Emotion
What knowledge changes your perception of whether or not something is beautiful?
Join this TED discussion click here
click here for Richard Seymour’s video - ‘How beauty feels’
Science and Emotion
Should scientists be emotionless? Should they present cold, hard facts with no emotion whatsoever? Is it possible to argue a scientific point by bringing in emotion? These questions are raised in this interesting Science Blog.
How do we know what other people want?
Rebecca Saxe discusses how the we figure out the needs and desires of others. How do we make moral judgements? Where does empathy come from? Rebecca studies what we think about other people’s thoughts. She considers how we sense the motives of others and tries to answer the age old question - How can we know what others want? Why is it so hard to change what others want or believe?
This is a really interesting look at how the brain judges the actions of others and how this then has an impact upon our moral sense.
click here for the link
Why are we happy?
Dan Gilbert questions whether we will actually be unhappy if we don’t get what we want.
read more...»Emotional Memory
We are more likely to remember emotionally loaded images than emotion neutral ones. We are also more likely to remember things if we are in an emotional state ourselves. This article also briefly looks at flashbulb memories - those ones where we remember exactly what we were doing when a certain event happened- eg the Twin Towers collapsing, Lady Diana and so on.
This is an interesting read with enough technical information without being too dry or boring.
Click here for the link to the BBC Radio 4 transcript
Michael Portillo on getting violent
Horizon: How Violent Are You? Tuesday BBC2 9pm
The programme is an attempt to have a look at the brain and its relationship to violence.
A lot of the programme is devoted to the Milgram Experiment, which is worth knowing about if you haven’t already come across it. The experiment is part of a study of obedience to authority. Participants think they are administering electric shocks to a stranger.
There are also interviews with a child soldier and a former football hooligan. click here for the link to BBCiplayer
Everything Connects -TOK
Emily Levine talks about science, maths, society and they way that everything connects. As a philosopher/comedian the discussion that results is very funny. Her work, whilst being hilarious, also makes serious connections between hard science and pop culture, between what we say and what we secretly assume.
The content is a little risque in parts- be warned.
•Emotion - •Language - •Perception - •Reason -
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Fibonacci Numbers
Marcus du Sautoy discusses the secrets of the Fibonacci numbers. He also looks at the work of Virahanka, who discovered that these numbers also count rhyming patterns, and Le Corbusier, who applied these numbers to architecture. This is an excellent over view.
click here for the link to the article
Maths and Emotion
Amongst other things Marcus du Sautoy discusses the emotional attachment people have with maths.
click here to find out more about the relationship between maths and emotion, maths and the web, maths and rubics cubes, and even maths and McDonalds!
Maths as a Creative Art
There is far more to mathematics than the rigid application of formal rules to meaningless systems of symbols. For some, it is creative, imaginative, deeply satisfying and in some ways similar to those disciplines sometimes considered diametrically opposed to mathematics, the arts.
read more...» •Emotion - •Language - •Perception - •Reason -
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Can Maths and Ethics be Related?
(Time saving Truth from Falsehood)
What are the implications for humankind if mathematics is involved in ethics?
Is our knowledge of right or wrong subjective or objective? Is ethical knowledge possible?
Price’s mathematical expression of the evolutionary purpose of altruism poses many questions.
Verbal and Non Verbal Communication
Children communicate in a non verbal way often because they do not have the emotional maturity or the linguistic skills to speak about their feelings. This is painfully obvious in those children who have been emotionally damaged.
read more...»Questions on the Truman Show
Question Sheet
Relevant to both the TOK course and the RE AS
The film focusses upon issues of perception and reality, Plato’s Cave, knowledge and truth.
read more...» •Emotion - •Language - •Perception - •Reason -
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TOK Connections Perception/ Knowledge
A stimulus sheet - pictures / buzz words
read more...» •Emotion - •Language - •Perception - •Reason -
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The Language of Love
Love- every language has a word for love. Love is a basic human emotion.
read more...»Moral Monkeys and Kant
In todays ‘Thought for the Day” Akhandadhi Das spoke about research presented last week to show that Monkeys express empathy and offer help when a fellow animal is in trouble. These findings seem to suggest that animals have a moral sense, thus calling into question the idea that humans are unique. Does this have implications for the Moral Argument as a proof for the existence of God?
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