Language

What is your definition of language?

• Language is the use of written and spoken words and that are used as a form of communication between humans. There are different languages associated with people from around the world each with their own distinctive way of talking and communicating with each other.
• A language must have rules that make it unique in some of its meanings and phrases
• Languages are far from optimum
• Languages are the basis of communication as they allow humans to easily interact with each other
• Languages are made up of grammar, words, letters, and symbols that make up a set of guidelines that must be followed in order for understanding to occur between people

Ways in which language is used for the purpose of communication:

• Language is used in the form of dialogue, through speaking and conversing with another person
• In order to communicate responsibly we must pay attention to the meaning of the word so that we make sure that we don't use it inappropriately
• Language allows for better and more efficient communication
• Body Language is the most important type of language used in communication as 55% of our communication is done through this type of language

Which side is the author on? Why?

• The author is on the American/Texan side, as he referred to the Mexican rule as "tyrannical rule" as well as highlighting the number of casualties that the Texans suffered in order to gain sympathy from the reader, and sway their opinion in favor of the American "defenders".

Theory Of Knowledge Vocabulary and Concepts

• Belief
• Certainty
• Culture
• Evidence
• Experience
• Explanation
• Interpretation
  
• Intuition
• Justification
• Truth
• Values

Knowledge Issues

These need to be expressed as questions which are:

• Open-ended, where there is more than one possible answer
• Explicitly about knowledge in itself and also it is not subject specific and does not deal with content
• Couched in TOK vocabulary and concepts
• Precise in terms of the relationships between these concepts

"They're Made Out Of Meat" Response

The story written by Terry Bisson, is one that deals with the way in which humans are understood by outsiders, in this case aliens. In the story, the author describes humans as being "meat all the way through." Personally, I agree with this honest statement as if we rid ourselves of our judgements and our vanity, then the statement would be extremely accurate, as it explains bluntly what we are. What I like about this story in particular is that it allows us to acknowledge the use of our sight to make certain conclusions and to draw up ideas on what we see. The story truly made me learn that our judgements are based on our sight, even though our sight can be fooled into seeing something that might not really be there, we still tend to form our ideas based on what we see, as we simply trust and use our sense of sight the most. 

What was also extremely intriguing about the story, is that it teaches us a lot about our prejudice. In the story, this is evident when the two "aliens"discuss wether or not to get to know the humans, they agree that officially they have to put their prejudice aside and get to know these beings, but they decide that they will pretend as if they never saw these humans or pieces of "meat" as they refer to them, and pretend as though nothing ever happened. The way in which we can relate this to as we at times choose not to address certain issues or acknowledge their existence because we simply don't agree with them or don't like them. 

Conclusively, this story although it was extremely abstract and honest, it was still extremely important in understanding how our sense of perception allows us to draw knowledge from different situations. 

Sense Of Perception

Our sense of perception is what we perceive to be true depending on what we see, hear, touch, smell and taste. As a class, most people agreed that they trust their sense of sight the most, however I respectfully disagree. Although, I do agree that our sense of sight is extremely important, it is a "luxury" one that we can live without. Personally I feel that the most trusted of our senses is our sense of touch. Truthfully, in order to believe we must touch and not see, this is because with sight it is easy to be fooled, by things such as illusions while as with touch there is not debate as to wether or not something is there or not because you are touching it. What is difficult to understand is why the phrase "seeing is believing" came about, since what you see may be altered to convey a certain message, thus manipulating your understanding and thought towards something. Conclusively, this discussion is one that has allowed me to understand why we tend to believe certain things, or see things a certain away, for it is because we use our sense to draw these conclusions that allow us to perceive different things. 

Week No. 2 -October 12th 2009 - Trust

During our introductory week of Theory of Knowledge, we were introduced to the "pillars" of TOK. We immediately began to discuss levels of trust which we categorized in different levels, the pet gold fish level, which is the lowest level, followed by the pet dog level and finally the child level which is the highest degree of trust on our scale.