UFO

There are a lot of people out there that claim that they have seen UFO’s before. There has been a lot of research on trying to find other species out there, but there has been no success. Condon, Hynek, and Paynter are all skeptical about the existence of UFOs. Condon believes that there should be more scientists working on other things rather then looking for UFOs. He believes that scientist should be researching things that will advance science, and he does not think that UFO reports will.  Hynek believe that there needs to be more information from people that supposedly seen UFOs. Hynek believe that there could be aliens out there, but there needs to be more information. Paynter is also skeptical but believe that there is a possibility. He believes that there needs to be physical evidence. There are a lot of people that think they seen aliens before, but there has never been any physical encounters with aliens. I agree with Paynter the most. I believe there is a possibility of aliens out there, but until there is physical encounter with them, I do not think they exist. There are a lot of people that could be hallucinating and said they saw a alien. Physical evidence is all I need to show me that aliens really do exist. 

Evaluating Evidence

A interesting topic that I saw in this weeks reading is evaluating evidence. Evidence is important in every argument or conversation trying to prove a point. Without evidence a persons argument is based on opinion which makes the argument significantly weaker. Evidence could come from everywhere, but as a good critical thinker we have to evaluate that evidence to see if it is reliable. In the word of the internet, there are a lot of information out there that is false. For example, usually professors do not like students using wikipedia. There is a lot of information on wikipedia, but anyone can write whatever they want on it. Since anyone can just write whatever they want the information on the website is not very reliable. IT is better to find facts to prove a point through books or online websites that are published by schools, or highly educated teachers. A good thing to do before reading a website is looking at who wrote it, so you are sure that the information is correct.  

Wisdom and Knowledge

There are many different perspectives on the differences between wisdom and knowledge. Knowledge is knowing information. When a person has a lot of knowledge they know a lot of facts, and are very book smart. When a person knows how to use all of the information they posses then I consider the person to have wisdom. Knowledge is all of the stuff a person knows, and wisdom is how a person uses it. Wisdom comes with age. Usually a older person has a lot of wisdom because they have been through a lot of different situations, and they know how to react to a certain situation because of all the knowledge they posses. A person with a lot of knowledge could just enjoy studying a lot, so they are really smart, but they do not know how to respond to real life obstacles. I think that in the classroom we mostly accumulate knowledge. A lot of the things we learn at school is information. For example, a lot of older people tell me that they do not use anything that they learned in college. They just went to college to get a degree to receive a diploma and get a higher paying job. I think that wisdom is not something a person can just read in a book and learn. Wisdom is learn through experience and going through certain situations and learning how to respond to them. I feel like wisdom is a way more important thing in life then just knowledge itself.

Expressive Language

When it comes to live expressions are everything. Anyone, and everyone can tell what a person is feeling by the way they express themselves. Many people are judged without really knowing the person based on how they express their feelings and express themselves to the public. Expression is used to show the reader or the other person how you are feeling at the moment. Expression is a good thing for the most part because it is giving people insight on what an individual is feeling. However, expressions have its negativities also. For example, there was a really good basketball coach named Bob Knight. While he was coaching he was the all time leader in wins as a coach, but he was also known for his short temper. One time the official blew the wrong call, and it cost his team the ball. He got so upset that he took the chair he was sitting in and threw it onto the court. He continued to run onto the court to yell at the referees. Bob Knight let his emotions have the best of him and he expressed in emotion in a very negative manner that gave him a really bad image to everyone in the world. The way someone expresses their emotions are really important, because an individual is often judged by the emotions they are showing.

Rhetorical Device

Rhetorical devices are common in everyday conversations. A rhetorical device is when someone tries to tell another person something, but not directly telling them the problem. An example of a rhetorical device is sarcasm. I use sarcasm everyday. Since I live with 38 other guys our trash cans seem to fill up fairly quickly. One day I was cooking in the kitchen, and I saw that the trash was pretty full. It was my friends turn to take out the trash, so I went to him and said, I cant find the trash can, theres just a bunch of trash on the floor. He got the point that the trash was overfilled, and that he needed to take it out. I also use Euphemism quite often. Euphemism is when someone replaces a negative word with a more positive word.  For example, when I was at a fancy dinner with my parents and their coworkers and I needed to use to restroom I also if I may be excused rather then saying I need to go to the bathroom. 

Negative Effects of Emotion

I found a lot of interesting topics from this weeks reading. The one that interested me the most was negative effects of emotions. Learning how to react with negative emotions are important because there are always things that go wrong. In our society not everything happens as planned. There are bad things that happen to everyone, and individuals need to learn how to deal with negative effects of emotions. As humans, we often let our emotions take the best of us, and we make irrational decision. For example, my ex girlfriend and I use to fight all the time over a lot of small things. One night she got mad that I was talking to one of my friends that was a girl, and we got into a huge argument. During the argument I was really bad, and I broke up with her based off my negative emotions because I was mad. When negative things happen to one person they often remember it for a long time, and do specific actions because they remember the bad things that happened to them. It is important to learn to move on, and not ever situation is the same.

Aquinas

I have gone to a catholic school my whole life, but I do not believe in an actual God. I believe that there is a higher power up there, but I do not necessarily believe in God. However, Dawkins believes that we came here from evolution, so he sees it as there is no way God could exist. I think that Darwins theory of evolution is very logical, and I agree with it. I think that we have evolved to who we are today because of evolution. However, there had to be someone that put everyone on the world because there is no way people just came out of nowhere. I think that Aquinas would agree with Darwin on this highly controversial topic. He would agree with Darwin because there are facts that back up the evolution theory, and because back then there was no writing, so the bible was written all out of memory. There could have been a lot of things that changes over time, and a lot of things could have been forgotten making it less dependable than Darwins theory.

Reasoning

The type of reasoning that I use to make my decisions is seeing what my strong points are. I see what are the things that I can do well, and what are the things that I need to improve on. This is very important in choosing my career in the future. For example, I am not very good at math, so it would be a terrible idea for me to decide to try and become an engineer  down the road. Taking different courses while I am attending college is going to help me find out what I can do effectively and enjoy. When I first came to San Jose State I was never interested in health science. I thought that it was going to be boring, but after taking a kinesiology class I found out that it is really enjoyable and it is something I am now thinking about doing as a career. It is important to base my reasonings off of things that I am good at because it will give me a higher chance of success.