Truth Essay

How can the different ways of knowing help us to distinguish between something that is true and something that is believed to be true?

Through Plato’s idea of knowledge we are able to get a clear understanding of what is true and what is not. Plato created a set way to identify truth. By looking at his ideas of what knowledge is, there is a greater understanding for how to separate something that is true from something that is not.

Plato’s argument is that knowledge has to be described and communicated, that way it had certainty to its truth. “Propositional” knowledge (aka Platonic knowledge or knowledge by description) is a way that we can determine what is true and what is not. Propositional knowledge is a formal statement of convincing knowledge, or “knowing that” something is true. According to Plato knowledge can be tested to see if it is in fact true or not. In order to be knowledge it must apply to three things, it must be justified, it must be true, and it must be believed. Knowledge can be justified though authority, empathy, ratification, and memory. Belief however is necessary but is not sufficient enough to stand on its own. Now for something to be true it must also fit into three categories. It must be public, independent, and eternal. The information presented has to be public, for example if the true statement was that a dog is friendly is true it must be friendly to everyone. If it was only friendly to its owner and not to other people of the public then it is not true. The statement must also be independent of belief. For example the owner of that dog may fully believe that his dog is friendly when in fact it is a evil beast, his belief does not make it true. Last but not least the dogs friendliness must be eternal. In that moment that dog must be friendly then and forever.

Based on Plato’s three clarifications must of how a piece of knowledge be true, I believe it fits in with all types on knowledge. In empiricism/experiential knowledge (see it, smell it, hear it, touch it, taste it) any sort of knowledge presented to be true through induction must also have to fit into the three categories. For example if someone were to say “the grass is green” because they can see that the grass is in fact green this knowledge could be verified as truth because it is public, everyone can see that the grass is green, it is separate from belief, and it is eternal because the grass will always be green in that moment. Rationalism and Deduction (instructed knowledge using a prior knowledge, ‘knowledge that came before’) are also an example that knowledge that can be used to distinguish between what is truth and what is not. For example a person can know that fire is hot and not to touch it through rationalization, it can be told to a person through authoritative means, they can tell from the heat it gives off, etc. All of the knowledge that they have acquired about fire can lead a person to know that fire is dangerous and not to touch it through ratification, without them ever having to try. This is public because fire is dangerous to all, it doesn’t only hurt some people. It is independent, because even if you believe it is not hot it is in fact hot. It is eternal because in that moment fire will always be hot.

The implications of my argument are that I believe that Plato’s form of acknowledging truth is the right form, no matter what type of knowledge is used. In my argument I do not address any other ways to justify truth through knowledge, and if people were to believe my claims then they would all think the same as Plato. There would not be any challenges in the way that we conclude what is true and what is not. This could impede on the development of knowledge as a whole. However, it would also lead to a recognized system to decide on truth and would create less ambiguity in the world.

A counter claim to my argument would be that Plato’s belief on finding truth from knowledge is wrong. There might be a different methodology this person may find more suitable to show how knowledge is truth. They could also argue with the three different categories that Plato lies out. It could be argued that truth does not have to be eternal since our realms of knowledge are changing daily, that things cannot ever stay eternal.

According to Plato’s idea of knowledge there it must be believed. However, just believing in something does not make it knowledge. For example you can not know that that grass is green with our believing in it. Also even though you may believe in dragons, it does not mean you have knowledge of them, because they are neither justified nor true. Also according to Plato truth must be independent of belief. This makes it fairly easy to separate truth from something that is believed to be true.

Monster 2

1. After learning about how the Bosnian War began and the role of
Karadzic and Milosovic, was it fair for the Independent to use the
word "Monster".
I feel as though it is not fair for the independent to use the word
monster as a label for Karadzic and Milosovic. Even though what they
were doing was completely wrong they do not deserve the term monster.
The blame cannot be placed entirely on them, for if the people of
Serbia had not lied and thrown rocks at each other Milosovic would
have never said the famous words “you will not be beaten again”. He
did not have the original intent to kill the Muslims, but only did so
when he felt it was revenge/defense for his people. A monster would
originally have the intent to hurt, and be looking for a reason to do
so, not the other way around. Plus a monster would not have human
driven motives such as revenge or defense, but would only kill for the
sake of killing.

