How would a Scholarship Assist Me After Graduation Essay Example for Free

How would a Scholarship Assist Me After Graduation Essay In my findings, it is not just enough to have enrichment of goal, fervency of passion and the keeping of focus, there is the place of vital impact played by pecuniary support from guardian(s) to actualize the desire. I strongly believe many brave and highly intelligent ones have been choked out of their academic dream in life after graduation. Statistical findings have unarguably revealed that financial incapability in one of the factors responsible for thwarted vision in academic excellence. I am very proud to note however, that our school is making part of her contributions in easing students’ financial burden as a responsible institution in the society. The scholarship is a gesture I really appreciate whole heartedly. I do forward this scholarship application to passionately appeal for my consideration in the grant in order to survive hardship in my future pursuit of academic excellence. See more: how to write a college scholarship essay format Being a promising member from a home with single mother who had lost his father as early as age five, I have only being struggling with ways out of incessant hopelessness, deprivation and unavoidable emotional abuse. I have labored assiduously with my parent to make both ends meet; during summer, I work at Boys and Girls Club to save some fund for school and trying hard to work-out element of laziness from exacerbating the poverty. Sooner after my graduation with me and my two other sisters in studying in college, the financial stress for our mother would climax. The cost of education even in a low grade school with the cheapest environment is overwhelming despite how hard I try to save. My two sisters also need optimum care to cater for their more demanding feminine nature. So huge are my worries despite the strong zeal to pursue academic excellence which I currently demonstrate in school for being among the top 10%. With the hope of scholarship aid, I look forward to a redemptive future from excellence incapacitation. In the college, the scholarship will assist to continual keep focus and meet up the grant expectation.

Right and Wrong Ethics Philosophy

Right and Wrong Ethics Philosophy In everyday life, we are always faced with the task of determining whether certain actions are right or wrong. Ethics can thus be defined as a branch of philosophy that addresses issues of morality. Ethics is also referred to as moral philosophy. Moral philosophy is the systematic study of the nature of morality (Furrow 1). Questions involving such concepts as good and evil, right and wrong, vice and virtue are addressed in this systematic study. Such questions include; what I ought to do in a certain situation? How I ought to live? Ethics is a coherent discipline in philosophy that strives to answer some practical questions that form a basis of establishing the guiding principles and values of an individual or society. Gensler (3) outlines two major branches of moral philosophy or ethics namely: Metaethics is the branch that attempts to study the nature and the methodology of moral judgments. Questions to be addressed under this branch include; what do good and ought mean? Are there moral truths and how can we justify or rationally defend beliefs about right or wrong? A metaethical view of morality has two parts; one part is concerned with the nature of moral judgments which is often the definition of good, the other part is about the methodology usually outlining how to select moral principles. Gensler (3) states that normative ethics studies principles about how to live. It asks questions like; what are the basic principles of right and wrong? What are the basic human rights? And is abortion right or wrong? Normative ethics is further classified into two levels; normative theory which looks for the very general moral principles and applied normative ethics which studies moral questions about specific areas like abortion, lying, euthanasia and surrogacy. Why study ethics? The study of ethics and more specifically the development of major ethical theories can be traced back to the Ancient Greek philosophy propounded by such philosophers as Aristotle and Socrates. In the modern life, ethics has captured the attention of various philosophers in diverse fields who are progressing in an attempt to answer various questions that are raised by the contemporary moral issues. Thus some of the reasons for studying ethics include; The study of ethics deepens our reflection on the ultimate questions of life. This reflection helps an individual to understand himself or herself better regarding the principles of some pertinent issues in life. Gensler (4) argues that if you have not wrestled with some of lifes deeper questions, then you are not a well-educated person. Ethics enables an individual to be an all-rounded person in life. The study of moral philosophy can help us to think better about morality. Some issues arise especially in the modern world and individuals are faced with ultimate questions on the moral basis of those issues such as abortion. For instance individuals adopt different approaches in dealing with the issue of abortion, while the proponents maintain that the mother has the principal right to make decisions concerning