The Philosopher of Free

The Philosopher of Freedom and Empiricism Essay John Locke (August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704) was a British Philosopher, Oxford scholar, medical researcher and physician, political operative, and economist. Alexander Popham, his father’s commander, helped him to gain an excellent education. It was 1964 when Locke started to study in Westminster School in London. John Locke had become the King’s scholar. The King’s scholar was group of intelligent boys who has the privilege to live in the school and to receive an allowance for two to three years before standing for election. After studying in Westminster school, he went to Christ Church in Oxford at the age of twenty. His years in college were devoted in taking logic and metaphysics and the classical languages. It was June 1658, when Locke was qualified as a Master of Arts and elected as Senior Student council in Christ Church College. After few years, Locke was elected as Lecturer in Greek, Lecturer in Rhetoric, and Lecturer in Philosophy. But then, John Locke declined the permanent positions to avoid confining himself in religious orders. Also, having studied medicine, John Locke served as a private physician and secretary to Anthony Ashley Cooper. His knowledge in scientific practice had influenced his political thoughts and methods. As author of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding and the Two Treatises, he made his place in the philosophical and political fields. He was considered as the first British empiricist. Locke said that all individuals were born without innate ideas or knowledge. When we were born, our mind is like a white sheet of paper; it is clear and does not have any ideas (tabula rasa). However, through experience which is derived from five senses, we can have an identity and firm foundation of knowledge. This knowledge is based on sensation and reflection. Sensation is our observation about external sensible objects; while reflection is from internal operations of our mind. John Locke implied that our passion or fantasy must not affect our reasons. He believed that observation and experience are the only strong foundations of knowledge. Observation can be simple which is always true or complex which is not always true and not corresponds with reality always. We can definitely be certain with our ideas if we can analyze our complex ideas back to the simple ideas where they originated. Truth will come out through the joining simple ideas in your head and matches the thing that your simple ideas represent in reality. His thoughts about the development of human knowledge became very useful in psychology- the association psychology. He was often called as the â€Å"Father of English Psychology†. Nowadays, his ideas are still applied in psychology. His work, the Essay, discussed his contribution about the philosophy of language. He said that language a basis for judgment. He said that the words we use do not have meanings, the meanings lie on the ideas in our mind. Among all his professions, John Locke was best known for his political thoughts. Arguing with Thomas Hobbes, John Locke stated that the original state of nature was happy and characterized by reason and tolerance. All people must attain equality and independence. Nobody has the right to abridge or harm another’s rights, life, liberty, and possessions. The state should be guided by natural law. Rights of property are very important, because each person has a right to the product of his or her labor. If one of the rights of citizens is being harmed, they have the right of overthrowing the government. John Locke’s political thoughts influenced the declaration of Independence in America by Thomas Jefferson. Until now, America is still under his influenced that everyone should be free.

Macbeth :: Literary Analysis, Shakespeare

Within the pages of the play Macbeth, one can find the five distinct literary devices of symbolism, allusion, alliteration, personification, and repetition used throughout. These three devices aid the story along and help develop the plot and characters each in a different way. With the use of symbolism, or the practice of representing things by means of symbols that give significance to objects (The Free Dictionary 2011), events, or relationships, one can see that this device helps the overall plot and development of characters by showing the significance of emotions, such as guilt, by the players. Symbolism brings a lot to the overall work as it gives the readers a deeper look into the emotions brought up in the play, helps the reader associate symbols to actual meanings, and gives the story a kind of depth that would not be there without. One quotation that shows the use of symbolism is by Lady Macbeth, â€Å"Out, damned spot! Out, I say†¦Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?† (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 30-34) (Sparknotes 2011). This quote shows the imagined blood on Lady Macbeth’s hands as the symbol of the guilt and remorse, as well as fright, that she feels over all the deaths that have been implemented by her in the play. Lady cannot get rid of the blood which is a symbol for how she cannot get the deaths out of her consciousness. Allusion, or a passing reference to something in the Bible, history, or literature, is used in the play as a way of letting the reader and audience gain depth into the story and overall it helps the actors get the meaning they are trying to convey across to the audience. One quotation that shows the use of allusion is by Malcolm, â€Å"Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.† (Act 4, Scene 3, line 23) (Sparknotes 2011). This quote is a biblical allusion that refers to the angel Lucifer’s fall from grace. In the context of the play, the quotes is in reference to Macbeth and how even though everything that is evil tries to present itself as good, there will always be a flaw and evil will never prevail. Alliteration, or the repetition of the same sounds or of the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables (The Free Dictionary 2011), is used in the play Macbeth to get an actor’s point across in a powerful and intense fashion.

Do Personality Traits Predict Behaviour?

