The Different Kinds Of Truth Philosophy Essay

The Different Kinds Of Truth Philosophy Essay There are two different kind of truth which is something that is true and something that is believed to be true. We must accept the idea that man can acquire all kind of truth but let us not mix them up. We would risk that the mixture will dissolve them up. Truth consists in the agreement of our thought with reality. The Aristotelian definition of truth states  [1]  : To say of something which is that it is not, or to say of something which is not that it is, is false. However, to say of something which is that it is, or of something which is not that it is not, is true. A belief is called true if it agrees with a fact or stated otherwise  [2]  . Beliefs determine how we see, interact and experience the world around us. Beliefs are ideas that are made after repetition and contemplation, that are accepted as truth and reality and therefore impact how we see life  [3]  . Believes and truth are often in conflict. For something to be true it must be public, eternal, and independent. By using different way of knowing such as reason, emotion, perception and language it can help us to distinguish the truth. Some knowledge can be taught and some we learn by our self through a process of reasoning. In our daily life, sometimes our logical thinking affects our believed about something. The fact is our logical thinking based on our experiences. Our reasoning is based on our pass experiences and from that we make a generalization. It is just the matter of how far our logical thinking based on our experiences can distort our attempt to distinguish between truth and believed truth. By putting down your hand into hot fire thus teaches us not to do it again. The implication of reasoning is of the greatest importance because it comes from our inner instincts. Logic attempts to help us determine whether our argument is true or false, or whether it is logical. Based on pass experience, it is logical if we tend not to do the same mistake by putting hand on fire because it is painful. Similarly with the truth, we tend to be selective in choosing knowledge based on our pass experienced and logical thinking. Sometimes mistake do happen during the process because we are easily influenced by our surrounding. The last question that will be dealt with is the question of what people know. According to the psychologist Jean Piaget  [4]  Ã‚  certainly regarded thinking as secondary to the actions of the intelligence. For him, logic was a science of pure forms, structures simply representing the processes of thought. As for me, logic was too narrow, arid and mechanical to properly represent human thought processes. Therefore, I can say that the truth which is true and believed to be true is not conforms and affirms through logic as ways of knowing alone because human have many limitations to count of. Logic work alone cannot really distinguish between something that is true and something that is believed to be true. Is emotion is the effective way? For some people, emotion plays an important role when it comes to decision making. Whether we like it or not, our emotion is depending on degree of logic that is include during the process of decision making. Imagine if you are a doctor and you have two make a decision whether to give a kidney to two of your patients who suffer kidney failure. One of the patients is your family. Which one would you give the kidney? Would the priority go to your family? The doctor tends to be bias if the decision made is involving with emotion. If I was the doctor, I would personally give the kidney to my family. But, based on what reason? The only reason why is because of strong love emotion. We tend to be bias in the process of seeking the truth because of our emotion. Based on scientific explanation, emotional situation triggers the release of chemicals in the bloodstream that alter the functioning of the brains neurons and other bodily functions as well. In effect, the situation requires some special behavior different from what we would do in the normal course of events. We only accept truth that will give us pleasure and make us happy. Emotional states seem to occur when things of particular importance occur in our lives. The neurobiologist Antonio Damasio  [5]  (1994) provides a somatic marker hypothesis  [6]   which explains how emotions make decision making possible. The doctor try to believe by giving the kidney to his family will save her/his live by ignoring the other patience live. How the doctor would know which operation will succeed? In this situation, we can say that the doctor is in believed truth. Thus, we can conclude that emotions are ordinarily conceived as irrational occurrences that cloud judgment and distort reasoning. It would be better if we separate our emotion when make a judgment. However it is impossible to that. Some philosophers, particularly those identifying themselves as postmodernists  [7]  , assert that truth is not absolute, but depends upon the individual point of view. Perception is one the ways of knowing that can help us to distinguish the knowledge whether it is true or just believed to be true. Everyone has different perception regarding on certain thing depends on own personal background, knowledge, experiences and our perceptions grow as we mature. I still remember during my childhood, my mom always told me to finish my meals or else the unfinished foods will cry. To be frankly, I believe on what my mom had told me. As I grow, I know that the foods will never cry as it is non-living thing. It just my mums trick to make sure I finished my meal. The perception of children will not be the same as adult. The problem is our perception constantly changing as we increase the scope of our knowledge. Thats why in science subjects we always come across with the term