Optical/Visual Illusions

Illusions Title: Goblin and the Two Faces, Hermann Grid, Dr. Angry and Mr. Smile, Inverted Faces-Thompson’s “The Thatcher Illusion”, Face in the Beans
Date: Oct. 4, 10
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class

           Our mind is capable of fooling us through our perceptions; often referred to as optical or visual illusions. In class, we took a look at some of these optical illusions and tried to find patterns and make conclusions in how our mind processed these images. One optical illusion I looked at, was the Goblin and the Two Faces. The goblin was in black (positive), and to see the face, we had to focus on the white or the negatives of the image. The majority of the class admitted that they saw the goblin before seeing the faces and were not able to see the faces unless pointed out by someone else. However, once someone pointed it out to us, it was impossible to miss again. This could be seen throughout all of the optical illusions. For example, another optical illusion I looked at was the Face in the Beans. The image consisted of many coffee beans in no particular order, all jumbled up together. The description told us that there was a face hidden among these beans. I looked and looked but could not find it. I took a look at the hints the description gave and only then, I was able to see the head peeking through the mixture of coffee beans. However, I realized that when I was explaining this to my friends, I could not miss this man among the coffee beans. I could not go back to the state when I was not able to see the man.

Common optical illusions also included a change in the faces when laid side by side. The ones I could see this happening were Dr. Angry and Mr. Smile and Inverted Faces-Thompson’s “The Thatcher Illusion”. In the optical illusion called Dr. Angry and Mr. Smile, two faces were laid side by side and blur effects were imposed on these two faces to portray a different image. When there was little blur, the left image looked manly and angry while the right image looked happy and calm. However, when the blur effect was added to these images, the right image began to look manly and angry while the right image looked happy and calm. Similarly the illusion called Inverted Faces was very interesting because when laid side by side and upside-down, the faces looked identical. However, when these faces were turned right-side-up, the one on the left looked pretty and happy while the right image looked as if the woman was angry and her face had been distorted.

The last optical illusion I saw was called Hermann Grid. It was an image of black blocks with thick white lines in between them creating intersections which looked like street lines. When I stared at the intersections, I would also see black dots forming in all the other intersections except for the intersection I was staring at. How did this happen? It was no magical intersection that this applied to. Any intersection I stared at, I would see black dots in the other intersections.

Through the study of optical illusions, I was taught that humans often tend to see humans or a face in another object even though it may not be there. Is this because we want to make connections to ourselves physically? I also realized that if we know something has to be there in the image, we unintentionally focus harder and we are more open to new ideas. We may choose to look at the bigger picture or narrow down into details. I found this true in my case as I was looking for the face in the Face in the Beans illusion. We also tended to look at the positives or the dark images rather than the whites. This is why when I saw the Goblin and the Two Faces illusion, the goblin stood out to me more.

But why does our brain make these decisions to interpret images in these manners? Is this a technique related to survival skills? Is it because in real life, many living organisms are not white, but closer to having a color, or being black? And so the brain thinks that if we interpret these positive images, we are more likely to survive? If we were in a forest, and we saw a dark figure moving, we interpret as a threat or possible danger and so we would dodge or try to escape from the situation because we want to live; this is our instinct. Is this why the brain sees the black more than the white? How do we know that the brain does not also process the white, but we just choose to ignore it unintentionally? What are some justifications that can help convince that our brain really does see and focus on darker images more than the white images?

Being fooled by our visual perception through optical illusions, how can we trust that what we are seeing is really there and not another optical illusion? What if our whole world was an illusion? Something we are fooled into thinking is present when it really isn’t there? Some people such as Kelly Clarkson in her new song “Naked Eye” states that “Seeing is believing.” With these optical illusions, can we justify that this statement is false? If we justify this as being false, if seeing is not believing, then what do we believe? What then, becomes the determinant of what we believe?