her body, the opponents argue that the sanctity of life should be maintained at all times and that the growing foetus has a right to life which is a major basic human right. Thus Gensler (4) states that moral philosophy or ethics can improve our perspective, and make it more reflective and better thought out. Another major reason of studying ethics or moral philosophy is to sharpen our general thinking processes. In philosophy we are able to learn very significant intellectual skills that guide our reasoning and thinking. Thus we can logically reason out concerning fundamental or ultimate questions in real life while critically evaluating the conflicting view points and consequently settle for decision that reflects on our values and principles as individuals. Ethics is undoubtedly a very interesting subject to study. Ethics provokes some good or healthy debates with other people, especially if the two or more people naturally have conflicting view points on major issues of life. These interesting debates stimulate and sharpen our thinking and imagination enabling people to re-think our view point giving room for alter or improve our perspectives in future events. History of ethics The history of ethics can be traced to three periods of thoughts as outlined by Gensler et al (25) namely the ancient, medieval and the modern period of thought. Ancient period of thought; philosophers who contributed to the development of ethics in this period include Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicureans and stoics. In the west, philosophical inquiry into ethics began with the ancients Greeks. Greek ethicists inquired into how a person could use reason to achieve the good life but they did not reach a consensus about what the good life is and the nature of the practical reason that can reach it. Socrates and Plato were concerned with act-oriented ethics which is primarily concerned with what we do. Aristotle (384-322BC), a student of Plato, modified a number of his Mentors idealistic and quasi-religious ethical views (Gensler et al 27). Aristotle is said to have rejected Platos ethical views and subsequently developed the aretaic, or virtue ethics. Gensler et al (27) argues that Aristotle proposed that virtue ethics is interested ultimately who we are despite our actions. Aristotle further clarified that virtue does not come naturally; an individual needs to be trained or educated to be virtuous. Virtue if of two types; Moral, which deals in part with the irrational part of the soul and the intellectual, which involves only the rational part of the soul. Gensler et al (28) argues that the highest form of virtue is found not in enjoying friends but in contemplating truth. During the period of Epicureans and stoics, philosophers became concerned with the practicalities of dealing with the political and social instability since in 323 BC, Greece fell into a significant decline leading to numerous battles for parts of the empire. Medieval period of thought: prominent philosophers in this period include St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. The political and social instability in the ancient period of thought continued into this period as the philosophers got more interested into gaining a deeper insight into this issue. This led to the analysis of human actions by the philosophers. Augustine proposed that human freedom stemmed from the lack of causal influences while Aquinas believed that human freedom stemmed from the internal deliberation that causes our actions. Gensler et al (31) claims that Aquinas analyzed actions on the basis not only of their conformity to the natural law but also of their specific features; the object of an action defines the action (talking to a person), the circumstances consider the context in which the action takes place (in a lecture hall during a lecture), and the end is the acts purpose (to ask the person a question about the lecture). All these t hree aspects of action must be proper for the act to be considered good. Both Scotus and Ockham maintained that the matters of moral judgement were settled ultimately not by reason but by faith. Thus Gensler et al ( 31) claims that their views reinforced a stronger sense of individual autonomy both in moral and political matters. Hence the medieval view on ethics was the belief in the existence of God and that eternal salvation should be the principal motivation for the ethical behaviour. Modern period of thought: philosophers use the term modern to denote the enlightenment period which is approximately the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Modern is contrasted with the contemporary that roughly covers the last hundred years, the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. Philosophers who made immense contributions in ethics during this period include; Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill. Gensler et al (32) states that ethics in the modern age began with a movement from the other-worldly focus that dominated medieval ethics. Although these prominent philosophers of the time did not reject the existence of God, a medieval idea, they rejected the view that humans should look up to God as a guide to their actions. They equally disputed the medieval idea that eternal salvation should be the motivation for ethical behavior. To the modern philosophers, the