Do personality traits predict behaviour? The trait approach to personality is focused on differences between individuals. After type theorists such as Sheldon, who focused on body parts to determine temperament, and lexical researchers such as Galton who provided the first dictionary of words to describe behaviour, the principles underpinning trait theory were first outlined by Gordon Allport (1937). He found that one English-language dictionary alone contained more than 4,000 words describing different personality traits and suggested that it is how the traits come together that produces the uniqueness of all individuals. Rather than relying on intuition or subjective judgement as did Freud and many other neo-Freudians, trait theorists used objective measurements to examine their constructs. The use of factor analysis was a major breakthrough in the trait approach and Raymond Cattell was the first to make the use of this to reduce the lists of traits to a smaller number. This marked the beginning of the search to discover the basis structure of personality. This essay will discuss the issues surrounding the use of personality measures such as Eysencks personality questionnaire (EPQ) and Costa and Mc Crae’s Big Five model (NEO-PIR) to predict behaviour. Cattell’s 16PF hasn’t had much of an impact but personality measures that followed such as Eysenck’s personality questionnaire, who claimed that 3 types/ supertraits, Extraversion, Neuroticism and Psychoticism, make up the basic structure of personality, and Costa and mc Crae’s Big Five Model measuring Openness, Conscientious, Extraversion, agreeableness and Neuroticism, have received a high level of support. The personality factors are found cross-culturally, in children as well as adults and specifically for Eysencks model in identical twins raised apart, evidence which seems to demonstrate that the observed personality differences are stable across time and have a genetic basis, although the underlying heritability estimate used in studies has been questioned by Plomin. Nevertheless, trait measures have great practical applications; they have been embraced by psychologists from almost every perspective and used by professionals working in a wide variety of settings, such as in the workplace and the education system etc, and are used to make important judgements about an individual’s behaviour in different situations. Employers have used scores from personality tests to make hiring and promotion decisions for many years (Roberts and Hogan, 2000). The methodology used to identify the dimensional structure of personality traits, factor analysis, is often challenged for not having a universally-recognized basis for choosing among solutions with different numbers of factors. More than one interpretation can be made of the same data factored the same way, and factor analysis cannot identify causality. However, some of the most common criticisms of trait theory centre on the fact that traits are often poor predictors of behaviour. While an individual may score high on assessments of a specific trait, he or she may not always behave that way in every situation. This was highlighted by Walter Mischel (1968, 1973) who stimulated a huge debate that raged until the early 1980s, concerning whether personality traits predict behaviour. At the heart of this debate was the questioning of the stability of traits across situations, known as the ‘personality paradox’. He demonstrated with his CAPs model that there is a complex interaction between situations and enduring individual personality differences, however the effects of many variables still have to be examined. Mischel criticised how personality measures were interpreted and used, demonstrating that on average personality measures statistically account for only around 10% of the variance observed in behaviour, therefore 90% is due to something other than the effect of personality. This reflects the fact that many factors contribute to any one piece of behaviour, such as: the characteristics of the specific situation, the person’s mood at that time, competing goals, etc. However an argument in trait theories defence is in regard to the . 30, . 40 correlation co-efficient. How high does a correlation have to be before its considered important? Research by Funder and Ozer (1983) looked at social psychological findings often cited for their â€Å"important† findings and found that they had similar co-efficient of . 36 and . 42. In their defence trait theorists argue that researchers often fail to provide a strong link between traits and behaviour is because they don’t measure behaviour correctly, only measuring one behaviour. As an alternative researchers can aggregate data, one study looked at trait measures of aggression and the number of aggressive acts students preformed, not only on one day but over the course of two weeks and found a correlation of . 1 between the aggregated measure and the trait score (Wu and Clarke, 2003). Burger (2008) states that when all the complex influences on our behaviour are taken into account we probably should be impressed that personality psychologists can explain even 10%. Mischels criticism has had beneficial effects in work settings, with the use of multiple measures of p ersonality such as, psychometric assessments, interviews, individual and group tasks used together as an assessment package to prevent overreliance on the psychometric tool. Furthermore, Mischels views led researchers to look very critically at their methodologies, admitting that measures were often weak and the selection of which traits to study was sometimes inappropriate (Funder, 1999,2001). Today most psychologists agree that the person and the situation react to determine behaviour ( Maggnusson, 1990) and Swan and Seyle (2005) conclude their review on Mischels work by saying that there are still instances where it is helpful to make distinctions between personal and situational determines of behaviour.

Literary Analysis of A White Heron - 2159 Words

Literature Analysis Part 1 Throughout the history Fiction has been used by many writers to emphasize on environment and the importance it has in our lives. A White Heron, is a great example of how an article can effectively grip the attention of the reader and delivering a vital message at the same time. On the other hand fact based articles are based on truth, research and years of hard work but unfortunately most of the time they fail to capture the common reader proving interesting to only subject area experts or environmentalists. A White Heron written in 1886 is about a girl who comes to her grandmothers house in the country side she falls in love with the nature and after some time adjusts in the new surroundings. Being familiarized with the surroundings, a hunter offers her a considerable reward for finding a Heron for his personal collection. Being human she agrees to find the bird and accompanies the hunter but fails to find the heron. Later on she goes alone and finds the birds nest by climbing on the tallest tree, this in turn reignites her love and passion for the nature and the thought of helping the hunter and killing of the Heron becomes cynical. She keeps it a secret and Hunter goes back without his prize. (Jewett, 2009) On the other hand Reducing, harmful, drilling and mining is an article that emphasizes on the use of coal in fulfilling our energy needs and the impact coal drilling and mining has on the environment of the surrounding areas. ItShow MoreRelatedMy Psychoanalytic Views of Two Short Stories1454 Words   |  6 Pagestheories seemed very radical, when put into life situations they actually make perfect sense. Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism refers to literary criticism or literary theory which, in method, concept, or form, is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud. 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