Illogical Thinking

1. I. Healthy skepticism is reserving judgement on a situation until sufficient evidence is able to present the right conclusion. Unhealthy skepticism is when a person believes that no truth exists in a certain situation.

II. Evasive agnosticism is when a person uses the phrase "I don't know" as an excuse towards a certain subject. Unlike healthy agnosticism, where the knower cannot find an answer after long hours of research on a topic, evasive agnosticism is when the knower doesn't bother to do any work, and uses ignorance as an excuse for not knowing about the topic. 

III. Narrow mindedness is when a person does not explore an issue because it does not meet his biases on what are important issues to explore.

2. Skepticism was a problem in reasoning during the era of WWI. Back in the early 1900's all of the European nations were developing an arms race. As each new weapon became invented, the countries announced that they were only using these weapons for defensive purposes. Unhealthy skepticism became involved, as the nations decided that each country was creating these weapons in order to gain the power to invade the other. Due to the fact that they did not believe one another, the European nations grew paranoid and they attacked each other in fear. If they hadn't been so skeptical of each another, these countries might have addressed the problems of the arms race in a reasonable manner. 

Logical Falacies - utility and cautions

1. The "Straw Man" fallacy occurs when a person's position is ignored and distorted by another person.

Luke: I think that we should get out some more
Jack: What are you talking about?
Luke: We spend too much time cooped up in this house.
Jack: Why bother? All you ever do is stay inside and play video games.

2. The "Appeal To Spite" fallacy occurs when spite is the driving force in an arguement against a certain claim.

Jason: I think that the Ra'zac are my favorite characters in the novel, Eragon.
Henry: What? Don't you remember that the Ra'zac killed Brom?
Jason: Oh man, I forgot about that. I hate the Ra'zac!

3. The link below leads to a video that involves the Ad Hominem. In this video Barack Obama is in an interview with a newsman, and the newsman presents a claim from Sarah Palin. She complained about the fact that Obama's nuclear defense policy was bound to hurt America in the long run. Obama uses the logical fallacy of Ad Hominem, for instead of addressing Palin's claim, he attacks her knowledge of the situation by saying that she is not an "expert in nuclear issues."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebT1Oo6yDMI

Reaction Time, Synthesesia, and Sense Perception

3.  Trial                                                      Number of Dots           Percentage Change In Score*
      1                                                                 23                                                  0%
      2                                                                 27                                                  17.39%
      3                                                                 28                                                  3.7%
      4                                                                 28                                                  0%
      5                                                                 26                                                 -7.14%

4. My performance on the Hit-the-Dot game was fairly decent. I scored more points than some, yet I scored lower than others. Sense perception affected my score because I was able to use my sense of sight to perceive the dots that were appearing right in front of me. I did not use reason during this game, for my main tools were sense perception and reaction time. For the most part, my reaction time improved with each new round, however, I screwed up at the fifth game. It might have been an anomaly, or I might have lost some of my focus while playing. Through this game I learned how to make my reaction time get steadily faster as the game progressed.

7. Synthesesia is a condition in which a sense is stimulated through the wrong sense. (Example: a person can taste color.)

8. When I listen to various sorts of music, I experience pleasure, for it manages get my mind off of stress. For me, nothing more than the sense perception of hearing is involved while I listen to music. For WOK, I experience emotions which differ depending on the tone of each song. Language is expressed by the singer when he/she signs the lyrics to their song. Sense perception allows me to perceive the song in my mind.

11. Word Set 1 Time = 17.207 seconds      Word Set 1 Time 33.063 seconds  Difference = 33.063 - 17.207 = 15.586 seconds

12. The Stroop effect is when a person sees a color word written in a different color. The Stroop effect causes the person to hesitate on naming the color that is presented to them due to the fact that the word spells out another color. The nature of the word would interfere with the person's quest in their environment because even though the person sees a certain color, the word is saying a different color. Despite the fact that the person knows the word is written in red, for example, he would hesitate on saying the shouting out red since the word says green.

