Is Virtue Knowledge Or Teachable Philosophy Essay

Is Virtue Knowledge Or Teachable Philosophy Essay Plato presents Socrates views on the question whether virtue is knowledge and whether it can be taught in several dialogues, most notably in Meno. In this dialogue, Socrates makes many different arguments on the subject of virtue. These arguments include how virtue is defined and whether or not people can acquire it. He examines the ways that virtue can be attained; whether or not one is born being virtuous, whether virtue can be taught or it is another factor for virtues people have. In this essay I will focus on the question of whether virtue can be taught. Platos answer is that virtue cannot be taught. In this essay I will suggest that Plato could have framed the questions a bit differently, which would have probably given him a different answer. In particular I will argue that Plato might have done better to ask whether virtue could be learned instead of asking whether virtue can be taught. The Meno begins with Meno asking Socrates whether virtue can be taught. The argument then is drifted then to another question, what is knowledge. Then Meno proposed an interesting paradox: one can never find out anything new: either one knows it already, in which case there is no need to find it out, or else one does not, and in that case there is no means of recognizing it when found (Plato 1997, 80d-e.). In other words if one does not already know what arà ªte (virtue) is, he cant even search for it, because if he does not know what it is already, then even h he searches, he wont be able to know when one has found it. Socrates suggests a way to solve this dilemma which is based on the Pythagorean view of the immortal soul. According to that notion, the soul, after the physical body dies, is reincarnated and thus never destroyed. If one can never acquire any new knowledge and at the same time it is obvious we are always learning new things, then it is be concluded that learning mus t be a matter of recollection of past life experiences and knowledge. In other words there is no such thing as teaching, but only remembering. In the Meno he demonstrated with a young slave boy who apparently didnt have any knowledge of geometry. By asking the young boy questions he managed to show that the boy had knowledge of certain mathematical theorems. Meno asks again his original question, that is whether one can be taught virtue, or one gets virtue by nature or in some other way. Socrates consents to proceed but argues that they need a common ground due to the fact that neither of them can say at this point what virtue is. Then Meno is made agree that if virtue is not knowledge then it cannot be taught, and if a knowledge then it can be taught. He points out that one can teach something only if one knows what it is that he is teaching. Someone who does not know himself how to drive a car seems unlikely to be able to teach someone else how to. Socrates and Meno much agree that there is no one that truly knows what is meant by virtue and because of this reason cannot be taught. According to Socrates, If virtue could be taught, we should be able to know not only those who teach it but also those who learn from them, which in truth we cannot easily do (Plato 1997, 96c). Socrates claims that teachers for horsemanship, medicine, etc. exist and everybody recognizes these as genuine teachers, whereas people dont agree about whether the Sophists really do teach virtue. Socrates goes one to speak of Thucydides, who had two sons, neither of which was considered to be virtuous. However, it is said that Thucydides educated his children in many different disciplines, but it seems that he could not find a teacher of virtue even though he found teachers for other aspects of life he found valuable. He could not teach it himself either, even though he himself was known to be virtuous. Therefore it seems virtue cannot be a form of knowledge. In order for something to be knowledge, someone must be able to teach it to others. Socrates concludes that virtue cannot be taught an d that there is no means or method by which virtue can be acquired. Virtue is simply shown as coming to us, whenever it comes, by divine dispensation (reference?) In my view, if Plato had framed the questions somewhat differently, he might have gotten a different answer. That is Plato could have better asked whether virtue could be learned instead of asking whether virtue can be taught. What I mean to say is that asking whether one can be taught something entails that the relationship of a student and a teacher, whereas asking whether something can be learned implies only that there is a student (whose life experiences might be said to be a teacher.) For example, to ask whether I was taught geometry is to ask whether a teacher taught me geometry. Whereas to ask whether I learned geometry is simply to ask whether I learned it, whether or not I was taught it by a geometry teacher or learned geometry myself either from (lets say) a book or by some other means. Learning can come in various forms. In order to learn something, one does not require a teacher in the strict sense. For instance, learning can be achieved from studying people who have virtue and yet the latter may not be aware that they are studied. So a man may be learning virtue, and his teachers may be virtuous, even though the teachers might not even be alive. Another form of learning is experience. Virtue may be learned through personal experience. In this example, the teacher would be both life experiences and the reflective nature of the learner. There is still another form of learning. A man can learn, even if he cannot offer an explanation of how he learned or of what he exactly knows. For instance, after someone has been through a particular problem in his life, he can then detect that a relative of his is going through the same problem. And although he can know it, he cannot give an explanation of how he recognized it. Another example is that of the musicians or painters who have learned their craft and are able to perform well, but find it almost impossible to give an explanation of what they have learned. So the question whether virtue can be taught is a much different, and narrower, than whether virtue can be learned. Plato is right in suggesting that virtue cannot be taught. I believe that we all know or have heard of people who recite rules of virtue (such us be compassionate or be honest,) but find it impossible to put them into practice. Certainly in this sense virtue cannot be taught. A mentioned above, having the ability to be virtuous is like having the ability to be musical, which is to some extent instinctual. So, for example, it could be argued that knowing when, for example, to offer help to a friend when he needs it, is a matter of instinct or judgment. All of this means that although virtue may not be taught, this is not to say that virtue cant be learned. Plato suggests the notion that virtue is inborn. Certainly this is to some degree true. There are some people with an exceptional capacity for virtues like compassion, etc. since they were born. Yet others look as if they are born with little to no moral conscience, which seems to be necessary for virtue to exist. However what this means is just that the foundation of virtue is inborn, not that it cant be learned. In the same way that we comprehend the fact that one can be preached how to be virtuous but fail to be virtuous in practice, the converse is also possible: people can refine the ways they understand virtue, they may become more virtuous by reflective practice, and their views of how to act in a virtuous way changes significantly as they grow up. In my view, if Plato put his questions in a different way (that is if he had asked whether virtue can be learned, instead of whether virtue can be taught) he might have found a much more affirmative answer. Bibliography