purpose of ethics is not to instruct humans how best to love God, but, rather, to show hum ans how best to live together in this world (Gensler et al 32). Major ethical theories Some of the major ethical theories that have influenced modern thinking in the United States include; utilitarianism, Kantian ethics and Aristotelian ethics. Utilitarianism also known as the consequentialist theory states that the consequences of an action of a given individual make an action moral or immoral. Hence, an action that contributes to beneficial consequences is considered right or moral while an action that results in harmful or destructive consequences is immoral or wrong. Driver (3) claims that the theory holds that an action or a law is right if only it produces the best outcome; only if it brings about the greatest good for the greatest number. To the proponents of this theory, any action is morally justified to the extent that it maximizes gains and minimizes the costs or harms. Some of the philosophers in support of this theory are Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Bentham, an 18th century philosopher usually likened happiness with pleasure thus a good life and unhappiness with pain thus an unhappy life. Mill who was a 19th century philosopher, used his theory of utilitarianism to criticize laws that he felt were poin tless and even harmful to society such as womens suffrage (Driver 3). Hence it is clear that utilitarianism ethical theory maintains that an action is moral or right when the consequences are beneficial to the majority of the parties involved and not only the person doing that action. In addition, the consequences of such an action must be evaluated, not only the immediate consequences but also the short-term and long-term consequences. Kantian ethics: this is a theory that stresses on the duties and rights in the moral evaluation of any human action. The proponent of this theory, Immanuel Kant has rejected the consequentialist proposition of considering the consequences of an action to determine whether it is moral or immoral. Kant argues that the motivation behind any human action is what matters in the moral evaluation of such actions and not the consequences. Thus actions that are moral or right are those done out of a sense of duty, which means that an individual does it since one recognizes that it is the right thing to do. Bennett (75) states that Kant used some famous formulations of categorical imperative i.e. the name he gives to the fundamental principle of morality. Kant believed in the respect of persons and thus people should never be treated as a mere means, but only ever at the same time as an end. We are able to know our duty since we are uniquely rational as human beings, a special nature that we p osses that distinguishes us from animals. This theory maintains we should act morally depending on our rights and duties at all times and under all circumstances. Consequently moral actions promote the dignity and worth of other person, not using other persons for own purposes. Aristotelian ethics: the most famous proponent of this theory is Aristotle who stressed on a virtuous life. Virtue ethics do not dwell on the principles or the rules governing our actions like the previous ethical theories but seeks a deeper insight in gaining knowledge on the kind of character that should be possessed by a moral human being. According to Aristotle, a moral virtue is the inclination to do the right thing and avoid doing wrong. This virtuous character does not come naturally but through thorough training and education, thus it is an achievement not a natural predisposition in a human being (Gensler et al 27). Courage, temperance, prudence and justice were considered by Aristotle as the most fundamental moral virtues. In conclusion, the study of ethics is important since it helps us to evaluate our actions based on principles. This critical evaluation of ethical behaviour guides our thinking and action for future events. Ethics is an interesting subject that every person will enjoy studying since it sheds light into how we make decisions concerning the contemporary moral issues.

Water Pollutions Causes Effect And Solution Environmental Sciences Essay

Water Pollutions Causes Effect And Solution Environmental Sciences Essay Although industrialization plays an important role in developing the economics of a country, we cannot overlook the causes and effects that it brings to the society and environment, particular in water pollution. Therefore, in order to alleviate and eliminate the serious impact of water pollution, we have to know well about the causes and effects of water pollution in order to find the best solution to tackle this issue. In this essay, we are going to present the most significant cause and effect of water pollution and ways to solve this problem. There are several factors behind which cause the water pollution. One of the major causes is the waste from the industries. It is so common that most of the industries seem consider that the sea or rivers is a good place for them to dump the waste. Those wastes contain very harmful substances which cause the sea and rivers become poison. Another main reason that leads to the water pollution is sewage. Sewage is a kind of waste such as faeces or dirty water from home or factories which flows away through sewers. It happens since those people do not want to live in a polluted area or dumpsite. For example, most developing countries carry those sewages to water while most developed countries have flush toilet which can take sewage quickly away from their houses. Moreover, sometime sewage is drained directly to the rivers or sea which has bad effect to the human and diversity in marine life. Last but not least, oil pollution is also the major reason of water pollution. Today, oil polluti on becomes a serious problem to concern. Sometime, oil spill is spilled accidentally; however, most of the ships spill it to the sea on purpose. The spread of oil cause a serious problem to be worried due to the fact that it makes lots of pollution and death to all kind of species in the sea. For example, the biggest oil spill in Alaska which 44 million litter of oil were release into the pristine wilderness killed many species in the sea. Several animals were killed and several billion of fish were destroyed. (Wood ford Chris, 2006). In short, waste from industries, sewage, and oil pollution are the major causes that need to be concerned. There are two main negative effects that are caused by the industrial water pollution that mostly occurred in the industrialized countries and developing countries. First of all, water pollution effects on the human health. When the water that people consume for daily life become pollutant, it will effect directly on their health and lives. Commonly, people in over the world must need water in order to support their lives, but if the drinking water contain lots of chemical substances such as phosphates, sulfuric acid, acids, toxic metals, oil, pesticides, it will caused many serious diseases on their lives and health such as diarrhea, hepatitis, dysentery, cholera, blood disease, etc. (Chandramita, 2012). For example, people and mostly children who drink the water that contain chemical substance like Nitrates, they will face a risk to their health and death. Moreover, when people eat fish or food that takes from the water which contain pollutants, they will get sick. Lastly, water po llution effects on the marine lives and aquatic plants as well. Because when the industrial wastes flow through the sewage pipe into the river or lake, they can impact on the aquatic plants and marine lives that live at there. For common example, many species of fish need a minimum of 4-5 mg of dissolved oxygen so as to survive, otherwise, if the water contains chemical substances, those fish will die or reduce reproductive output and decrease the quantity. (Environmental Engineering Solution, 2008). In addition, the oil spilled is one another important that effect on the aquatic plants and marine lives. For example, there are many ships that spill the oil into the ocean or river, thus, the large number of marine lives die every year. Moreover, the aquatic plants like seaweed cannot grow in the polluted water as well. Prevention is better than cure. The best possible way ever to alleviate and eliminate water pollution from industries is prevention. First of all, Industry should clean up their waste before disposing it. In elaborate, they should have a proper check on the type of the waste that they are going to dispose of and segregate the harmful and non-harmful waste. Then, they have to clean up the non-harmful sewage before sending it to the sewage and dispose the toxic chemical waste properly. By doing these, it will help to decrease the polluted level of chemical material that is needed in production when they dispose it into water (Asaff, 2012). Second of all, In order to protect our water from being polluted, we have to ensure that the water protection act has its proven effect and to enforce the law of water protection; Clean Water Act for example, in order to raise the awareness of the public and restrict the industry from doing whatever they want without concerning on the effect of their action (Natural Resources Defense Council, n.d.). Last but not least, since oil is considered as one of the deadly water pollution, industry should get rid of such problem by having a regular check on their machine in order to prevent the leakage that is stemmed by the improper usage or machine breakdown. Furthermore, factory has to properly disposed the oil that they use and clean up all of the that is resulted by oil leaks (Asaff, 2012). In Conclusion, if the suggested solution above is fully implemented, water pollution will be alleviated. As a result, the world will be a better place to live in and less pollution will be harmful to all living things on Earth. References: Chandramita, B. (2012). Industrial water pollution. Water pollution solutions. Retrieved from: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/industrial-water-pollution.html Environmental Engineering Solution. (2008). Human health vis-a-vis degradation of global environment. Retrieved from: http://environmentengineering.blogspot.com/2008/05/human-health-vis-vis-degradation-of.html Natural Resources Defense Council. (n.d.). Promoting water efficiency. Retrieved December 19, 2012 from: http://www.nrdc.org/water/ Sarabeth A. (2012). How to stop water pollution. Retrieved December 19, 2012 from: http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Identify_the_Cause_of_Greenhouse_Effect

