FINAL BLOG POST!

I Consider this semester the stepping stone to my future. Just like how a child will never forget the day he/she learns to ride a bike and/or who taught it to him/her, I will not forget FALL 2010 session1. I have taken so much from this course and the professors were all kind and helpful to make this experience a lot easier. This class ended up not being as hard as I thought it would be. Eng 103 was different and a bit difficult yet manageable. The way Professor Dragan helped each student out each milestone to the final paper, it has become easier to learn the material to writing a successful research paper. Something i would have done differently is the way i consumed time wiht each milestone. In the begining of the class i did not know how important each assignment was for the end result. IT WAS VERY IMPORTANT, I'm glad I did not slack off with my tasks, if that were the case I would probably would not be writing this blog...  Professor Dragan's feedback for each milestone was the best part of each assignment his suggestions and many corrections on each of my paperhad allowed me to make it more efficient each time. Also, the databases you have provided was very useful too, I know i will carry on with using these databases for further papers Thank you Professor Dragan!

Critical Thinking Blog 5

After my study in this course of Brains, Minds, and Consciousness I have learned many great things about cloning, robotics, and advanced technology. But my feeling about all three things remains the same, I am against human cloning and cordial on the use of cloning for other things and about robotics I’m starting to accept that they are become much more advanced and useful to our society nowadays but my thought that they won’t ever have the same consciousness as humans has not changed. David Gelernter states that "Here is an unfortunate truth: today's mainstream ideas about humans and artifical intelligence thought lead nowhere" (202). I agree with Gelernter because like I mentioned earlier  there is no way that robots can gain consciousness like humans have, humans are structured in such diversity, nothing can mimic us exactly, close maybe but not one hundred percent successfully. The main debate about human cloning is that it will destroy our uniqueness and identity. Many fictional stories that discuss  human cloning has opened our eyes to the possibilities of downfalls we will face if this act is allowed through the works of  Churchill's A Number and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. The best part about this cluster was that all the other courses has correspondingly been related to one another’s cirrculum, this fact has allowed me and other students stay well attached and interested. Thanks a well organized and caring English professor, a generous and caring psych professor and a professor who mastered philosophy I was able to soak in the most knowledge from this cluster  more than my first cluster experience. Challenges to learn the importance in the basic course this semester has allowed to me to take each milestone successfully, thus far. I want to thank Professor Dragan, Professor Brown, and Professor Beaty for all working together to make this semester a successful term!

Critical Thinking Blog #4

Just like me, who disagrees with the practice of human cloning, Churchill’s play called The Number shows the perils to human cloning that will clearly show the possible outcomes to ‘cloning gone wrong’. This play shows the conflicts that can come along with human cloning. In the play a father, Salter, clones his son Bernard for many different reasons. But instead of just having one clone of Bernard there ends up being about 20 clones of him. In the play Salter stated "But I didn't know that wasn’t part of the deal. They were meant to make one of you not a whole number, they stole that, we'll deal with, and it’s something for lawyers. But you're what I wanted, you're the one" (Churchill 158). Salter basically addresses his concerns about the multiplicity of clones. He did not originally want so many clones of his son but was pleased with the outcome. Bernard’s clone (B2) is outraged that he’s a clone.  Bernard #2 states "I'm just a copy. I'm not the real one" (Churchill 158). You can see here that B2 does not like the fact that he is just a copy of Salter’s first son. This is the kinds of downfall cloning creates. The author writes, “Because they’re copies, copies? they’re not, copies of you which some mad scientist has illegally, how do you know that? , I don’t but, what if someone else is the one, the first one, the real on (Churchill 148)”. This play shows the complexities of the cloning. Salter’s unjust reason for this act led to unwant tragic that left him with less than what he began with. Churchill’s play addresses the importance between nature and nurture. One question that The Number makes us question is whether or not cloning is a just representation of humanity? Another question is what’s greater in importance, Nature or Nurture?   The moral of the story gives an instance of a probable act that one may foresee and the most probable outcome one can expect.

