Ayesha's blog on emotion

This lesson we explored the different emotions a human experiences, and the implications of them on ourselves.
We listed all the emotions that crossed our minds, and saw how the negative emotions overruled the positive ones. After identifying the positive and negative of each emotion, we decided to place every emotion in a continuum, from the strongest to weakest. This raised discussion, as everyone’s perception of which emotion was stronger or weaker then the other varied. I personally felt that all emotions are almost stationary, and can go to any extreme depending on the situation and circumstance.
Furthermore, we started discussing how emotions are felt in the first place. This brought three theories to mind:
1. All emotions are in the mind
2. All emotions are learned
3. All emotions are innate
Most of the class disagreed with the fact that all emotions are in the mind. However, debates were created between emotions are learned, and emotions are innate, as some people believe that society nourishes the seed of emotion that is already within us. However, some people went to extreme sides saying that emotions are innate, or emotions are planted into us by parents and society. This is how we started to classify emotions, by discussing where emotions actually came from.

TOK Lesson 19th November - Language

This lesson we learnt about language as a way of learning and how words or phrases can be interpreted in different ways. For example, 'teeth extracted by the methodists' could mean different things based on your understanding of English. It could be funny to people who are fluent in English and can understand the error and the meaning behind it, but perfectly normal to others. We also learnt that our language limits our knowledge. We can only think in words and pictures of things we have seen. This means we may never find out some entirely new concept of things, beause we haven't made up a word or seen it yet. There is a book of words called 'The Meaning of Life' by Douglas Adams, full of words we haven't made up of yet for special situations, like the uncomfortable feeling you get when you sit in a chair and it's warm because someone else sat on it.

Lesson Summary - 27th November

How do we gain knowledge through reasoning? I'm not quite sure actually, but in the lesson we touched on two different types of reasoning's which may help explain why we think the way we do.

deductive reasoning is reasoning from the general to the specific:
fact #1: spinsters are single
fact #2: Aunty Jean is a spinster

deductive conclusion? Aunty Jean is single

easy? easy.
okay, so then we moved onto INDUCTIVE REASONING, which is basically the opposite, reasoning from the specific to the general.
fact #1: Aunty Jean is a spinster
fact #2: Aunty Jean is happy

inductive conclusion? Spinsters are happy.

This is all really a simple concept. However, there are problems with this type of reasoning...Just because i see a lot of something doesn't prove anything. It only proves that this item exists, it does not prove that another type of it does not exist. Confusing? Okay, basically, what I'm saying is:

I see one white swan.

Then another white swan. Then another. After a few years, I've seen PLENTY of white swans, but never any other swans of another color. Therefore i can safely induct from each specific incident that swans are white. However, i cannot, on the other hand say

swans are not black.

Just because I've never seen it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Inductive reasoning occurs quite often in life. If something has often occured in the past, there's a good chance it will occur again. But, when you really think about it, that not an extremely reliable conclusion.
Par example: Susan is a basketball player. She has a 1/5 chance of shooting a basket.
She's managed to shoot 6 baskets. Does this mean that she will definetly be able to score the next basket? NO it doesnt. She STILL only has a 1 in 5 chance of scoring. It's just that us, humans have a tendency to see what we want to see and remember what we want to remember.

yup. that's all folks.
25 more days till christmas!!!!!! :)