A talking lion ?

The famous philosopher Wittgenstein once said " If a lion could talk, we would not understand him." A fascinating statement, but what does it really mean? If a lion could talk, why wouldn't I be able to understand him, even if he was talking in English? If a lion was to open its mouth and say " I like to eat meat, feed me food" I am pretty sure that I would understand what he wants. However, Wittgenstein seems to have looked into this a little deeper than I obviously have. I don't think that I could explain exactly what he means by this statement, or even know, however I am happy to attempt.

I feel that if Wittgenstein was to make a point about any of this, it would go something a little like this...maybe...perhaps...

If a lion was to talk, we would not be comprehend as its referencing would be so far removed it simply just wouldn't make sense. We should be careful not to personify the lion as a human being for it has mind of its own and sees the world in a completely different way to us. I believe Wittgenstein point is that the lion would not open its mouth and say " I am hungry, give me food" for that is a lion talking with a human mind. If a lion was to talk with a lions mind, we as humans would not be capable of communicating or understanding.

Despite all of this, I still like to think that when I'm at home and my dogs look up at me with their adorable puppy dog faces, I know they want feeding. And then they come bouncing into the room with their leads in their mouths, I know they want walking. I believe that if my dogs were to open their mouths and begin talking to me, that I would be able to have a fully understandable conversation with them.

extract from own work!

A small eztract from most recent essay....no dangour now that its been handed in!

We normally view a country as either democratic or undemocratic. For example China could be said to be a country with no democracy. But, when we investigate a country in more detail, things are not always as they initially appear to be. We realise that there are different levels of democracy making some countries more or less democratic than others. D. Robertson, (a writer in 1986) said that “Democracy is the most valued and also vaguest of political terms in the modern world.”( http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/democracy.htm) The United Kingdom itself is listed as a free country, a country that sees itself as governed by the people. However, in Lord Hailsham’s 1976 Richard Dimleby lecture, he states
“the powers of our own Parliament are absolute and unlimited. And in this, we are almost alone. All other free nations impose limitations on their representative assemblies. We impose none on ours. Parliament can take away a man’s liberty or his life without a trial, and in past centuries, it has actually done so.” (http://www.republic.org.uk/liberty/index.php)
Lord Hailsham suggested that Britain was not as democratic as it was made out to be. In the same lecture he also said “We live in an elective dictatorship, absolute in theory, if hitherto thought tolerable in practice.”(http://www.republic.org.uk/liberty/index.php) I begin to wonder how much power we have. We get to vote around once every four years to help influence which political party will govern over us for a four or five year period. Apart from that I don’t really see anything else that we can do without political reform. Does this really make us a democratic country?

After last week’s lecture, I realised that I want to make money. I have done all my life; it’s just that I’m not very good at it. My first stab at trying to make money must have been a few years ago when I started doing online surveys. The pay was awful, it would take about a year to make a pound, and you have to make £25 before they send a check. So I quickly gave up on this idea and moved onto the next. I created my own website then put Google ads on there. This proved to make little money. After much frustration of trying to make money online I went on eBay. At first I didn’t sell anything. Instead I bought a "get rich quick" eBook for 99p of eBay. I know these things are supposed to be cons and that only stupid people buy them but my curiosity got the better of me and I just had to know what these things were. I now sell get rich quick schemes on eBay. I have to say I have made a small amount of money from it....not much to tell the truth. I then sold real items on eBay and made a bit of money as well. And now I promote a website as an affiliate and get 50p every time someone signs up! But now I am in money making mode and really want to get going with this. I have always been interested in the stock markets but always been too scared. Here’s hoping that that will change. And this whole thing about currency trading excites me! I can’t wait to try it! Easy money!


http://FastStudentCash.com/winchester

Please sign up guys....its free, all they ask is your name and email!!

Winchester Journalism
Winchester MA Journalism
Winchester BA Journalism
Winchester International Journalism
BJTC
Winchester Studios and Facilities
Winchester Lecturers

The Creators

Forgive me if this blog goes wrong....its 3.45 am. So I'm going to talk about Whitehall...sort of. I don't really understand all that much about it to be honest so ill keep it short and sweet.

From what I learnt in the lecture is that basically Whitehall runs the country.( A big road in London with lots of government buildings.) They decide...everything. That's what I think anyway...please correct me if I'm wrong.

