marielaras-blog

[marielaras-blog]

In the acquisition of knowledge, the responsibility for accuracy lies with the user not the producer. Discuss this claim with reference to two areas of knowledge.

Natural sciences: since these depend on factual evidence, for this area, the accuracy lies on the producer.

If the producer shares inaccurate information or claims, this knowledge could be abused or misinterpreted by the user.

Many natural sciences depend on the development of theories that will later be proven through research. Because of this, the accuracy has to depend on the scientists that study and creates this, not on the people who receive this knowledge.

Art: there is no accuracy

Art is a form of expression and many times, the knowledge that is shared through the art is determined by how the receiver interprets it.

However, it could also be taken from the perspective that the accuracy of art is determined by the success of the artist. If the artist wanted to express happiness and the receiver interprets happens then the art would be “accurate”

History:

History is biased and it should depend on the producer because they are the ones responsible for sharing the knowledge that others will learn.

However, the closest one could get to accuracy in history is the combination of different perspectives.

Human sciences:

Since human sciences are sometimes subjective the responsibility of accuracy will many times depend on the receiver since the way the information is obtained many times depends on someone else. For example, so some extent, the efficiency and accuracy to which a psychologist can perform their job will depend on the willingness and openness of their patient.

[marielaras-blog]

Do the arts allow us to discover truths that are difficult to express in straightforward language?

Definitely. Art has become so prevalent and important in society because it is literally the perfect medium for expression. One of the most impressive ways that art has been able to express things that cannot be expressed in straightforward language is in the pieces of art that are so old, that generations that are alive right now, never had communications with the generations that created those pieces of art. This old art has managed to tell us stories, feelings, situations, thoughts, and information from those times that could've been expressed through straightforward language because there is no way to directly communicate with the people that lived at that time and created those pieces of art.

Another example is rebellion. Art has many times been used as a medium to defy what’s established and express things that are not accepted by society or that wouldn't have had been received with open arms. This has normally happened because of the infringement on the human right of freedom of expression. Since many times people have been forbidden to directly express certain ideas to the public, many, resort to the power of art.

We must also not forget that for many people, direct expression does not come easily. When someone faces difficulty in telling someone else how they feel or telling them a story or a thought, instead of trying their very best to express those things through straightforward language, they express them through the type of art that comes the handiest to them. Depending on the person, they might choose, paintings, drawings, sculptures, music, poetry, letters, etc. Art is simply a form of expression and the same way there are things that can’t be expressed through art, there are things that can’t be expressed through straightforward language.

[marielaras-blog]

“The quality of knowledge is best measured by how many people accept it.” Discuss this claim with reference to science.

It depends on the facts that lead the people who accept the claim, to accept.

Normally, a scientific claim is backed up, supported, and proven thanks to factual evidence scientists gather and experiments they take on. However, there are different possible situations that can change the validity of this claim: “The quality of knowledge is best measured by how many people accept it.”

The thing is, that for many humans, it is part of our nature to follow. Because of this, it is important to consider this situation: Say a group of people start to believe in a scientific claim not because of facts but because of faith or because they want it to be true. If this event becomes very big and more people start to find out about it, uninformed people might start saying they support that scientific claim without really knowing about it. This is a moment where the validity of a claim cannot be determined by the number of people who support it because in this case, a big majority of the people are uninformed. This situation can and has happened many times thanks to fake news.

On the other hand, if the people who support  a claim are well informed and they support it because of research and facts, then this claim:

“The quality of knowledge is best measured by how many people accept it.” might then true. This could happen because the validity of knowledge (in this case a scientific claim) would be depending on a big group of informed people.

[marielaras-blog]

Human Sciences

1) What is culture? How does the definition affect what is studied and how?

