My admiration

Someone that occupies a big part of my life and that influences me in every part of it is my best friend Catherine. She is so strong of a person that I truly admire her. When I go back to Montreal, I always go to her house obviously and just the way she acts is so mature and funny. I am my own person but I do admire people that have a positive influence on me. I also admire my mom because she works a lot for what she wants and that is the women I want to become in life. She is smart and independent, all I wish for my future.

Oceane Lefebvre
Mr Dickey
Theory of Knowledge
22/11/13

Does artificial intelligence have emotion(s)?

My answer to that is NO. I think that an artificial intelligence is programmed to answer to certain type of questions, but does not think the way a human being would think. As persons, we know our emotions because we feel them. We directly feel if we are sad or happy because our direct experiential knowledge leads us to this conclusion. Even though it is possible to be wrong about the way we feel, it is more likely to be accurate then an artificial mind. I had a conversation with the chat machine, and I could see that her answer to my questions were repetitively the same. I decided to see how she would react if I insulted her, so I wrote a really mean word and she replied by saying; "You do not speak with respect. Thanks and you are a delightful person too. No I am a robot not a dog." I then said; "I love you!" She answered; "Thanks I like you a lot too." Normally, a human would feel very offended and would have a lot of hate towards me, but the chat machine told me right after I insulted her that she loved me which showed that artificial intelligence do no have real emotions. When I asked her how she was, she always answered that she was fine and had no other words to described the way she felt."Our ability to give names to emotions and speak of them with others indicates an emotional life shared with others."(157) This quote from the packet Emotion as a way of knowing, shows that in order to be able to  process and understand our emotion,we need a certain interaction between humans. Emotions are not just identified with our personal experiences. We use our shared knowledge of language as we name our emotion and our knowledge through sense perception and reason when we want to explain how and why we feel a certain way. It takes a lot more than artificial intelligence to be able to intellectually reflect through ways of knowing related to our emotions. A simple chat machine does not have the ability to interact with humans like we do and to identify the way we feel. "Knowing our own emotions, as personal knowledge, involves the knowledge we share with others."(156) This quote from the packet proves the essentiality of human interaction in order to develop and to acquire an emotion. 

To what extent does chemistry influence love?

I think humans get physical attraction towards a person before they get to know each other. An example of one of the chemicals that our body releases when we feel joy and excitement is Norepinephrine. It makes our heart race when we get exited from something, usually when we see someone that we find very handsome. "High level of Norepinephrine in the brain increases the experience of joy and reduces appetite", according to Dina Kudasheva, biological BV. When we fall in love, the cliché is to have a lack of appetite and to feel extreme joy. A bunch of chemicals are released in our brain when we feel instant joy. Chemical love is the feeling of being in love with someone's appearance basically. In conclusion, chemistry does influence love because we all get in love with someone we mostly find attractive, but it does not determine the complexity of how we feel about that person. 

I chose the first quote;" We think an name in one world, we live and feel in another (Marcel Proust). 

A: In this quote, I think the author intended to say that we have in ourselves two opposite world which together forms a normal human being. The world where we think is where reality and personal knowledge take place. The world where we live and feel is where our shared knowledge take place. It is where we share our emotions and our ideas with others, and where love occurs. We most of the time become a completely different persons when it comes to love. 

B: I completely agree with this quotation because as much as we can be serious and hard worker in our first world, we completely let it out and dream about anything in our second world. I think that both worlds united create a perfect balance of life.The fact that he mentioned two worlds for two different things is a good observation because humans tend to separate the two worlds, for example between work and love or even between seriousness in the first world and craziness in the second world. 

C: For example, when I'm in school, I am serious in class and I am not the crazy loud person that I am at home. I do not talk about my feelings in class when I am working, but after school when I am out of my rational world. I separate my two worlds to be able to learn in class, and to be joyful out of school. Another example would be when I am with my friends VS when I am with my teacher. 

Language

To have further information about how a child acquire a language, go check the TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html

1. In the TED talk, the real life situation is made in Deb Roy's house. It is an observation that has been made on his baby boy to understand how fast he could learn a word, a language. It created the idea that language connected to events to provide commun ground for language. He began five years ago to place cameras all around his house that would create a bird view of each room and that would capture every moments of his child's life. It is quite fascinating to be able to understand the condition in which a child is able to learn a word. 

