My Premises and Conclusion:
Situations can make humans bad. All humans are placed in different situations based off of the where they are born, how they are raised, and the decisions they make. All humans can be bad depending on their situation.
I think that the theme of the class was more to make us think deeply than to come up with an answer to the question of the theme. The theme made me think again about what actions people can condone and where the line can be drawn when it comes to good and bad. I believed that humans became bad because they decided to do a bad action, one that could not made better by an apology and making up for it but one that is the physical harm of another human being. When a person commits a bad action, they have made the decision to do so, making the decision a bad one. They could have made the bad decision based on the situations that have made up their lives.
The knowledge that I have gained in the classroom has included a wider understanding of humans and to be open when I am learning. Throughout learning, I have been able to identify two theories on knowledge from Pritchard and one perspective on knowledge from Blackmore. Blackmore showed me that consciousness is a controversial term because there is no agreed definition on it, but it does involve the way a person has an experience. Consciousness is a complex theory about the human mind because it can be perceived to be an addition to the brain that allows us to have the unique feature to think about our actions. The questions on consciousness that Blackmore keeps returning to is that if we have a conscious, what does it do for us as humans and why do we have it? While Blackmore offered ideas on consciousness, she also explained her ideas based on how the brain works and how it can be altered and evolved based on situations and experiences. Pritchard showed me that knowledge is subjective based on the types of knowledge that exist and how we come to know the information. My theory on knowledge based on reading Pritchard's What Is This Thing Called Knowledge? is that epistemology, the theory of knowledge can helps us gather a better understanding of knowledge and determine what is good knowledge that is supported and which is not. Propositional knowledge and ability knowledge is where we started our discussion of knowledge at the beginning of the quarter. My theory is that we have propositional knowledge based on the information of an opinion compared to the ability knowledge that we gain through knowing information that we have physically learned how to do in life. If humans have propositional and ability knowledge then we each have the capability to accumulate knowledge in life. To gain knowledge humans must absolutely know the truth based on research and information to back up ones beliefs, not just a mere true belief on what we know. Pritchard's information on knowledge has offered a way to come up with a connection between mere true belief and truth gained by knowledge, one can have a mere true belief and after research that belief can become knowledge that is supported by facts. Knowledge is valuable in life because it is how we grow, but not everything we know in life is valuable for every step we take towards our future. With propositional knowledge of true beliefs, a person will consider all knowledge valuable because they can help a person attain the goals they set in life. The information of knowledge that I have gained were relevant and important to my understanding of the theme because I was able to set a line of where I thought of what made humans bad and then I was able to grow my mere true beliefs based on the way the human brain worked with the consciousness that I believe each person has. Consciousness is not a supported fact because scientists have not found a way to explain if people have them or not but with enough support to the idea of their existence I feel comfortable enough to say that they do exist and that with them humans can come to the conclusion of right and wrong. I have come to the conclusion that a person's conscious effects their actions for the better, but that the situations a person is dealt in life can still cause a person to be bad.
Knowledge Domains:
Knowledge in the humanities has expressed that linguistics is more than just the words being spoken, the words expressed can reveal where a person comes from and why a person says the things they say. The humanities revealed to me that people can be bad or good in life based on John Locke's theories of everyone starting life as white paper where we gather information and knowledge and it adds art to the canvas of our lives. With the situations we experience in life we add marks to our paper life. The social sciences have taught me that everyone in life experiences life differently based on the situations that make up our life even before we are born and decide for ourselves. We can be born into a broken home, bad neighborhood, a loving family, in a great school district but we each also can control what actions we take while in those situations. The situations in our lives are challenges that guide us into the people we become. Natural science knowledge has brought the way the brain works into consultation when questioning what makes up a person bad by looking into the brain itself in a scientific setting. By looking into the way the brain can be altered, changed, and works in general, I have been able to learn more about what makes humans what they are and how more than our conscious can affect us. The knowledge domains have shaped my position on the theme and in life because they have offered me a way to understand more about humans and the interactions that we face to establish stronger support on my mere true belief. I now believe that humans can be bad based on the situations that they each are placed in whether they were their decisions or not. My beliefs are reflective on the lessons from the knowledge domains as well as those of Pritchard and Blackmore.
The new insights I have gained are that the world has more gray space than I originally thought. I know that the world is not all black and white, but there are parts that are black and white to me and the physical harming of another human being to the point where a life is lost is the line. I am referring to murder, I do not see justifiable homicide or suicide by cop as murder because that is a gray area in killing another human being, but if that person has killed or is trying to kill another person or someone else then they are in no position to be seen as a victim in my eyes. I personally would like to investigate further into the line between murder and justifiable homicide.By writing this blog, I have grown my ability to understand that the gray area in life is larger than one can ever imagine. As I wrote the blog I was able to get to know myself better as well as express what I have learned and the ideas that I have been drawing to conclude where I believe I stand on right and wrong in the world around me. My conclusion is not one based purely on my beliefs of right and wrong but on the research and journal articles of others. As I wrote, I was able to identify my position based on the lessons of knowledge domains and through the premises I made as we learned I was able to come to the conclusion that situations and our conscious decisions affect us as human beings. The process of writing the blog on this theme has helped me come to the final conclusion that all humans can be bad depending on their situation.
Blackmore, Susan J. Consciousness:
A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.
Pritchard, Duncan.
“Some Preliminaries.” What Is This Thing Called Knowledge? London:
Routledge, 2006.
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