evolution and revolution. As scientist doing more research, they found that the previous theories are no longer applicable to support their new discovery. During the 20th century, in the history of biology, biologists mostly accepted that living organisms is classified into five kingdoms  [8]  . However, in 1978 the American Biologist Carl Woese  [9]  proposed a three domain classification. From the example and explanation above, we can conclude that our perception is not fixed and differ from one another. But without perception, it is hard for us to differentiate the truth. Last but not least, we can use language as one of the way of knowing to help us distinguish whether the truth are the real truth or believed to be the truth. According to R.A Hall: language is the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols  [10]  . Language plays an important role in our lives in seeking the truth. Language allows us to form statement, express concept and our idea. Let we take the example of a statement all bird can fly. From the statement, we can express our idea to other people that all type of birds has the ability to fly. Imagine how could we explain the word bird, all, fly without word? Without the  statements it would be hard to organize our ideas and to then determine if these ideas are true or only we believe them to be true. We could use other alternative such as gesture, sounds and drawing to represent our ideas. As it connected to the ideas that they portray they als o become part of the language. The statements created by language help us to determine if an idea in true or not. Since a sentence expresses the relationship between objects we can check the validity of the statement. If ostrich cannot fly, then we can prove the statement all bird can fly is not true. The presence of evidence can always prove the statement is false then we know the statement is not true. The problem with language is sometimes it is misinterpreted due to the word that has many different meaning. For example the word gampang. For Indonesian it means easy but for Malaysian it is insulting. Admittedly, all knowledge could be regarded as a combination of truth and believed truth, and since all information needs to pass our subjective minds to become knowledge. By using the four ways of knowing logic, emotion, perception and language can helps us to distinguish the truth. One ways of knowing stand alone to distinguish the truth and believed truth would not be very fruitful. 1450 words.

Process of Creativity :: essays research papers

The Process of Creativity The following is taken from Duane and Sarah Preble’s ARTFORMS, 5th edition. Footnotes and endnotes are omitted for ease of reading. Erich Fromm said, Creativity is an Attitude. We all have the potential to be creative, yet most of us were not encouraged to develop our creativity. We can do so by becoming willing to explore new relationships and insights. The source of all art, science and technology --- in fact, all of human civilizations --- is creative imagination, or creative thinking. As scientist Albert Einstein declared, â€Å"Imagination is more important than knowledge.† What do we mean by this ability we call creativity? Psychologist Erich Fromm wrote: In talking about creativity, let us first consider its two possible meanings: Creativity in the sense of creating something new, something which can be seen or heard by others, such as a painting, a sculpture, a symphony, a poem, a novel, etc., or creativity as an attitude, which is the condition of any creation in the former sense but which can exist even though nothing new is created in the world of things†¦ What is creativity? The best general answer I can give is that creativity is the ability to see (or to be aware) and to respond. Creativity is as fundamental to experiencing and appreciating a work of art as it is to making one. Insightful seeing is itself a creative act; it requires open receptivity --- putting aside habitual modes of thought. Studies of creativity have described traits of people who have maintained or rediscovered the creative attitude. These include the abilities to: ïÆ'˜Â  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  wonder and be curious ïÆ'˜Â  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  be open to new experience ïÆ'˜Â  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  see the familiar from an unfamiliar point of view ïÆ'˜Â  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  take advantage of accidental events ïÆ'˜Â  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  make one thing out of another by shifting its function ïÆ'˜Â  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  generalize from particulars in order to see broad applications ïÆ'˜Â  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  synthesize, integrate and find order in disorder ïÆ'˜Â  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  be in touch with unconscious sources, yet be intensely conscious ïÆ'˜Â  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  know oneself, have the courage to be oneself in the face of opposition ïÆ'˜Â  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  be willing to take risks ïÆ'˜Â  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  be persistent: to work for long periods ---- perhaps years ---- in pursuit of a goal The creative process of ten begins when on is inspired by an idea or faced with a problem. It can start with something as simple as â€Å"fooling around.† There are as many ways to create as there are creative people, but creative processes generally have certain sequential characteristics in common: 1.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Preparation - Framing or formulating the question(s) may be the most important step; information is gathered and open-minded exploration takes place.