2. What are the knowledge claims being made?

Roy claims that he discovered new ways of thinking about language acquisition.

One of the knowledge claim being made by Deb Roy is that we learn from our linguistic environment, our surrounding basically. He is also claiming that the media is influencing us with the situation a word is in and we that we most of the time relate that specific word to the situation the media is showing us. He also claims that child learn faster the word that relates to a movement.

3. For those claims being made, multiple ways of knowing are uses. We use our body language to define a word and to have a better understanding of its meaning. We also use communication as a way of knowing because the more we tell a word, the more we remember it and we associate it to the situation that the word has been told. 

4. The shared knowledge was mostly used because their knowledge of the language got transmitted to the child. The words said to their kid where the ones that he then was able to pronounce, like the word water. It then gave the kid personal knowledge of the language. It created personal knowledge to the child who assimilated those words to the place in the house or depending on the situation the words were place in, which enlightened him to more conclusion of their meanings.

5. To what extend are our senses essential to learn a language?

To what extend is the methodology of the experiment accurate in terms of validity?

6. To what extend can the observation made on Deb's child could be accurate in terms of generalization?

130-140 of the packet

To what extent does Chomsky and Skinner play a role in language?

- Chomsky and Skinner play a role in language because they both created a theory that contribute to our shared knowledge and how we learn language. Skinner theory made the assumption that language was learn trough reinforcement. He categorized language as a form of behaviour emphasizing on imitation, practice, and correction, according to the packet. Chromsky developed his idea on an explanation of language learning that opposed to Skinner's idea. He said that human's capacity of learning a language is something that is instinctively in us humans. He argued that children do not imitate an adult, but construct the language with grammatical patterns that he have heard. Those two theory implicated humans into more profound thinking about how a child learn a language.

Do you think animals have a language? Why or why not?

- I do think animals have their own way of communicating but is simply in a different form then humans. We as humans are able to communicate with sound and gesture which is similar to the way animals communicate. Animals use different behavior that describe certain thing instead of saying it in words. For example, a dog will mark his territory with their urine, according to the packet. Animal still don't have the same capacities of communication that humans have so their way of communicating stays pretty simple and limited.

How is language ambiguous?

- Language is ambiguous because some word has connotative and denotative meanings. Some words simply have different meanings then what we could think. A denotative word would be rose, meaning the flower, but its connotative meaning would be the colour rose. Ambiguity is the complexity of words and explains how we can mislead the meaning of a word.

According to your reading what is the importance of signs?

- A sign is essential to communicate something without talking. For example, a sign on the road that tells you to stop. The only bad thing about signs is that to understand it, we have to know what it represents and its meaning. We can easily be mislead with a sign. A sign is something that we learn to know its meaning. Signs are an easy way to communicate even though humans cannot know what they mean before they actually learn them. When we talk about sign language for deaf people, we realize how important signs are. They become a new way of communication with humans.

What is the relationship between words and symbols?

- Words are essential to recognize a symbol because if there is rocks on a symbol and you don't know what a rock is, then it is impossible to know the meaning of this particular symbol. The connection between words and symbols gives us a larger possibilities of meanings. A word can have different meanings, but a symbols goes pretty strait forwards.

Is Sign Language an actual language? Why or why not?

- Sign language is an actual language because it is recognize as a way of communication within individuals. We use movement to express a word. If it makes humans understand each other, then it is consider as a language.

Deduction vs Induction

Between deduction and induction, I trust more deduction because in inductive reasoning, errors of thinking can occur.  In induction, we take generalization and gather information based on them.The information we get from inductive reasoning makes us gain new knowledge.   On the other hand,  deductive reasoning is more useful to have accurate data. Deductive reasoning is taking the information we already know that creates conclusion that you did not realize before.

