is that religion is something explained by human science, such as the brain is explained through psychology. The brain itself is not a human science, but the fields that study the brain are. I believe that the same logic applies to religion.

Ethics

I do not think that ethics can be quantified. This is because each person has their own limits. In order to make an ethical decision, someone has to simply follow their gut. Gut feelings will differ from person to person, which means that there is no set line that divides “okay” and “not okay”. I think people could use reason and language to figure out a general ballpark of what is unacceptable, but the actual limit will differ for every person. So, it is somewhat difficult to come up with a specific example pertaining to this…. I guess we could discuss abortion. It’s pretty much agreed that you can’t kill the baby once it’s born, but every person has a different opinion of when a fetus is considered a baby. Some people believe that it is from conception, others say from 3 months. It will be impossible for every person to simply agree on when a fetus is a person. Also, with this issue, I think that a slight majority of people believe that rape victims should be able to abort a pregnancy, but then again we encounter those who disagree. Those people will never be convinced to agree, even through the use of reason, because their gut is against it.

It’s extremely difficult to discuss ethics, because the person reading this could completely disagree with me and consider me as wrong. There is no right answer. GRRRR.