The Word “Ghetto”

A word’s meaning can usually be traced back for hundreds of years. Over such long periods of time, words become manipulated, many times to the point where the meaning changes entirely. This is the case with the word â€Å"ghetto. † The word ghetto can be traced all the way back into the 1500’s. This word has infiltrated itself into today’s society and culture seamlessly. However the current definition of the word is far from what the original definition was. Perhaps due to the connection that the word ghetto has with urban culture, the word has evolved over time to have a more positive, less intolerant meaning.The word ghetto, which would come to be used throughout Europe to describe communities of isolated minority groups, originated in Venice in the 1500’s. According to the Oxford English Dictionary a ghetto was â€Å"The quarter in a city, chiefly in Italy, to which the Jews were restricted† (OED). In 16th century Italy, Pope Paul IV estab lished ghettos in Venice as a place of confinement for Jews. His main goal was to gain maximum economic advantage from the Jews’ presence while ensuring minimal social contact with Jewish people.In 1516, seven hundred Jews were forced to move to one small part of Venice, then an abandoned site of a 14th-century foundry that produced cannons. This area known as the â€Å"Geto† was an old Venetian dialect for â€Å"foundry† from the Italian verb gettare which means to pour or to cast, while the island across from it on which waste products had been dumped became known as â€Å"Il terrneo del Ghetto. † The word ghetto in its new usage did not remain long confined to the city of Venice. Generalization of the term helped the word to include all enclosed quarters of Jews in Europe.By the Pope’s edict, Jews remained enclosed in ghettos for two centuries until 1797, when Napoleon and the French army invaded Italy. At that time the ghettos were disbanded an d the Jewish people who lived in them were allowed to go wherever they pleased (holocaustresearchproject). Having immigrated to new countries, Jews tended to congregate in particular areas of a town or a city even when no longer forced to do so as did many minority groups living in a foreign country. This was a matter of choice. The Nazi’s eliminated the choice. â€Å"Ghettoisation† appeared in the countries occupied by Germany during World War II.After their 1939 invasion of Poland, Germans tried to control the sizable Jewish population by forcing Jews, and also Gypsies, to reside in marked-off sections of towns and cities the Nazis called â€Å"ghettos. † Altogether the Germans created at least 1000 ghettos. The largest was in Warsaw, Poland, which was the location from where the Nazis transported more than 300,000 prisoners to death camps. The Warsaw Ghetto was also the site of the largest and most significant Jewish uprising, and the first urban uprising in German occupied Europe (holocaustresearchproject).The Germans usually marked off the oldest and most run down areas of a city for a ghetto site. Thus the word â€Å"Ghetto† came to be associated with cramped dilapidated housing, appalling sanitary conditions, inadequate and poor food quality, absence of medical supplies and facilities that were all common aspects of ghetto living. Inhabitants often died of starvation, disease and exhaustion within the ghetto. These connotations remained attached to the word ghetto even up until modern times. In America, the word changed and evolved.Today, the term ghetto applies primarily to blacks in Northern U. S. cities. While all major immigrant groups coming into the U. S. establish their own residential areas, blacks ended up more segregated then most. Scholars have argued over whether or not poverty created ghettos in America or whether the ghettos created poverty. In any event, the connotation of the word ghetto in America became asso ciated with large-scale housing projects and inner city neighborhoods inhabited by black people who suffer from harsh living conditions.Because of such harsh living conditions, these areas have become notorious for crime, drugs, and violence. Thus the connotation of the word ghetto in America has stayed true to its original usage. It is used to this day to describe places of racial segregation (bos. frb. org). While the word ghetto still is associated with impoverished living environments, perhaps because of gentrification the word ghetto has come to have positive slang connotations as well.For example, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the expression â€Å"ghetto fabulous† or â€Å"ghetto fab† as â€Å"an ostentatious or flamboyant lifestyle or manner of dress, associated with the hip-hop subculture and characterized as a marker of status in economically disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. † This is a perfect example of how the way we use the word ghet to has changed dramatically over time. The word became part of hip-hop culture in the 1990’s. It was used in a good way for the first time.To describe someone who wanted to be part of that way of life as â€Å"ghetto† or â€Å"ghetto fab† was a complement. It was something that the world had never seen before. The creation of slang words and expressions is one of the ways that language changes over time. A group will use a certain word and after time, it