Journal Reflective Writing - 5. Sense Perception and 6. Memory as a Way of Knowing

It is pretty interesting to realize that we use our memory, our perception and our senses to recreate appearance and shapes. "Through our memories, we carry with us the knowledge we are gaining" (97), which means that it is the main source of our knowledge. Our memory is not 100% reliable when we think about it because it cannot recreate what we see precisely and accurately. It makes me wonder if we should or should not trust our memory. It is quite fascinating to realize that our memory does not work like a video camera like I thought it did. Therefore, our perception plays an important role into what we see but can also be deceiving. What we perceive is not always reliable and can misled our memory. Our sense perception also make a huge difference in what we see and believe."Sense perception moreover, provokes many of our most intriguing questions of what we know and how we know it" (80). Our senses basically are used to explain what we know. Humans uses their five senses to create a larger area of knowledge. In the pictures of the horses, sight was used. We cannot have a precise idea of the world without at least one of those senses. Of course nowadays, a lot of people that are missing one of those use different technics to still be able to live and understand life as it is. 

The two questions I have from the reading are: 

To what extend does inductive reasoning provide explanations of generality? 

To what extend can our interpretations of the way we perceive the world can lead to causal inferences?

KQ: To what extent do our senses give us knowledge of the world as it really is?

Our five senses; Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch and Smell are what forms a memory. They are essential to our everyday life. They create a better understanding of the world. We learn more through our senses by listening to new music that have mark the history for example or even by looking in a museum  we learn more about our life and our place on Earth. Also, most people believe what they see. They need proves and only trust themselves. On page 80, it is telling us that our senses are the basis of our life style and that they provoke many questions of what we know and how we know it. 
Personally, my senses are guiding me, giving me more knowledge everyday. What I see in some places is exceptionally devastating for me. But, as sad has it can be, it teaches me lessons and other visions of the world. I get more open-minded! Everything that I know is based on my senses. 

 How do we know through memory?


Today, I have a psychology test and I am studying the subject since monday. My earliest memory is my vocabulary words. 

Our memory is selective. We remember what we think is important. I am aware about the moments of my life that I don't remember about. For example, what I did in my math class when I was in middle school is completely out of my mind right now. Or even something that my teachers tell me about a lesson and sometimes it happen that I listen but I don't register the information because I don't pay enough attention to what he or she is saying. 

I keep a lot of photographs, written messages, and personal objects from the past. I keep them into a box that contains all of my memories. My birthday cards from when I was a kid, photographies of my friends and my family, CDs of a ballet show I did when I was 10. All sort of things that would make me remember my past. I do not preserve bad memories because I don't thing they are worth remembering. I love to go back and see how I use to be, what I did, what people wrote me. I even have a letter that my dad wrote for my 10th anniversary about how he think I will be when I am 16 years old. He certainly did not plan for me to be in Africa. Those are just important souvenir that I want to hold on to. It is important because usually when I look into that box, all sort of emotion comes to me by looking at those memories that are special and significative to me. I do not think that my interpretations of the present and your choices for the future is influenced by my past memories. I rather think that my decisions are influenced my what I live now. I learn everyday and have a new interpretation of thing because I acquire more and more knowledge. My past memories were in Canada and I have changed a lot since I'm in Dakar so directly, we can see that nothing corresponding to my past memories influenced who I am and who I want to be. I surly have knowledge from my past but I did not learn as much as now. I was in my own world in my little city. I was not as open to new perspectives then in Dakar. I think I became a better person by living this experience. New memories were created and influenced my decisions in life. I don't think and see thing the same way as I use to. 

Memory and trauma: child soldiers

The definition of a child soldier is any child, boy or girl, under 18 who is part of a any armed forces.  It is a cheap and expandable weapon. Humans use children because they are easy to catch and to manipulate. 

It is a concert to force child to participate in wars because they are too young and innocent. All kids aged less then 18 should not be in that kind of environment. It is totally unethical and against human's rights. 

More than 300 000 children are presently involved in conflicts worldwide. International conventions are agreements used with treaty between countries stating children's right. There is a lot of conventions working to accomplish this goal such as Amnesty International, Unicef, the UN, ICRC and many others.

KQ: To what extend are child soldiers used in a war context?

Is it wrong for children to be recruited into armed conflict? If so, why?

- Yes it is extremely wrong for a child to be recruited because a child does not have the same ability to defend himself in any comparison to an adult. They are easily manipulated which makes them even more vulnerable. They are lead to a life where deaths and violence is everywhere. It is against child rights!

Who and what determines what 'childhood' is and when it ends? 

