To what degree might different languages shape in their speakers different concepts of themselves and the world? what are the implications of such differences for knowledge? (Blog post 5)

There are sayings that when you speak more than one language you have a different tongue and personality.

What that means is that you are different when you speak one language from another and in my opinion I believe with this claim because for me, my mother tongue is spanish yet I spent such a short amount of time developing my spanish due to the fact that i moved out of my home country at a young age being 5 years old and was forced to learn another language. Then being in another country that only spoke english, i had to put my spanish learning aside and start to learn english at a young age when i did not even fully develop one language at all. I feel like this affected me in my identity because I feel like I was neither fluent in spanish or fluent in english. spanish was my first language that I learnt and its meant to be my mother tongue and  it is the language that is spoken in my home country however i personally feel like im not fluent in spanish. Then I learnt english at a young age and since then for my school purposes and academic reasons the only language I really practice the majority of my time is english. I feel like know more english vocabulary than spanish and i know both english slang words and spanish slang words but i feel like i belong neither in spanish because i am not fluent in it or my vocabulary range is not long and I am not fluent in english because it is my second language and it is not my mother tongue and I have trouble explaining somethings in both english and spanish. I feel like i have the spanish of a 5 year old and the english of a bilingual person, so i am not fluent in either.  Also each language's have different meaning and different knowledge towards the words. An example would be the word and meaning stupid. In spanish and english, both words have the same meaning however due to culture and influences, the word stupid and any word in general gets shaped and get implanted another meaning or a different use of the word. In english stupid could be treated as an okay word and not a very harmful word to say to someone or to call something but in spanish if you call something or someone stupid, it could be just as bad as using swear words or curse words to use against someone. Also in spanish the meaning "que pedo contigo" literally means what fart with you in english. However the meaning of that sentence means whats the matter with you or whats wrong with you and in that example,

you could see how each language's vocabulary, words and meaning are unique and are sometimes untranslatable or incomparable  or its meaning is untranslatable to other languages as each language is unique and different if you try to compare one language from another.

What do the quotes suggest about the role sense perception plays in our acquisition of knowledge? (Blog post 4)

Quote 1: "We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves." Denis Diderot

Quote 2: "Where the senses fail us, reason must step in" Galileo Galilei

what do the quotes suggest about the role sense perception plays in our acquisition of knowledge?


The 1st quote was proposed by a man named Denis Diderot. He was a french philosopher, art critic and writer. He was around during the age of enlightenment and during the age of enlightenment this was the time when "Enlightenment thinkers in Britain, in France and throughout Europe questioned traditional authority and embraced the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change." This was the time for new ideas or any ideas at all to be brought out and be open for discussion. Question everything would be a summary of the age of enlightenment. This is where our senses and perception would be questioned and this contemplation probably lead Denis Diderot with this quote. He claims that we are instruments equipped with feeling (sense) and memory (past perception) being struck by surrounding objects such as the world around us and that these instruments frequently play themselves. The instruments frequently playing themselves in the quote imply how our own intuition or gut feeling/instincts play a role with how we perceive and sense things. And the way we sense and perceive knowledge easily affects how we see the world itself in an outline.

Sometimes the world shows us knowledge and sometimes we show knowledge to the world.


In quote 2 "where the senses fail us, reason must step in" means simply to not always trust our sense perception and to find an answer/reason. This quote is extremely significant because it is coming from a man named Galileo Galilei. He was an Italian scholar and scientist whom made a huge impact on our ways of knowing in this world and about knowledge itself back then around the 16th century with science. Back then, due to the influences of religion and the church everyone believed that the earth was the center of the universe and planets and stars orbited around the earth. They believed that the earth was in the center of everything that it stayed still where it was, and it was not easy to agree with this. physiologically, we as humans make assumptions of our environment and we do not like to be wrong or to be confused at all. Seeing the perception of the sun, moon and the other planets around us we sense that everything around us is moving and we are staying still be we ourselves do not feel motion of this world, however Galileo proved this theory that the earth was the center of the universe wrong and that the sun was actually in the center and we were orbiting around it. He found it discovering the Phases of Venus and he showed the world that our senses and our perceptions have been proven wrong. That is why in the quote he indicates that "reason must step in" because if our ways of knowing about the world (ex. the world being the center) are actually not what they seem and feel to be, then how could we as humans tell from right or wrong?

Sources:

Biography.com. N. p., 2016. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.

Learnodo-newtonic.com. N. p., 2016. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.

Revolution, Scientific. "Enlightenment - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.Com".HISTORY.com. N. p., 2016. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.