2. How do you think this phrase would be justified, according to
Plato? Use specific examples from the reading and the documentary, The
Death of Yugoslavia, to justify your claims.
I think the phrase of calling Karadzick and milosovic would be
justified through authority and reason. News articles such as the
independent are authoritative sources and are telling people that
these people are monsters, so then it must be true. In the Peter Maas
article we are able to read a first hand account of the witness of the
brutalities committed. They are presented to us with such distaste and
we take what we are learning about to obviously be extremely inhumane.
Since we see the actions as being inhumane it is easy to place the
term of something none human to apply to the persons in charge, i.e.
monster.

3. When the term Monster is used, what do you think it means. (You can
look it up in the dictionary, but as you know, that has limitations).
I think a monster can be defined as something inhumane, or something
that is not human. Monsters thoughts are purely based on blood and
destruction with no other motive or reasons for their actions. A
monster does not stop until everything is destroyed, it does not have
a certain goal or objective.

4. Has your answer changed since your first entry? Why or why not?
My answer has not changed since my first entry. It has not change
because I still feel as though a monster is just a term used to place
the blame on these two individuals, making them look horrendous
instead of showing their side of the argument and seeing why and
where these cruelties really manifested.

Karadzic is a Monster? How do we know?

The Independent refers to Karadzic as a "Monster." Think back to last year and consider: "How do they know what they know?" How have they attempted to justify their knowledge claims? Please be specific.

The knowers in the two articles are claiming to know what they know from deduction and rationalization. Peter Mass describes his first hand account of his tours through the prison camps and depicts the torture and pain he has witnessed. Clearly only a monster, something that is inhuman, inhumane, could allow something like this to happen. He uses deduction to conclude what is really going on behind the scenes, what is being hidden to make the camps look good. His emotional response as a human to seeing other humans tortured and beat tells him that what is going on is wrong. Being a human and having a disgusted response to what is happening in the authors mind only something inhuman, not humane, could allow a monstrosity like this to occur. Dare I say a monster? The independent uses deduction and authoritative reasoning to claim that Karadzic is a Monster. Similar to Peter Mass, being humans who create the Independent, a normal response to such cruelty and hatred they responded with fear, disgust, confusion, and an automatic bias that blocks their reasoning from seeing Karadzics views on the situation. The fear, disgust, and confusion of how someone could allow this to happen makes the knowers automatically dehumanize him by calling him a monster. Making it easier to hate what him from what he has done. They can claim that they know things also from the images, reports, and other sources of information that they have at thier fingertips to interpret as they wish. Which is authoritative.

OBEY

1. What is your emotional response upon entering the exhibit? Please explain.
My emotional response upon entering the exhibit was intrigued. I didnt really know much about the whole OBEY thing and i was extremly curious. The only artwork i had really seen from him was the Obama add and the famous OBEY poster. Right away looking at the first few art pieces when walking in i was blown away by thier compelxity, then even more amazed when i got closer and saw the more intense detail. Each poster brought a differnet emotion. There was some that brought sadness, pity, and even laughter. When reading about his ideas to create propaganda just to make people think, the posters seemed to create even more of a emotional responce. It created more curiosity for what he was trying to convey with these posters. Some posters even brought a feeling of shame, like the ones that were insulting America and the world. It almost made me shamefull and upset that I am apart of what he is trying to convey.

2. What is your emotional response upon leaving the exhibit? Please explain.

My emotional responce upon leaving the exhibit was intense. I was extremly intrigued by what i saw, and it made me think alot more about the war and the propaganda in our society. The last room left me blown away and speechless. threre was so much detail and so much meaning all around that my eyes could not stay focoused on one area for to long with out moving onto the next with intense curioisity. I felt like the exhibit was also set up to further enhance this sense of confusion and curiosity, with all of the different rooms, it was almost maze like.