Try some yourself:



nobeliefs.com



michaelbach.de/ot/lum_herGrid/index.html















For More Check Out: http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/

Taking Account the Possible Errors

Title: Taking Account the Possible Errors
Class: Chemistry IB HL
Category: Other Classes



gmasononline.com



            When writing a lab for science class, we must always think about the sources of errors. When calculating the result of something, we must always determine the absolute error or percentage error of the calculation. We do this so the numbers or the data we present can be as accurate as possible. However, how do we know if our calculations or data is accurate even with the error calculations? Is it possible to take into account all of the errors? How do we know if we have made these errors? If we didn’t make these errors, isn’t it more accurate when we don’t include the error calculations? Is it safe to assume that we have made these errors? Or that our calculations and data are reliable with the errors calculated? Will information ever be reliable? How does one determine whether a source is reliable? With math class, it’s easy to figure out whether our answer is correct or not through the answers in the textbook. However, in reality, there is no answer book. So how do we verify our answers, our decisions, our thoughts? Would it benefit us if we were able to make the correct decisions all the time? How would we know if we are making the correct decisions in the first place?

Lord of the Flies

Title: Lord of the Flies
Author: William Golding
Date: August 31, 2010
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class

fantasticfiction.co.uk

            In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a beast is mentioned. No one knows whether this beast is real or not, but the children claim that they have seen it at night when they were sleeping. However, the leader Jack does not believe them and claims that there is no beast on the island. The children are scared of being on the island without any adults and this fear causes them to think that there is a beast. Because of this strong emotion of fear, they believe that it is there and so they claim that it is true and that they have actually seen it although in reality, they did not. This is an example where a strong emotion (such as fear) causes us to imagine something as being true, in this case being the beast.

            If strong emotions can control our mind to perceive things that are not really there, does it mean that our mind is not able to think clearly when we are having strong emotions? Is our perception unreliable once we start having strong feelings? Are emotions stronger than our strength to control our minds? How capable are we of controlling our own minds? 

Naked Eye by Kelly Clarkson

Title: Naked Eye
Singer: Kelly Clarkson
Category: Song/ Outside of Class

somanymp3s.com

            The song “Naked Eye” by Kelly Clarkson has a few interesting points to make. The song is about a girl realizing and trying to convince her boyfriend that there is no more connection between herself and her boyfriend. She uses the phrase “seeing is believing” and states that she saw the connection and emotions disappearing with her naked eyes.

To some people lyrics may not matter so much and that this is just a song. However, when I heard this song I began to wonder, ‘Is seeing really believing?’ Do we believe everything we see? Yes, we perceive by seeing. It is also true that most of us tend to believe everything we see. However, just because we see it and believe it, does it make this true? We could force ourselves to believe in something as in 1984 when Winston is forced into believing that O’Brien is holding up 5 fingers when he actually sees 4. Does this mean that what we believe in depends on what we want to believe in? And if we believe by seeing, does this mean we see what we want to see? Is it fair for the girl in the song, to say that the connection is lost in her relationship with her boyfriend? She could be forcing herself to believe that this connection is no longer there, but is it true? Was the connection even there in the first place, or did they just believe it was there?

Blindness of Change

Title: Blindness of Change
Date: September 24, 2010
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class

            I never noticed how oblivious we are to change in our lives. When we think about it, it seems very easy to recognize change; however, experiments show that we usually don’t recognize changes even if they are as drastic as changing the person who you are speaking to. In class, we watched a couple of Youtube videos so we could actually see this as being the case. We watched a video where we saw the color of the cards changing along with many other changes. However, the majority of the class only recognized the color change in the cards when there was a drastic change in the clothes the people were wearing, the table cloth on the table, and the backdrop. Blindness of change occurs when we focus on one particular subject and so we miss the other changes going around us. People normally focus selectively and cannot pay attention to many things at once. This is why most of us could only detect one change in the video, because we were focusing on this one change rather than the whole.

            Why is this true when we are able to perceive in eight different ways (visual perception, olfactory perception, cutaneous perception, gustatory perception, auditory perception, kinesthetic perception, vestibular perception, and organic perception)? Shouldn’t we be able to recognize changes simultaneously as we have so many ways of taking in information about our surroundings? What traits determine what change we are able to recognize? If a person who we are talking to changes, is it the change in the person’s clothes that I notice? Or the change in similar traits I shared with the person being swapped? The person’s gender? The body shape?

 What if our senses actually recognize these various changes but we are just not aware of it because our brain is only capable of processing one data at a time? Does this mean that people who claim that they are able to multitask is fooling themselves? Do they say they are able to multitask as an excuse to do what they do for fun, at the same time as doing work?

