Violence in Mexico

Cambridge, MA – Drug trafficking, kidnappings, and violent crimes in Mexico have recently absorbed the headlines of the media throughout the world, but how serious is the threat they pose for Mexicans’ security and what can be done to mitigate it? Notable leaders from Mexico’s government, media, academia, and civil society will attempt to answer these questions at Harvard University between the 13th and 17th of April, when they attend the student symposium titled “Crime and Security Challenges in Mexico,” organized by the Harvard University Mexican Association (HUMA).

“We believe that Mexico’s problems, whether political, economic, or social cannot be resolved unless a multidisciplinary approach is adopted, and the crime wave Mexico is going through right now is not the exception. We believe our efforts will bring different perspectives and leverage alternative solutions to a problem that worries all Mexicans in the country and abroad” said Ricardo Godinez, Co-President of HUMA.

Failed, weak, fragile, and risky, among others, are adjectives that have been used to describe the Mexican State in the past few months. Observing the intense debate that emerged as a result of this, HUMA decided to hold a set of conferences with several keynote speakers that will try to offer a proper diagnosis for Mexico’s current state of affairs.

From the public sector, Sigrid Arzt, former Technical Secretary of Mexico’s National Security Council and current security advisor to President Felipe Calderón, will be speaking about the challenges of drug trafficking for the Mexican security strategy. To complement this discussion, Rommel Moreno, Attorney General of the State of Baja California, will offer a local perspective on the same issue.

Civil society will be represented by Alejandro Martí. Mr. Martí´s 14-year-old son was kidnapped and murdered in June 2008, and his case has become emblematic of the security issues facing Mexico today. Last November, he introduced the Observation System for Citizen Security (SOS), a civil society organization that will foment and finance efforts of civic groups that fight for improving public safety.

Dr. Denise Dresser and Dr. Carmen Reyes will provide analytical and practical tools from the world of academia to approach various issues linked with crime. Dr. Dresser will evaluate the risks that organized crime poses for this year’s mid-term elections in Mexico. On the other hand, Dr. Reyes will explain the most current developments on Geographic Information Science, an approach that has proven to be fruitful in criminology and security studies, and could provide a resource for logistics, tactics, and strategic purposes in the field of public safety.

Finally, Alfredo Corchado and Adela Navarro, both with exemplary trajectories on drug reporting, will give voice to the media. Mr. Corchado is the Mexico Bureau Chief for the Dallas Morning News. His years of groundbreaking coverage of the U.S.–Mexico border earned him the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot award in 2007. Ms. Navarro is Director-General of Zeta Weekly, a publication in Baja California, Mexico, that specializes on drug reporting. She won the 2007 International Press Freedom Award for her independent reporting of drug issues at Zeta. “We hope this symposium sheds light on the potential solutions to the complex problems that crime poses for Mexico today, but we’re sure that by providing Mexican students in the area of New England with wide-ranging perspectives on the topic, we’re taking a step forward,” said Sergio Holguin, HUMA’s other Co-President.

HUMA is a non-profit student organization that groups more than 100 Mexican students, professors, and researchers from Harvard University currently working in the fields of government, business, health, education, law, technology, arts and sciences. Founded in the 90s, HUMA promotes the presence of Mexico at Harvard through conferences, seminars, debates, cultural activities, and social events. At the same time, it seeks to strengthen the ties between the Harvard community and Mexican public and private institutions.

Source: http://www.tuboston.com/article-1916-crime-in-mexico-how-serious-is-there-a-way-out.html

Crime stats in Mexico:
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/mx-mexico/cri-crime

What does having a bad worldview mean?

It means having a worldview that influences you in a way that affects you or other people, sometimes in a indirect way, or the person who is being affected could think that is good for them. One example: the suicidal terrorists; they feel proud of dying, while other people think they are crazy, and they affect other people, but they think they are doing the right thing (this is also a example of how our worldview can affect our behavior).

Do you think everyone has a worldview?

I think that everyone has a worldview, even when they don't know it, because every person has a different way to see things. Perhaps we don't realize it is there because we are used to it.

If you behave in a "good" way, that will benefit the World, improve the World and make you happy.

So, why doesn't everyone behave in a "good way"?

Not everybody has the same perception of good and bad; what I see as bad could be seen as good or perfect for other people. Many people think they are improving the World by doing things I find crazy or horrible, but everyone has a different idea of what a "Perfect World" would be, and how they could reach it. Other thing to think about, is that doing the "right" or "good" thing, even when we have a clear idea of what would it be for us, is not always the easier option, and we end doing something we know we shouldn't be doing.

Walter Elias Disney

'Why should I run for Major when I'm already King?'
Walt Disney

Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 5 December 1901. When the first World War arrived, he tried to enlist in the U.S. Army, but he was rejected as being too young. Instead he travelled to France with the Red Cross and spent his time driving an ambulance decorated with his own cartoons.

Settling in Kansas City after the War, he embarked on a career as a cartoonist and, in 1920, he created his first original animated characters, while working for Kansas City Film Ads. Two years after that, he started his own company 'Laugh-O-Grams', but the company quickly ran into financial difficulties and Disney decided to leave and, with his drawing equipment and an idea for a cartoon, move to Hollywood.

His new venture began in a garage. Together with his brother Roy, Disney launched Disney Brothers Studio. He started out with $500 borrowed from his uncle, $200 from Roy, and $2500 from his parents, who mortgaged the house to raise the money.

Mickey Mouse was born in 1928, making his debut in the first-ever sound cartoon Steamboat Willie. Disney continued to innovate within the cartoon medium. He introduced Technicolor to cartoons, and in 1973 he premiered the first featured lenght musical animation, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He took a huge risk with this film, it was the first of its kind, it costed $2 million to make, which in the 1930s (middle of the Great Depression) was a huge amount. Fortunately to him, the gamble paid off, and Snow White was followed by other full-lenght animated classics.

Disney wasn't an easy man to work for, he was frequently neurotic and obsessive and he imposed strict rules at his studio.

The second World War had temporarily sidelined the Walt Disney studio's output.

In 1955 Disney took his brand in a new direction: The Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California. His investment was $17 million.

From the mid-1960s onwards, one project consumed the final years of his life. The 'Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT)', which was a Disney World with a social dimension. Disney World opened in October 1971, in Florida, with an amusement theme park, hotel complex, airport and 11 years later, the futuristic EPCOT centre, but he, however, was not present to witness the fruition of his plans. He died on 15 December 1966.