3. Does emotion interact with reason, sense, perception and language for you in this exhibit? If so, how?

Yes emotion does deffinatly interact with reason, sense, perception and language in this exhibit. His artwork was designed to envoke an emotional responce from the viewers and have them question the society around them. He purposly manipulated language in some of his works to portray a meaning of stupidty. He also had newspaper clippings that were embedded in the back of the art work to help enhance whatever messsage or emotion he was trying to convey in that piece. The different colors and images greatly targeted your perception of how you viewed the exhibit, and helped to enhance the emotions he was trying to convey.

4. Is this an American culture exhibit? How might someone from a non-Western country respond to this exhibit? Why?

I felt that this is deffinatly an Amercian culture. First of all it deffinatly shows freedom of speech that may not be allowed in other countries, it directly insults President Bush, the war, and calls America stupid. A non-Western country might be bothered by the amount contraversy presented in these images. They also might be upset by the images of asian children holding guns.

5. Can one appreciate theatre, music and art using only the rational mind or must Emotion play a role? Explain.

I do not think it is possible at all to enjoy any type of art with out emotion. All art is created with the intention of capturing some type of emotion, or trying to inflict it on the viewer. I feel that if you are to look at art with only a rational mind, it just wouldnt work. Even looking at a piece of art and trying to analyze it, you can not do so succesfully without being able to interpret and feel the emotions that are being portrayed with in it.

Enron Essay

Informal fallacies are used in everyday life. We are constantly presented them from the media, and other sources of information. They have a huge impact on how we perceive the world around us and how people want us to perceive the world around us.

Informal fallacies are often convincing for many reasons. For one I think it has a lot to do with human flaws. Most people are willing to accept what the majority of people say because it is easier than to cause controversy. Unless a person is looking for a way to piss another person off then normally we tend to agree or not argue with that persons reasoning for things. For example, if a person were to was to state an ad ignorantiam fallacy (claming that something is true because it cannot be proved false.) any counter argument would cause much controversy, and also has no proof to it. Retaliating to something that has nothing to retaliate about would only create a useless argument that has no possibility of a solution. In my opinion, humans tend to avoid pointless arguments that they feel they have no chance in winning. A person is more likely to argue something if they feel that they have the upper hand and will not make a fool of themselves. If a person was to argue back to a fallacy like an ad ignorantiam fallacy then they themselves have nothing to back up what they are stating. Leading to a useless argument with no hope of winning. People are more likely to avoid a situation that they feel would cause useless drama in their lives, so they are less likely to responded to fallacies similar to this. On the flip side of this argument the people who are stating that fallacy are well aware that other people are less likely to respond against it, therefore letting their opinion be made and stated in such a way that they do not have to back up their ideas. In a argument containing an ad ignorantiam the person stating the fallacy would have the upper hand to the person over the person who is arguing against it. Both would have no clear evidence that what they view is correct or incorrect but since the person who started the argument is more likely to be more passionately involved in the statement itself, and would not want to be proven wrong. When people believe something that they have stated and they told it is wrong they tend to go into a defense mode over what was said. The person arguing back is less likely to have as much passion for the argument and since both have a side that can not be proved the less passionate person is the one who is more likely to give in.