What if people notice the change, but they are really just scared of the rest of the world disagreeing with them? And so they decide to remain quiet as if they did not notice the change like the others. If this is the case, are people just fooling themselves into thinking that we are only able to focus on one thing at a time? Perhaps in our previous generations, people were able to multitask, but after we began to believe we were only able to focus selectively, perhaps this became a habit and thus now, we believe we are not able to recognize different changes at the same time. Are we really only able to focus on one subject? Or is this just a belief? Will we ever know?

For related videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pklq0bXUaA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDLLf_WCyZ4

A Talk with My Daddy

Title: A Talk with My Daddy
Date: September 26, 2010
Category: Outside of Class

discoveringdad.net

            While eating noodles for lunch, my dad and I began to talk about the color change in the noodles. I hadn’t noticed that the noodles had changed colors from the last time we ordered it from green to white until he pointed this out to me. He didn’t just state this in a neutral tone. He liked the change to white because he believed that noodles should be white, not green. I disagreed and said it didn’t matter what color the noodles were, as long as they were noodles. Trying to convince me that noodles should be white and that everyone thought so, he explained to me that Coca-Cola had once made their cokes white. He told me that this change in color reduced their sales drastically because people believed that coke was supposed to look dark. I tried arguing that I would buy the white coke even if it was a different color, but sadly he eventually won in the end.  

            Should things always remain constant or be susceptible to change? Do we have an exact idea of how certain things should be? And if altered, does this change our idea or how we view the product? Is this how stereotype began? By having a certain image of how things should be, we tend to think of things different to our image as being unusual, strange, or even wrong. Perhaps this is how discrimination began, due to our lack of open-mindedness and because we had an image of certain things being the way they were. Does this mean that we shouldn’t have any ideas about how things are? Wouldn’t that mean that we would be completely without thought? With these questions arouse another –will discrimination ever end if we keep having a certain idea about how things should be? 

Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

Title: Does your language shape how you think?
Author: Guy Deutscher
Publication Company: The New York Times
Publication Date: August 26, 2010
Class: English IB HL
Category: Other Class

colleges.ksu.edu.sa

            This article from the New York Times suggests that language restricts us in what we are forced to think about. Languages are set up in different manners from other languages, and so this causes people to have different habits when speaking to another. This may also account for why people pay attention to different things. For example, in Chinese, there is no past tense or future tense, you just simply use present tense and put the word “yesterday” or “tomorrow” in front of the sentence. However, in Spanish, the verb changes according to when it was put into action. Therefore, people who grew up speaking Spanish may pay more attention to time than the people who grew up speaking Chinese. In the same manner, in some languages, we are forced to think about certain aspects such as time, gender etc. which can shape the way we think in our daily lives.

            But how do we prove this? This may just be a huge generalization, and be completely false, or it could be absolutely correct. How do we know? And also, what about the people who have grown up in other countries all their life? Do they still think in their mother tongue, or do they adapt to new languages? I know I’ve been living in Vietnam for basically my whole life and I rarely think in my mother tongue –Korean. I don’t think in Vietnamese either because my Vietnamese is very limited in what I can express. I think in English because it is the language I am most comfortable with, it’s the language I have been learning in for my whole life. Does this mean that we think in the language we learn in? Does it differ for different people? How will we know if the people are actually thinking about things such as time, or gender of the subject when talking or if it is just a habit they have formed?  Will we ever know the answer to all of this?

            After reading this article, we discussed about the importance of language in our English class. We talked about the significance of language. Language determines what we are able to express and allows us to share our thoughts and knowledge with other people. The more words there are the more effective we are able to communicate. Communication is very important because it allows for a society to build within our population; it lets us connect with other people and interact with one another. However, in the novel 1984 by George Orwell, language is restricted by the government, and the language is constantly being cut down into fewer words, all with good connotations. This restricted the people in how they expressed themselves. They were forced to be optimistic, and forced to praise rather than criticize. As language began to be shortened, they began to lose memories of what other words had meant. So does language really shape how we think? Does it determine what we are capable of thinking about or just how we describe such things? Could we communicate in other ways than using language? Would this be as effective? How would we know?

