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Wednesday, 25 September 2013

1984- George Orwell

Why is the ruthless totalitarian regime, described in Orwell’s novel purging Oldspeak and imposing Newspeak? What assumptions are being made about the relationship between language and thought?

The extract from the novel depicts two men, one of whom is a "philologist, a specialist in Newspeak." The entire concept of Newspeak is to simplify and "destroy" words, that is, discard the diction which are thought to be unnecessary. It's aim is to ultimately narrow down the range of vocabulary as well as the depth of knowledge, because according to their beliefs, as long as there are no words to describe one's state or mind, situation etc, the inexplicable situation would be nonexistent and surreal. 

Wednesday, 11 September 2013

Formulating a knowledge question from a real-life situation

Real life situation: Gay marriage should be legal
topics: Belief, ethics, faith, religion, love, gender roles and equality
poor KQ: How would the legalisation of gay marriage portray the revolution of love?
Intermediate KQ: How does the portrayal of love in modern societies depict the changes in beliefs?
Good KQ: To what extent can the portrayal of love in modern societies be used to support the changes in ethics?

Sunday, 8 September 2013

Fruits and Global warming

In this post I will come up with a the knowledge claim (based on Mr Moussay's grandfather's opinion), topic, poor knowledge question, intermediate knowledge question and a good knowledge question i.e the ladder of abstraction.

knowledge claim: fruits are ripening faster because of global warming
topic: belief, science, imagination, empirical knowledge
poor KQ: how can the changes in nature signify the existence of global warming? 
Intermediate KQ: can a person's beliefs be used to support scientific facts? 
Good KQ: to what extent can empirical knowledge be used to justify a scientific fact?