The magic of Disney is, nowhere more evident than in the fact that such complicated and often difficult man could atract such talented individuals to his studios, and somehow persuade them to produce their very best work. The vision and drive that spawned a billion-dollar international entertainment company was down to one man: Walt Disney.

'Steamboat Willie'

Source: 'Business the Ultimate Resource, New Edition'

World hunger

World hunger 'hits one billion'

Most of the world's undernourished live in developing countries
One billion people throughout the world suffer from hunger, a figure which has increased by 100 million because of the global financial crisis, says the UN.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said the figure was a record high.

Persistently high food prices have also contributed to the hunger crisis.

The director general of the FAO said the level of hunger, one-sixth of the world's population, posed a "serious risk" to world peace and security.

The UN said almost all of the world's undernourished live in developing countries, with the most, some 642 million people, living in the Asia-Pacific region.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the next worst-hit region, the figure stands at 265 million.

Just 15 million people are left hungry in the developed world.

"The silent hunger crisis - affecting one-sixth of all of humanity - poses a serious risk for world peace and security," said Jacques Diouf.

"We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world and to take the necessary actions."

'Contradiction'

The increase in the number of hungry people was blamed on lower incomes and increased unemployment, which in turn reduced access to food by the poor, the UN agency said.

But it contrasted sharply with evidence that much of the developed world is richer than ever before.

WORLD HUNGER

Asia-Pacific: 642m
Sub-Saharan Africa: 265m
Latin America and Caribbean: 53m
Middle East and North Africa: 42m
Developed world: 15m
Source: FAO
"It's the first time in human history that we have so many hungry people in the world," said FAO spokesman Kostas Stamoulis, director of the organisation's development department.

"And that's a contradiction, because a lot of the world is very rich despite the economic crisis."

Mr Diouf urged governments to provide development and economic assistance to boost agriculture, particularly by smallholder farmers.

"Investment in agriculture must be increased because for the majority of poor countries a healthy agricultural sector is essential to overcome poverty and hunger and is a pre-requisite for overall economic growth," he said.

Urban suffering

The UK's international development ministry (Dfid) said the figures were "a scandal" and said it was helping some of the poorest farmers in the world to boost the amount of food they produce.

"In the last year we have pledged more than £900 million to lift millions out of hunger to help farmers boost agriculture production," a Dfid spokesman said.

The UN warns that poor people living in cities will probably face the most severe problems in coping with the global recession, because lower export demand and reduced foreign investment are likely to hit urban jobs harder.

Many migrants to urban areas would be likely to return to rural areas, it added, transferring the burden.

Incomes have also dropped "substantially" in some developing countries where families depend on remittances from relatives working abroad.

With the financial crisis hitting all parts of the world more or less simultaneously, developing countries have less room to adjust, the UN agency says.

Food prices

Among the pressures is the reality that borrowing from international capital markets is "more limited" in a global crisis, the FAO said.

Food costs in developing countries now seem more expensive, despite prices in world markets declining during the food and fuel crisis of 2006-08, it added.

They remained on average 24% higher in real terms by the end of 2008 compared to 2006.

"For poor consumers, who spend up to 60% of their incomes on staple foods, this means a strong reduction in their effective purchasing power," the FAO said.


Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8109698.stm

Religion - part 2

The God of the philosophers

According to the 'God of the philosophers', God is the eternal, all-powerful, al-knowing, all-loving creator of the universe, but the problem is that, when we look at this definition more closely, we run into all kinds of paradoxes, here are four:

1- The paradox of omnipotence: could God create a stone so heavy that he can't lift it? if he creates the stone, then he can't lift it, so there would be something he can't do, and if he can't create a stone, there would be other thing he can't do.

2- The paradox of change: this paradox arises when we ask how a God who is perfect can intervene in human history as He has traditionally been thought to do.

3- The paradox of sufering: this paradox arises from the twin assumptions that 'God is all-loving and does not want us to suffer' and that 'God is all powerful and is able to prevent us from suffering'

4- The paradox of free-will: if God is all-knowing, then He knows not only the past and the present, but also the future. This means that he knows not only everything we have done in the past, but also everything we will do in the future.

From Theory of knowledge, Richard van de Lagemaat

You have been sentenced to death. What method of execution would be your worst nightmare and what would be the most tolerable?

My worst nightmare would be every single way to die while im aware of it, or concious of what they are doing to me, and it would be even worse if it is painfull. The most tolerable would be every way while im not concious, preferebly asleep, or anesthetized, so I don't feel it.

Religion - Part 1

People turns to religion in seeking the answers to many questions in life, such as why do innocent people suffer? and is the death the end?. The trouble is that different religions give different answers to these questions, and some people are not satisfied with any of the answers that are on the offer.

There are three broad views about religion:

Theism: A theist believes that the universe is governed by an eternal, all-powerfull, all-knowing creator, God.

Pantheism: A pantheist believes that god is everything and everything is part of God, and that reality is spiritual in nature and the everyday world is an illusion.

Atheism: An atheist denies the existence of a creator god and believes the universe is material in nature and has no spiritual dimension.

They all have different beliefs about the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Beliefs are metaphysical, in nature and because of that we cannot determine wether they are true or false on the basis of experience alone. Some people have adopted a fourth position, "agnosticism", which neither it asserts nor denies the existence of God or some higher reality, but keeps an open mind about these things.

From theory of knowledge, Richard van de Lagemaat

Do you think of God as a 'he' or a 'she' or an 'it'?

I think of God as a 'something', not a he, nor a she neither an it. I think there is no proper word to describe God.

What difference do these different words make to the way you think about god?

I think that when we call God 'he' or 'she' we make God be in the same position as us (as a person) and, perhaps it is because of my religious formation since I was born, but I don't find it correct. I know I sometimes do it daily speaking, but is because I don't find other way to describe God's position. If we were to talk about him as an 'it', we will be treating God as less than us.

Do you think that God exists - or is supposed to exist - as a thing, or a force, or in an entirely different way?

I think that knowing it is out of our limits, God probably exists in an entirely different way. Even then, I always imagine him as a huge person with white hair.

About Alexander Fleming story:

It was too good to be true :( but is still nice:)

If you're thinking this story rings too good to be true, you are absolutely right. "Charming as it is," observes a Churchill Centre page devoted to alleged convergences between the lives of Winston churchill and Alexander Fleming, "it is certainly fiction."