Selective Attention VS Inattention Blindness

• Selective attention is when an individual focuses their attention on only one item or action in their environment, and block out possible cases of interference  Inattention blindness is an effect of selective attention. It is when an individual is so focused on one objective that they are unable to notice differences that occur in their environment outside of the scope of their attention.
• A personal example of selective attention came to light when I was in the depths of my own mind. I was thinking about TV, and I blocked out everything else during that time  An example of selective attention in the Area of Knowledge known as human sciences came in the form of a video called  Selective Attention Test. The objective that the video asked the viewer to complete was that they had to count how many times the people in the white shirts passed a ball. As a result, the viewer's sole focus would be to pay attention to the players in white, and they would block out everything else.
• A personal example of of inattention blindness continued when my mom asked me to do a chore while I was thinking about TV. I was so into my thoughts that I did not even hear my mom when she presented her request.  An example of inattention blindness in the Area of Knowledge of human sciences appeared at the conclusion the Selective Attention Test, video. The people in white made a total of fifteen passes, but in focusing on the objective, the viewer may have experienced inattention blindness when they might have failed to see a gorilla walk right into the middle of the scene and beat his chest. 

http://www.mind-meditations.com/concentration-attention/selective-attention-inattentional-blindness/

Knowledge Issues Questions

1. A mind boggling event happened in the world of medical science when Scott Routley managed to communicate with his doctors. Scott was about twenty-seven years old when he was involved in a car accident that left him in a vegetative state. For over twelve years, he could not communicate with anyone until the day Dr. Adrian Owen preformed an experiment on him. By reading his brain activity with an fMRI machine, Dr. Owen was able to gain yes or no answers from Scott, even to the question which has haunted the loved ones of vegetative state patients for years: "Do you feel any pain?"
Now that this method of communication has been enacted, there are several thought provoking, knowledge issue questions to be considered:
I. (If a patient answers yes to the question of pain, what should be done to alleviate it?) What does good evidence present as the correct solution?
II. (If a patient answers yes to whether or not they wish to die, should the doctors take his life?) In what ways does value effect our perception of ethics?
III. (If the family wishes to keep a patient alive even though they want death, should the doctors obey the family, or the patient?) Whose opinion is of more value?


2. Movies can create a great amount of controversy for their viewers. Some movies make more money, and gain more popularity than other films. This statement can even be applied to movies that are made by the same company. Some people love a certain movie while others cannot stand it. In order to gain further insight into the world of films, here are some knowledge issue questions that apply to this subject:
I. What makes a movie so popular to the masses?
II. Why are some movies more liked than others?
III. Why do some people like one movie while others hate it?
IV. What does a viewer search for when he or she watches a movie?
V. If a movie does not make a lot of money, can it still be popular?
VI. Can a movie truly be bad or good?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/scott-routley-vegetative-patient-yes-no_n_2125481.html

Context

The 'organizing principal' that I have chosen is context. An example of context from the reading is the anecdote about the origin of X-rays. German physicist Wilheim Roentgen made this discovery when he was looking at a fogged photographic plate while he was working with some vacuum tubes. When he took an X-ray of his wife, he was able to see her bones and her wedding ring. By using context and taking the clues from the fogged plate that he had found earlier, Roentgen managed to create the X-ray and discover a way to help people with their broken bones.
An example that I have made of this principle is that I went online and looked up a sentence that contained a word that I did not know. I went on a web sight and found a sentence. The word was insouciance, and the sentence was: "His insouciance will come back to bite him, if he doesn't study he will have to repeat his grade." I immediately came to the conclusion that insouciance was another word for lazy. I thought that when  the sentence was describing the possible failure of the student, and how his insouciance would hurt him, the word was suggesting his lack of effort. When I looked up the actual definition online, it was: "Casual lack of concern; indifference." I didn't get the true meaning of the word, but using the context clues of the sentence, I managed to come up with a definition that sends almost the same message.
This method that I used to find the definition of insouciance involved my sense perception because I had to use my sense of sight to read the word and I had to use my mind to process the information. Once I had read the words on the page, I used my brain to interpret the sentence and think up a possible definition for it. I then delved into my memory to dig up my common sense and I used the conclusion I came up with to estimate a possible definition for insouciance. Context is truly essential in the area of sense perception, and it helps us dig out the clues that are sometimes hidden to us throughout our lives. 