Informal fallacies can also be plausible for many reasons as well. One of the more important reasons is authority. The movie talked about an experiment called the Milgram experiment. This experiment tested how far a person would go with shocking another person when it came to being told to do so by a ‘seemingly legitimate source’. Most of the people in the experiments were willing to shock to the death as long as they were being told it was ok by some higher and seemingly legitimate source. This is how fallacies are able to become plausible. Some higher or ‘seemingly legitimate source’ can make a type of fallacy statement and have no one speak up against them since people are much more willing to place the blame in someone else. Since the person in the Milgram experiment had more authority then the people in the experiment they were willing to behave inhumanely as long as they were told if it was ok and that the responsibility wasn’t on them. Our society is based off of responsibility. Punishment and law enforcement only takes place when we are not responsible and do not follow the laws. Our system is based off of us being responsible for our wrong actions, and when we commit theses wrong actions we are punished. However if the responsibility is lifted off of our shoulders and we are told a ‘bad deed’ is ok to do, then what is stopping us? In our society if we are not responsible for something then the results of what ever that something is does not matter to us. If you have a test in Latin on Wednesday, and someone in your class fails, it does not matter or effect you at all. However if you were told to tell this person about the test because they were not present when it was announced, and that was your responsibility (and you did not), then you are extremely likely to feel some amount of guilt when they fail. When responsibility is taken away from us, we are more likely to behave in a way in which we do not think about the actions that may occur. When a fallacy is used that takes away responsibility to think choose etc from the person it is being told to they are more likely to go along with it. This works even more when it is coming from some higher authoritative source that is thought to be trusted. This is how Enron was able to use so many fallacies and have the accepted by people.

Enron had many fallacies that they used to try and keep their charade of a good business going strong. They used ad homenium (supporting the person rather then the argument) to try to make Ken Lay seem like an innocent person who could never be involved in any of the corruption and crime that surrounds Enron. They played up the fact that he was the son of a preacher’s man. Here instead of trying to place facts about how he was not corrupt they played up how being the son of a preacher he could/would never be involved in such a thing. They also used false dilemma (assuming that only the two black and whites exist) with their employees. They created these ‘vacations’ in which people who were invited had to do crazy and risk taking stunts. If you said no to an initiation to one of these trips (even if you were only doing so out of fear of being injured) then you were viewed as against the company. This put employees in a place that forced them to have not be able to choose, so they would not be viewed as against the company. The company had a very Darwinist view. That only the strongest would survive. Employees would grade each other on a 1-5 scale and based on that scale 15% of people would get fired. Now being viewed as against the company, no matter how untrue or how much of an asset you may be, would significantly lower you in the eyes of your fellow coworkers. This could only decrease your chance of being able to hold onto your job for much longer. Another fallacy that was used was ad ignoratum (claming something is true because you cant prove it’s false). This was mentioned in both the movie and the Gladwell excerpt. Both go into detail about Mark to Market accounting. Mark to market accounting made it so Enron could make deals based off of predicted measurements of the stock market and make money that way. They wanted to have investors and other companies ‘forget about how much oil there really is’ and to believe that the stock would continue to keep rising, ‘you can’t prove I’m not gonna make it in the future.’ When explaining mark to market Gladwell states, “You aren't going to get paid for another ten years, and you aren't going to know until then whether you'll show a profit on the deal or a loss.” Here Gladwell shows how uncertain mark to market accounting is. However by using ad ignoratium Enron was able to get people to invest and believe in what they were doing because they had so much success in the past.

I think fallacies are completely justified. We live in a society of free speech, and should be allowed to use fallacies in any way we want. Fallacies are used a lot when it comes to speeches and public advertising, just like in Enron. People only became upset with Enron’s fallacies when they claimed that they were not being told the truth, when in fact they were just to lazy to uncover it. Its sad but the use of informal fallacies helps to make our society thrive. Politicians put them in constant use, helping them gain support through vague promises and other fallacies like circular reasoning. It would be interesting to see how an election would pan out if every single candidate did not use and fallacies and directly stated their views and plans. It would be extremely harder to win over votes of the majority of the people, with out offending, or even including a group. Also it would be interesting to see if commercials would work as well if there were no fallacies used. I have not seen a single charity commercial that does not have some type of fallacy used that makes people feel guilted into donating money. It would be interesting to also see if these charities would thrive as much as they do with out fallacies. I think fallacies are defiantly justified in using because we know they are there. We could easily find truth to what is being said behind the fallacy if we merely looked. I fully agree with Gladwell when he says “Its your fault as well”. People could claim that fallacies should not be used because it tricks us into believing things, but however all that has to been done is question what is being presented in front of you. When fallacies are presented to us we make the conscious choice of whether or not to believe them. Fallacies are completely justified to be used; it is up to us how to take them.