Among the reasons set forth in support of that conclusion are:

•There is no record of Winston Churchill nearly drowning in a Scottish bog when he was young.

•There is no record of Lord Randolph Churchill paying for Alexander Fleming's education.

•Though it is true that Winston Churchill contracted pneumonia more than once during World War II and was treated with an antibiotic called sulfadiazine ("M&B"), he was never, according to available medical records, treated with penicillin.

That said, Sir Alexander Fleming was indeed the discoverer of penicillin, and Churchill did apparently consult with the brilliant physician and professor of medicine once in 1946 when he had a staph infection that proved resistant to the drug.

The Churchill Centre attributes the apocryphal tale, which has circulated in email form since 1999, to a 1950 book called "Worship Programs for Juniors" by Alice A. Bays and Elizabeth Jones Oakbery.


Source: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_winston_churchill.htm

Other links:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_Alexander_fleming's_father_save_winston_churchill
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/fleming.asp

Alexander Fleming

His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to eke out a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog.
He dropped his tools and ran to the bog. There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death.

The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman's sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved.

"I want to repay you," said the nobleman. "You saved my son's life."
"No, I can't accept payment for what I did," the Scottish farmer replied, waving off the offer. At that moment, the farmer's own son came to the door of the family hovel.
"Is that your son?" the nobleman asked. "Yes," the farmer replied proudly.
"I'll make you a deal. Let me take him and give him a good education.
If the lad is anything like his father, he'll grow to a man you can be proud of."
And that he did. In time, Farmer Fleming's son graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.

Years afterward, the nobleman's son was stricken with pneumonia.
What saved him? Penicillin.
The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill.
His son's name? Sir Winston Churchill.

Someone once said what goes around comes around.

Question

You enter a quiz and the winning team will be awarded $10,000 for the charity of their choice. You find a copy of the questions before the quiz. Is it okay to cheat for the benefit of a charity?

It is not okay to cheat. The other team is trying to win money for a charity as well, and by cheating I would be cuting their posibilities and it is unfair, and quite selfish.

Question

You deliberately sabotage a piece of machinery in your work place so that when someone next uses it there will be an accident which will result in that person losing the use of their legs. Are you morally responsible for their injury?

Do you have NO guilt?

I would feel morally responsible for the injury, because I sabotaged the machinery in purpose, so its my fault that it caused an accident.

Every sixty seconds you spend upset, is a minute of happiness you'll never get back :)

Intuition

Intuitions are very different from emotions. The word “Intuition” is typically associated with the aha moment of insight when you suddenly see the solution to a problem without going through any conscious process of reasoning.

We might distinguish between three different types of intuitions:

-Core intuitions: Our most fundamental intuitions about life, the universe and everything
-Subject-Specific intuitions: the intuitions we have n various areas of knowledge such as science and ethics
-Social intuitions: Our intuitions about other people, what are they like, whether or not they can be trusted, etc

Natural and indicated intuitions

Our natural intuitions do not always help us to understand the world, while expert intuition is another matter. This intuition is not just talent, but also a vast of mental database of background knowledge. Top level professionals in areas as varied as biology, brain surgery and baseball have similar intuitions.

In reflecting on the nature of these kinds of intuitions, we should keep in mind that despite appearances they are not a short-cut to knowledge. There are at least two necessary conditions for having good ideas:

-A through knowledge of the relevant field
-Unusually good powers of concentration

How reliable is intuition?

We can say that expert intuition is generally more reliable than natural intuition. Good intuitions are not God-given, we need to test them against other sources of knowledge. If your intuitions coincide with reason and experience and other’s people intuitions, then it makes more sense to trust them than if they do not.

From the book Theory of knowledge, Richard Van de Lagemaat

Question

Your best friend is getting married in an hours time. You discover their partner has been having an affair and have concrete evidence to prove their guilt. Do you tell your friend and ruin their big day?

I would obviously do something about it. I think I'll try to speak to the partner of my best friend first, listen to what she has to say, to see if im right or wrong. When it is clear, if she doesn't offer herself to speak to him about it and tell him the truth, I would go and talk to him. I know my best friend, and I know he will thank me for doing that for him, and besides, it won't be like ruinning his big day, it would be like saving him from a hudge mistake.

What is a worldview and what does changing your worldview involve?

According to Chris Gousmett, a worldview is an everyday, ordinary-language description of the world, that shapes and guides our lives, helping us to understand, explain and explore the world around us and everything in it, and how these are all related to each other, by giving us a way in which we can see them. In this sense then, it is "the comprehensive framework of one's basic beliefs about things and their relationships."

There are many different meanings for “worldview”, and it is because the meaning of that word depends, actually, of it.

Other way to understand what “worldview” involves is comparing it, as they do in this explanation: “a set of assumptions which help you to make sense about reality. It is like a lance through which you see things and you are not really aware of the lance, you are only aware of the things you see. Is the filter through which you actually see life, and the whole universe, humanity and actions, are understood through that lance.

After investigating and reading a few explanations, I made up my own meaning for the word “worldview”:

A worldview is the way we interpret and judge life, is how we attempt to give it a sense, the way we reason, look at the world around us and classify things. A set of beliefs created, accepted and held by each one, even when we not notice it. Thanks to them, life is understood by us.

Our worldview affects the way the world influences us, the principles by which we organize our actions and our personality. Everyone has their own single worldview, as everyone has a different personality or way to see things. It can be similar to others, but never the same.

Our worldview is not necessarily indicated by how we react to specific situations, but it does affect it. It can be determined by the character of our lifestyle or the overall pattern of it, the way we response to important issues, when our basic beliefs arise.

There are such things as “group worldviews”, those are worldviews based in a very general idea, but at the moment of getting further and analyzing it, we find out that the ways of thought of everyone differ at some point. I think that as you get deeper in an ideal, it is more likely for people to not coincide (Or as the ideal gets closer to the person, the person expresses his vision of how things should be). I’ll explain it with an example in a diagram (It can have thousands of other ramifications and can also be longer, until reaching individuals. This a simplification of a much greater and complicated process):



So, we can see how important is the existence of our worldviews, even when we don’t notice that they are there. They are basically what help us to make elections or what make us pick one election rather than other one.

But, what does changing our worldview involve?

It, certainly, is a really important thing. To make our general worldview change, something transcendental has to happen to us, not just a minimum event. We have the potential to do it, but perhaps it is quite uncommon for it to happen. We can easily modify some aspects of our character and even try to improve it in purpose, but changing the whole worldview, its something bigger and it doesn’t happen just because.