The Life and Poetry of W.B. Yeats Essay -- Poets, biography, Biographi

William Butler Yeats was born on the 13th of June in 1865, in Sandymount, Country Dublin, Ireland. His family was extremely artistic. His father, John Butler Yeats, studied art at Heatherley’s Art School in London, his brother Jack became a well-renowned painter, and his sisters Elizabeth and Susan became involved in the Arts and Crafts movement, which was the use of handmade objects and boycotting mechanical objects. Yeats grew up as a member of the former Protestant Ascendancy, where the changes in Ireland directly disadvantaged him because of his heritage. During his childhood, he experienced political power shifting away from the Protestant Ascendancy, which had a major influence on his poems later on in his life. At the age of two, his family moved to England for his father to study art and become an artist. At first, he and his siblings were taught at home, where his mother entertained them with stories and folktales from Ireland. His father gave an education of only geography and chemistry and took William to natural history explorations. On 26 January 1877, William Yeats entered the Godolphin primary school in Hammersmith where he would learn for four years, before his family moved back to Dublin. In 1881, Yeats continued his education at Erasmus Smith High School in Dublin, near his father’s studio. Yeats spent most of his time there, meeting the city’s artists and writers. It was during this time when he started to write poetry. During the years of 1884 and 1886, Yeats attended the Metropolitan School of Art, when in 1885 his poetry works and essay of â€Å"The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson† were published in the Dublin University Review. Others of his works from this time include a play about a bishop, a monk and a woman ... ...ows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? The poem begins with a description of multiple disastrous situations: the falcon, a metaphor for a person, cannot hear the falconer, God, which means that people cannot hear what God is saying, and that chaos and anarchy will uphold the government. The Second Coming is when Jesus or any other religious figure comes back to the world, and something major happens that changes the current way of life. In this case, a vision of a sphinx comes out of Spiritus Mundi (Spirit of the World) and goes towards Bethlehem, possibly saying that the Anti-Christ will return and spread the disastrous happenings throughout the world.

