Author: Mr. Lakhaney

TOK Teacher

Can Moral Disputes Be Resolved?

July 19, 2015

An interesting article that approaches this question by examining the role of religious dictates, moral philosophies, reason, natural science among other point of view.

“Moral disputes seem intractable — more intractable than other disputes. Take an example of a moral position that most of us would consider obvious: Honor killing is wrong. But honor killing has its supporters. Anyone who suggests that we can compromise with its supporters on the matter misunderstands the nature of this type of disagreement. It’s absolute. One party has to be right. Us. So why can’t we convince those who hold the opposite view?”

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/can-moral-disputes-be-resolved/

Amazonian Tribe Creates First Encyclopedia of Indigenous Medicine

July 13, 2015

What does this article tell us about indigenous knowledge systems? Must this knowledge be written in a western style encyclopedia to be accepted as “scientific”?

“In the farthest reaches of the Amazon rainforest, the last remaining elder shamans of the Matsés tribe came together in a quest to save their ancestral knowledge from the precipice of extinction. The gathering, held in May in a remote village on the frontier divide of Perú and Brazil, concluded over two years work and culminated in the production of the first Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia ever written by an Amazonian tribe. The 500-page repository details medicinal plants used by Matsés healers for a diversity of ailments.

“For centuries, Amazonian peoples passed on through oral tradition an accumulated wealth of knowledge of the natural world. Now with cultural change destabilizing even the most isolated societies, that knowledge is rapidly disappearing. For the Matsés tribe, outside contact occurred only within the past half century and the healers had already mastered their knowledge before being told it was useless by missionaries and others. As a result of these outside influences, the remaining elders, now all over 60 years old, have no apprentices among the younger Matsés generations. Their ancestral knowledge was poised to be lost forever.”

http://www.the-open-mind.com/amazonian-tribe-creates-first-encyclopedia-of-indigenous-medicine/

Sorry, Pluto: You’re really not a planet

July 13, 2015

What does this article tell us about the roles of definitions and language in the natural sciences?

“What finally led the International Astronomical Union to reconsider Pluto’s status was Brown’s discovery of another Kuiper belt object, Eris, that was actually a bit more massive than Pluto. Aware that this would probably just be the first of many, the IAU voted to approve a new definition that would eliminate all of these objects from the list of planets — rather than continue to add more and more planets in future years.”

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/16/8420813/pluto-not-a-planet

How can we fix unconscious racism?

July 8, 2015

“Racial prejudice has its roots in children’s natural drive to carve the world up into categories. Can research do anything to fix this?

“Racist stereotypes, at their root, come from quite a fundamental learning mechanism. Humans are able to learn and adapt so quickly because they are excellent at making generalisations about the world based on very limited experience. Take dogs, for example – a toddler might reasonably conclude after meeting just two or three that all dogs are furry, bark and have tails that should be treated with some caution.”

http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/jul/08/how-can-we-fix-unconscious-racism?CMP=twt_gu

Radiolab Podcast: Memory and Forgetting

July 5, 2015

“This hour of Radiolab, a look behind the curtain of how memories are made…and forgotten. Remembering is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process–it’s easy come, easy go as we learn how true memories can be obliterated, and false ones added. And Oliver Sacks joins us to tell the story of an amnesiac whose love for his wife and music transcend his 7-second memory.”

http://www.radiolab.org/story/91569-memory-and-forgetting/

Radiolab Podcast: Mau Mau. Reconstructing history in Kenya

July 5, 2015

“When professor Caroline Elkins came across a stray document left by the British colonial government in Nairobi, Kenya, she opened the door to a new reckoning with the history of one of Britain’s colonial crown jewels, and the fearsome group of rebels known as the Mau Mau. We talk to historians, archivists, journalists and send our producer Jamie York to visit the Mau Mau. As the new history of Kenya is concealed and revealed, document by document, we wonder what else lies in wait among the miles of records hidden away in Hanslope Park.”

What does this podcast tell us about the way in which we construct knowledge in History? What role does corroborating documentary evidence play? Can we solely rely on oral history to construct knowledge about the past?

This podcast also raises many interesting questions about ethics and responsibility. Does Britain’s government have any responsibility, moral, ethical, or legal, to acknowledge past crimes? Does it have to make amends for these actions?

http://www.radiolab.org/story/mau-mau/

Shut Up and Sip: Coffee is neither good nor bad for you. Now you may go.

July 5, 2015

“One day you may read that coffee is bad for your health; the next day you’ll hear that the same cup of java reduces your risk of disease. How can you sort through the complex and often conflicting world of scientific research to make sound health decisions?”

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/06/is_coffee_good_or_bad_for_you_the_answer_is_neither.html?wpsrc=fol_tw

The Science of ‘Inside Out’

July 5, 2015

“Those quibbles aside, however, the movie’s portrayal of sadness successfully dramatizes two central insights from the science of emotion.

“First, emotions organize — rather than disrupt — rational thinking. Traditionally, in the history of Western thought, the prevailing view has been that emotions are enemies of rationality and disruptive of cooperative social relations.

“But the truth is that emotions guide our perceptions of the world, our memories of the past and even our moral judgments of right and wrong, most typically in ways that enable effective responses to the current situation. For example, studies find that when we are angry we are acutely attuned to what is unfair, which helps animate actions that remedy injustice.”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/opinion/sunday/the-science-of-inside-out.html?_r=0

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics by Richard H Thaler review – why don’t people pursue their own best interests?

July 5, 2015

“That a person with such everyday flaws has scaled the unforgiving heights of the economics establishment is striking in itself. Even more so is the fact that he has done so by turning those weaknesses into the very subject of a new branch of economic science. Thaler has spent a career seeking to understand individuals as they really are – chock-full of weaknesses, irrationalities and idiosyncrasies. He labels these creatures ‘humans’, rather than as ‘econs’, walking calculators rationally optimising their utility.”

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/04/misbehaving-making-behavioural-economics-richard-h-thaler-review-nudge?CMP=twt_gu&CMP=twt_gu