Changing your worldview makes your life be totally different. It changes the way you see what you have done in the past, how you classify it and if you think what you did is good or bad, the way you see the things happening now, what you expect from the future to come for you and the way you’ll interpret it will be different as well.

It makes you become a different person, could be a better or a worse one. Changes your moral and decisions, because you will think different and see things in a dissimilar way.

While changing your worldview, you also change your lifestyle, because our lifestyle is created and formed by us and our decisions. If it involves changing our lifestyle, it also involves changing our actions, ideas and probably our future.

A person with a bad worldview won’t have the same opportunities as a person with a good one, or perhaps they do but they just don’t get them. Imagine a person whose worldview is that nothing matters. He would only do things because he is obligated to, he won’t care about improving or making his opportunities in life better. His manner to react to an action would be totally different to the way a person who cares react. If he gets an offer he probably won’t accept it, or won’t even think about it, because he just doesn’t care, while a person with an opposite view will do the contrary.

We can say that we are influenced by the world, but perhaps we are influenced by it to one extend, and that extend finishes when the influence we have in ourselves begins. This influence (the influence we have above ourselves) can be our worldview and the stronger it and our beliefs are, the less likely for the world to manipulate us.

Other thing that could be transformed with it (worldview) is the role we have in our society. Let’s think about the example above again and we will find out that the person who cares has almost always a more active role in society, while the one who does not care is passive (or forced to be active).

In conclusion, having a worldview is not an option, but it does play an important role in our life. It affects everything: the way we feel, we think, we act, etc. and changing it, involves transforming our life in a huge way.


Sources:

http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~faithact/WORLDV.HTM
http://efphilosophy.blogspot.com/2010/01/questions-for-constructing-personal.html

Your Moral Parsimony Score is 55%

What Does This Mean?

Moral frameworks can be more or less parsimonious. That is to say, they can employ a wide range of principles, which vary in their application according to circumstances (less parsimonious) or they can employ a small range of principles which apply across a wide range of circumstances without modification (more parsimonious). An example might make this clear. Let's assume that we are committed to the principle that it is a good to reduce suffering. The test of moral parsimony is to see whether this principle is applied simply and without modification or qualification in a number of different circumstances. Supposing, for example, we find that in otherwise identical circumstances, the principle is applied differently if the suffering person is from a different country to our own. This suggests a lack of moral parsimony because a factor which could be taken to be morally irrelevant in an alternative moral framework is here taken to be morally relevant.

How To Interpret Your Score

The higher your percentage score the more parsimonious your moral framework. In other words, a high score is suggestive of a moral framework that comprises a minimal number of moral principles that apply across a range of circumstances and acts. What is a high score? As a rule of thumb, any score above 75% should be considered indicative of a parsimonious moral framework. However, perhaps a better way to think about this is to see how your score compares to other people's scores. In this respect, your score of 55% is slightly lower than the average score of 67%. This suggests that you have utilised a somewhat wider range of moral principles than average in order to make judgements about the scenarios presented in this test, and that you have, at least on occasion, judged aspects of the acts and circumstances depicted here to be morally relevant that other people consider to be morally irrelevant.

Moral Parsimony - Good Or Bad?

We make no judgement about whether moral parsimony is a good or bad thing. Some people will think that on balance it is a good thing and that we should strive to minimise the number of moral principles that form our moral frameworks. Others will suspect that moral parsimony is likely to render moral frameworks simplistic and that an overly parsimonious moral framework will leave us unable to deal with the complexity of real circumstances and acts. We'll leave it up to you to decide who is right.

Battleground Analysis

Congratulations!

You have been awarded the TPM medal of distinction! This is our second highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.

The fact that you progressed through this activity without being hit and biting only one bullet suggests that your beliefs about God are internally consistent and well thought out.

A direct hit would have occurred had you answered in a way that implied a logical contradiction. The bitten bullet occurred because you responded in a way that required that you held a view that most people would have found strange, incredible or unpalatable. However, because you bit only one bullet and avoided direct hits completely you still qualify for our second highest award. A good achievement!

Comparative Statistics

•472438 people have completed this activity to date.
•You suffered zero direct hits and bit 1 bullet.
•This compares with the average player of this activity to date who takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.10 bullets.
•45.83% of the people who have completed this activity, like you, took very little damage and were awarded the TPM Medal of Distinction.
•7.87% of the people who have completed this activity emerged unscathed with the TPM Medal of Honour.

Analysis of your Bitten Bullet

Bitten Bullet 1

You answered True to Question 16.

This answer generated the following response:

You've just bitten a bullet! In saying that God has the freedom and power to do that which is logically impossible (like creating square circles), you are saying that any discussion of God and ultimate reality cannot be constrained by basic principles of rationality. This would seem to make rational discourse about God impossible. If rational discourse about God is impossible, there is nothing rational we can say about God and nothing rational we can say to support our belief or disbelief in God. To reject rational constraints on religious discourse in this fashion requires accepting that religious convictions, including your religious convictions, are beyond any debate or rational discussion. This is to bite a bullet.

The hardest decision :(

Emotions as ways of knowing

The traditional view claims that the emotions are more of an obstacle than a source of knowledge, but they play more a positive role in our mental lives and, without them, we would be unable to make sense of the world.

Emotions as an obstacle to knowledge

Emotions are an integral part of our mental lives, they influence the way we see and think about the world. Strong emotions sometimes distort the three other ways of knowing:

-Perception: our perception of things can be colored by strong emotions, and there is some truth in sayings like ‘love is blind’ and ‘fear has many eyes’.

-Reason: if you hold your beliefs with too much passion, this can prevent you being open-minded and lead to a ‘my theory right or wrong’ kind of attitude.

-Language: A person in the grip of a powerful emotion is likely to use slanted and emotive language.

Many times in life, emotions can undermine our ability to think clearly. When our emotions are aroused, it is all too easy to stop listening to the person we are arguing with and to start trading insults rather than reasons.

Rationalisations

When we are in the grip of strong emotions, we tend not to reason in an objective way but to rationalise our pre-existing prejudices.

We tend to rationalise when there is a conflict between two or more of our beliefs. At the limit, the tendency to rationalise can lead a person to develop an illusory but self-confirming belief system:

1- Powerful emotions
2- Biased perception
3- Fallacious reasoning
4- Emotive language

Irrational behaviour

Our emotions can not only distort our beliefs, but also lead us to make poor decisions. Some emotions are urgent and short sighted and they can easily blind us to the longer-term consequences of our actions.