- Childhood is the part of a child's life where everything should be about imagination and happiness. Each society determines how a child is supposed to live and what he is supposed to do. In the world, they is probably different view about that subject. Young children do not have the same maturity then an 18 years old adult. The government determine the legal age to become an adult but in my opinion, once the maturity is acquire, you are no longer in your childhood.

To what extend could history be called 'the collective memory of the past'?

- Because our history is based on assumption. Whether they are real or not, nobody knows. Historian constructed history based on what the previous historian remembered and wrote down for the future generations. History cannot be precise and neither can a memory. 

Discussion Activity- Shared Remembrance

In my society in Canada, there is a monument that was created to remember the National War of 1914-1918.

Link to the image: http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/gatordawg/gatordawg1003/gatordawg100300015/6661041-the-canadian-national-war-memorial-statue-at-the-tomb-of-the-unknown-soldier-in-ottawa-ontario-canad.jpg

On the monument, we can see soldiers on horses at the bottom of it and on top angels encouraging them. The date of the begging and the end of the war is also written on the side of the monument. It is symbolizing the sacrifice made by every Canadian who has died for their country. The monuments represent sad memories because it bring back the fact that so many people died during this war. 

Ceremonies of remembrance preserve the shared knowledge of the society because everyone has their own way to remember something. We all have different views of our memories. We either remember person or an event differently. 

Collective memory is a kind of memory that is shared within a group of people. It is a souvenir that everyone remember the same way. For example, someone could remember the hair color of the departed person and everyone will remember the same color as well.

Our remembrances of the past is only relevant to our understanding of the past because our brain is visualizing what we perceived from it. 

Commemoration are made to remember someone or something that marked the past. It is made so we don't forget those people or event that have marked history. Commemorations helps the population remember not to do the same mistakes.

Our knowledge of history is important for decision-making of the present because we learn from what already happened so human don't do it again. 

Overview Subjectivity and objectivity

Language: Objectivity

Sense Perception: Subjectivity

Emotions: Subjectivity

Reason: Subjectivity

Imagination: Subjectivity

Intuition: Subjectivity

Faith: Objectivity

Memory: Subjectivity

In overall, I think that we use a lot subjectivity in our everyday life. We use our 8 ways of knowing on a daily basis. Consciously or unconsciously, they are always there. Our ways of knowing can be influenced my the society too. 

Math: Objectivity

Arts: Subjectivity

Ethics: Objectivity

History: Objectivity

Natural Sciences: Subjectivity

Human Sciences: Objectivity

Religious Knowledge: Subjectivity

Indigenous Knowledge: Subjectivity

Subjectivity interacts in everything that can be perceived in our own way through our ways of knowing. To what extend can our subjectivity affect our way of thinking and viewing the world?

Objectivity interacts with everything that has a precise and definite answer. 2+2 equal 4, and can only equal 4. 

To what extend does subjectivity is based on objectivity?

The spectrum does become more complex. 

Sense Perception and Me

Today, the most interesting piece of knowledge I learned was from the Ted talks by Robert Legato. It was really interesting to learn how professionals can replicate what the viewer remember from a certain event. How what we see and react to is a complete falsehood. Movie directors  use different technics that we would never think of to film it. Our perception of movies and the way they are been created is something completely different then what we see. 

Perception Test

Perception tests: 

On Test my Brain site, I did the Famous Faces test. The site showed me famous faces with hair removed and I had to identify them. I scored 6 out of 9.12 which is below average. I agree with my result but the fact that the celebrities showed were only American people influenced my results since I am from an other country and I don't know all the famous stars in America. I feel that in the Understanding Results part, they did not tell me the reasons of my score. The fact that I know some celebrities is from movies, media and magazines. 

On the Lab in the Wild site, I did the Test your social intelligence test. In this test, they are trying to see if the ability to recognize emotions of others vary across cultures. They showed me 37 pictures showing just the eyes part of people's faces. Then, I had to guess what emotion these eyes were showing. They gave me four words that defined an emotion and I had to choose the one that corresponded to the emotion in the eyes. Since I am not a native English speaker, it was hard for me to understand every words there was so my results could have been influenced by that. My result was 24 out of 36. The average result for adult population is 26 out of 36. I disagree with my result because they did not give me a language choice for this test which could have be better for me. In overall, I think that since I did not understand every words, I had a pretty good score. My perception of emotion helped me a lot to recognize the good emotions through eyes.