Final draft follow-up

So far, I have been on task with all the milestones for this research paper. My most recent milestone has not yet  been revised due late submission so I am unable to tell you how i did so far. However, I feel as though I've done my part of the research for this paper and i'm excited to see the final draft. I have put use of all the datatbases available to us such as lexis nexis, JSTOR, The Gale Virtual Library, and even the databases available to us by Laguardia. I have found some very interesting case studies, scholarly articles, and newspaper articles that I used towards my last draft. I have not included resource from a book yet. Honestly I havent even searched for one yet. If anyone knows any books on 'Anterograde Amnesia' it'll help me out. My paper is flawed and needs more work, i know this. So i will work to perfect it soon.

Critical Thnking Blog #3

 Human Cloning can be defined as making or creating of a exact copy of an existing being. The issue that arises is whether or not human cloning would be ethical and or possible to accept in our actual world. There are two types of human cloning "therapeutic cloning" and "reproductive cloning". Therapeutic cloning the use cloning of adult cells for medicine and reproductive cloning is involved with making cloned humans. Ray Kurzweil states that "Cloning will be a key technology- not for cloning actual humans but for life-extension purposes, in the form of 'therapeutic cloning' " (121). Kurzweil reveals that cloning is not a good deed for human purposes, but it can solve the problems of life-extension, such as the extinction of animals and world hunger. In Kurzweil's article he presents a solution for a problem that came about due to ‘cloning’ he states "Cloning technologies even offer a possible solution for world hunger; creating meat and other protein sources in a factory without animals by cloning animal muscle tissue" (124). Cloning can be used to stop the killing of animals for food which will eventually lower the rate of ‘world hunger’. On the other hand Caryl Churchill expresses how he feels in the play A Number. In the play, A Number, a character named Salter states "but I didn't know, that wasn’t part of the deal. They were meant to make one of you not a while number, they stole that, we’ll deal with, it's something for lawyers. But you're what I wanted, you're the one" (158). This shows that cloning can come with problems with identity and bias treatment of one and not the other within a household. This idea stated within this play written by Caryl Churchill has contrary ideas in comparison to Ray Kurzweil’s. Even though the concept of ‘cloning’ has been used for cloning animals for good use, there had been also a quite of few of downfalls. One example is Dolly the sheep, the first successfully cloned mammal or was she? she got very sick and eventually died. This shows that we don’t have the good enough equipment to always come up with successful clones. The 6th Day, shows the story of a man who finds out that he has been cloned unwillingly. This movie presents a view that the concept of cloning is merely for convenience purposes and nothing of this is due to improvement of our lives. This film clip has always allowed me to wonder humans will eventually be replaced with a clone of us. The main character felt ashamed and unhappy that his family was oblivious to this fact about himself, that he was not authentic. But yet they all fulfilled all the tasks and duties as if he was really himself. Concluding all that I’ve mentioned above, I believe that there won’t ever be an strong enough argument and evidence to argue whether ‘cloning’ is good or bad. Nor do I think there will ever be a one hundred percent successful clone that can be recognized. We do not have the proper materials nor the mind to recreate naturalistic human. We are formed in such a diverse dynamic way, we cannot be mimicked.

Follow up on Research Paper!

So far I have written an introductory paragraph which has been reviewed and approved by Professor. Dragan. I have also began to write out my first body paragraph. I found a few great sources that will help me towards this research paper, which i'm excited about. I will watch the film Memento by Christopher Nolan once more for a more critical viewing of this film. I really appreciate way this class operates. It's a step by step process that Professor Dragan is patiently teaching us (me) to helping me write the most well reformed research paper =]

 