Turbulent emotions can distort our ability to think clearly and behave intelligently.

Emotions as a source of knowledge

Some studies of brain-damaged patients n fact suggest that if you did not have any emotions then your life would quickly disintegrate. The scientific ‘Antonio 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.

The above suggests that although we tend to think of reason and emotion as two different things, in practice they are closely related to one another and it is difficult to make a clear distinction between them.

Rather than think of reason and emotion as completely different things, it makes more sense to say that there is a continuum of mental activity running from the very rational to the very emotional.

Furthermore, rather than think of reason and emotion as being opposed to one another, it may be more sense to say that our emotions can be more or less rational.


From: Theory of knowledge, Richard van de Lagemaat

Support Disaster Relief in Haiti

On January 12, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. Join recovery efforts mobilizing around the world to assist earthquake victims. Your donation will help disaster victims rebuild their lives and their communities. Google will also donate $1 million to help organizations provide relief.

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Mexico City bus system promotes gender inequality

Jacie Williams

A short article in USA Today caught my attention the other day. It was an article on segregation.

It is not the kind of segregation that we, being raised in the South, often think about. This particular article dealt with the new bus policy found in Mexico City, which allows for a bus specifically for women.

Because of molestation and harassment women receive while on the regular bus routes, the city decided that segregation would be the best way to help solve a problem that they found otherwise insolvable.

From all the blogs, articles and forums I have read, the majority of the women seem to approve of this new system. Mexico City has had women-only subway cars during rush hour for some time now.

According to USA Today's article "Mexico City debuts women-only buses," the problem with normal subway cars were that the majority of commuting women were riding the overly crowded buses, where they had no protection from sexual predators.

Although there are only three routes with the women-only buses, Mexico City plans to add 15 more by April.

It is great that the city is being proactive about protecting their women, but they could be going about it in a better manner than segregation.

First, it is sexist against the men of Mexico City. The buses for women have ample seating while the men still have to squeeze into overly crowded buses.

By adding more buses to existing routes and improving the transportation system in general, I think the problem could start to diminish on its own.

With more space on all the buses, there would be less of an opportunity to "bump" into a woman accidentally or intentionally.

Having a segregated bus system will not make the problem go away. It only makes it less apparent. The best way to combat sexual harassment is education.

Mexico City should inform women about their rights not to be harassed. Education on how to handle sexual assault would empower women not to tolerate it.


Source: http://media.www.reflector-online.com/media/storage/paper938/news/2008/02/01/Opinion/Mexico.City.Bus.System.Promotes.Gender.Inequality-3181912.shtml

Other article with the same topic:

Ethan Arpi

Following the lead of Tokyo, where the subway has implemented female-only cars so that women can avoid the unwanted gaze or grope of overly-aggressive men, Mexico City has now introduced buses reserved exclusively for women. “One time a man stuck his hand up my skirt. They grab your butt … It’s gross,” Lourdes Zendejas, a female bus-commuter told Reuters. The new buses are emblazoned with pink “women only” signs on the exterior to warred off any confused man who wants to hitch ride. According to Carlos Cervantes, the spokesman for Mexico City’s bus system, sexual harassment has been an ongoing problem for female passengers who have suffered a variety of indignities merely for having an extra X chromosome while riding the bus. “We were constantly receiving complaints of women being leered at, kissed or followed,” he told Reuters.

It’s a nice step, especially for making public transportation accessible to everyone in a city where over 60 percent of the population travels by some type of bus.


Source: http://df.thecityfix.com/mexico-city-launches-grope-free-women-only-buses/

Emotions

In theory of knowledge the emotions are treated as one of the four ways of knowing, together with language, reason and perception.

The word emotion is derived from de Latin verb movere, meaning “to move”. An emotion usually consists of various internal feelings and external forms of behaviour.

The word “passion” is usually reserved for a strong emotion.
A mood is an emotion which continues for a period of time.

There are six basic emotions, according to psychologists, common to all cultures:
-Happiness
-Sadness
-Fear
-Anger
-Surprise
-Disgust

The James-Lange theory

This theory says that the emotions are essentially physical in nature, and bodily changes come before, and cause, emotional changes.

It supposes that when you remove all the physical symptoms of and emotion, the emotion itself disappears. Interestingly the theory also suggests that if you mimic the appropriate physical symptoms you can generate the corresponding emotion. For example, if you smile you will feel happy, and if you scowl you will feel angry.

It also suggests a mechanism through which we can come to know and empathise with other people’s feelings. The idea is that when you talk to someone, you unconsciously mimic some of the physical expressions of his mood.

Which of the following words do you naturally associate with reason and which do you naturally associate with emotion?

Hot- Reason
Cool- Emotion
Voluntary- Emotion
Reflective- Reason
Powerful- Reason
Blind- Emotion
Weak- Emotion
Impulsive- Emotion
Subjective- Reason
Wisdom- Reason
Controlled- Emotion
Objective- Reason
Instinctive- Emotion

Washington, DC imam: US Govt, Mossad staged Flight 253 Christmas Day bombing

Here is yet another manifestation of the evasion of responsibility that we have seen here so many times over the years -- indeed, it is typical of the Islamic supremacist response to any jihad crime Muslims commit: it is always the Infidel's fault.

We have seen Imam Musa before also. He is the character who has declared his desire to establish an "Islamic States of America" by 2050.

"Washington DC Imam Abdul Alim Musa: Attempted Christmas Day Plane Bombing - the Work of US Government and the Mossad," from MEMRI TV, January 5 (thanks to Dave):

Following are excerpts from a TV debate with Abdul Alim Musa, Imam of the Islam Mosque, Washington DC, and George Mason University professor Jack Goldstone. The debate aired on Press TV on January 5, 2010.
Interviewer: Imam, I guess this is something that most people didn't expect to hear on Christmas Day.
[...]

