Author Archives: mattdkuykendall

Is tolerance the root of democracy’s Demise?

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charlottesville-neo-nazis-alt-right

Karl Popper, a famous Austrian philosopher of science from the 20th century put forth the thesis that too much tolerance is a bad thing. 

Is it? 

Watch the Vice Media coverage of the Charlottesville Neo-Nazi gathering/protest below and assess your position on tolerance and censorship: 

https://news.vice.com/story/vice-news-tonight-full-episode-charlottesville-race-and-terror

Questions to Consider: 

  1. What arguments exist that the group should the group NOT be tolerated? I.e not allowed to protest and spread their ideas?
  2. What arguments can you come up with that the group should be tolerated and allowed to protest and spread their ideas?
  3. What dangers exist in letting the group speak? What dangers exist in preventing them from speaking?
  4. How would this issue be viewed from a utilitarian perspective? How would the issue be viewed from a Kantian perspective? 

Popper’s argument against too much tolerance is summarized below, what logical fallacy could you argue is present in his argument? 

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And lastly, let’s return to our title question: is tolerance the root of democracy’s demise? 

Heidegger And the Question Concerning Technology

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Awakened Learning

After you’ve read Hiedegger’s Question Concerning Technology,

Heidegger believes we must understand the essence of technology in order to head down the right path of progress

http://simondon.ocular-witness.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/question_concerning_technology.pdf

think carefully and react to the questions/quotes below:

1. Why talk about the silver chalice?  What does that have to do with technology?

2.  Heidegger states, “what has the essence of technology to do with revealing? The answer–Everything.” What does he mean by this?

3.  Heidegger writes, “we are questioning concerning technology in order to bring to light our relationship to its essence.”  What is our current relationship to the essence of technology? What is YOUR current relationship to the essence of technology? 

4.  Heidegger writes, “What is dangerous is not technology…but rather there is the mystery of its essence. The essence of technology, as a destining of revealing, is the danger.”  This is a KEY sentence to understanding his whole…

View original post 248 more words

Heidegger and Quantum Mechanics

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kvantvase_lit_ref

Most people likely don’t connect Heideggarian philosophy with quantum physics…but you’re going to! 

Watch the trailer for the film, “The Quantum Activist” below. In it, physicist Amit Goswami is discussing implications of quantum scientific concepts.

Your task is to write your Second Journal entry on the following prompt: 

How are Heidegger and Goswami’s ideas related? Discuss the connection between Heideggarian philosophy and quantum physics.

To help you better understand Heidegger, read the NY times column below:

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/30/heideggers-philosophy-why-our-presence-matters/

 

What’s up with that? A PBL investigation in social psychology

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When students reflect on psychology, many of them consider behavioral analysis as the primary outcome. We’ve learned that “behavior” in a psychology context can also include thoughts, emotions and other cognition.

However, in Social Psychology, our focus is indeed on observable behavior.

There are so many interesting questions and quirks of humanity that can be investigated from a social psych perspective!

Task: Your task is to brainstorm interesting/shocking/confusing/amazing aspects of behavior and then formulate a driving question to guide your  research! You should engage in this process similar to the process you engage in to create your TOK presentation; beginning from a Real Life Situation.

Finally, you and your partner will then create a video that you’ll post to youtube or youku that answers your question!

The Assignment, with assessment rubrics, is linked here: social-psychology-pbl

 

 

Whitehead on Math

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Alfred North Whitehead is a Brit who famously practiced philosophy at Harvard. However prior to becoming a “full time” philosopher, he was an oxford educated mathematician!

Consequently, the AOK of Math had a massive influence on his thinking and philosophy. Whitehead went on to formalize some of his musings on Math as an AOK and below are linked some excerpts from his famous work, An Introduction to Mathematics published in 1911.

chapter-1-the-abstract-nature-of-mathematics

Backwards Design: From KQs to RLS

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This very ugly post is your learning helper as the file will not allow itself to be attached to awakened learning or schoology 🙂 So i just copy and pasted the content below

Knowledge Issues in Math

A key skill in TOK is being able to identify knowledge issues within areas of knowledge.  This would lead to your skill in extracting knowledge questions from those issues and applying those epistemological questions of knowledge to real life situations.

But you don’t know how to do this  yet!! J

So…below are some KNOWLEDGE QUESTIONS relevant to the AOK of mathematics.

Knowledge Questions in math…

 

  1. TWE is truth different in mathematics, arts and ethics? How is truth unique in mathematics? What is “truth” in math?
  2. Is complete certainty achievable? (in mathematics?)
  3. Do ideas exist?
  4. Must something have physical properties in order to exist?
  5. What role does shared knowledge play in mathematics? Does personal knowledge exist in math?
  6. What’s the difference between knowledge and imagination?
  7. What’s the role of imagination in mathematics?

YOUR TASK: Your task is to move backwards from one of the above knowledge questions to identify KNOWLEDGE ISSUES and then finally a REAL LIFE SITUATION that could have inspired the knowledge question you analyzed.

Process:

  1. Choose a knowledge question to analyze above
  2. Identify “knowledge issues” relevant to your chosen question
    1. You need to identify 3-5 knowledge claims
    2. You need to identify 3-5 knowledge issues
    3. You should reference awakenedlearning.com for information, and specifically the document linked on awakenedlearning entitled “tok understanding knowledge issues”
  3. Identify a “real life situation” that you think could give birth to the knowledge question and or claims/issues you chose to analyze. You should try to choose one in Math, but if you can’t, that’s cool.