However, these thoughts are not useful to have and do not help us to survive the threats of tigers and starvation. In an attempt to drive out thoughts of instability, we begin to create abstractions upon the world that allow us to believe in stability. One such example is language. We develop language to hold the meanings of words and assume its apparent consistency and effectiveness are signs of stability. However, these presuppositions of the stability of language based upon effectiveness are unfounded. In fact, they may be one of the best examples of the unstable mistaken for stable. III. View From Nowhere Only Reveals Empty Tautologies We say 1+1=2. It is true 1+1 does equal 2. But what have we learned from such an observation? We learned a shorthand, we can now call “1+1” by another name “2” but that doesn’t amount to the discovery of any new knowledge. By the same means, the concepts of addition become trivial as it is just a way to rename numbers by grouping the ones differently and calling it a different name. “Twoness” doesn’t really mean anything apart from “1+1”. Thus subtraction is the same process in reverse, and multiplication is the same renaming process as if you were to do the same addition multiple times… and suddenly basic arithmetic become trivial. So yes, while we can have ideas that are objective and internally coherent, they are mere trivial fabrications. Progression: Math> Logic> Language> Thin vs Thick > This is pretty in VFN, Thick does not work
India has a major problem with corruption. In the book The White Tiger, we see this problem throughout Balram’s life. The first time we are exposed to corruption is when Balram is just a young boy living in his village that is in the “darkness” of India. His village of Laxmangarh is in the darkness of India and is run by four landlords that use intimidation and scare tactics to collect an unfair amount of money from their tenants.(pg. 21-22) Another place you see corruption in The White Tiger is when Balram is working for Ashok and his family. Their family has to pay the government bribes to keep from being prosecuted for illegally stealing coal, and evading taxes.(pg.233) Imagine if we lived in a country where if you paid the national government
As he walked into the arena, the crowd stilled. The sand below was white and blinding in the light of the beating sun. The stone wall of the arena felt like the walls of his soon to be coffin. As he turned around slowly to bow to the king, a customary for the victims of his sick barbaric punishment, but when he looked up, his eyes were only on the woman he dearly loved. As their eyes meet a memory flashed between them like a spark of light move quickly before his eyes.
Today I will be talking about is the documentary Paper Tigers. The term paper tigers mean that a person may seem like they are threatening, but they are not at all. This documentary followed various students of all grades at Lincoln High Alternative School and teachers. This showed us what each student was dealing with and why they reacted in a certain way. Paper Tigers was a great documentary to me because it showed something that most people do not see all the time. This showed me how these students deal with raw emotions. How much these kids just want someone that would care/love them and show them some compassion. They want someone to be there for them when they need someone because the people they are around now are giving them no support.
Language is a tool that may be used in thinking, but it isn’t the sole basis of
Language is powerful and can be used to control instead of uplift. An example of language being used to
Long-term survival of a species depends on its ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions (Murphy, 1994). Genetic diversity within a species, which has taken 3.5 billion years to evolve, makes adaptations to these changing environments possible. Unfortunately, the rate of extinction of genetically diverse organisms is rapidly increasing, thus reducing this needed biodiversity, largely due to the human impacts of development and expansion. What was an average of one extinction per year before is now one extinction per hour and extinct species numbers are expected to reach approximately one million by the year 2000 (WWW site, Bio 65). As a result governmental and societal action must
The good may become the bad and words, like people, are modestly the victims of circumstance. It may seem useless to track, study, and observe the origins of language and the buildings blocks that comprise each phrase, but in studying dialect or linguistics we can trace and assign the historical path or human nature. Language, in some form or another has been with the human race from the beginning of time. The ways in which civilizations have communicated can be reflected and understood through words, as if they were taking photographs of the things they witnessed the whole time. Language as whole is like an immortal being, omnipresent throughout all human
In the words of George Orwell, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Language has been spoken for over 350,000 years. It has expanded tremendously, but its power has never changed. The use of language shapes peoples' perceptions and the depth of interactions because it can demean, avoid, portray emphasis, persuade, and conceal from simple phrases such as “I feel like” and “just”.
Even if language allows this, philosophical argument does not. Philonous objects: "How many shapes is your matter to take?...you mean nothing at all... you employ words to no manner of purpose, without any design or signification whatsoever" (Berkeley 54, 57). Philonous, the philosopher, wanting to describe his thought-world precisely, attempts to restrain unruly language by defining words clearly and distinctly—it is a task familiar to us. Berkeley, through Philonous, realizes the power of words as interpretations of thought-meaning (ideas); he attempts to control that power by making one word mean one thing only. But, indeed, words are imprecise, indefinite, unclear—Berkeley can approach, but can not gain complete reign over his language.
How words are interpreted by the mind and effect it has – although this is not explicitly stated, could link to Carter’s distinction between pattern reforming and pattern reinforcing; and pattern reforming could change the way we look at things and support new
The introduction of foreign or “invasive” species into ecosystems places a massive risk of exposing the inhabitants of this environment to mass extinction, far lower rates of biodiversity and potentially irreversible, permanent changes to the biological makeup of the food web. The ethical problem involved with this serious situation is whether the culling or “selective slaughter” of these invasive species is ethical, if, in doing so will inflict pain and suffering. To come to the morally permissible answer to this dilemma one needs to come to a conclusion of the legitimacy of animal’s pain and suffering and thus how heavily it plays a role in coming to an ethically strong conclusion. Through the exploration of the specific case of the introduction
These examples verify that though we may not know the outcome of speaking words into actuality, they can be accommodating as we continue to discover life and communication is. Think of it this way, one may never know the purpose of a word if you had not communicated it into existence, and without a word existing one may not know what it pertains to, and that brings about ignorance. Ignorance in return prohibits you from further exploring communication and sometime your own
Feral species have the capacity to cause significant altering impacts upon biodiversity of an ecosystem (Phillips & Shine. 2006). In the endeavor to ‘Europeanize” Australia, alien invasive species have frequently been introduced, resulting in a negative impact upon the ecosystem (Paini. 2004). The renowned cane toad, Rhinella marina was introduced in the effort to eradicate destructive beetle species that were desecrating sugar cane crops in Australia, during 1935 (Department of the Environment. 2010). Following this introduction, cane toad populations have exploded, now covering over 1,000,000 km2, from northern NSW, to Queensland and the Northern Territory (Phillips & Shine. 2006; Department of the Environment. 2010). This cane toad species
There are 6.5 million species of land mammals. Wildlife biologists get the privilege of studying and spending time with these animals as their everyday life. I should be a wildlife biologist so I can study land mammals.
“Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.” – Benjamin Lee Whorf