Abdul Alim Musa: Right. I am just going to go straight to the point. If you go back for the last 20 years, from the first World Trade Center bombing in '93... This is our view, from those who... We said it then, and we say it now, and this is the belief in the Muslim world: 90% of the bombing plots - or this plot or that plot - we believe is done by and with the help and the aid of Mossad, and the United States government. This is our experience.
We believe that whoever this guy is from Nigeria - we don't believe he has any ties with Islam. If you talk about the World Trade Center bombing - all of these things are done... I can give you two quick reasons, and it will solve the problem. Number one - to blame these things on Muslims. You get the Patriot Act, you get the anti-terrorism bill, you get a right to what they call stop, put a freeze, on the global Islamic movement, which has been spreading, growing, and developing. You get a chance to launch missiles, to kill, and to put a freeze on the Islamic movement. But the Islamic movement is only the first target.

The second target is the American people, because as you see, you have a systematic crash of the economy in America, headed downhill. Eventually, it affects everybody. Eventually, it affects the general American people. They want to have all the guns, and they want to have terrorism acts, they want to have everything - not for the Muslims - because we are a small minority - but for the American people - who do not put up with high taxes, and starving to death...

Interviewer: Wait a second, did you say that America may have played a role in this?

Abdul Alim Musa: No, we said they definitely did.

Interviewer: Definitely played a role?

Abdul Alim Musa: Yes, definitely. This is our belief. We've said this. We have... I didn't bring them all... We have "CIA Patterns of Deception," "Zionist Control of Media," "Babylon the Great" - these are years old - "Bush the Unifier"... Our belief has always been, since 1993, and we've done TV programs on it - that the United States government... Who do you talk about? You talk about Al-Qaeda. Where did Al-Qaeda come from? Al-Qaeda, Bin Laden, and all that - those are US friends.

Interviewer: But why would the US do this to its own people?

Abdul Alim Musa: In order to control them.....

I think that if this appears to be true, the U.S. will get in a lot of trouble, as economical as social, and thousands of people will feel really disappointed. But for me, this is just a theory, and has as possibilities to be true as every other theory; I can’t disqualify any of them, because I don’t know exactly what happen and I’m never going to be sure of it, since I was not there, and even if I were there, it would be hard to agree, because this theory has strong arguments, but the U.S. theory about that the attack was caused by terrorist has good founds as well.

Emotional IQ Test

What is your emotional IQ?


This emotional intelligence test consists of two parts; a self-report portion and an ability portion. The test assesses your capacity to recognize your own emotions and those of others; understand how best to motivate yourself; become close to others; and manage your own feelings and those of others. Emotional intelligence contributes a great deal to your potential in life. A poor emotional intelligence can hold a brilliant individual back from achieving his or her goals, while a good EIQ can help someone who might otherwise struggle achieve success in life.





1-Did you agree or disagree wth your score? Why?

My score says that my emotional IQ is excellent, so I loved it, but I don’t agree with any kind of “IQ” test, not intelligence test neither in emotional test. I think we all have different capacities and no one is capable of qualifying and marking us as “bad” or “excellent”. Every person has weak and strong points, and every kind of personality has as much advantages as disadvantages.

2- What are the strenghts/or weaknesses of a test like this?

The strengths of tests like this one are that they don’t forget about the background of the person. At the end, they asked a list of questions that can be really helpful to evaluate a person. One of the biggest weaknesses is that some persons can’t evaluate themselves and their actions well, and say what they think but perhaps they are totally different and other people realizes that. Making another person answer this test for you is not a solution, since they can’t know what you think (and for some answers this is needed).

3- How important do you think having a high IQ might be?

I think having a high IQ is not so important, for the reasons I explained in the first question.

Philosophy and ethics...

.__.

WATCHING THIS IS YOUR OWN OPTION AND RISK.



Reduce your risks of accidents, to be happy in life, refuse any idea which contains risks, be very watchfull.

Loaded questions

Loaded question, also known as complex question, presupposition, "trick question", or plurium interrogationum (Latin, "of many questions"), is an informal fallacy or logical fallacy. It is committed when someone asks a question that presupposes something that has not been proven or accepted by all the people involved. This fallacy is often used rhetorically, so that the question limits direct replies to be those that serve the questioner's agenda. An example of this is the question "Are you still beating your wife/husband?" Whether the respondent answers yes or no, he will admit to having a spouse, and having beaten them at some time in the past. Thus, these facts are presupposed by the question, and in this case an entrapment, because it narrows the respondent to a single answer, and the fallacy of many questions has been committed.

The fallacy relies upon context for its effect: the fact that a question presupposes something does not in itself make the question fallacious. Only when some of these presuppositions are not necessarily agreed to by the person who is asked the question does the argument containing them become fallacious.

Example: Are you still beating your wife?" A loaded question may be asked to trick the respondent into admitting something that the questioner believes to be true, and which may in fact be true. So the previous question is "loaded," whether or not the respondent has actually beaten his wife.


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

Circular reasoning

Circular reasoning is an attempt to support a statement by simply repeating the statement in different or stronger terms. In this fallacy, the reason given is nothing more than a restatement of the conclusion that poses as the reason for the conclusion. To say, “You should exercise because it’s good for you” is really saying, “You should exercise because you should exercise.”

It shares much with the false authority fallacy because we accept these statements based solely on the fact that someone else claims it to be so. Often, we feel we can trust another person so much that we often accept his claims without testing the logic. This is called blind trust, and it is very dangerous. We might as well just talk in circles.


EXAMPLE 1

A confused student argues: “You can’t give me a C. I’m an A student!”

Circular reasoning is problematic because the claim is made on grounds that cannot be accepted as true — because those very grounds are in dispute. How can a student claim to be an A student when he just earned a C?

To clarify, no one is an “A student” by definition. Grades are earned in every class and are derived from a variety of different methods. The requirements in one class are set by the school and the instructor, so the same class taught by a different teacher or in a different location should yield two very different results (final grades). Merely claiming to be an A student does not make the claim valid.

NOTE: The false authority fallacy also applies here — you cannot use yourself as your own authority with total certainty. A doctor is more qualified to diagnose your shoulder pain than you are; your teachers are better qualified to evaluate your performance than a student.


EXAMPLE 2

A satisfied citizen says: “Richardson is the most successful mayor the town has ever had because he's the best mayor of our history.”

The second part of this sentence offers no evidence — it simply repeats the claim that was already presented. Don’t be fooled into believing that using the word “because” in an argument automatically provides a valid reason. Be sure to provide clear evidence to support your claims, not a version of the premise (the initial statement in an argument).


EXAMPLE 3

An obvious non-smoker blurts: “Can a person quit smoking? Of course — as long as he has sufficient willpower and really wants to quit.”

