All posts by Maai

Art / The Arts

The Arts

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The taste of arts depends on each person who listens or watches the arts. Some people say that they do not like the art, some people say that they like it, and some people say they just do not care about it. Therefore,  it is weird that there are many arts which are considerd as univeserly good art. The evaluation of the arts are depending on each person, but there are some universal agreements that some arts are good. When Mr.MacKnight said this I thought there is a contradiction and it confused me. How do people feel that they like the arts? How do we judge the art is good or bad? Do people think it is a good art by the use of techniques? Then, how do you the techniques are going to make the art good? The longer I think about it, the more questions I have about this topic.

I agree with the statement that

Good design is simple.

I am not interested in arts, but I had to take arts until grade 9.  Every art class teacher showed the famous art which is considered as good art.  From that experience, I never saw the arts which are conplicated.

For architects and designers it means that beauty should depend on a few carefully chosen structural elements rather than a profusion of superficial ornament.

I think this can say for paintings, too. If there is a lot of use of colors and decorations, it is going to be hard to understand. I think art is one of the ways of expressing ourselves. If the people who saw the art will have a hard time to understand, it is going to be not good art. Some people may say thinking the meaning of arts is fun, but I never saw the art which is considered as good art and complicated in my experience, so I do not understand those people.

However, I know it is just my opinion who does not have any knowledge of arts. Taste of arts depends on each person, but the knowledge of the arts does not depend on the person. There is much knowledge and judge the arts. In the beginning, I had a question “How do we judge the arts good or bad? ” As I write this I may have an answer for this. Good arts are considered as good art by judging with knowledge of arts.  Going back to the statement that “Good design is simple”, The Girl From Ipanema is simple too. I guess most people will think that song is simple by listening without knowledge. The video which analysis the song also says that

Every bit of melody is either a reputation of something came before or itself the start of a new sequence which is useful.

There are many repeating in a melody which is simple. Therefore, I can say that good art is simple. However, I have a question about this topic. People who do not have art knowledge will say they like art which is considered as good art by making judgments based on their taste. Then, what is the relationship between taste and knowledge of arts?

History

History

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We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.

—George Bernard Shaw

When I read this sentence, I could not understand what is this means. I guess I read this more than ten times.  It confused me because it says we learn from history at first and then it says we learn nothing from history. This sentence seems contradictory. However, now I have my interpretation for this sentence. People make mistake and it will be a part of the history, but they will make the same mistake again that they did before. For example, when people think many victim of the war, they think it is sad and war is not good. However, in reality, there are a lot war happening in this world, even though they had many experience of wars and learned that war will kill people and made people sad. It means they learned nothing from the history.

Language & Storytelling

Are you persuaded that storytelling should be regarded as a Way of Knowing?

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I think storytelling should be regard as Way of Knowing. When I asked what is the meaning of Way of Knowledge to Mr. MacKnight, he told me it is a method or means of knowing: reason, emotion, storytelling etc. It is not what we know, but how we know.

Storytelling is how we know most of what we know—or think we know.

—Eric T. MacKnight April 2012

In my opinion, there are two types of Way of knowing. One is “experience” and another one is “storytelling”. The experience we had will be our knowledge. For example, if we touch an ice, then we will know that ice is cold and that will be our knowledge. Then, how can we have a knowledge which we did not have an experience? I think somebody should tell you, or you read a textbook, etc. This means the knowledge except from the experience is learned by storytelling. For example, most of the history is storytelling. We don’t know what happened in the past and also we cannot go back and check what happened, so we listen to the people or read a book and believe it and it will be our knowledge. However, when people tell a story, it will also includes their emotion or belief. That is why the facts we believe are different for each person. For instance, in my country we learn that atomic bomb is awful and war should never be started. When I listen to the TV documentary of  the atomic bomb, I can hear that Japanese are blaming Americans and I believed that until I heard a story from my cousin. I have a cousin who lives in US and having an education in US. He told me that he learned that US dropped the atomic bomb to save the life of  Japanese citizen. Because Japanese government did not stop the war, US dropped the atomic bomb and try to bring the war to end. After I heard this, I started to think there will be other perspectives or stories when I hear a story. Therefore, there is one true fact, but it will change depending on storytelling and it will influence to our knowledge.

Business Management, Human Sciences

Human Science

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Business Management is a study that learn how to start up the business and how to manage the company. We learn base on business functions which are marketing, finance, human resource, operation.

In my opinion, human resource will apply to the articles. When the managers think about human resource, they use the resources which have done and there are a lot of resources which tell how to have a efficient relationship in the company. For example, we learned that mass production will demotivate the employees due to the easy task and low salary. This is just a hypothesis and it does not mean that the workers for mass production does not a high motivation. Some worker might have a high motivation because the job make he or she confident  due to the easy task. Or the job is a job that she finally got and she might be so happy to have a job. I think emotion does not have an absolute answer and even though there are many resources, it does not mean it will apply to everyone because each person has different background and personality.

In addition, company could tell false positive. For example, company exaggerate on the advertising to impress the customers and made them to buy the products or use the services. When you see the advertisement for Mc.Donald’s, you will see a high quality hamburger with low price. However, when you actually buy the hamburger, the quality is not that high as you see on the advertisement. One more example is that company could only tell the positive things of their products or services. Common point of the example is that companies do something to attract the customers, but they do not lie.