may become widely used. Then it can become a part of most people’s vocabulary. Instead of being a noun with the most negative connotations of poverty disease and even death, the word ghetto is currently used as an adjective to label certain clothing, style, and even attitudes.There are certain brands of clothes that in many cases are described as ghetto. This could be because of the way they look (baggy, brightly colored) or because of the fact that the people who wear them frequently live in urban areas. The word ghetto is used for many reasons. Due to our culture and our society many times the word gains negative meaning. Generalizations may cause people to believe that people from the ghetto have less moral values than someone from out of the ghetto. However, the true definition of the word says nothing about morality.Although the word has a myriad of meanings, it is still understood in a variety of conversations (123helpme). Did the word ghetto really go from being such a negative term to such a positive one while somehow still maintaining part of its original meaning? That’s exactly what the word has done. The bridge between the two polar opposite meanings can probably be attributed to the fact that each has something to do with the city or urban areas. This is just about the most ameliorated a word could ever get.After a few centuries of word evolution, the word ghetto has become part of our culture in a positive way, rather than a negative one. The word has been throug h an incredible amount of semantic change. Through the process of broadening, the word has gained many new meanings. It no longer describes a quarter of an Italian city in which Jews were forced to stay in. It no longer has to describe a run down, over populated city such as Brooklyn, New York. The word ghetto can be used as an adjective now. It can be used to positively describe someone or something.Semantic changes such as broadening and generalization have brought about countless new usages and meanings to what was once a very specialized word (COHA) The word has been altered over time to become much more of a slang term. Many would argue that this term has become slang because of the way it is used by the younger generations. While it shouldn’t be considered a totally different word, the word ghetto represents entirely different meaning then it used to. The word has been used in and seen in such a wide variety of ways that it rarely gets used to describe what it was nitia lly meant to. The real meaning of the word ghetto does not mean much anymore because there is no longer a place where Jews are forced to live or for that matter a place where any group or minority is forced to live. The word now depicts a disadvantaged section of a city or town. The word ghetto was used in America most frequently in the 1970’s. Before that it was probably used a lot more internationally due to the fact that most ghettos in America did not exist until around the 1950’s. In the 1970’s the word is used with certain words very frequently.For example the words â€Å"black,† â€Å"boxed-in,† and â€Å"community. † However over time and into the 21st century the word is used less and less. While the usage decreases, the meaning changes. Today, we see the word ghetto used with words and phrases such as â€Å"fabulous,† â€Å"pimp,† â€Å"track-suit,† and â€Å"gangsta† (COHA). Its evident that as time goe s on, the meaning of the word ghetto is being altered tremendously. The word ghetto is a word that has an important place in not only today’s world, but also in the past. The word contains tremendous meaning for certain groups of people throughout history.For most of these people the word isn’t something they consider a noble word or a cheerful word at all. The people who know best what this word means are the people who experienced the Ghetto, the people who were confined, and people who were restricted. These people couldn’t experience the outside world. They were stuck in what is now defined by the OED as â€Å"the part of the city, especially a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups. † The term was originally used in Venice, Italy to describe the place where the Jews were meant to live.Eventually the term became widespread. Now used not just for areas where minorities live, but also for poorer areas in general. The word went through the sem antic change of broadening. Ultimately, more than just Europeans in the old world used the word. In later years, the Venetian origin of the word â€Å"ghetto† came to be forgotten, as it was used exclusively in its secondary meaning as referring to compulsory, segregated and enclosed Jewish quarters, and then in a looser sense, to refer to any area densely populated by Jews.Eventually â€Å"ghetto became the general designation for areas densely inhabited by minority groups, almost always for socioeconomic reasons, rather than legal ones as had been the case with the initial Jewish ghetto. Interestingly enough, the word â€Å"ghetto† can be described as a colloquialism, but can just as easily be used as slang. The fact is no one changed the meaning of the word on purpose. This is what happens to words over time. They change meaning time and time again. The word ghetto is no different. The word is a perfect example of language and how it is ever changing.

