1. Logic
First there were myths or religions, then came philosphy to differentiate from
religion and then logic became a branch of philosophy.
Human life is full of decisions, including significant choices
about what to believe. Although everyone prefers to believe what is true, we
often disagree with each other about what the truth is in particular instances.
Logic is defined as "the science of reasoning, proof, thinking, or inference."
Logic will let you analyze an argument or a piece of reasoning, and work out
whether it is likely to be correct or not.
If I believe that:
All whales are mammals, and
All mammals are fish, then
It would also make sense for me to believe that whales are fish.
I used my mistaken beliefs/ reasoning as the foundation upon which to establish
a new one.
It is possible to distinguish correct reasoning from incorrect reasoning. Logic is the discipline that studies this distinction—both by determining the conditions under which the truth of certain beliefs leads naturally to the truth of some other belief, and by drawing attention to the ways in which we may be led to believe something without respect for its truth. This provides no guarantee that we will always arrive at the truth, since the beliefs with which we begin are sometimes in error. But following the principles of correct reasoning does ensure that no additional mistakes creep in during the course of our progress. Some examples below will prove the un-noticed importane of logic in our daily lives,
Every criminal opposes the government. Everyone in the opposition
party opposes the government. Therefore everyone in the opposition party is
a criminal.
OR
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal.
From the above two examples we can differentiate from valid and invalid logic. Now coming to some basic terms used in Logic. Our fundamental unit of what may be asserted or denied is the 'proposition' that is typically expressed by a declarative sentence. "Smith loves Jones" expresses exactly the same proposition as "Jones is loved by Smith," while the sentence "Today is my birthday" can be used to convey many different propositions, depending upon who happens to utter it, and on what day. The chief concern of logic is how the truth of some propositions is connected with the truth of another. An 'argument' is a set of two or more propositions related to each other in such a way that all but one of them (the premises) are supposed to provide support for the remaining one (the conclusion). The transition or movement from premises to conclusion, the logical connection between them, is the inference upon which the argument relies. Another example below will explain how we use logic in our daily lives continuously.
Premise: Every event has a cause
Premise: The universe has a beginning
Premise: All beginnings involve an event
Inference: This implies that the beginning of the universe involved an event
Inference: Therefore the beginning of the universe had a cause
Conclusion: The universe had a cause
The proposition in line 4 is inferred from lines 2 and 3. Line 1 is then used, with the proposition derived in line 4, to infer a new proposition in line 5. The result of the inference in line 5 is then re-stated (in slightly simplified form) as the conclusion.
One thing is obvious from the above discussion, logical reasoning is not an absolute law which governs the universe and logic is not a set of rules which govern human behavior. Humans may have logically conflicting goals. Logic will somehow prove that all other four, love, faith, culture and instint are not true.
2. Faith
Someone said that in humans the instinct to worship is hardly less strong than
the instinct to survive. I think we all possess an inborn instinct to carry
a faith, worship and act as subordinates. To the degree that we are not worshipping
the true God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we will inevitably
worship other gods—things like money, relationships, and work. The most
important question is not if we worship or not, but the thing that keeps haunting
us humans is that which gods we are worshipping. We have made pictures on walls
in caves and worshipped them. We have worshipped every thing that scared us.
We have found new gods to worship every now and then compared them and discarded
older ones. We have always wanted to worship even when no one was telling us
to do so. But faith is not all about worshipping, there is more to it...
Some people say that faith contains no logic, no facts, it
is a blind leap. In 1931, a Czech mathematician named Kurt Godel demonstrated
that any logical system as advanced as arithmetic is built on foundational premises
which can neither be proved true nor false within the system. That is, every
logical system as advanced as addition and subtraction is a faith-based system.
You are driving on a highway and you stop at a service centre, expecting to
grab a coffee and a muffin. You see a coffee shop sign, you enter the shop and
you order a coffee and a blueberry muffin. You have made an act of faith. They
might have ran out of coffee, the coffee maker may have been out of order, the
service station might have a coffee shop that opens only for the night. Your
act of faith is testable. Now, if you entered the lube change workshop instead
and ordered a coffee and a blueberry muffin, that would be blind faith. And
if the salesman in the workshop brings you the coffee and the blueberry muffin,
that would be a miracle.
More to come...
3. Love
An intense emotional attachment, as for a pet or a treasured object, or a person,
such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a
sense of underlying oneness. Sometimes done with no thought of a reward. Its
is often considered synonymous to affection, devotion, fondness, infatuation.
Love is the most intense. Effection is less ardent (like from parents). Devotion
is earnest and implies selflessnes (like from teachers). Fondness is a strong
liking (like for pets) and, Infatuation is foolish and often for a short duration.
Love is often a heart thing and brain has a little role. Probably thats why
the frequently used symbol of love is the heart. Love
is inherent in all human cultures and thus may be seen as a defining trait of
humanity, that is, love is a quality that makes one human. It is precisely these
cultural differences that make any universal definition of love difficult, but
not impossible, to establish. Various religions define love in different ways
too and most of them refer to the love of God. One Islamic poet explaining the
concept of divine love, said, "What difference could ever be, between me
and you, beyond the tiny gulf of my own existance".
Expressions of love may include the love for a soul or mind, the love of laws and organizations, love for a body, love for nature, love of food, love of money, love for learning, love of power, love of fame, love for the respect of others, et cetera. Different people place varying degrees of importance on the kinds of love they receive. Love is essentially an abstract concept, easier to experience than to explain.
Robert Sternburg published his famous triangular theory about love in 1986. He said love has three components. Intimacy, which creates a feeling of bonding or closeness. Passion, which creates a drive to romance or sexual attraction. Commitment, which creates a decision to maintain the intimacy and passion.
4. Culture
Culture is an integrated system, a collective atttitude and behaviour thats
socially transmitted. Cuture forms a set of socially acquired values, beliefs,
and rules of conduct which delimit the range of accepted behaviors in any given
society. It can express of a particular period, class, community, group, organisation,
business or simply a population. It is usually acquired through enculturation,
the process through which an older generation induces and compels a younger
generation to reproduce the established lifestyle. It gets transmitted in various
shapes and mediums, through language, material objects, ritual, institutions,
and art, from one generation to the next. This transmission differentiates human
from animals. Culture gets embedded in a person's way of life. Culture is difficult
to quantify, because it frequently exists at an unconscious level. It tends
to be so pervasive that it almost escapes everyday thought.
Anthropologists think that all aspects of a culture can be called as traits of a culture. Diffusion of traits between two cultures has happened frequently in the past. Spread of certian traits from one society to another, depends on many unknowns. Some scientists think that the spread (diffusion) depends on evolutionary stages of a culture, especially in terms of material culture (i.e economic achievements). The diffusion also depends on political achievements (i.e. chiefdon, states, nations etc.). It can be summarised that the spread from one culture to other depends on the relative complexity of the cultures. Simple cultures tend to get more complex adopting traits from nearby cultures.
To make it simple, a culture can consist of three basic elements, ideological values (mentifacts), social norms (sociofacts) and technological achievements (artifacts). Mentifacts comprise of ideas that guide the rest of the culture. They establish what is important in life. Sociofacts comprise of expectations of how people will behave in cerain situations. Each culture has different methods (sanctions/ laws) of enforcing its norms. Artifacts comprise of materials and technologies and are derived from cultures values and norms.
A smaller society people share the same set of values, norms and artifacts. In bigger societies subcultures are formed which maybe based on ethnicity, class or race. It may also be called a multi-cultural society. Some considered themselves to be more cultured than others. Or is it just that culture is what is the best that has been thought and said in the world. It is a persuit of our total perfection in all the matters that concern us. Some have said that our instincts are outcomes of our cultural evolution. Some say that ecological factors lead to cultural changes. Some say that a culture is a unique outcome of its historical processes. But it proves one thing for sure that the concept of culture has been playing an important role in human lives.
5. Instinct
All life forms have an inborn pattern or bahaviour. This behavior is not learned
but passed between generations by heredity. This bahviour is often a responce
to environmental stimuli. My point of view is that some insticts are common
to similar species but some instincts might be very personal. Instincts are
not based upon past experience but sometimes are modified by environmental conditions.
Among many animals, fixed patterns of instinctive behavior include survival,
courtship and altruism, but they can be modified with environmental conditions
or past experiences. And every one has different experiences. But one thing
can be said, that no being is absolutely bound by their instincts. Some try
to control them, some dont. But the question is; can they be blamed for whatever
their instinct tells them to do. Sometimes some instincts are acceptable and
tolerable to certian societies, and not thinkable at all to others.
Some commonly seen instincts are given below:
1. Breastfeeding
2. Salmon spawning
3. Altruistic instincts in social animals - actions that benefit others with
a net detrimental or neutral effect on the actor
4. Bacteria that propel themselves toward beneficial substances, and away from
repellent substances
5. Incubator-hatched geese would have learnt the characteristics common to their
species
6. Sexual imprinting, where a young animal learns the caharacteristics of a
desirable mate.
7. Reverse sexual imprinting, where two people live in close domestic proximity
during the first few years in the life of either one, both are desensitized
to later close sexual attraction and bonding. Some examples are Israeli kibbutz
system, the marriage customs of Taiwan, as well as in biological-related families.
8. Where a brother and sister are brought up not knowing about one another,
they may find one another highly sexually attractive when they meet as adults:
a phenomenon known as genetic sexual attraction. It is generally highly distressing
to both parties, as this sexual attraction is contrary to their socialized sexual
and moral structures.
9. Birds which are hatched in captivity have no mentor birds to teach them their
traditional migratory routes. An italian hang glider hatched birds under his
glider wings and then showed them the ways of migration. Birds had the instinct
to imprint on his hang glider as if it was their parents.
10. A baby kangaroo climbing towards the pouch after coming out of the womb
11. Babies dont like sour and bitter things. Sour is normally gone stale and
bitter is normally poisenous.
11. Still searching....
Technically speaking, any event that initiates
an instinctive behavior is called a key stimulus (KS). Key stimuli in turn lead
to innate releasing mechanisms (IRM), which in turn produce fixed action patterns
(FAP). Sometimes more that a single KS may be needed to trigger an FAP. Different
Senses determine the type of FAP produced. The pheromones through nasal sensory
receptor cells may trigger a sexual response, while a frightening sound received
through auditory sensory receptor cells may trigger a fight or flight response.
As mentioned earlier, survival is one of the basic instincts. Courtship behaviours
are quite basic too. Sometimes referred to as animal instincts, because, when
it comes to the key qualities of attraction, humans and animals share more than
one might think. Again using the basic five senses we follow our instincts.
Visual displays seem to play a very important role in triggering sexual attraction
and hence all forms of visual adornment are used to help attract members of
the opposite sex. Males fall in love more easily and thats why females know
that providing visual cues is important. Talking about scent, the Vomero-nasal
system in the brain bypasses all the brain's thinking processes and directs
its information exclusively towards the regions that control sex and aggression
and hormonal regulation. In many animals, taste, or the oral contact forms the
basis of social investigation. And touch conveys romantic intentions, involuntarily
in the begining. People have established romances on phone conversations without
seeing each other. A bird that sings better attracts more...