Wednesday, September 7, 2016
The Problem of Knowledge
For this blog response, refer to the quotations on page 2 of our Cambridge edition TOK textbook. Choose one of the quotations and discuss your thoughts on the matter. Consider what we discussed in class, and say something interesting. This assignment is due by Friday, September 16th.
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Firstly, I would like to talk about some parts of the chapter one before talking about one of the quotations in the beginning.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, at the end of the chapter, in the last two pages(20-21), I do believe that we should not be that much sceptical. I mean I myself am a really sceptical person which I will tell you more in this blog post, but if I see it is raining, it is raining(if i'm not dreaming). That sceptical guy is doubting way too much and you cannot live like that. Do you want yourself murdered? Because that's how you make someone murder you.
I'd like to move on with the quotation from Charles Renouvier, which is "Properly speaking, there is no certainty; there are only people who are certain". I think I agree with this quote but I cannot say that it is certain, then I would be contradicting myself. There is nothing certain. Even, I might not be writing this right now because I could be in a dream.
I'll give you another perspective that is not mentioned in this chapter, not sure if it is in the book though. Can you please open page 13 and look at activity 1.6? Dougles Hofstadter claims that there is such a thing as being too open-minded. He tells that "I think it is wrong to be open-minded about whether or not the Nazis killed six million Jews in World War II" In MY opinion(it might be wrong) there is a possibility that the history never happened. You could call me selfish or egoist but some part of me believes that all of the things around me is just created for me, I'm the sole purpose of the life and everything is set to make me feel like I've been living. Just like the truman show but except that it's not a show, It's like everything happening. By the way, I'm slightly disagreeing with Descartes and relatively disagreeing with the writer of the book who said "How can you be certain that you are not living a Truman-show-type life and that the people around you are not simply actors?" Even if this is true, which I also think it is, then SOMETHING, SOMEHOW is existing. Even if I'm wrong, I'm not the center of the world, something is existing that making me believe that I'm living. Why do I disagree with Descartes, I should change the quote to: "I think, therefore something is."
To conclude, just like the quote said, there is no certainty; there are only people who are certain. But then again, do we really have to doubt this much? There is no end in doubting, I might even doubt death. But right now, in the best years of my life, I have a strong faith of being happy and getting the most badass memories that I could possibly get, always having fun at what I am doing. I can doubt in TOK classes and sometimes when it's needed outside of the class.
EFE
"Properly speaking, there is no certainty; there are only people who are certain." -Charles Renouvier
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading the chapter, first thing I realized was certainty does not exist. As Charles Renouvier said, there are only people who are certain. In my opinion, they are people who afraid to question. They have borders and cannot face the unknown. It is easy to believe what you see or what you hear, but it us hard to open your mind and try to understand what other people believe.
Since the first human being was created, born or evolved, the need of belief started. People wants to known and feel safe. We need something to hold on and something to live for. So, it is the simplest way to create a bigger power or idea. This is why we started the religions and ideologies. These things attenuate our fear.
We cannot tell what is true or what is false. We can't even prove if we are alive or what we are living is just a dream. So, how can we be certain? We need the definite answers to be certain but whatever we believe, see, hear or learn will not be definite. We'll never know how we came to this world or we'll never know if the aliens exist.
It is fun to question everything and open your mind to every idea. I may not believe or accept his/her knowledge as mine but it is important to never stick to something because it is never going to be certain.
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ReplyDelete-When I opened the blog today I saw that it was due Friday, but I didn't know that it was due that day, that's why I'm posting it today. I thought it was due Sunday, sorry for that.-
ReplyDelete“The greatest obstacle to progress is not the absence of knowledge but the illusion of knowledge.” -Daniel Boorstin
I agree with Daniel Boorstin’s quote on progress, but I’d like to go a little bit further and describe what the absence of knowledge means to me in this quote.
What does the absence of knowledge mean? To me, it exists for everything we think that we know, and for what we call knowledge. I don’t claim that it is a bad thing; in fact, it is something really good to know otherwise there wouldn’t be any progress. The further discoveries happen because of the absence of knowledge: People start questioning if something is certainly true. As a result, it something needed to learn more and get closer to what we call “true knowledge”.
First of all I didn't know that this blog post due Friday since I wasn't at school last week. So I just did it today, sorry for that.
ReplyDelete"All men have opinions, but few think" - George Berkeley
I totally agree with this quote because nowadays everybody has some opinion about anything. For instance if you didn’t watch a movie and yet you search about that movie and read some comments about that and you got the writers opinion about that movie or you heard something about that movie from your friends and you got their opinions not yours.
But to have your own opinion you should have watched that movie and think about it in order to have an opinion of your own not anyone else’s opinion.
“All men have opinions, but a few think”
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I would like to say that this chapter opened my mind so much. I understood that this class is going to help me improve.
Everyone thinks in different ways. I don’t think you can teach someone how to think because thinking and knowing is something someone has to learn by themselves. Not everyones thoughts are the same on one topic and that is a very special thing about humans. Everyone is different. Some people might have the same thoughts on a topic but I’m sure that they do not think the same way on each topic. Probably everyone on this planet has heard of the Earth being round. I know that there are quite a few people who disagree with this fact (I honestly don’t know how) but if you ask people in the street, most of them will say that its round. They just know this, they don’t know how or why. That’s what they have learned in primary school.
I was talking about the maps on our book with my dad. Then I showed a video about it to my mum and her cousin They told me that they have never even thought about Russia being smaller than Africa. That’s the truth and I haven’t thought about it before and trust me, I am obsessed with maps (which might sound weird). So I had to think about it after I saw the picture on our book and the video.
Politics is a great example for this quote. There are tons of people who vote for someone that is actually not good for our country without thinking. They just say that he is great. It’s their opinion. I wish I could change it but I can’t. This is like this in every single country all around the world. Some people don’t know about what’s going on around the world, they don’t know the truth about anything, and they certainly don’t know what good and bad is. But if they actually start thinking about what is going on in this world and how bad actually it is going to end up, they might change their minds but they do what other people tell them to do. Parents and friends affect people a lot. If a friend has an opinion on something, you might start thinking the same way because you want to stay friends with them.
I wish people started to think about what is going on in our world. The world might become a better place to live in.
But that’s not going to happen…