For more information: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?_r=2&emc=eta1

1984

Title: 1984
Author: George Orwell
Publication Date: 1949
Publication Company: Harcourt Brace & company
Class: English IB HL
Category: Other classes



12sw.wordpress.com



           The book 1984 by George Orwell directly relates to theory of knowledge as Winston (the protagonist of the novel) tries to overthrow the Party by joining the Brotherhood which may or may not exist. When Winston is caught by the Party for trying to overthrow them, Winston is sent to the Ministry of Love to be “cured” into loving and supporting the Party and Big Brother. In Part III of the novel, it states “Anything could be true. The so-called laws of nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. ‘If I wished,’ O’Brien had said, ‘I could float off this floor like a soap bubble.’ Winston worked it out. ‘If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.’…. ‘It doesn’t really happen. We imagine it. It’s hallucination.’….All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens” (Orwell, 229).

            Is this correct? Is reality only in the mind? Is there a world outside our mind? Do we really imagine and hallucinate every second of our life? Does this mean reality is different for every person? We cannot possibly imagine the same exact scenario, can we? How do we know if someone is thinking the same thing we are, and perceiving the world in the same manner we do? Of course, we could ask them. But how do we know the words coming out of their mouths mean the same thing we interpret it to mean? If every word means different things to different people, it makes us question how effective is our communication system? If everything is a hallucination, are we really communicating with another person or is this, also a hallucination and not reality? Does reality even exist? Or is it just a concept that we all believe in? Will we ever know? Is knowing the answer to reality existing outside our minds possible if we can only think within our minds and not anything beyond it?

A Sightless Experience

Title: A Sightless Experience
Date: September 20, 2010.
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class

callcentrehelper.com

            During this field trip to the park nearby our school, we were able to witness what it was like to lose the sense of sight. In pairs, one of us had to be blindfolded and the other person had to guide us through a certain route. The guiding person could not touch us or be in any physical contact with us, he/she had to guide us through his/her voice.

                As a guide, I had the responsibility of guiding my partner and protecting him. I had to constantly talk to him because he depended on me for instructions. Sometimes, this was frustrating because he did not trust me in the beginning and I wanted him to. I thought to myself, ‘Why is it so hard for him to trust me?’ But when we switched roles, I soon found out why –because another person was in full control of my safety and I was not used to being so dependent on someone else. This was why the first couple of steps were the hardest. I could tell he didn’t really trust me yet he still followed my directions because he was forced to; he relied on me. Without being able to see, he could have avoided dangerous situations. There was one moment where he could have almost walked into a tree because for one moment I was not fully focused on him. If he was able to see, he would have avoided this situation because he would see the tree in front of him and would change directions to avoid the tree in his next step.

Through this experience, I was able to once again realize the importance of our ability to see. Being able to see meant that one was able to understand and know what type of situation he/she was in. For example, in the dangerous situation, because he was not able to see, he did not know or understand why he had to change directions. He just did it because he trusted that what I was saying would benefit him in some way. In addition to this, it would be difficult to describe certain things in daily life such as a cat, or riding a bike because the blind person would have never been able to witness these things through sight. We could describe these things to them but the blind person would not be able to visualize these things perfectly. For example, if I was to describe a cat, I could say that they have large eyes, a triangular nose with two nostrils, whiskers, lots of fur, when fully-grown about 70cm long and so on. However, these blind people would not know that tigers and lions are also considered cats because they look alike. Of course again, someone could the blind people these information but it wouldn’t be the same as seeing cats in real life. Likewise, if I was to describe riding a bike, the blind person would not necessarily think of bike rides the same way as I do. This is true because riding a bike varies from one person to another. For example, if I was a bad bike rider, I could describe the bike ride as being wobbly and scary. On the other hand, if I was a great bike rider, I would describe the bike rides as being exciting, fast, and windy. The blind people would not be able to know what type of bike rider they are because bike riding without the ability to see can be very dangerous, even fatal if one was in a bad accident.

I realized that when I was guiding my partner, I thought this would be a fairly simple task (following the instructions of my partner). Yes, this was true; following instructions was simple. The difficult part was in trusting my partner. When I had to wear the blindfold, my heart started pounding, and my steps were smaller and were more hesitant than my original walk. This experience forced me to trust my partner because he was the only one I could rely on for direction. In the beginning, I could not trust him. I thought he would walk me into a tree, and so I became paranoid. I began to rely on my other senses-my hands and feet to feel my surroundings and my ears to hear my guide’s voice. For example, I felt the pavement under my foot to make sure I was going in the right direction and I reached out my arms so I could prevent myself from walking into a tree.  I realized sometimes we take things for granted. We take the experiences we see, for granted. People who are blind don’t get this experience and they must live by trusting, and overcoming paranoia.