**S.A**

Critical Thinking Blog #2

Many people are looking forward to the upcoming technologies that will help improve human nature. Or is it? Artificial Intelligence has been advancing over the years, researchers and scientists are moving at a fast pace to improve versions of robotics. And I must say, that they’ve done a marvelous job so far, robotics are becoming so ‘high-tech’ that its become difficult to distinguish ‘us’ from ‘them’. In my lib 110 course, we were shown video clips of robotics at its highest. The kinds of robots that I’ve saw was the most ‘high-tech’ thus far. These robots were able to share emotions through actions and even facial expressions. Mechanisms are currently being built to share human like qualities. Or is it? My study in philosophy has helped me to wonder whether mechanisms are like us humans even if they shared the same mental states. Scientists will sooner or later build robots to have consciousness like us. Would that be entirely good? That’s the type of questions some can’t help but question. Some are extremely against this idea, merely because this may change our way of life entirely. David Gelernter states in his essay Dream-Logic, The Internet and Artificial Thought he addresses his position on what is being said about consciousness within robotics. "Here is an unfortunate truth: today's mainstream ideas about humans and artificial intelligence thought lead nowhere" (Gelernter 202). In the quote previously given Gelernter shares his thought on artificial intelligence, that being he thinks that thought in robots is not going to happen. Gelernter also states that a machine will not be able to think without free-association which humans do and are able to do daily. Free-association is when one can let their mind wander, in a way like day dreaming. He states they machines will not be able to do that therefore they cannot be build to have a consciousness (Gelernter 202). With that being said, I will reference another authors view point on artificial intelligence with a whole different output. Ray Kurzweil wrote "The Singularity is Near" He argues that "Artifical Intelligence at human levels will necessarily greatly exceed human intelligence for several reasons" ( Kurzweil 138). Kurzweil believes that artificial intelligence will be smarter and will have a huge advantage for the  way of life. He states many reasons to this, one which is that humans are able to only develop their skills in ways that have been encouraged by evolution whereas artificial intelligence can advance us even further with their systematic and well equipped ways. There are many more perspectives on this topic. Here I’ve listed only two views that were contrary. I believe the same thought as Gelernter, I do not think that artificial intelligence can be built like humans no matter how hard we try. Humans are mechanisms with very diverse parts and functions that cannot be copied. And even if someone were to invent a mechanisms with sorts similar to us I am morally against this idea merely because with items and products like robots with high functioning capabilities it will become even more difficult for humans to perform certain tasks and limit our accessibilities. For instance, It will become even tougher to get a job if mechanisms far beyond our expectations to be invented, because if they functioned even close to how humans performed than it will be easy to put unethical robots to do the job with no pay than to give to humans. That’s another issue one worries about.

Sample Paper: Overview

Today's lab classwork was very helpful, I felt like I received a lot of out put on what is expected in future papers. Although there was some flaws with the paper, overall this paper had a lot of researched quote sandwiches and information. I would like to see more of this kind of work for review and experience wise. I had a great experience with this kind of work.



**S.Ahn***

Critical Thinking Blog Assignment #1

             The last couple of lectures from eng101, eng103, and lib110 courses, I've studied the new developments in artificial intelligence. As we've discussed newly developed mechanisms such as robotics. I've grown to be optimistic about this subject matter. Although I feel optimistic about artificial intelligence, I am not strongly positive about the advancements for the future like Kurzweil. Because I worry for the problematic issues such as limited job opportunities, too simliar of clones that may steal opportunities of actual humans, and the way people will reply on artificial intelligence to carry on some if not most of the duties we're meant to fulfill alone. In other words, I feel like artificial intelligence will limit people to reach their limit of effort because we will soon become dependent on mechanisms to carry on for us. So, my standpoint would be neutrality instead of agreeing one hundred percent to this approach.
             Even in my philosophy course we've discussed the views on functionalism. The theory that if mechanisms act like humans in every way possible and carry on the same internal beliefs as us, then why aren't they considered moral like us?  Putnam's theory on functionalism is that if two things that are entirely different from one another, robot vs human, has the same input, the same output, and the same internal states then we can believe that these two things are functionally identical. I'm making the connection between a philosophical view with the views of Ray Kurzweil to simply say that
although they both mean the same position, its awakens us to believe that our world would become a supernatural place.
            As I have furthered my knowledge on human consciousness, I’ve learned that to be humanistic partially means to have behavior that correlates with the internal states like having emotions, having experiences, stories to tell to be able to relate to others in a humane way. As a in class experiment, we’ve gotten hands on with the newly discovered chatterbot such as A.L.I.C.E. My class had performed a mini Turing test to determine what it meant to  have humanistic qualities. One of which we discovered was that A.L.I.C.E was not able to answer tell us a real song like a real person will be able to. When the question, “Do you know any songs” was asked she answered “Yes, just one”. Something a real person will not do, A.L.I.C.E did, which helped us to quickly assume that to have human consciousness is to have the qualities, and morals of humans and not automated responses.  

Sharing a Source

              The most useful database I found information from was on Lexis Nexis. It helped me come across actual case histories of people who are and is overcoming this condition of anterograde amnesia. Like the article, "Understanding the Mystery of Memory", this New York Times article I discovered on Lexis Nexis shares the story of a twenty-seven year-old man by the name of H.M who suffered from a condition called eilepsy. He underwent surgery to "sorta" treat his condition which meant he had to remove some parts of himself such as his inner ear and also the hippocampus. If you didn't know already, the hippocampus is the part of the brain that helps formulate memory. He successfully underwent his surgery, alive, but with another condition called anterograde amnesia. Researchers then realized that by removing the hippocampus, outcomes such as H.M.'s will occur. The indirect experiment done on this man, will help me to see the more factual details of how this condition occurs. And ways to prevent it. This source along with many others i've discovered can help me formulate a solid argument that the film Memento does not portray the actual occurence of the condition and that the film is a dramatized version of its actuality.


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Memento trailer

10/14/2010 re: Essay 2 ENG103

I chose to write about topic #2 'Portraying Minds' through the film Memento. I chose this film because I was drawn to the subject matter of a condition that conflicts with ones mind and memory. This condition correlates to the discussions and materials I am currently learning in my Psychology course. For this essay i hope to find more answersabout myself (career wise) because I hope to become a psychologist that can help people with these kinds of diagnosis. My thoughts on this assignment is that I'm thrilled I like that I'm able to watch a Hollywood film that portrays people that suffer amnesia and I'm also thrilled that I will be able to get a better learning experience through this paper.

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Research Paper Possibility.

For this upcoming research paper, I'm not exactly sure what I want to choose to do yet, however I'm leaning towards research paper #4 'Portraying Minds'. I feel propelled to do my topic on paper #4 because I love watching movies and films especially because its topic is on mental illnesses and conditions that catches my attention. I've heard a lot about a few of the movie choices that's listed but I have never got a chance to view them yet. So I will like this chance to both watch the films that fit my interests and also write a research paper regarding the film(s) I watched. I think I will enjoy this assignment a lot. I look foward to research these conditions that I'm not aware of to better understand the symptons and conditions others may face. This may really help me understand myself more because I want to become a counselor that aids and assist people with lack abilities someday. But again, I'm not positive that I'm going to choose this topic.


*--S.A

Freewrite regarding essay #1

I have a strong urge to write this essay on Temple Grandin because I felt inspired by her story. I also prefer to write this paper on Temple rather than the negative use of Internet Technology because I got so much out of her story that educated me about this common disorder. Autism is becoming a common disorder for some, I too want to become a supporter of this disability. It was especially heart-felt when I viewed the 'Bio-Pic film' to learn that most Autistic people like Temple not only have disabilites but have many advantages that most people do not.
The inspiration she allowed others to have after sharing her own experiences has opened the doors and ears or many people around the world. Her couragious, intellectually different and inspirational life has

*---Welcome to my blog---*

Hello all!

Welcome to SoJin's Cluster Course Blog.
This cluster courses' main topics of study are Brains, Minds, Conciousness.

Enjoy~~!