Joe Beaty

October 10, 2006

Jr. Faith '06

 

            Throughout this last section, we have learned many things about how our mind works with the information we absorb and retain, and how we do so. Three kinds of knowledge are experience, where we learn about the world through our own actions, Authority, like school, where we are taught about life, and reasoning, where we use prior knowledge of the world to find truths unknown to us, and making statements about the world with our limited knowledge. As we learn, we must be aware of our thinking errors. Non sequiturs allow us to put two radically different ideas together to prove something true, even through the statements themselves are true, they have no relevance to the last statement. False and vague statements are what they are, and just make people sound ignorant. Ad hominem is a Latin phrase that allows us to make false blanket statements just to argue our point. When you are begging the question, you are really just supporting your argument with your argument, like parents saying they are "right" because they "said so." Red herring has always rather confused me, but it seemed like accidentally brining up a sore subject in public. My parents taught me as a child, never to discuss two things: religion or politics. To think critically you need many different aspects of thought. You need to know the real facts, understand the principle and possibilities of contradiction, clearly define your words to make clear to others what precisely you mean to say, be humble in your findings, don't boast or brag, and definitely keep in mind the different views from all kinds of people. Finally, we had the process of knowing, taking in what we have, and putting it into basic thought. First, we must perceive what is around us with our senses, then we categorize and sometimes stereotype with our bias, ‘rose-colored’ glasses. As we evaluate what comes in, we put it against our other knowledge to see if it is true or even relevant. We then symbolize, or clarify our jumbled thoughts, and reproduce them in a manner all can understand more readily. We must then share our knowledge with the world, and test our own mind against others not only to check out fact, but also to learn new ones.

            My favorite part of this section was probably “what the bleep do we know?” not because of the ridiculously absurd animations or odd visual effects, but because it tried to explain how the brain worked, and there is so much that happens beneath the surface of our vision and my own personal experiential knowledge that I never learned before. I like the explanation of being addicted to moods; we make ourselves happy, by thinking happy thoughts.

            I enjoy learning the teachings of old philosophers, like Aristotle. What we learned on lunes about the difference between wanting luxuries, wealth, and needing real goods of food, clothing, shelter, and love was fun. Though we do not need lots to survive, we find that we want many things to make us happy, though they usually lose their elasticity after some time. We also do in excess what we need because we want more of what makes us normal, which can then consequently kill us.

            I really liked the visual mind tricks we also saw on Monday. Though our eyes only let us see one answer at a time, we should know from common knowledge that both pictures are the same, or they are easily measure, like with the same sized circle surrounded with different sized circles. Though one looks smaller than the other, experience with past mind games, and the entire structure of this class should let us come to the conclusion of ‘why not both?’

 

IF we can start to teach animals to reason, will they soon need the same needs as us, with food, shelter, and a higher being?