The definition of culture would generally be along the lines of: “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group” (Merriam-Webster). I think that when studying culture, what automatically comes to mind is that areas such as: morals, religion, customs, language, food, daily life activities, would be the ones looked at. However, limiting the study of culture to these areas limits and affects the depth to which the understanding of different cultures can reach. If the study of culture would always go by that definition important areas such as: the infrastructure of the area, social structure or division, government, justice system, etc. would be ignored. These areas are also important because they are different depending on the geographic area and they are defined by the different (cultural) characteristics.

2) How can we know how people in other cultures behave and think?

By analyzing the reason behind the different decisions that they take. The more you broaden your view, they more someone will be able to understand about the culture of the area; no detail is insignificant. If you pay attention to the history of culture one can probably find the cause for many of the things that occur in the present.

For example: it is common to see, in rural areas of Nicaragua, people with names that sound as if they came from an English nature. However, if you ask them to write it down, their names do not follow English spelling, (instead of Michael you would get a Mikol). The incorrect happens because the majority these people do not know English. Next, why would people from a Latin American country name their children with names in English? This happens because of the US presence before the first civil war as well as present tourism and humanitarian aid.

3) In what terms can we compare different cultures for meaningful knowledge of universals or the range of human possibility?

It's simple, we look at knowledge about the universe and the range of human possibility by putting together and analyzing knowledge and/or information from the different cultures. At the end of the day humanity is one, the problem is we are divided by race and other factors such as geographical location, beliefs, etc. Because of these different factors different cultures have different perceptions of the world and some have more knowledge in certain areas or topics than others. Because of this by putting the knowledge together, a better understanding of these two topics could be obtained.

[marielaras-blog]

Real life situation knowledge question

What ways of knowing do people use when creating their opinion on a criminal?

How do we know whether it is right to punish people who go against the law?

How do we know / to what extent can the validity of science be used to defend a criminal?

How do we know the validity of scientific evidence in the criminal justice system?

Crime is something that has a great presence in this world and it presents itself in different ways. There are many issues that come along with the criminal justice system and the way that people deal with these criminals. More than once has an innocent person been incarcerated . more than once has a guilty person gone free. However, one of the controversies that come into place when talking about criminals: those that are mentally ill. Criminals are punished because they are the ones that had the free will to make their decisions however, some criminals with mental disorders do not really have control of their actions. This is where the situation becomes complicated because many do not know if this factor is strong enough to be used as an excuse to treat them differently and what exactly defines who is a criminal and who isn’t.

Ted Bundy is one example for this situation. He was a serial killer who, at the end of his life, confessed to more than 30 different murders of women. It was at the end of his life when they studied his brain and realised that he was mentally ill which explains most of the crimes he committed. His condition was that he was unable to feel empathy. Even though they knew that he was mentally ill, he was still prosecuted in the electric chair for the crimes he did. Also, the entire country was celebrating the day he was prosecuted. He was hated for the things he did to women even though he was unable to stop himself from doing this.

[marielaras-blog]

“We see and understand things not as they are but as we are” Discuss this claim in relation to at least two ways of knowing.

I believe this claim expresses the truth. Everyone sees the world through different eyes because we’ve all experienced different things, we are all different people, and we all know different things. As I’ve talked about in past blogs, our ways of knowing depend on the different things that have formed the person we are. These include different things like experiences, our cultural background, the way we were raised, the people we surround ourselves with, etc. Because of this, this claim can be related to the areas of knowledge of perception and reason. Perception literally describes this claim because our perception depends on who we are. For example, a person A who is from a country that has greatly seen the consequences of corruption will not have the same opinion or feeling towards corruption than person B who lives in a country where corruption is very minimal. This is where reason comes in order to arrive at a conclusion/opinion, reason is involved. For example, in order for person A to arrive to their opinion about corruption they utilize reason by analyzing their situation as well as their country’s, what is taught to them in schools, the opinion of their parents, how they’ve affected by the situation, what they know about the situation of other countries, what their own morals are, etc. Because of these factors how we see and/or understand things depends on us, because we all see things differently. Since the perception of everyone has at least some type of variation it is really hard to determine what something literally is because the opinion of everyone, and sometimes even “facts” are biased.