How do these people know who to trust? Who are reliable? The main source of their knowledge is other people as they cannot rely on their eyesight. Are their sources reliable? Is depending on other people more reliable than if they were to see it themselves? I think that this is possible, as it can avoid them from having optical illusions, or hallucinations; but not entirely, as they would be able to understand critically if they were able to see it for themselves. I think the loss of eyesight can mean a loss of critical thinking. One is not able to observe and think for themselves; instead, they must rely on other people to tell them what to think and therefore know to be true. But do we necessarily know something is true just by thinking about it and hearing about it? Not necessarily. We could think about unicorns having one horn, and having similar features as a horse, but do we know they are true in reality? But if we heard that unicorns existed from someone, would it be true? Because blind people learn and know information through hearing from other people, does that mean their knowledge is not necessarily reliable? But then again, we also depend on knowledge from other people. Does that mean our knowledge is not necessarily reliable and true? How do we know whether the information is reliable or not?

Plato’s Cave

Title: Plato’s Cave
Date: September 22, 2010
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class

mlahanas.de

            In class, we illustrated Plato’s idea of the realm of being vs. empirical world. A few students (who were supposed to be locked up in a cave since they were born) had to try and figure out what was happening as they saw silhouettes of movements on the cave wall. Some of them were able to move around in order to gain a deeper understanding of what was going on. Some are led to see the sunlight as they explore. When they come to share what they’ve seen with the others, the others deny this as being true. This is because they grew up only knowing the cave, and nothing else. The thought of another world existing outside a cave was way beyond their thoughts and so they thought it was better to consider this nonsense. They are practicing pragmatic theory because they think they will benefit if they don’t think this is true, and so they don’t believe that there is another world beyond the cave.

            This simulation relates to Plato’s idea of the realm of being and the empirical world. The realm of being was represented by the sunlight, the world outside the cave, the reality. Plato considered the realm of being to be eternal, everlasting and unchanging. Plato also thought that we were all fooled by our senses and in reality, things are always changing. Sometimes I agree with Plato, ‘What if we are fooled by our senses?’ What if the keyboard I am typing on right now, is not really there? I could just be thinking that it is there, and I think hard enough that I believe it’s there and so I believe I am touching it and typing on it right now. This is possible, but how will we know if this is the case? Or could my senses just be limited? What if this keyboard was just a tiny bit of something enormous? What if I was one of the blind men in “The Six Blind Men and the Elephant” story? This again, is possible. Like Plato, we could think that our world is concrete, and eternal, but like the movie “Inception”, our world could be just one level of our dreams, and we are just being fooled by our senses. Perhaps, but because we believe this world is real, and unchanging, we try to make the best of it and I fear that if we believe that our world is always changing, we will all give up. Does this mean I’m practicing pragmatic theory and denying reality? Or does my thinking correspond to reality? Can we ever know and how do we know if this is the case?

Three Theories of Truth

Title: Three Theories of Truth
Author: Bertrand Russell, Bland Blanshard, C.S. Peirce, William James, James Dewey
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class



leggmason.com



            The authors have come to conclude that there are three theories of truth-correspondence theory, coherence theory and pragmatic theory. They state that we use these theories to categorize what we think to be true as actually being true or just a thought. Correspondence theory of truth includes information we are able to sense and measure. Russell states that because we are able to sense and observe these things, they are correspondent to reality and therefore be true. Blanshard’s idea of the coherence theory of truth states that if there are true arguments supporting a new idea, the new idea must be true. It uses logic to explain why it is true and therefore uses rational thinking. It is frequently used in subjects such as math and science to explain why such theories are true.  Philosophers supporting the pragmatic theory of truth such as Peirce, James and Dewey state that this theory explains things as being true if people want to believe it as being true. We see pragmatic theory being practiced in our daily activities. Take medicine for example. People take medicine because they think that it will cure them. But does it really? Or do they think it works because they want it to work and because of this, they believe that it works? Is it really the medicine that cured them? Or do they just feel better because they believe that the medicine has cured them?