Business management is not scientific. Because business and management is always connected to emotion, even though there are trend or tendency,  it will not have the exact same data or result for each resources. Also, it is hard to represent the resources by using number for business and management.

Emotion

Emotion

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When a read that bodily changes come before, and cause, emotional changes, I did not believe that. However, when I think deeply person who is in depression has a symptom to their body; even though that depression is cause by emotion. Thus I understood The James-Lange theory.

Indeed, according to the James-Lange theory(which is named after the psychologists who came up with it), the emotions are essentially physical in nature, and bodily changes come before, and cause, emotional changes.

I like the example of the snake in the part of the role of beliefs. If I could add something to the paragraph, I would add about the religion. Some christians believe that there will be a home in heaven that people can go after they die. That belief makes christian not afraid of death. However, people who do not believe this will be anxious about death because they do not know where are they going and what is going to happen after they die.

A change in your beliefs has led to a change in your emotions.

The story of Elliot who suffered damage to the emotional canters in his brain which is example of a source of knowledge was interesting. When a person fight with a another person, she  will decide whether or not the is going to say this to this person. However, it is going to hard to think and decide when she is really mad. She just want to say the thing what she think. Thus I understand that emotion is important for decision making.

Damasio speculates that emotions help us to make rational decisions about things by narrowing down our options so that we can choose between a manageable number of them.

Rationalisation is particularly interesting for me. This case usually happens to me and my mother when I try to convince her. For example, when my mother told me to go for a trip with her I told her that I don’t want to go because I want to study alone at home and told her to take your friends. However, my real reason was that I could have a party with my friends if my mother is gone.

We tend to rationalize when there is a conflict between two or more of our beliefs.

Ethics

Are there universal moral values?

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In my opinion, there is no universal moral value. There are a lot of religions and cultures in this world and each person has different definition of bad and good things. For example, it is bad to eat pork for Islam people, but for every religious does not think it a bad thing. The example which talked in the class was killing people. I think everyone will say that killing people is a bad things. Then what happen to the death penalty which is usually use as subject of discussion. If killing the people is a bad thing, the death penalty should be stop. However, there are a lot of countries which has death penalty even though they says killing people will cause penalty.

Ethics

Altruism

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Altruism is a belief to act for other people, not for own benefit. In my opinion, altruism will help in many situation. For example, when the earthquake occur and we know tsunami is coming we need to evacuate as soon as possible; however if there is an old woman, altruism will help her even though the person has a risk that he or she might lost her life by being left behind. On the other hand, both of them can evacuate. In this world, there are a lot os situation that we need to help us each other.

Ethics, Real-life situations

how do you know that something is good or bad, right or wrong?

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Good things are the thing have positive affect on something and bad things are the thing have negative affect on something. It means depends on the perspective.

For example, when the parents get mad at their children, they will get mad to teach what are the bad things to do so that children will not do the same thing again. Parents are teaching to their children to raise them into a good adults. Thus parents think getting mad is a good thing for children. However, that may hurt the children both physically and mentally, then it is a bad thing for children.

Logic

Thinking logically

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Thinking logically is to organizing causal relationships and considering them in order, or explaining them clearly.

For example, “I feel stomachache in summer”. “summer” and “feel a stomachache” does not have a relation.  It has be like this,

I eat ice-cream a lot in summer.→ Eating ice-cream makes stomachache.→So in summer when I often eat ice-cream, my stomach hurts.

It made easier to understand by  understanding the causal relationships between “summer” and “feel a stomachache”.

Plato

Meno Part5

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At end of part 5 Socrates says that virtue is neither by nature or taught by others and people who have virtue were possessed of God; it does not related to knowledge.

At the moment, if through all this discussion our queries and statements have been correct, virtue is found to be neither natural nor taught, but is imparted to us by a divine dispensation without understanding in those who receive it, unless there should be somebody among the statesmen capable of making a statesman of another.

 

Plato

Meno part3&4

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In part 3, Socrates and Meno argued that virtue is knowledge or not. Socrates says that if virtue is a kind of “knowledge”, it can be taught, but if not it can not be taught.

In part 4, Socrates ask about the argument to Anytus, but at the end Anytus  said to Socrates that don’t talk to people  rude, so advise is to be careful not to cause a disaster.

Socrates, I consider you are too apt to speak ill if people. I, for one, if you will take my advice, would warn you to be careful: in most cities it is probably easier to do people harm than good, and particularly in this one; I think you know that yourself.

Plato

Meno part2

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The main topic which Socrates and Meno argues is  “Is some of our knowledge innate or not?”

Yes,Socrates, but what do you mean by saying that we do not learn, and that what we call learning is recollection? Can you instruct me that this is so?

Socrates answer this question by asking “boy” the geometry question.

Plato

Meno Part1

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Socrates and Meno was talking about “virtue”. Socrates asked Meno ” What is a virtue”, but Meno answered the type of virtue as the answer to that question and that was not the answer that Socrates wanted.  After talking about virtue they started talking “What is evil” ,  “what is good” and why people do evil things”.

This conversation confused me.