Archive for October 9th, 2009

• World View

  Date: 2009.10.09 | Category: Reading Reviews, Unit SSK12 | Response: 0

  Reading Review
  Unit: SSK12
  Week: 5 (in Week 6)
  Date: 09 October 2009

  Book title: Communication Between Cultures
  Chapter title: World View
  Author: Larry A. Samovar and Richard E. Porter
  Publication Date: 2004

  Thesis:
  Samovar and Porter immediately aim to acknowledge the importance of worldviews and to illustrate how worldviews are fundamental to way we perceive the world; how it is “colored, shaped, arranged according to personal cultural perceptions” (2004, 85).

  Main points:
  1. A definition of worldview
  2. The importance of worldviews in shaping our understanding and our perception of the world.
  3. A recognition that worldviews are so fundamental to our perception that people cannot see any other way of thinking when they are unaware of the concept of worldview.
  4. A series of examples illustrating how understanding the worldview of culture can help to understand the perceptions of the world for that culture why members of that culture think or act the way they do.

  Review:
  There are entire books dedicated to the concept of worldviews. In one chapter, Samovar and Porter are able to give a compact and concise treatise of the importance worldviews have on our perceptions of the world. They use examples of worldviews generally associated to different cultures in order to demonstrate how they affect the way members of that culture think and behave. Their work is easy to read and follow, with ample support from experts in the field of worldviews and sociology.

  Reference:
  Samovar, Larry A., and Richard E. Porter. 2004. World View. In Communication Between Cultures. 5th ed. 85-86. Belmont, California: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

• Proposition

  Date: 2009.10.09 | Category: Glossary, Unit SSK12 | Response: 0

  Glossary
  Unit: SSK12
  Week: 6
  Date: 09 October 2009

  Word: proposition n.
  Context: Proposition was used in both The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought and The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy, while defining belief.
  Definition: A proposition is “a statement or assertion”; “a statement consisting of subject and predicate [what is said about the subject] that is subject to proof or disproof” (Australian Oxford Dictionary, 2004). The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (2000) when defining types of proposition says, “propositions may be distinguished in respect (1) of their logical form, e.g. (a) singular, particular or universal, (b) affirmative or negative, (c) categorical…, hypothetical or otherwise complex, (d) existential, attributive or relational; (2) of their kind of TRUTH or VERIFICATION, as a priori or empirical….” and so on. To put that into my own words with the assistance of The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy (2009), a proposition is required in some sentences (due to the grammatical rules of language) where an abstract object is expressed and which bears “truth-values”. Philosophers introduced the word proposition for these purposes. The existence of propositions and their use is debated by some philosophers.
  Word in Use: Within the statement, “The west is losing the war on terror”, the word ‘losing’ is a proposition. The word is truth-bearing, but it can be either true or false.

  The Australian Oxford Dictionary. 2004. 2nd ed. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

  Bullock, A., and Trombley, S., eds. 2000. The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought. 3rd ed. London: Harper Collins.

  Bunnin, N., and Yu, J., eds. 2009. The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy. West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell.