All posts by Miku

Art / The Arts

The Arts

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The taste of art is just a person’s view and someone’s taste is fine to be different from others. 

The story from the handout on page 7 “The Ice Cream Story” discusses that 

“judgments of quality are different from judgments of taste.” 

A specific example was given; a person went inside an ice cream shop, Waldorf-Ritz, and they served pistachio ice cream as he was one million customer. However, he doesn’t like pistachio ice cream. It doesn’t matter for him if it is using high brand pistachio and no artificial additives at all that the fact of dislike will not change. This is absolutely a personal taste/opinion and nothing to do with the people around him. Quality on the other hand can be evaluated by people experts in that field. For example, even I like certain artwork and say “I like it so much because many cute birds and squirrels are drawn with several colors”, some experts say something back at me such as “this is such a ridiculous work, unbalanced and zero emotion on it”.  

The other article, Taste For Makers, includes 13 types of good design. A statement I surprised the most was 

Good design can copy 

that I didn’t expect copying other work eventually link or support to create a good design. Paul Graham who wrote this article says that the emotion of wanting to imitate others’ work is that the person thinks he/she can be done better than that. Nevertheless, unknowing imitation is almost a recipe for bad design, he said. You have to be aware whether you imitate or not otherwise you are not able to make a design original. I am sure everyone has imitated anything before because I have done it thousands of times. I realized I am not good at painting and drawing when I was in 2nd grade. Since then, I once stole a few people’s ideas and combined them together to create my own work. My artwork was not good, to say the most, but at least it had done better than putting only my idea.

While studying knowledge in art, my thoughts on art change a lot. Famous artists have natural-born talent, that is what I thought at first, but then each artist has originality and specialty that can be seen from people around the world. Especially for artwork does not require a certain language to express emotion or opinion about works. At the same time, therefore, artists must cultivate their point of view in order to show their values. I believe that there is definitely a relationship between art and artist and art can contribute to a view of self.

 

History

History as an area of knowledge

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We use a textbook to learn history every time. However, when we consider whether history is true, we hardly say yes because I think it is written based on facts but not the truth. History is more like watching a fiction movie. History is the subject that influenced by the author’s perceptions and circumstances, and it is very unclear because there is no way to verify it.

“bias present in the document itself. The reasons for which the record was created. The perceptions of the document’s creator”

“In-depth analysis and interpretation of a historical document is an important step in the genealogical research process, allowing us to distinguish between fact, opinion, and assumption, and explore reliability and potential bias when weighing the evidence it contains”

These are a similar opinion to me which were in the article “Analyzing a Historical Document”. History describes what happened in the past that it becomes uncertain things over time, so we might think there is a problem with history but actually people who recognize history, us, have a problem. I believe it is important to examine history not only from one point of view but from a different perspective. Therefore, history does not exist to have discrimination or bias but to connect it to our present life.  Because of history, many of us hold stereotypes about other countries and even murder is occurring. History is one of an area of knowledge that studies historical fact and can build our knowledge, but we must think what and how do you want to learn from history before we started.

 

 

Language & Storytelling

Storytelling (WOK)

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I believed that storytelling should be regarded as a way of knowing. As the article, Storytelling: Our Most Important Way Of Knowing, says that

“The stories we are told, the stories we believe, and the stories we tell—both

to ourselves and to each other—shape our view of reality; our ideas of good and bad, right

and wrong, normal and strange; our most basic beliefs about what is true, and what is false”(Eric T, Macknignt)

I also think in the same way. Stories exist across history, across culture, and across era so that stories are just like our life. Suppose the listener knows nothing about the world( this might be when we were kids), and the speaker tells the listener knowledge that the speaker has. It can construct a listener’s own world by having an idea and knowledge to think. I am assuming that storytelling can also lead people to think objectively, not only from their own subject. It is because stories are created by humans based on the situation they are standing, and storytelling includes a person’s value. It is not just a method of knowledge transfer, but to construct the new world inside of the listener. In other words, the speaker is talking not for herself but for the listener.

“Everything we think, everything we believe, everything we know takes the form of a story. If we hope to

understand ourselves and others, we must understand stories” (Eric T, Macknight)

These last two sentences might have similarities with what I wrote above and related to the first quote. A thousand stories you heard influence everything we believe and we know. However, I think storytelling can be the basis of the way of knowing only when they experience the story.