SOURCES:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Can_you_give_me_hard_words_and_then_sentences_for_them



https://www.google.com/search?q=insouciance&rlz=1C1NNVC_enUS487US514&oq=insouciance&sugexp=chrome,mod=15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Sense Perception & Knowledge of the External World

3. To see "what is the case," the requirement is that the sight in question must be organized by the brain through these different methods. Context is when certain circumstances are formed into an event. An inference is when someone reaches a conclusion using the method of reasoning. A concept is a broad or abstract idea that is usually applied to a worldly topic. Experience is when a person goes through an event in their life and learns how to use that event to prepare for another situation that is similar to its predecessor. Interpretation is when a person absorbs an idea, and frames their own belief about what that idea really means. Those are the methods in which someone can use to see "what is the case."

4.What Nietzsche means by "the fallacy of the immaculate perception" is that there is no one correct view as to how something is seen, and there are many more views besides an accepted view. Joseph Jastrow proved this point by creating a drawing that was vague enough to be interpreted as several different things, which included either a rabbit or a duck. We have done this in class with the perception test. For example, when the slide of the cleaning woman was shown, it was made in such a way in which it could have been interpreted as several different views. For example, the drawing was so abstract that I interpreted the drawing as the head of an alien and a pair of chopsticks

7. When Abel says "to perceive is to solve a problem", he means that finding a permanent image when you are viewing a scene helps you truly function in the world. For example, if a tiger finds a man alone in the woods, perception is essential for that man's survival. If he has poor perception, the man will not be able to properly use and trust his vision, and the tiger will most likely kill him. However, if the man has good perception, he can see the threat that is in front of him, and he can trust his senses to properly deal with the situation at hand. That is what Abel means when he says "to perceive is to solve a problem."

8. The role of social conditioning in determining how things "naturally look" is that it causes the individual's views to be altered. If society tells an individual how something should look, that individual is going to be looking at that view as they think they are supposed to look at it. For example, when a toddler is asking his mother about cheese, she is going to tell him that it contains the color yellow. Therefore if the toddler sees a picture of red cheese, he is going to come to the conclusion that it is not the natural look of cheese, for he has been told that normal cheese is yellow. That is the role that social conditioning has in determining how things naturally look.

9. The significance about the Durer rhinoceros story is that it shows how Durer's carving threw human convention up in the air about what a rhino should look like. Durer used "second hand evidence" in order to create his interpretation of a rhino, and as a result, it may or may not have looked like a real rhino. The influence of convention took place when James Bruce drew a rhino. When he saw saw the rhino in Africa in 1790, Bruce thought it looked incredibly similar to Durer's carving. He was so influenced by the carving that when Bruce sketched the rhino, there was suspicion that he made it look more like Durer's work rather than the actual rhino. As a result, no zoologist can tell whether Bruce's drawing is truly a rhino or not. That is the significance about the Durer rhinoceros story, and that was how convention influenced James Bruce's drawing

11. When Abel writes "believing is seeing", he means that people gain their beliefs by being either seeing something, or being guided to see something to another's interpretations. For example, a woman is in a museum looking at a painting of a partly cloudy sky. The curator notices her observations and tells her that the cloud on the upper left hand corner of the painting is meant to be in the shape of an acorn. The woman, taking the curator's word to heart, makes an effort to prove that his statement is true. When she thinks she has seen the acorn, she believes that the cloud is truly shaped like an acorn. That is how believing is seeing.