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s All the Sad Young Men Essays -- Fitzgerald Sad Y

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s All the Sad Young Men F. Scott Fitzgerald’s All the Sad Young Men was his sixth book. The work was composed of nine short stories that had been published in magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post over the course of the previous year. The work was Fitzgerald’s third short story collection and followed the Great Gatsby in publication on the 26th of February 1926. To most, this book signaled Fitzgerald’s staying power as many of his seniors had believed that his initial success as a writer was lucky. They did not take Fitzgerald seriously as an author. On the whole, critics valued the work and praised some of the stories as the best Fitzgerald had written to date. The collection of short stories in All the Sad Young Men included: â€Å"The Rich Boy,† â€Å"Winter Dreams,† â€Å"The Baby Party,† â€Å"Absolution,† â€Å"Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les,† â€Å"The Adjuster,† â€Å"Hot and Cold Blood,† â€Å"The Sensible Thing,† â€Å"Gretchen's Forty Winks.† Of these, â€Å"Absolution† was widely considered to be the best as it was an artistic piece as opposed to the ones that the critics claimed Fitzgerald wrote to sell. â€Å"Absolution† is a story about an eleven year old boy and a priest; even those who did not like this collection wrote favorably about this story. One critic said of â€Å"Absolution,† â€Å"Yet, it must be said, immediately, that ‘Absolution’ is a penetrating and profound effort to articulate life in primal and dark conflict. It is simple and stripped of all artifice. The poet and humanist in Fit zgerald is in this counting of the search of a boy and an elderly priest for absolute truth, in the conflicting presence of the demands of daily life with its common everydayness of people and trivial affairs.†[1] ... ...cal jazz age mold and reached new audiences. Fitzgerald also received the common criticism that he was writing to sell; many critics felt that â€Å"Absolution† and â€Å"The Rich Boy† with a few others from the selection were the only works of merit. Bibliography ed. Bryer, Jackson R. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Critical Reception. Burt Franklin & Co., Inc. 1978. http://www.people.vcu.edu/~bmangum/asymcr.html. (This site is not very informative.) http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/collection/dustjackets/sadmen.html. (Dust jacket) [1] Bryer, Jackson R. Pg. 258. [2] IBID. Pg. 259. [3] IBID. Pg. 253 [4] IBID. [5] http://www.georgetown.edu/tamlit/collections/fitzwrks.html#dreams [6] IBID. Pg. 260. [7] IBID. Pg. 258. [8] IBID. Pg. 259. [9] IBID. Pg. 261. [10] IBID. Pg. 261. [11] IBID. Pg. 270. [12] IBID. Pg. 269.

Shakespeares Hamlet †Ophelia Discussed Essays -- GCSE English Litera

Hamlet – Ophelia Discussed Courtney Lehmann and Lisa S. Starks in "Making Mother Matter: Repression, Revision, and the Stakes of 'Reading Psychoanalysis Into’ Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet" make a statement regarding the effect of Ophelia’s words, even though she was considered mad at the time: Hamlet's own disgust toward the body and sexual behaviour, coupled with Ophelia's erotically-charged songs, did not suddenly become "about" sexuality after Freud. On the contrary, censorship of the play in performance during various historical time periods indicates that the tragedy has always been perceived of as highly erotic, and often dangerously so. Even in the context of twentieth-century interpretations of Hamlet, critics have been reluctant to engage in genuine confrontations with the problem of the play's sexuality and its underlying anxiety. For this reason, Jacqueline Rose has claimed that critics writing on Hamlet, beginning with T. S. Eliot, have conflated their puzzlement over the play with the Western notion of "woman" as the bearer of an impenetrable secret. (2) Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet, presents almost a dozen male characters for every one female character. The only prominent female characters are two: Ophelia, Laertes’ sister and Polonius’ daughter; and Gertrude, the queen and wife of Claudius and mother of Hamlet. This essay will explore the character, role, and importance of Ophelia. The protagonist of the tragedy, Prince Hamlet, initially appears in the play dressed in solemn black, mourning the death of his father supposedly by snakebite while he was away at Wittenberg as a student. Hamlet laments the hasty remarriage of his mother to his father’s brother, an incestuous act; thus in his first soliloqu... ...akes of 'Reading Psychoanalysis Into' Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet." Early Modern Literary Studies 6.1 (May, 2000): 2.1-24   http://purl.oclc.org/emls/06-1/lehmhaml.htm Pennington, Michael. â€Å"Ophelia: Madness Her Only Safe Haven.† Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. From Hamlet: A User’s Guide. New York: Limelight Editions, 1996. Pitt, Angela. â€Å"Women in Shakespeare’s Tragedies.† Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Rpt. from Shakespeare’s Women. N.p.: n.p., 1981. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html Wilkie, Brian and James Hurt. â€Å"Shakespeare.† Literature of the Western World. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992.

Demarcation in Philosophy of Science Essay

The demarcation problem in the philosophy of science is about how to distinguish between science and nonscience, and more specifically, between science and pseudoscience (a theory or method doubtfully or mistakenly held to be scientific). The debate continues after over a century of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields, and despite broad agreement on the basics of scientific method. The demarcation problem is the philosophical problem of determining what types of hypotheses should be considered scientific and what types should be considered pseudoscientific or non-scientific. It also concerns itself with the ongoing struggle between science and religion, in particular the question about which elements of religious doctrine can and should be subjected to scientific scrutiny. This is one of the central topics of the philosophy of science, and it has never been fully resolved. The Purpose of Demarcation Demarcations of science from pseudoscience can be made for both theoretical and practical reasons. From a theoretical point of view, the demarcation issue is an illuminating perspective that contributes to the philosophy of science. From a practical point of view, the distinction is important for decision guidance in both private and public life. Since science is our most reliable source of knowledge in a wide variety of areas, we need to distinguish scientific knowledge from its look-alikes. Due to the high status of science in present-day society, attempts to exaggerate the scientific status of various claims, teachings, and products are common enough to make the demarcation issue pressing in many areas. The demarcation issue is therefore important in many practical applications such as the following: Healthcare: Medical science develops and evaluates treatments according to evidence of their efficiency. Pseudoscientific activities in this area give rise to inefficient and sometimes dangerous interventions. Healthcare providers, insurers, government authorities and – most importantly – patients need guidance on how to distinguish between medical science and medical pseudoscience. Expert testimony: It is essential for the rule of law that courts get the facts right. The reliability of different types of evidence must be correctly determined, and expert testimony must be based on the best available knowledge. Sometimes it is in the interest of litigants to present non-scientific claims as solid science. Therefore courts must be able to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. Environmental policies: In order to be on the safe side against potential disasters it may be legitimate to take preventive measures when there is valid but yet insufficient evidence of an environmental hazard. This must be distinguished from taking measures against an alleged hazard for which there is no valid evidence at all. Therefore, decision-makers in environmental policy must be able to distinguish between scientific and pseudoscientific claims. Science education: The promoters of some pseudosciences (notably creationism) try to introduce their teachings on school curricula. Teachers and school authorities need to have clear criteria of inclusion that protect students against unreliable and disproved teachings Ancient Greek Science An early attempt at demarcation can be seen in the efforts of Greek natural philosophers and medical practitioners to distinguish their methods and their accounts of nature from the mythological or mystical accounts of their predecessors and contemporaries. Medical writers in the Hippocratic tradition maintained that their discussions were based on necessary demonstrations, a theme developed by Aristotle in his â€Å"Posterior Analytics†. One element of this polemic (passionate argument) for science was an insistence on a clear and definite presentation of arguments, rejecting the imagery, analogy, and myth of the old wisdom. Aristotle described at length what was involved in having scientific knowledge of something. To be scientific, he said, one must deal with causes, one must use logical demonstration, and one must identify the universals which ‘inhere’ in the particulars of sense. Criteria for Demarcation: Logical Positivism also known as Verificationism * Held that only statements about empirical observations and formal logical propositions are meaningful, and that statements which are not derived in this manner (including religious and metaphysical statements) are by nature meaningless. * The Viennese philosophers who introduced the positivist paradigm effectively laid the groundwork for the modern philosophy of science and one of its most important strands of thought. The early Positivists favored a rather strict approach to the demarcation and strongly affirmed the empirical nature of science, meaning that questions that cannot be empirically verified or falsified are irrelevant to scientific thought. * These philosophers, who called themselves logical positivists, argued that to produce a meaningful claim, one must always return to the tangible observations that result from that claim. * By the late 1970s, its ideas were so generally recognized to be seriously defective. Falsifiability * Proposed by Karl Popper. In his monumental book, â€Å"The Logic of Scientific Discovery† he proposed the idea that scientific hypotheses must be falsifiable; unfalsifiable hypotheses should be considered pseudoscience. Popper’s emphasis on falsifiability changed the way scientists viewed the demarcation problem, and his impact on philosophy of science was enormous. * Popper’s demarcation criterion has been criticized both for excluding legitimate science and for giving some pseudosciences the status of being scientific. Postpositivism * Thomas Kuhn, an American historian and philosopher of science, is often connected with what has been called postpositivism. * In 1962, Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which depicted the development of the basic natural sciences in an innovative way. According to Kuhn, the sciences do not uniformly progress strictly by scientific method. Rather, there are two fundamentally different phases of scientific development in the sciences. In the first phase, scientists work within a paradigm (set of accepted beliefs). When the foundation of the paradigm weakens and new theories and scientific methods begin to replace it, the next phase of scientific discovery takes place. Kuhn believes that scientific progress—that is, progress from one paradigm to another—has no logical reasoning. He undermines science as a whole by arguing that what is considered science changes throughout history in such a way that there is no objective way (outside of time or place) to demarcate a scientific belief from a pseudoscientific belief. Science, Kuhn argues, is like politics: institutions believe that certain ways are better than others at different points throughout history; however, it is impossible to be more or less certain of our basic assumptions about the world. Within a democracy (a specific political paradigm) there can be progress: an economy can grow, schools can be built, and people can be given healthcare. However, if a revolution occurs and the country becomes socialist, the government is not inherently better or worse than before, but simply begins to follow a different set of assumptions. Paradigm shift * A paradigm shift is a phenomenon described by philosopher Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. * Kuhn posited a process to explain the persistence of incorrect ideas, and the seemingly rapid and sudden abandonment of these ideas when they finally are rejected. * People tend to believe in what they know, and science is basically conservative. A current â€Å"paradigm† or theory is difficult to dislodge. It takes either a large volume of evidence, or a particularly powerful single piece of evidence to overturn major scientific theories (scientific revolution). When this occurs, it is called a â€Å"paradigm shift†. Lakatos’ research programs * Imre Lakatos combined elements of Popper and Kuhn’s philosophies with his concept of research programs. Programs that succeed at predicting novel facts are scientific, while ones that fail ultimately lapse into pseudoscience. Feyerabend and Lakatos * Kuhn’s work largely called into question Popper’s demarcation, and emphasized the human, subjective quality of scientific change. Paul Feyerabend was concerned that the very question of demarcation was insidious: science itself had no need of a demarcation criterion, but instead some philosophers were seeking to justify a special position of authority from which science could dominate public discourse. Feyerabend argued that science does not in fact occupy a special place in terms of either its logic or method, and no claim to special authority made by scientists can be upheld. He argued that, within the history of scientific practice, no rule or method can be found that has not been violated or circumvented at some point in order to advance scientific knowledge. Both Lakatos and Feyerabend suggest that science is not an autonomous form of reasoning, but is inseparable from the larger body of human thought and inquiry. NOMA * The concept of Non-overlapping Magisteria is a relatively recent attempt at proposing a clear demarcation between science and religion. It explicitly restricts science to its naturalistic foundations, meaning that no conclusions about supernatural phenomena like gods may be drawn from within the confines of science. â€Å"As to the supposed ‘conflict’†¦between science and religion, no such conflict should exist because each subject has a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority—and these magisteria do not overlap.† Criteria based on scientific progress Popper’s demarcation criterion concerns the logical structure of theories. Imre Lakatos described this criterion as â€Å"a rather stunning one. A theory may be scientific even if there is not a shred of evidence in its favour, and it may be pseudoscientific even if all the available evidence is in its favour. That is, the scientific or non-scientific character of a theory can be determined independently of the facts†. Instead, Lakatos proposed a modification of Popper’s criterion that he called â€Å"sophisticated (methodological) falsificationism†. On this view, the demarcation criterion should not be applied to an isolated hypothesis or theory but rather to a whole research program that is characterized by a series of theories successively replacing each other. In his view, a research program is progressive if the new theories make surprising predictions that are confirmed. In contrast, a degenerating research programme is characterized by theories bein g fabricated only in order to accommodate known facts. Progress in science is only possible if a research program satisfies the minimum requirement that each new theory that is developed in the program has a larger empirical content than its predecessor. If a research program does not satisfy this requirement, then it is pseudoscientific. According to Paul Thagard, a theory or discipline is pseudoscientific if it satisfies two criteria. One of these is that the theory fails to progress, and the other that â€Å"the community of practitioners makes little attempt to develop the theory towards solutions of the problems, shows no concern for attempts to evaluate the theory in relation to others, and is selective in considering confirmations and disconfirmations†. A major difference between his approach and that of Lakatos is that Lakatos would classify a nonprogressive discipline as pseudoscientific even if its practitioners work hard to improve it and turn it into a progressive discipline. In a somewhat similar vein, Daniel Rothbart (1990) emphasized the distinction between the standards that should be used when testing a theory and those