[marielaras-blog]

Are there some parts of human life or experience where reason has no real function?

No. The explanation for this answer is quite simple, our lives are based on decisions and thoughts. We don’t necessarily notice it, but we move on with our lives because of all the decisions we take. And no, I am not only talking about big decisions like deciding if to get up from bed when your alarm rings. When we: decide what to eat, how to organize ourselves, what to respond in a conversation, which direction to take, etc., we are using reason. It's hard to notice it many times, and I am sure many people might not agree with me on this because many times, we use it unconsciously. How exactly is grabbing the fork before the glass is using reason? Well, maybe you unconsciously grabbed the fork first because it was closer or because you wanted to grab a bite of food before drinking, or because you saw it first, etc. these are all uses of reason. They may not seem like so because it is not an extensive use, but there is always a presence of it because our thoughts and decisions are always based on another affecting factor/element. It is true that we sometimes chose to ignore reason because we think we know better, in this case, reason becomes invalid to us, but in reality, it keeps on being valid because we used reason to take that decision (I’m sorry but it appears you can’t really escape it).

[marielaras-blog]

Do you trust your own intuitions why or why not? If your answer is “it depends”, then on what does it depend?

Trust is relative, and that is why my answer to this question is, not surprisingly, “it depends”. According to the English dictionary of Cambridge, the definition of intuition is the following: “(knowledge from) an ability to understand or know something immediately based on your feelings rather than facts”. The reason why I do not always trust, or know if to trust, my intuitions is because of the close relationship they have with our feelings. In a previous blog post, I talked about how many times emotions are not very reliable because of the influence that they have over us, is sometimes higher than acceptable. Emotions in intuition are precisely the problem I have with it, but, it is also one of the reasons why I trust it most of the times (yes, I know it's ironic). The thing is, I’ve had really good outcomes when following my intuitions because I get a feeling that this is what I should do and because that feeling is related to a past good and successful experience, I trust it. On the other hand, sometimes the feeling that gives me the intuition might one like jealousy or anger, in this case, it hard to decide if to trust my intuition or not. Also, if my intuition is telling me something that I don't necessarily like because of, again, emotions or feelings, I am likely to ignore it (not a wise choice I know, I’m working on it). At the end of the day, I recognize that intuitions are, most of the time, reliable since they rise from feelings provoked from past experiences. If these experiences were handled correctly then your future intuition will most likely be worthy of paying attention to. If I handle a situation wrongly (this happens more often than I would like to admit), it then becomes hard to decide if to follow your intuitions or not.

[marielaras-blog]

Emotion is a state of feeling in response to a stimulus. How does emotion impact our knowledge? How can emotion be a source of knowledge? How far should we rely on our emotions and feelings a source of knowledge.

Emotions impact our knowledge. There is a reason why people tell you: “do not let your emotions get to you”. Emotions are powerful and sometimes hard to control; this is why it is very easy for emotions to get in the way of what we know. There are many ways that our emotions can interfere with the knowledge that we have and the knowledge we are obtaining. The easiest way to explain how this happens: we do let our emotions get to us. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't mean that they take control of us and that suddenly all we know and think, how we act and the decisions we take, is controlled by our emotions. What I mean is that our emotions are a part of us, and at the end of the day, they will have influence. One easy example, when something good or bad happens to you, emotion is involved in the reaction. The possibilities are endless but let's say it was either regret or proud. If it was regret, this emotion makes the event a learning experience where you know you shouldn’t take the same decisions again. If it was proud, this also becomes a learning experience and you now know which decisions to take to succeed. Emotion impacted our knowledge.