Management Role in Ensuring Editorial Freedom

Responsibility, credibility and quality are key words for a large, serious media group. This applies in relation to the users of our media, customers, employees, shareholders and the societies in which we work. At the forefront, however, is the publishing responsibility: to safeguard editorial independence and freedom of speech in the media which we own. Free media are among the main contributors to strong, live democracies. A credible, strong media should defend important values such as religious freedom, tolerance, human rights and democratic principles. They must reflect a diversity of opinion. For this reason, they should also provide different ways of looking at issues and views on important questions in public debates. The management must facilitate editors in complying with the legislation and ethical regulations of the country where the operations take place. Editorial quality and credibility are the cornerstone of publishing activities and these, together with the individual medium’s articles of association, form the basis for the editors’ work. The editor-in-chief has full freedom and is personally and fully responsible for the content of the medium of which he or she is in charge. However, there are only few publications that allow their editors with total freedom. In reality, an independent press is a myth. Or at best, a glorified term. Most editors dare not write their honest comment/opinion. In other words, they are sometimes paid to keep their honest opinions out of the paper. And if they do defy the management, they would soon be out on the streets hunting for a new job. Most managements have vested interests – political, social and cultural in running the paper, which may not gel with the opinions held by the editors they employ. It is here that the editors have to either compromise with their editorial values or pay a price for standing up to them. In private, corporate media environments, editorial hiring and firing are the preserve of the owners. Media houses (read owners) have become highly profit-oriented organizations. So editorial values are always at stake Distortion of news and comment in such a scenario becomes the order of the day. Most owners hand-pick their editors so that the policy of the owner becomes the policy of the editor. Dissent is seldom allowed It is media owners who possess the greater weapon today – i. e. , one useful against incumbent politicians fearful of bad press, lack of access, and endorsement of opponents. This sorry, quid-pro-quo, relationship leads to media corruption, benefitting only the ruling, corporate, class. Managements giving complete editorial freedom is therefore rare. But any newspaper which enjoys more flexibility and freedom from their management, has the potential to make greater impact and live up to the reputation of a frank, fair and fearless media. Today's concentration of media ownership and editorial power brings into sharp focus not only the immense responsibility, but also the freedom and estate of editors – in particular those with huge audiences. Yet it is major-media owners, and their hand-picked editors, who decide what the vast majority see, hear, and read. Media owners and their editors have become the unelected, and unregulated, keepers of the public trust and molders of the public mind.

FBI Warning Regarding Phishing, Spoofing and ID Theft

The FBI,  the  Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Internet service provider Earthlink have jointly issued a warning on how the growing ranks of Internet crooks are using new tricks called phishing and spoofing to steal your identity. In an FBI press release, Assistant Director of the agencys Cyber Division, Jana Monroe says, Bogus e-mails that try to trick customers into giving out personal information are the hottest, and most troubling, new scam on the Internet. The FBIs Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) has seen a steady increase in complaints that involve some form of unsolicited e-mail directing consumers to a phony Customer Service type of web site. Assistant Director Monroe said that the scam is contributing to a rise in identity theft, credit card fraud, and other Internet frauds. How to Recognize Attack Email Spoofing, or phishing, frauds attempt to make Internet users believe that they are receiving e-mail from a specific, trusted source, or that they are securely connected to a trusted web site when that is not the case. Spoofing is generally used as a means to convince individuals to provide personal or financial information that enables the perpetrators to commit credit card/bank fraud or other forms of identity theft. In E-mail spoofing the header of an e-mail appears to have originated from someone or somewhere other than the actual source. Spam distributors and criminals often use spoofing in an attempt to get recipients to open and possibly even respond to their solicitations. IP Spoofing is a technique used to gain unauthorized access to computers, whereby the intruder sends a message to a computer with an IP address indicating that the message is coming from a trusted source. Link alteration involves altering the return address in a web page sent to a consumer to make it go to the hackers site rather than the legitimate site. This is accomplished by adding the hackers address before the actual address in any e-mail, or page that has a request going back to the original site. If an individual unsuspectingly receives a spoofed e-mail requesting him/her to click here to update their account information, and then are redirected to a site that looks exactly like their Internet Service Provider, or a commercial site like ​eBay or PayPal, there is an increasing chance that the individual will follow through in submitting their personal and/or credit information. FBI Offers Tips on How to Protect Yourself If you encounter an unsolicited e-mail that asks you, either directly, or through a web site, for personal financial or identity information, such as Social Security number, passwords, or other identifiers, exercise extreme caution.If you need to update your information online, use the normal process youve used before, or open a new browser window and type in the website address of the legitimate companys account maintenance page.If a website address is unfamiliar, its probably not real. Only use the address that you have used before, or start at your normal homepage.Always report fraudulent or suspicious e-mail to your internet service provider.Most companies require you to log in to a secure site. Look for the lock at the bottom of your browser and https in front of the website address.Take note of the header address on the web site. Most legitimate sites will have a relatively short internet address that usually depicts the business name followed by .com, or possibly .org. Spoof s ites are more likely to have an excessively long strong of characters in the header, with the legitimate business name somewhere in the string, or possibly not at all.If you have any doubts about an e-mail or website, contact the legitimate company directly. Make a copy of the questionable web sites URL address, send it to the legitimate business and ask if the request is legitimate.If youve been victimized, you should contact your local police or sheriffs department, and file a complaint with the FBIs Internet Fraud Complaint Center..