            All of these theories are practiced throughout our lives whether we are aware of it or not. But do all of these theories necessarily all truth? Is it truth at all? What is truth? The definition of the word “truth” is as follows: a fact that has been verified. How do we know if something is necessarily true? How do we know the verification of the truth is valid? Are these theories enough to know whether something is true or not? Is the word “truth” just an idea or does it really exist?

The Elephant and the Six Blind Men

Title: The Elephant and the Six Blind Men
Book: Fifty Famous Stories Retold
Author: James Baldwin
Date: September 6, 2010
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class

ereads.com



            There are many variations of this story but the basic plot line remains constant with six blind men feeling a different part of the elephant and concluding what an elephant must be like. One states that it is like a fan (touching its ears); another man states that an elephant is like a wall (touching the elephant’s side), another claims that it is like a spear (feeling the tusks). Another disagreed and said the elephant was similar to a snake because he felt the trunk, but another argued that it was like a tree feeling its legs. The last man thought the others were all mistaken, and that the elephant was clearly like a rope by touching its tail. In the end, everyone had their own ideas about what an elephant was like and had their own vision of what it would look like.

            Everyone has their own opinions and their own ways of perceiving something. How they develop their ideas about a certain object depends on their experience. If the six men combined all of their ideas, they would be able to figure out what an elephant was really like. In this sense, we should be open to new ideas and try to collaborate with another, instead of arguing that one was right over the other. Details are important when collaborating, but we should be open to the big picture. In a way, knowledge is like a puzzle. We must put all the possible perceptions together in order to see the whole picture, rather than limiting our thought to our own opinions. However, one must wonder, ‘When will the puzzle ever be complete?’ How will we know that we are taking in the big picture, that the puzzle is complete? Is knowledge ever absolute, unchangeable? If we’re always open to ideas, doesn’t this mean that our knowledge of the certain subject is always growing and never final? How will we account for the thoughts that are nonsense, that we know is false? After all, they are all still perceptions. How do we know what is false?  

Building a Nation of Know-Nothings

Title: Building a Nation of Know-Nothings
Author: Timothy Egan
Publication date: August 25, 2010, 8:30 pm
Publication organization: New York Times
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class

weblogs.cltv.com

            This article from the New York Times states that many of the Americans believe that Obama is not a U.S. citizen but instead, a Muslim. Most of the people believing in this are Republicans who were for McCain during the election. Although McCain has disproved this idea, many continue to believe this as being true. This article suggests that this is due to the media’s influence. It points out that the media is to blame for this rapidly spread idea as many people depend on the media as one of their source of knowledge. Although Obama clearly states that he is an American, and there is a birth certificate available as proof, many still believe he is not an American citizen and that he is a Muslim instead.

            To these people, is media their main source of knowledge? I begin to wonder why it is so hard for them to believe Obama when there is a birth certificate to explain that he was born in the United States. Is it because our technologies have improved so much that they think that the birth certificate is fake? Or is it because they don’t want to believe it and so they come up with reasons that support their ideas? They are practicing the pragmatic theory. Because believing that Obama is a Muslim will make them feel secure in the sense that they will be able to think that Obama is ineligible to become the president of the United States, they will believe it. Thus, they believe this to be true. But we, who also believe that Obama is American, could also be practicing pragmatic truth. We want to believe that Obama is American. We believe this because it will make us feel like we are right and the others are wrong. If everyone practices pragmatic theory, how will we ever know which is true? With everyone wanting to believe that they are correct, is it possible to know which is true? Is truth all opinions? If so, should they really be considered as something that is true? 