Emotion can also become a source of knowledge. In some cases our opinions about certain topics will be determined our influenced by the emotion it creates in us. If the right of abortion brings you the emotion of acceptance, what you know about this, as well as the knowledge you transmit about this, will most likely be about the pros of having the right to abort. If you receive an emotion like anger, then the result would be the opposite. This was an example of how some of our opinions are greatly influenced by emotion, because of this same reason, depending on the situation, is precisely why there should be a limit as to how much we can rely on emotion as a source knowledge. Just because something made us feel happy or good makes the event correct or positive. Just because something made us feel bad or hurt makes the event a negative situation.

Emotion is a very powerful thing. The more we learn to control it and learn how it works on us, the less negative effects it will have. At the end of the day, how we feel and react to different things, makes us who we are. It’s interesting to realize how much our emotions are involved in the things we know, it is one of the main reasons why it's sometimes hard to differentiate between wrong and right. But, emotion also results in loved ones and amazing experiences.

[marielaras-blog]

Do you consider faith to be a way of knowing? Would it be more accurate or clearer to call it a way of believing? To what extent can this same question be applied to other ways of knowing? Compare faith in this regards to sense perception, language.

I think that faith is connected to what it means to believe in something, but, there is also a relationship to knowledge. Faith could be defined by trust and hope. Placing your trust in someone or something, or, having hope that something will happen. Belief is defined as a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing. According to the definition of belief, faith would be more accurately described by the word belief than the one of knowledge. I do believe that depending on how you view knowledge, faith could be considered a way of knowledge or at least linked to it. For example, I previously talked about how the perception that each person has is affected by their already acquired knowledge. Knowledge is defined as the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association. So, perception is affected and many times defined by knowledge, and in my opinion, faith is affected and sometimes defined by perception. Faith is rarely supported by concrete facts since we normally put or faith into things, events, or people, without any reassurance. Our faith normally relies on our morals, previous experiences, our hopes, who we are as a person, and how we view the world. And at the end of the day, our faith becomes our knowledge because we are able to find arguments to defend it and we normally stick to it no matter what. At the same time, faith is something really personal but, depending on what we have faith on, we pass it on to people just like shared knowledge.

[marielaras-blog]

What are the problems of reliability associated with eyewitness accounts?

Memory/eyewitnesses are definitely not a very reliable source for criminal cases. The first problem with eyewitnesses goes as well with people who go to court to testify. When the eyewitness provides the information they supposedly obtained from their memory from the event that happened, they could easily lie. It is not news when someone bribes a participant of a criminal case to lie or withhold information. It doesn't even have to be because of someone else, the eyewitness themselves might choose to change the information “they know” because of their personal opinion.  Next, going back to what I talked about in one of my previous blogs, what you remember has a lot to do with perception. It is possible that two people were present at the event but that their memories have many variations because they interpreted the situation differently or paid attention to different details. Things like how you were feeling that day, how the event made you feel, and what details from the scene personally caught you attention will affect your memory of whatever happened. Also, if you have any strong personal connection with the case or feel identified in any way, you unconsciously might have changed your memory because of your strong feelings about the case and which side you think is right.

Your memory also doesn't work like a video camera, you might, in detail, remember parts of what happened, but an eyewitness will never accurately remember everything that happened. In general, opinions are biased. Somewhat that “saw” what happened, will never understand what happened as well as a security camera.

[marielaras-blog]

Perception

This examples show us that something that influences the nature of perception is the knowledge of the person and the area in which a big portion of their life is focused. This happens because your way of life (say your career) becomes a part of you and you end up applying things from that into your daily life because it what you know. Ex: if i know very little from literature but am studying medicine, it would be very hard for me to notice literature references and easier for me to notice things relating to the human body, medicine, and science.