I have used informal fallacies before many times whether or not I was conscious of the fact that I was using them. I think that there most likely is not a single person who has not used one sometime in their lifetime. When I was little I probably constantly used ad ignoratum to prove a point. Being little I didn’t know I was using a fallacy but when one of those “nuh uh….yeah huh” arguments would come across I would say “prove it” when in fact it could not be proved.

Over all fallacies are something that we are presented to in everyday life. What really matters about them is what we do with them. If we chose to accept them, or if we chose to find the truth behind them.

Enron #3

1. What does Gladwell mean when he says that, 'Puzzles are "transmitter-dependent"; they turn on what we are told. Mysteries are "receiver dependent"; they turn on the skills of the listener.'?

When Gladwell says that puzzles are transmitter dependent because in order to figure out the end result of a puzzle the outcome is completely dependent on the person who made it, not the person who is solving it. Mysteries are receiver dependent since it is up to the receiver to understand the information and be able to find the outcome.

2. Why didn't Enron have to pay taxes on their S.P.E.'s? What would be Enron's defense? Can you name the Illogical Fallacy present?

Enron was able to get away without paying taxes on its S.P.E’s because it wasn’t real money, so it couldn’t be taxed. Enrons defense was that they could still post it as a gain in the stock market, since they would eventually make the money. The Fallacy would be Equivocation because the idea of earnings is viewed in two different ways here. The IRS looks as earnings as something that is real or tangible while the stock market does not.

3. Did Enron try to hide the fact that they weren't paying taxes?

Enron tried to hide the fact that they weren’t paying taxes because people would start to question why, and learn about all of the “fake money” being made in S.P.E’s

4. Why does Gladwell claim that, 'Woodward and Bernstein would never have broken the Enron story.' Why don't you think anyone asked about Enron's financial statements? Is there a fallacy at work here?

Gladwell claims that ‘Woodward and Bernstien would have never broken the Enron story’ because he feels that they only had the pieces to put the puzzle that were given to them from a source. Woodward and Bernstein would have had to interpreted the information that was given to them, since Enron is a mystery not a puzzle. I think no one questioned Enron’s finical statements because they were such a large and trusted company. This is a fallacy of circular reasoning.

5. Gladwell claims that, 'Mysteries require that we revisit our list of culprits and be willing to spread the blame a little more broadly. Because if you can't find the truth in a mystery—even a mystery shrouded in propaganda—it's not just the fault of the propagandist.It's your fault as well.' Do you agree with the implications of this statement?

I do agree with this statement. In a mystery it is up to the people who are solving it to find the truth. If all the information is there for it to be solved, but no one is willing to search hard enough for the truth, then it is his or her fault as well. Since they are letting whatever happen happen while the information is right there.

6. What was the advice of the Cornell students to anyone who held Enron stock?

The advice of the Cornell students to anyone who held Enron stock was to sell it right away since their investigation started to show that there was something strange and not right for the company to have grown so quickly

Enron # 2

1. How does a Special-Purpose Entity (S.P.E.) work? Why does the "partnership" giving money to your company make a big difference?

Special-Purpose Entity is when a company needs to borrow money, but does not want to do so because of the high interests rates a bank will put on the loans. However, if you have leases on some product that are sure to raise the amount you need of the next few years you can give them over to the SPE that has been set up with outside investors. This way the bank will lend you the money with a lower interest rate and the partnerships you have created will gain you money also.

2. How did Enron pit "twists into the S.P.E. game?" What does it mean that Enron "didn't always put blue-chip assets into the partnerships"? What was problematic about Enron using its own executives to manage the S.P.E? What was Enron's guarantee?