The First Reptiles and Their Evolution

Everyone agrees how the old story goes: Fish evolved into tetrapods, tetrapods evolved into amphibians, and amphibians evolved into reptiles. Its a gross oversimplification, of course—for example, fish, tetrapods, amphibians,  and reptiles coexisted for tens of millions of years—but itll do for our purposes. For many students of prehistoric life, the last link in this chain is the most important, since the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine reptiles of the Mesozoic Era all descended from ancestral reptiles. Before proceeding, though, its important to define what the word reptile means. According to biologists, the single defining characteristic of reptiles is that they lay hard-shelled eggs on dry land as opposed to amphibians, which must lay their softer, more permeable eggs in water. Secondarily, compared with amphibians, reptiles have armored or scaly skin, which protects them from dehydration in the open air; larger, more muscular legs; slightly bigger brains; and lung-powered respiration though no diaphragms, which were a later evolutionary development. First Reptile Depending on how strictly you define the term, there are two prime candidates for the first-ever reptile. One is the early Carboniferous Period (about 350 million years ago) Westlothiana, from Europe, which laid leathery eggs but otherwise had an amphibian anatomy, especially pertaining to its wrists and skull. The other, more widely accepted candidate is Hylonomus, which lived about 35 million years after Westlothiana and resembled the small, skittery lizard you run across in pet stores. This is simple enough, as far as it goes, but once you get past Westlothiana and Hylonomus, the story of reptile evolution gets much more complicated. Three distinct reptilian families appeared during the Carboniferous and Permian periods. Anapsids such as Hylonomus had solid skulls, which provided little latitude for the attachment of robust jaw muscles; the skulls of synapsids sported single holes on either side; and the skulls of diapsids had two holes on each side. These lighter skulls, with their multiple attachment points, proved to be good templates for later evolutionary adaptations. Why is this important? Anapsid, synapsid, and diapsid reptiles pursued very different paths toward the start of the Mesozoic Era. Today, the only living relatives of the anapsids are turtles and tortoises, though the exact nature of this relationship is hotly disputed by paleontologists. The synapsids spawned one extinct reptilian line, the pelycosaurs, the most famous example of which was Dimetrodon, and another line, the therapsids, which evolved into the first mammals of the Triassic Period. Finally, the diapsids evolved into the first archosaurs, which then split off into dinosaurs, pterosaurs, crocodiles, and probably marine reptiles such as plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs. Lifestyles Whats of interest here is the obscure group of lizard-like reptiles that succeeded Hylonomus and preceded these better-known and much larger beasts. Its not that solid evidence is lacking; plenty of obscure reptiles have been discovered in Permian and Carboniferous fossil beds, especially in Europe. But most of these reptiles look so similar that attempting to distinguish between them can be an eye-rolling exercise. Classification of these animals is a matter of debate, but heres an attempt to simplify: Captorhinids, exemplified by Captorhinus and Labidosaurus, are the most basal, or primitive, reptile family yet identified, only recently evolved from amphibian ancestors such as Diadectes and Seymouria. As far as paleontologists can tell, these anapsid reptiles went on to spawn both synapsid therapsids and diapsid archosaurs.Procolophonians were plant-eating anapsid reptiles that (as mentioned above) might have been ancestral to modern turtles and tortoises. Among the better-known genera are Owenetta and Procolophon.Pareiasaurids were much larger anapsid reptiles that counted among the biggest land animals of the Permian Period, the two best-known genera being Pareiasaurus and Scutosaurus. Over their reign, Pareiasaurs evolved elaborate armor, which still didnt prevent them from going extinct 250 million years ago.Millerettids were small, lizard-like reptiles that subsisted on insects and also went extinct at the end of the Permian Period. The two best-known terrestrial milleretids were Eunotosaurus and Milleretta; an ocean-dwelling variant, Mesosaurus, was one of the first reptiles to de-evolve to a marine lifestyle. Finally, no discussion of ancient reptiles is complete without a shout-out to the flying diapsids, a family of small Triassic reptiles that evolved butterfly-like wings and glided from tree to tree. True one-offs and well out of the mainstream of diapsid evolution, the likes of Longisquama and Hypuronector must have been a sight to see as they fluttered high overhead. These reptiles were closely related to another obscure diapsid branch, the tiny monkey lizards such as Megalancosaurus and Drepanosaurus that also lived high in trees but lacked the ability to fly.