This statement contains a more subconscious version of circular reasoning. The intended argument simply repeats itself, disguised as a logical statement. The warrant is simple: “A person can quit because he can.” True, any smoker can quit, but the task is not as obvious or as easy to accomplish as the statement suggests. The arguer must provide reasons to suggest how a person can overcome an addiction, not to simply identify the obvious use of will power. This example also falls into distortion and the only reason fallacies.




SOURCE: http://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/~shagin/logfal-pbc-circular.htm

Lateral thinking

1. The man in the Elevator

A man lives on the tenth floor of a building. Every day he takes the elevator to go down to the ground floor to go to work or to go shopping. When he returns he takes the elevator to the seventh floor and walks up the stairs to reach his apartment on the tenth floor. He hates walking so why does he do it?

2. The Man in the Bar

A man walks into a bar and asks the barman for a glass of water. The barman pulls out a gun and points it at the man.

3. The Man who Hanged Himself

Not far from Madrid, there is a large wooden barn. The barn is completely empty except for a dead man hanging from the middle of the central rafter. The rope around his neck is ten feet long and his feet are three feet off the ground. The nearest wall is 20 feet away from the man. It is not possible to climb up the walls or along the rafters. The man hanged himself.

4. Death in a Field

A man is lying dead in a field. Next to him there is an unopened package. There is no other creature in the field. How did he die?

5. Anthony and Cleopatra

Anthony and Cleopatra are lying dead on the floor of a villa in Egypt. Nearby is a broken bowl. There is no mark on either of their bodies and they were not poisoned. How did they die?

6. The Coal, Carrot and Scarf

Five pieces of coal, a carrot and a scarf are lying on the lawn. Nobody put them on the lawn but there is a perfectly logical reason why they should be there. What is it?

7. Trouble with Sons

A woman had two sons who were born on the same hour of the same day of the same year. But they were not twins. How could this be so?

8. Push that Car

A man pushed his car. He stopped when he reached a hotel at which point he knew he was bankrupt. Why?

9. The Arm of the Postal Service

One day a man received a parcel in the post. Carefully packed inside was a human arm. He examined it, repacked it and then sent it on to another man. The second man also carefully examined the arm before taking it to the woods and burying it. Why did they do this?

10. The Elder Twin

One day Kerry celebrated her birthday. Two days later her older twin brother, Terry, celebrated his birthday. How come?

11. Heaven

A man died and went to Heaven. There were thousands of other people there. They were all naked and all looked as they did at the age of 21. He looked around to see if there was anyone he recognised. He saw a couple and he knew immediately that they were Adam and Eve. How did he know?

12. Friday

A man rode into town on Friday. He stayed for three nights and then left on Friday. How come?

13. Manhole Covers

Why is it better to have round manhole covers than square ones?

14. The Deadly Party

A man went to a party and drank some of the punch. He then left early. Everyone else at the party who drank the punch subsequently died of poisoning. Why did the man not die?

15. The Deadly Dish

Two men went into a restaurant. They both ordered the same dish from the menu. After they tasted it, one of the men went outside the restaurant and shot himself. Why?

16. The Realization

A man was walking downstairs in a building when he suddenly realized that his wife had just died. How?

17. The Blind Beggar

A blind beggar had a brother who died. What relation was the blind beggar to the brother who died? (Brother is not the answer).

18. The Broken Match

A man is found dead in a field. He is clutching a broken match. What happened?

19. The Music Stopped

The music stopped. She died. Explain.

20. Swimmer in the Forest

Deep in the forest was found the body of a man who was wearing only swimming trunks, snorkel and facemask. The nearest lake was 8 miles away and the sea was 100 miles away. How had he died?




1. The man is a dwarf, and can only reach the button for 8th floor.

2. The man had hiccups. The barman recognized this from his speech and drew the gun in order to give him a shock. It worked and cured the hiccups - so the man no longer needed the water.

3. He climbed on a block of ice which has since melted.

4. The man had jumped from a plane but his parachute had failed to open. It is the unopened package.

5. Anthony and Cleopatra were goldfish whose bowl was knocked over.

6. They were used by children who made a snowman. The snow has now melted.

7. They were two of a set of triplets

8. He was playing Monopoly.

9. The three men had been stranded on a desert island. Desperate for food, they had agreed to amputate their left arms in order to eat them. They swore an oath that each would have his left arm cut off. One of them was a doctor and he cut the arms off his two companions. They were then rescued. But his oath was still binding so he later had to have his arm amputated and sent to his colleagues.

10. At the time she went into labor, the mother of the twins was travelling by boat. The older twin, Terry, was born first early on March 1st. The boat then crossed the International Date line (or any time zone line) and Kerry, the younger twin, was born on February the 28th. In a leap year the younger twin celebrates her birthday two days before her older brother.

11. He recognized Adam and Eve as the only people without navels. Because they were not born of women, they had never had umbilical cords and therefore they never had navels.

12. The man's horse was called Friday.

13. A square manhole cover can be turned and dropped down the diagonal of the manhole. A round manhole cannot be dropped down the manhole. So for safety and practicality, all manhole covers should be round.

14. The poison in the punch came from the ice cubes. When the man drank the punch the ice was fully frozen. Gradually it melted, poisoning the punch.

15. The dish that the two men ordered was albatross. They had been stranded many years earlier on a desert island. When the man tasted albatross he realized that he had never tasted it before. This meant that the meat he had been given on the island was not albatross as he had been told. He correctly deduced that he had eaten the flesh of his son who had died when they first reached the island.

16. The man had visited his wife in hospital. She was on a life-support machine. As he was walking down the stairs all the lights went out. There had been a power cut and the emergency back-up systems had failed. He knew that she had died.

17. The blind beggar was the sister of her brother who died.

18. He and a number of other passengers were making a balloon trip in a desperate attempt to flee a country. The balloon had to lose weight to stop it from crashing. He drew the short match and had to jump.

19. She was a circus tight-rope walker who walked blindfolded over a high wire. The band played as she crossed and when the music stopped it was the signal that she had reached the end of the walk and could safely alight. One day the conductor was taken ill and the stand-in conductor ended the piece of music too early. She stepped off to her death.

20. During a forest fire, a fire-fighting plane had scooped up some water from the lake to drop on the fire. The plane had accidentally picked up the unfortunate swimmer.


Source: http://www.thecourse.us/Students/Lateral_Thinking.htm

Causes of bad reasoning

Why do we commit fallacies?