Jaw-dropping Movie: Inception

Title: Inception
Director: Christopher Nolan
Main actors: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page
Genre: Action, Mystery, ThrillerDate watched: 21 August 2010
Place: Lotte Mart, Phu My Hung, HCMC, Vietnam
Category: Outside of Class

“Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.” –Cobb –

“You keep telling yourself what you know. But what do you believe? What do you feel?” –Mal –

Inception is a movie about reality and dreams. Cobb, the main character in this film has a unique skill of stealing secrets using other people’s dreams. Although this skill is very valuable, it has cost him his loved ones—his children and his wife, Mal. However, he is given an opportunity by Saito to have his life back, to see his children again and to be with them again if he could plant an idea into his rival’s mind. To achieve this, he must go into three levels of dreams and come back to reality with a given amount of time. His projections (Mal) act as the obstacles in this “maze” created by the dream architect. This movie questions whether our life is real or if it is all a dream that we are not able to escape from. If it is all a dream, who are the dream-makers, the architects of our dreams? If it is all a dream, who are the projections? Are we in the limbo right now? These are questions that the movie makes us think about. The movie leaves the audience to question whether Cobb is still in a dream, or if he is back to reality.

I think that in the end, Cobb is back to reality. I think this is true because the totem (that allows him to determine whether he is in a dream or reality), had lost its balance and was on the verge of toppling over. However, it may just be my desire for the ending to be the reality that I try and come up with reasons why I think this is true.

Because dreams feel so real when they are happening, I don’t think there is a way of knowing whether our life is a dream or a reality unless we wake up from this big dream. However I come to wonder, ‘What happens when we fall asleep in our life, do we go into another level of dreams? Or do we come back to reality? What is reality itself? How should reality be defined?’ I think the life we are living in is reality, but I don’t think there is any way of knowing this is true. It cannot be proven, because to be proven, we should know the difference between reality and dreams. Identifying this difference would essentially answer the original question of whether our life is a dream or reality. Like Nagal said in his article “How do we know what we know?” it is all a big loop.  Trying to answer the question of reality and dreams is a cycle; a cycle which will not lead to answers, but lead us back to the question itself.

The Mouse Who Ate The Cheese

Title: The Mouse who ate the Cheese and Those Who Believed, Those Who Knew, Those Who Doubted
Author: Dr. Stuart Fowler, Educational Consultant, Penrith, Melbourne, Australia
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class



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This article was about a guy at a party (claiming he was not hallucinating or drunk), seeing a mouse eat the cheese. His friends who know what type of person he is, believes him because they do not think he would lie to them and so they trust them. However, the guy hosting the party doubts Bill (the guy who claims to have seen the mouse eat the cheese) and says there are no mouse in his house. All of these characters have their reasons for thinking/believing what they think/believe.

As I read this article, many questions popped into my mind. First of all, how did Bill know he was not hallucinating or that he was not drunk? Most people are not aware of when they are drunk or hallucinating, instead they believe what they claim to see. Here, Bill is doing the same thing. He claims to have seen the mouse eating the cheese but he could have easily been hallucinating or drunk. He does not know he is not hallucinating or that he is not drunk, he believes this to be true.

Another question that came up as I read this article was, how did his friends (Virginia Turner, Adrian Small) know that what Bill had said was reliable? Like I said, he could be hallucinating, or lying, or claiming what he assumed to be true. How did they know he was speaking the truth? Is trust enough to justify one’s belief as being true?

With Bill’s claim, I came to wonder, ‘How does he know that there are no mice in his apartment?’ Does he really know this? Or is he simply trying to convince himself of this being true? He uses experience to justify his thought. He states that he had exterminators come and check his house frequently. He relies on these people to have made sure there are no mice in his house. But then, how does he know his money is being used effectively? The exterminators could have pretended to check cautiously, or could have even pretended to spray toxic liquids in order to kill the mice when it was simply water. These are all possibilities.

All of the characters in this article use different ways of justifying their thoughts and beliefs. Bill uses empirical reasoning (observation) while Virginia and Adrian use rational reasoning (trust) to justify their beliefs. Both of the reasonings are effective and one is not better than the other. Some may argue that empirical is more reliable because we can justify it with what we saw. But then, how do we know what we saw? How do we know we were not hallucinating? We weren’t imagining? We can’t. We just need to believe what we know and from there, we can proceed in learning and believing and questioning and living life.

The Beginner's Mind

Title: The Dancing WuLi Masters, an Overview of the New Physics – Beginner’s Mind
Author: Gary Zukav
Publication Info: Atlanta International School
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class



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            The Beginner’s Mind explores the concept of nonsense. It asks us to think about how we classify something as being nonsense. Zukav states that what one person considers as nonsense, is different to what another person thinks is nonsense. Zukav gives an example of a Zen story. Tea is poured into a cup until it overflows and the person continued. The person pouring the cup stated “‘Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?’” (Zukav 26). This example shows how we must empty our minds and be open to new ideas, and all possibilities. He also gives an example of a man thinking that he is a football. Zukav argued that this was pure nonsense because he was the only one who viewed himself as a football. However, the man thought everyone else’s thoughts were nonsense because he believed that he truly was a football.