"A balance between shared and personal knowledge is extremely important in the quest for truth" (Blog post 3)

what does it mean?

The reason why a balance between shared knowledge and personal knowledge is crucial is because personal knowledge throughout time develops into shared knowledge and from that particular shared knowledge comes the chance for interpretation and the creation of new knowledge, which is personal in the very beginning and if spread again repeating the cycle and becoming shared knowledge. It is almost as if both knowledges contribute towards one another and are in a cycle of contributing towards one another making it a balance of knowledge.
     If too much knowledge was personal then we would never hear about these knowledges or point of views on a particular subject in the beginning and knowledge would be lost or not used at all. If  too much knowledge was shared then people would become sluggish and lazy to question knowledge in the beginning and the creation of new knowledge would be scarce due to all knowledge being shared. An example of personal knowledge to shared knowledge would be all those law's and theory's and elements named after people because those people personally found this new knowledge and shared it to the whole world to obtain this knowledge. Can you imagine what would have happened if Isaac newton never shared any of his information on gravity?

"By participating in the ownership of shared knowledge an individual belongs to a particular group possessing a particular perspective on the world." (Blog post 2)

Being a Christian

    Straight away from the heading you can already tell what the main and significant perspective of the world is. I believe that there is a God and that god is father, son and holy ghost in one. The son being jesus who was sent to the world to sacrifice for humanity's sin's however, some people do not believe the details that god is all three and this is when separation happened between christianity. Christian is broad itself and within Christianity there are groups that derived from it ex. Catholicism and many more. The Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary estimated 34,000 denominations in 2000, rising to an estimated 43,000 in 2012.  This indicates that even within my group, there are hundreds more, but i'm not here to talk about the amounts of group there are. I am here to talk about my group's belief and what we believe in about this world

     We believe that when we are in this world, we are trying to bring in the kingdom of god (heaven) to earth or in other words, greatness and righteousness. We believe in the teaches of the bible strongly and try to interpret the bible in our way most fitting. If we have faith in god and jesus, we will be saved and have eternal life because we think that in this world, judgement day will come upon us and god will save us from the sin and death of this world. Life is short for a reason and that is why we believe we should devote as much time as possible to god and jesus so that when the time comes to be judged, we can be saved and go to heaven. If we live a life full of sin we think god will be righteously angry at us and judge us to not let us enter the gates of heaven. He wants us to confess our sins to him and worship him as much time as possible and devoting our lives to him so that he can grant us a place in what we believe is heaven where there is no sin and no harm in anyway in this place. God describes heaven in the bible to be unlike anything we have seen in this world, saying that no "good" feeling that we associate in this world (eating your favorite food, watching favorite tv or doing your favorite activity) is compared to what heaven is like, and we can be there forever and have eternal life. In saving us (salvation), we also believe that baptism is the key to salvation and you can be baptized at any time once you have attained faith and belief in christ. When you are baptized, you die with jesus and are reborn, or resurrected.

The Problem with Knowledge (Blog post 1)

Knowledge is everywhere, and there is no denying in that claim. It passes from generations onto generations and changes or varies as it goes throughout time. It can also be lost as it would be out of date or no longer necessary or useful at all. There is no right or wrong, but there is more accurate answer than others in knowledge. There is also bias depending on several factors such as the time the knowledge is given and date the knowledge is given. An example would be with the Vietnam war, the americans never heard of events which made america seem like the villains in the war due to the oppression of media and bias. Knowledge could try to be kept hidden, but since we humans are in a world where we are brought up and know entirely nothing about it having nothing but our minds, it is bound for us to encounter and absorb knowledge that is both shown and kept in the dark. Knowledge could also be inaccurate due to the lack of evidence or facts supported in to make the claim believable and reliable. It all comes down to the person receiving the knowledge if they would agree or disagree with the knowledge and if should they use it or ignore the knowledge. There are still many things that us humans know nothing about since we are such a small planet in our cosmos. However, the more we question every piece of knowledge we are given and use this absence as an option to search out if there is more that we do not know of in a certain subject, then we can proceed onto find more knowledge and hopefully coming to a very strong and accurate annotation of a piece of knowledge. In conclusion, knowledge can be bias, limiting, and is not very accurate simply because there is not enough information that we have attained to come up with a conclusion. This leads to our why’s and how’s of the knowledge that we barely know about yet have attained and been given to from the past. “The sky’s a limit”, an idiom first recorded in 1920. Is the sky still a limit now in late 2016?