There are four main reasons:

Ignorance - when we do not realise that a particular form of reasoning is fallacious.
Laziness - when we have developed fixed habits of thinking and are too lazy to check the argument or see if it has supporting evidence.
Pride - when we prefer to hold simple beliefs rather than get bogged-down with confused details.
Prejudice - when we manufacture bad reasons in order to justify them (rationalisation)

Syllogisms

Syllogism: Kind of logical argument in which one proposition is assumed because of two premises of a certain form. It is composed of a conclusion and two premises, quantifiers (such as ‘all’, or ‘some’ or ‘no’ and three terms, each of which occurs twice. Example:

All dogs are mammals.
Fido is a dog.
Therefore Fido is a mammal.

Terms in this syllogism: ‘Dogs’, ’Fido’ and ‘Mammals’
Premises: ‘All dogs are mammals’ and ‘Fido is a dog’
Conclusion: ‘Therefore Fido is a mammal’
Quantifier: ‘All’

Venn diagrams

To decide if a syllogism is valid or not, we can draw a "Venn diagram". To represent the syllogism above we draw a big circle with the word "Mammals" and inside of it another one and we label it "Dogs":


As you see in the picture, the circle labeled "Dogs" falls inside of the other one labeled "Mammals", and since Fido is a dog, he is in the "Dogs" group so is correct to say that he is a mammal.

Reason

Reason: The capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought; intelligence. We can acquire new knowledge about the world by using reason.

Kinds of reasoning:

Deductive reasoning – Any form of reasoning that moves from the general to the particular.

All metals expand when heated
“A” is a metal
Therefore “A” expands when heated

Inductive reasoning – form of reasoning that moves from the particular to the general.

Metal “A” expands when heated; metal “B” expands when heated; metal “C” expands when heated.
Therefore all metals expand when heated.

Informal reasoning – Assuming things because of given information.

Which of our faculties do you think is more reliable – reason or perception?

Reason, because our perception can mislead us, while our reasoning, if is well based will lead us to a correct answer or idea. To show this in an example, I’ll use the story of Richard the farmer (http://karlaprepcourse.blogspot.com/2009/11/richard-farmer.html). His perception told him that his cow, Doris, was in a particular place of the field, but he was in a mistake. He “confused” his cow with other thing. Changing the story a little bit, let’s imagine that he sees his cow by the window, in its corral. Then, he would know that his cow is not in the field, by reasoning that if Doris is in the corral, she cannot be in the field.

"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything but his reason"
G. K. CHESTERTON, 1874-1936

Love is a fallacy

-Make notes of the fallacies in the following video:



-Dicto Simpliciter:

Exercise is good. Therefore everybody should exercise.

You mustn’t take all these things so literally. I mean this is just classroom stuff. You know that the things you learn in school don’t have anything to do with life.

Explanation: Dicto Simpliciter means an argument based on an unqualified generalization.

-Hasty Generalization:

You can’t speak French. Petey Bellows can’t speak French. I must therefore conclude that nobody at the University of Minnesota can speak French.

We have now spent five evenings together. We have gotten along splendidly. It is clear that we are well matched

Explanation: When a generalization is reached too hastily. There are too few instances to support a conclusion.

-Post Hoc: Let’s not take Bill on our picnic. Every time we take him out with us, it rains.

Explanation: Believing that temporal succession implies a causal relation

-Contradictory Premises: If God can do anything, can He make a stone so heavy that He won’t be able to lift it?

Explanation: Conclusions are drawn from the interactions of premises: where two premises contradict each other, there can be no interaction and hence no conclusion.

-Ad Misericordiam:

A man applies for a job. When the boss asks him what his qualifications are, he replies that he has a wife and six children at home, the wife is a helpless cripple, the children have nothing to eat, no clothes to wear, no shoes on their feet, there are no beds in the house, no coal in the cellar, and winter is coming.

Polly, I love you. You are the whole world to me, the moon and the stars and the constellations of outer space. Please, my darling, say that you will go steady with me, for if you will not, life will be meaningless. I will languish. I will refuse my meals. I will wander the face of the earth, a shambling, hollow-eyed hulk.

Explanation: An appeal to pity is a fallacy in which someone tries to win support for their argument or idea by trying to cause pity.

-False Analogy:

Students should be allowed to look at their textbooks during examinations. After all, surgeons have X-rays to guide them during an operation, lawyers have briefs to guide them during a trial, carpenters have blueprints to guide them when they are building a house. Why, then, shouldn’t students be allowed to look at their textbooks during an examination?

Five dates is plenty. After all, you don’t have to eat a whole cake to know that it’s good.

Explanation: In an analogy, two objects (or events), A and B are shown to be similar. Then it is argued that since A has property P, so also B must have property P. An analogy fails when the two objects, A and B, are different in a way which affects whether they both have property.

-Hypothesis Contrary to Fact:

If Madame Curie had not happened to leave a photographic plate in a drawer with a chunk of pitchblende, the world today would not know about radium.

You do owe me something, don’t you, my dear? If I hadn’t come along you never would have learned about fallacies.

Explanation: This fallacy consists of offering a poorly supported claim about what might have happened in the past or future if circumstances or conditions were other than they actually were or are. The fallacy also involves treating hypothetical situations as if they were fact.

-Poisoning the Well:

Two men are having a debate. The first one gets up and says, ‘My opponent is a notorious liar. You can’t believe a word that he is going to say.’ ... Now, Polly, think. Think hard. What’s wrong?

You can’t go with him, Polly. He’s a liar. He’s a cheat. He’s a rat.

Explanation: This sort of "reasoning" involves trying to discredit what a person might later claim by presenting unfavorable information (be it true or false) about the person.

Go to this site: http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/rgass/fallacy3211.htm for more kinds of fallacies, explanations and examples of them.

Holidays finished - my blog is back :)

According to the astronomer Carl Sagan (1934-96), "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Explain what he meant by this. Do you agree?

By this, he meant that if we are claiming something to be true, but is either hard to believe or other people reason in a totally dfferent way, then we have to find something really good to prove the accuracy of our claim. I agree in some way, but it depends of the person. For example, I won't dare to doubt something a really important scientific says, but if a unknown (by everyone, not just me) person says claims something I would ask for proves.

Explain, with reasons which of the following statements you think is less likely to be true. -The Loch Ness Monster- Some mystics are able to levitate-

I think that the second one, because there may be not a "monster" in the Loch Ness, but an unknown animal could be there and people calls it monster.