Lesson review [11/18/07]

Lesson review [18th November 2007]
Main topics:

1. Language and values
2. Language and meanings

Language and values:
loaded vocab: words loaded with value meaning to make reader think a certain way (biased,propaganda)
emotive vocab: incite strong emotions in reader

Examples:

US
We
Suppress neutralize dig in

Afghanistan
They
destroy and kill

Main Question
Can language affect the way we act and think?

Language and meaning
Literal meaning: direct translation
Intended meaning: actual meaning

"Pepsi brings you ancestors back from the grave"

Examples:
A child picks up the phone and when asked "is your mummy in?" replies "yes" and hangs up.

This example illustrate that we understand what the child does not: that meanings of sentences go far beyond apparent meaning. Linguistics call this parole where the child understood only the direct meaning and not all the other social meanings that go with it.

Sense Perception Quotes

"There's more to seeing that meets the eye." (K. T. Cole)
"There is no truth. There is only perception." (Gustave Flaubert)
"Everyone hears only what he understands." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
"True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception."(Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy)
"We hear and apprehend only what we already half know." (Henry David Thoreau)
"Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic." (Edward de Bono)
"We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see." (Henry David Thoreau)
"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception." (Aldous Huxley)
"We sometimes get all the information, but we refuse to get the message." (Cullen Hightower)
"The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comrehend." (Henri Bergson)
"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is -- infinite." (William Blake)
"It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive." (C. W. Leadbeater)
"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings." (Richard Dawkins)
"Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing." (Camille Pissarro)
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world." (Hans Margolius)
"Science is nothing but perception." (Plato)

Knowers & Knowing

1. 'Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to recognise that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to recognise that you do not know it. That is knowledge.' (Confucius)
2. 'Where there is shouting there is no true knowledge.' (Leonardo da Vinci)
3. 'Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.' (Martin Luther King)
'Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.' (Francois de La Rochefoucald)
'Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.' (Daniel J. Boorstin)
'It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.' (G. K. Chesterton)
7. 'Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics.' (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.)
8. 'A very popular error – having the courage of one’s convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack upon one’s convictions.' (Anon)
9. 'There are many who know many things, yet are lacking in wisdom.' (Democritus)
10. 'The most important truths are likely to be those which… society at that time least wants to hear.' (W. H. Auden)
11. 'Never assume the obvious is true.' (William Safire)
12. 'The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.' (Ludwig von Mises)
13. 'The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.' (Anais Nin)
14. 'If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.' (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)
15. 'Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.' (Buckminster Fuller)
16. 'Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.' (Carl Jung)
17. 'The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.' (Eden Phillpotts)
18. 'The dumbest people I know are those who know it all.' (Malcolm Forbes)
19. 'Self-knowledge is like a garden. If it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested.' (Ghanaian proverb)
20. 'In times of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future: the learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.' (Eric Hoffer)
21. 'The more you know the less you understand.' (Tao Le Ching)