Enron put many different twists in the SPE game, or did things that went against what it was supposed to be used for. When Gladwell says that Enron “didn’t always put the blue-chip assets into the partnerships” he means that Enron would put in leases that may not reliably create income, or it would not always sell them to outsiders but to executives in its own company. Enron would then pay back something if it had declined in value in stocks, so it was paying itself back with itself, which is extremely problematic.

3. How did the world come to learn of Enron's use of S.P.E.'s? Is Gladwell correct in claiming that this is another example of a mystery? Explain.

The world came to learn about Enrons use of SPE’s from the reports of Weil’s colleagues at the Wall Street Journal. They found all of this out by reading what had been published in Enron’s public filings. This is defiantly another example of a mystery because all of the information was right there to be analyzed but it just doesn’t come together cleanly.

4. What is the difference between "scrounged up" and "downloaded?"

The word downloaded means simply to obtain with out to much struggle (on the internet), Scrounged up however seems to imply that he had to dig around through some sources before actually reaching it.

5. Why does Gladwell claim that "It scarcely would have helped investors if Enron had made all three million pages public."? Explain what Gladwell means when he says, "But here the rules seem different." Who is Andrew Fastow?

Gladwell says that "It scarcely would have helped investors if Enron had made all three million pages public.” Because he is stating that if they had realsed all of these documents it wouldn’t have really helped anyone. When the finest legal talent in the nation tried to summarize it all they made two hundred highly complicated pages that would have done little good to investors because of its complexity. When Gladwell says "But here the rules seem different." He means with each piece of evidence that is given about Enron the puzzle only seems to get bigger. Andrew Fastow was Enron’s chief fincial officer and he didn’t fully understand the implications of the deals.

6. Why has he "Disclosure Paradigm" become an anachronism?

It has become an anachronism because now a days the more complexity a company has the more it tells us about its business.

7. Why did treating the German secret weapon as a mystery prove to be more useful? Specifically, how did the "propaganda analysts" (the batty geniuses) use reason to uncover the Nazi V-1 Rocket?

By treating it like a mystery they stopped looking for puzzle pieces and in turn just went into further analysis of what they already had. The propaganda analysts studied Nazi propaganda and used repeating patterns in their propaganda to figure out what was true and what wasn’t. They learned from the German U-boats that Goebbels would not lie about something to his people that he was using to boast morale, so they came to the conclusion that there was a secret weapon. They then used the tone of the Germans when taking about it and the amount that it was talked about to figure out the expected date for it to be done.

8. How has diagnosing Prostate Cancer transformed from a puzzle to a mystery?

It used to be a puzzle because doctors would just simply look for the symptoms. However now doctors try to catch the disease before symptoms occur. They look for things that have a possibility of becoming Prostate Cancer, but do not necessarily mean you have or could have the cancer. Not only do different doctors agree and disagree on the signs but they also agree and disagree on the benefits of treatment.

9. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, how has "the situation facing the intelligence community has turned upside down?"

The worlds information has become less closed and more open, creating more mysteries and less puzzles. The need for spies is less but there is a huge demand for greater analysis and problem solvers to figure out things from the information already given.

10. How does Admiral Bobby R. Inman believe the U.S. should strengthen the U.S. intelligence system? Why was his answer seen as unusual?

His answer was unusual because most people think that the more spies and information you have the better off you are. However he thinks that we just need more people who understand the culture of what we are looking into, and then they will be able to solve the mysteries better.

11. Gladwell writes: In a post-Cold War world of "openly available information," Inman said, "what you need are observers with language ability, with understanding of the religions, cultures of the countries they're observing." Inman thought we needed fewer spies and more slightly batty geniuses. Does this curriculum sound familiar?

This defiantly sounds familiar. Instead of using the traditional methods of finding information it is talking about how we need to look at the views of the people who we are trying to get the information from, and just simply depict it from what we already know. This reminds me a lot of TOK, because in TOK instead of trying to find all of the information to everything we try to look at things from different angles and solve problems that way.