I recently had a similar experience to the one explained in the paragraph. I have a group of friends with multiple nationalities. We have people from India, Kenya, Nigeria, Brazil, Nicaragua, Mexico, China, Panama, Canada, Germany and Spain. We all met each other at a summer camp a month ago but we keep in touch via message. A few days ago we were having a conversation about social media and the different opinions caught my attention. One of my friends from Panama, Pablo was explaining how he didn’t have any social media because he didn’t like what it exposes young kids to. He argued that everyone that uses social media is obsessed with it, that it is the main cause for problems in teenagers like depression and body shaming. He explained that he had experienced this himself as well as observed it with people close to him and that not having social media was his own way of protest and to prevent being a carbon to the negative fire he says social media is. We then had a complete opposite opinion from one of my friends from Nigeria, Chisum. She argued that social media is a very positive thing, that it gives a voice to those who don’t have  one, and that it has been responsible for many movements against social issues. Pablo then continued to defend his point by asking Chisum for an example of a movement started in social media by teenagers. She was easily able to do this. She sent an account that is dedicated not only to spread awareness about the really bad rape culture in her country, but also fighting against it (this account on instagram had arranged a march and were actively peacefully protesting). And then we had the middle ground (myself included), that gave both sides the reasons by defending that it all depended on the person and how they chose to use social media, that both extremes are possible but that there is also a middle ground. This is a perfect example that portrays how perception is shaped by the cultures and experiences of a person. If two people have had very different experiences inside the same area (what they’ve been taught and what they have seen and grown up with counts), their perception about this topic will most likely be very different.

[marielaras-blog]

How does language shape knowledge or what is it possible to know? If people speak more than one language, is what they know different in each language? Does language provide a different framework of reality.

Not many people realize that even two people that speak the same language sometimes have a hard time understanding each other or at least certain words that are used throughout the conversation. This happens because there are differences even inside the same language; different words to express the same thing or different ways to express the same message. The interesting thing about language is that it’s linked to culture and ways of life; this is exactly why language does shape knowledge and why people who know more than one language have a broader view, understanding, and knowledge of the world (both of these lead the person to view the world a specific way).

When talking about knowledge, language is what allows us to learn a big majority of what we know because it’s the way we communicate.

Example: sometimes we do not realize when someone’s not feeling okay. Otherwise, when they tell us directly we automatically learn how they are feeling and we will very likely learn about what they are going through.

Learning more than one language allows us to communicate and truly interact with people from another country, allowing us to learn about a different culture and you sometimes end up learning that because of their origin, certain things are of more importance to them.

For people who speak more than one language, what they know is not necessarily different in each language, it may just be expressed differently or have a different value because of the origins of the language and the culture from which the language comes from.

Portuguese has a particular word that is used to express the feeling of deeply missing someone or something, “Saudade”. The thing that makes this word special is the fact that it has no literal translation to any language, it is particular to Portuguese.

Language does provide a different framework for reality and this is again because of the different ways to express things in each language and because of the different experiences that the language provides.

Example: people who know ASL get a different taste of the world of communication. They have to express themselves more with their bodies and they may learn to recognize in an easier way the reality of people's feelings.

It is said because of their grammar, German and Slavic languages help people think more critically.

[marielaras-blog]

Who are you and how do you know?

I am an endless possibility and so is everybody else. Many possibilities shape a person, leading them into the person they are, were, or will become. As time passes, I grow up, I “change”; am I becoming a different person as I grow or am I becoming the person I was meant to be? Maybe when we’re born, there is something in us that stays constant all throughout our lives defining who we are no matter what happens, maybe not. I don’t know if there is something in me that makes me who I am no matter all the changes I go through, but something that I am personally sure of is that my experiences have shaped the person I have grown into. The experiences that have become available to me, what i have learned from them, my decisions, the people I surround myself with, things I have no control over like moving to another country; these, and many other things is what makes me, me. I know this because I recognize the things different events in my life have taught me and since I’ve applied these things, they’ve become a part of me, and so I know I wouldn't be the same if it weren’t for my experiences. But then again, it's all possibilities, if I hadn’t earned the scholarship to Notre Dame this summer I would’ve never experienced that trip ergo I would've never learned the things I learned there.