Geography, Human Sciences

Human science

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Human science refers to synthetic science that tried to solve the problem using human brains and human behaviour. geography is a study of the relationship between people and the natural environment and geography can be divided into four different types and the key concept of this subject is an interaction between humans and the environment. There are human geography, social geography, social geography and physical geography. physical geography is known as actual geography mountains and rivers, for example. The tallest mountain on earth is Mount Everest because there is evidence of it, therefore the scientific method is usually used in physical geography in order to determine whether it’s true or false. However, human science applies to the other three types. These are quite different studies then physical geography, which is the study of people, environment, economies and cultures in space. Human science needs survey and quantitative data and makes it generalize. I’ll take a river as an example, you definitely think rivers are classified as physical geography. Most rivers can be made naturally, and the rivers grow and change shape over time, at the same time, rivers have both negative and positive impacts on humans. Rivers can be used for transport and farming. Rivers carry water, so it is a route for travel and transport resources. On the other hand, there are few disadvantages of rivers in the environment such as flooding and erosion. Humans have developed a brain that is to analyze a problem deeply, so that we believe that our environment is becoming better. So to get back on track, rivers, humans tried our best to prevent flooding such as to create levees and dams, plant trees and make wider floodplains. Levees are usually able to prevent flooding when the condition is good enough, but as you know these are established by our hands which means it wouldn’t be perfect and an error occurred in many places. Poor countries can’t afford to build it but wealthy countries are able to increase the height of levees and eventually, this big disparity causes worse implications. Another example is the Sea Of Japan. It is the name of the sea between Japan, Korea and Russia, so that this area cannot be part of any country. And the Japanese call this area “Sea Of Japan” while South Korea is named “East Sea” and North Korea supports the name “Korean East Sea”. These countries have arguments to support their archipelago. This may be a rebellion depending on which name you use when broadcasting this sea on TV. In Conclusion, human science applies to geography in many ways.

Emotion

Emotion

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I agree that emotion is essentially physical because I always have a sinking or negative feeling when I hurt somewhere in my body. This emotion, that connected to bodies, applies to the James-Lange theory. The James-Lange theory also suggests emotion which comes from other people’s feeling. Imagine when a person next you are depressed, you will try to cheer the person up in order to make a better atmosphere around you and the person. At the same time, you also are something close to depressed and you forgot what had you thinking when you noticed. You unconsciously empathizing with the person’s feelings.

Emotion is a very important source of knowledge. Positive emotion such as happy, love encourages us to do activities. Also, negative emotions can be your reason for knowing.

In my opinion, we cannot distinguish clearly between we make up a reason to explain our emotions, so it’s difficult to just think of a reason.

In my point of view, expert intuition is more reliable than people who are ignorant. These people are studying in one or two specific fields so they have advance knowledge of those fields, and the intuition is based on their endeavour and doesn’t occur naturally.

Ethics

Universal moral value

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I think there is no universal moral value because each country, each religion, and each school has its own definition of things. We can’t make an exact border between a good thing and a bad thing, in other words, one thing must do evil or come into conflict when you have to choose one thing from two good. I will take one example from “The Argument For Universal Moral Values a.k.a Moral Facts”, The life of a mother vs. The life of an unborn foetus. Both lives have to alive in every situation; however, you might have to give up and kill either one life if you in a worse situation. We are not able to classify it as good or bad because it depends on the situation and explanation. And if it is published, people around the world blame pregnant a woman or doctor based on the personal definition. The personal definition is affected by religion, education, environment and culture. Thus, I am assuming that there isn’t even one bad thing everyone will agree to.

Ethics

Altruism theory

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Altruism is the behavior of helping others, not for you. This is similar to consequentialism and not looking at action but looking at what you have done. Even the action you did and you will be arrested, and do well-being things to others such as friends, family, babies or elders. I grasped this theory like this and this action might not be following the law but eventually be positive consequences. The definition of altruism said, “It is possible to argue that altruism does not exist, because aeven when we do not expect to be repaid, we still experience a positive feeling of having carried out a ‘good deed’, so it can be argued that we acted in self-interest, rather than the interests of someone else.” However, I think a person who believes this theory just wants to do well-being behavior for others.

Real-life situations, Reason

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

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

Its depends Whether the world will be better or not.  Everywhere we go has rules and laws that are created by the government or society. They taught us to obey these rules because they think these behaves are good for society and if we don’t follow, we will be suspended.

For example, there is a law stealing goods from store shelves imposes up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to 500000 yen in Japan. But if your friend she or he got fired and he had to sell his house, and sitting in front of the store you entered. Eventually, A person who disobeys the rule will steal some food and drink and give them to him. Perhaps this action is not right but might be a good thing.  Also personally think after you saved him, the world becomes better with a smile. Therefore I ill recognize it as a good thing.