that should be used when determining whether a theory should at all be tested. The latter, the eligibility criteria, include that the theory should encapsulate the explanatory success of its rival, and that it should yield test implications that are inconsistent with those of the rival. According to Rothbart, a theory is unscientific if it is not testworthy in this sense. George Reisch proposed that demarcation could be based on the requirement that a scientific discipline be adequately integrated into the other sciences. The various scientific disciplines have strong interconnections that are based on methodology, theory, similarity of models etc. Creationism, for instance, is not scientific because its basic principles and beliefs are incompatible with those that connect and unify the sciences. More generally speaking, says Reisch, an epistemic field is pseudoscientific if it cannot be incorporated into the existing network of established sciences. Rejection of the Problem * Some philosophers have rejected the idea of the demarcation problem, such as Larry Laudan. Others like Susan Haack, while not rejecting the problem wholesale, argue that a misleading emphasis has been placed on the problem that results in getting stuck in arguments over definitions rather than evidence. Laudan * Larry Laudan concluded, after examining various historical attempts to establish a demarcation criterion, that â€Å"philosophy has failed to deliver the goods† in its attempts to distinguish science from non-science—to distinguish science from pseudoscience. None of the past attempts would be accepted by a majority of philosophers nor, in his view, should they be accepted by them or by anyone else. He stated that many well-founded beliefs are not scientific and, conversely, many scientific conjectures are not well-founded. 3 Major Reasons why Demarcation is sometimes difficult: * science changes over time, * science is heterogeneous and; * established science itself is not free of the defects characteristic of pseudoscience

Portfolio Requirements Essay

Section A Now, in no more than a one page Word document (aim for around 500 words), create a new list, once again prioritizing the MDGs and targets from development you would like to see in your country. However, this list should not only be the original list that you placed in the Discussions: it should also incorporate the replies you got from your peers and the Discussions that took place in the rest of your group. Include on this one page an explanation of how you arrived at your final list, by referring to the replies you got from your peers and the Discussions that took place in the rest of your group. It is also important that in this page, you explain your view on how you compare â€Å"happiness† to increased economic wealth. Submit your one page Word document via the Assignments tool. Section B In no more than a one page Word document (aim for around 500 words), create a new set of answers. However, this list should not only be the original list that you placed in the Discussions: it should also incorporate the replies you got from your peers and the Discussions that took place in the rest of your group. Also incorporateinto this one page some additional information that you were able to add to your answers by exploring the Internet – don’t forget to include the web addresses of the pages where you gathered this information. Submit your one page Word document via the Assignments tool. Section C Students who successfully complete this assignment will be able to present critical arguments around ICTs for development projects and demonstrate their capabilities related to engaging with textual and numerical data to present information in a presentation format. Locate any project where ICTs were applied in contexts such as those described in this chapter, in your local community, own city, province or country, or elsewhere in the world and/or that you have been involved with. Ensure that you identify the following aspects in your case study: 1. Title  of the project 2. Website address(es) that provide information about the project 3. Introduction & Background, including details on the project Rationale (what was the reason for the project/why was it needed?) Start date, duration (this far) and status (ongoing, completed, etc.) 4. A description of the project, including details on The ICT4D solutions that was used in the project The strengths and weaknesses of the project 5. You could also add things like Major partners Major stakeholders Who initiated the process? Who were the target beneficiaries? Who were the service providers? How did the initiative work? Was there a local champion (some-one from the local community who represented the interests of that community)? Create a PowerPoint presentation of no more than 8 slides that provide the information as detailed above. Submit your presentation via the Assignments tool. Section D Portfolio Section D: Ethics, Copyright and IPR in Computer labs In the normal course of their teaching duties, several lecturers have reported finding pirated software improperly installed on the computers in the computer labs. Lecturers also found that students have copied and pasted materials from various Internet resources into their own assignments and reproduced them as if they were their own. This, they find, is a common problem among their students. Before taking a decision on what should be done, lecturers asks you, as students, for your inputs to decision-making. Submit your answers to the following questions in either a one page Word document (aim for around 500 words) or a PowerPoint presentation of no more than 8 slides in the Assignments tool: 1. What are the ethical and IPR issues that the faculty are confronted with? 2. What are the steps that the faculty should  take to address the ethical and IPR issues? 3. If you were the student who copied and was caught for plagiarism, what are the consequences you would expect?