            In the first example, it states that we must destroy all our previous thoughts, assumptions, and perceptions. However, if this was always necessary, how will we know anything? Is the Zen the state of not knowing anything and therefore being open to all possibilities rather than knowing that something is nonsense? Once we learn something new by having the beginner’s mind, we would have to empty our minds again and become a beginner again. Therefore, we wouldn’t have any progression as a learner. Linking the two examples together, if we had the beginner’s mind, would we view and believe the man as being a football because we have no assumptions, no thoughts and no perception? How do we know that he is not a football? Is majority always correct? Not necessarily, the majority previously thought the world was flat but they were not correct. How do we know that we do not believe in something that is nonsense right now? Does it all lead to what we have faith in? If so, what determines what we should believe in, what we should have faith in? If this is all true, does nonsense really exist or is it just what we do not believe in?

How Do We Know Anything?

Author: Nagel, Thomas.

Publication info: What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Oxford UD, 1987.

Class: Theory of Knowledge

Category: In class
 



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                Nagel states that we cannot know whether we are living in the real world because we only know what is inside our brain. We rely on our senses and experience to explain the physical world but we cannot be sure whether we are living in the physical world. Nagel states that everything exists in our mind. We cannot know whether we are living in the physical world because there is a possibility that everything is a dream. It is possible that we are living in a dream right now.



            This article relates to the movie “Inception” in the sense that it brings up a point about our lives possibly being a giant dream. We cannot be sure which is the real world—our dream when we lie in the bed and sleep, or the world we wake up in or neither. How do we know that the physical world is not our dreams? How do we know that when we wake up from the dream, we are now experiencing the physical world? Is there a way to figure this out? Or is it like Nagel said, impossible to figure this out because we only know what’s in our mind?



            It’s sort of frightening to think that we could be living a life full of never-ending dreams. There is a possibility of our lives being as how “Inception” shows us, waking up and dreaming continuously. We could all be confused which world is the “real” world because we cannot really know for sure. We cannot be certain because there are so many possibilities. We believe that the world we wake up from is the real world because we want it to be. We want to have a sense of stability in our lives. Therefore, we’re practicing pragmatic theory. We believe that there is a real world, because it benefits us by giving us a form of stability in our lives, something we can build our lives on.



Personality Test

Title: Know Thyself—gnōthi sauton
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class

            We think we know who we are, but do we really? In our theory of knowledge class, we took a personality test from two sites, www.humanmetrics.com and www.kisa.ca/personality/. Before we took these tests, we had to write a short paragraph of who we thought we are. I wrote that I considered myself to be an outgoing and susceptible person, easily influenced by the people I am surrounded by. I find happiness when I know I am of service to other people and consider other’s opinions before mine which works as both an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage would be that because of this, I am a caring person but the disadvantage would be that I am susceptible to other people’s judgments and thoughts. People tell me I care too much about what other people think and so I am easily hurt. I know who I am through what other people tell me. For example, because my friends tell me I care too much about what other people think, I know I am a sensitive and susceptible person.

             With this idea of my personality in mind, I took these personality tests. Both of these tests concluded that I had the personality trait of ESFJ. The letters stand for extroverted sensing, feeling and judging. This meant that I was an extrovert, meaning that I was outgoing but I still valued feelings and is the type of person who go by the rules and rely on facts. I am the person who depends on empirical knowledge; I like to see it to believe it or sense it with the other four senses that I have. Because the personality tests matched my understanding of who I am, I believe that I have a clear idea of who I am. However, I still wonder, is this who I really am? Could this personality be a mask that I pretend to be because I’m afraid to show the others who I really am? If this is a mask, have I become too attached to it that I have begun to think that this mask of personality is the true ‘me’? How do I really know? Are these test taking sites reliable? With all these questions in mind, I come to think, ‘so do I really know who I really am? Or do I just think I know?’ Do we ever really know who we are? Or do we just believe in our thoughts?