After thinking about this for a while I began to wonder...who controls Whitehall? Anyone? Anything? I decided on the Queen just so I could stop arguing with myself. Then I asked the question again....who is in charge of the Queen? There could only be one answer and one answer only....GOD!

When googling to see if the God was the queens boss, I stumbled across a guy named Bertrand Russell. He said that every thing that exists needs a cause. So if God exists something must have made him but who created God? If you take this approach...in my view you will just keep back forever, so theres no point really...might as well stop at God. But to bring this whole blog to somewhat of a logical ending...someone had to create Whitehall..but who? So something has to run Whitehall whilst Whitehall runs our country. I'm going to stop now...beginning to confuse myself..let alone you poor readers!

Polar dont go!!

If you don't like polar bears.....hit the red cross now.

I have a real soft spot for wildlife and in particular the polar bear. The polar bear is my favourite land based carnivore. But we have recently learnt that it is possible that these amazing bears could be extinct within 50 years due to global warming.

Global warming is melting the sea ice faster than ever before making it even harder for polar bears to hunt for their food. With no ice to walk on....no seals to eat. Polar bears have been known to been found miles out to sea..lost...looking for food and land.


With the sea ice getting thinner, the polar bears are falling through the sea ice and at times drowning.

I recently watched the 'Great melt' on the BBC. I feel that shows just how vulnerable the polar bears really are.

So next time you leave your room, check your check your not wasting energy and that your lights are switched off and spear a thought for the poor polar bear.

Mum.....do you love me?

Before I start I would just like to point out that I don't really agree with what I am about to say in this blog.

OK, I'm going to try and keep this as simple as possible...which should be too hard as I'm quite a simple person! But my question today is...how do we know?

So the first big word is "empiricism". The attitude of having to see before you believe. The second word in the equation is "a priori" which is basically the opposite of empiricism. I'm not sure if the next paragraph is going to make much sense but it does to me....in my head.

Empiricism is the theory of knowledge (according to wiki), the use of science to prove something. But what if something cannot be scientifically proven? For example, our parents have always told us they love us...one would hope so...but what if our lives have been one big lie? An a priori way of thinking would of course be to believe that our parents do love us. How do we know?

Another crazy pointless over the top example I am going to use quickly is the existence of places we have never been. If we have never been somewhere, what evidence do you have that that place actually exists? Sure you seen pictures or read about it but that could be pictures of anything. To take it even further...just because I've sat on a plane for 24 hours and landed in a place called "New Zealand" who's to say this is New Zealand ? I could be anywhere. To me, this is a stupid way of thinking....some people can't help but take empiricism to the next level!

Reading this blog back to myself...I appear to have confused myself and realise how silly it is! But never mind....that's how I work!

Get Paid to Blog!

OK, this is just a quick blog telling you guys that you can get paid to blog. I have only just singed up to it but it seems to be pretty good.

How it works is simple. You blog, they pay...if your blog is accepted. When you create your account you will be asked to submit your blog URL. Advertisers can then contact you and ask you to write a blog for money. I wont go on about it any more but if this does interest you, click on the link below, sign up and read all about it!

Politics.......what a load of monkeys!

I’m not little, neither am I blue, but I am a man....I think. And the same goes for Charles Darwin. Now, I'm not much of a monkey boy, but Charles Darwin had to be a smart guy. I like him. That’s all I’m going to really do in this blog, talk about monkeys so if that bores you - stop reading now.

Now we all know that Darwin came up the theory of evolution. The idea that we have all evolved from monkeys. As we evolved, you would have thought that we became smarter...right? We would like to be able to say that we are smarter than the monkey hanging in the tree. But how much smarter are we? Can a banana eating, tree swinging, tail hanging, fury animal outsmart us as humans? Well even Darwin himself once said "An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men." Ok, so he might be having a little go at just the Americans here, but I think it’s in all of us!

Of course we are more intelligent than monkeys in the sense that we have done stuff, like build houses and we know how to fly planes and drive cars. However in the monkeys defence, we can’t swing from tree to tree or hang off a tree with one arm whilst eating a banana at the same time. This takes some skill and for this reason I admire the monkey and its tree skills.

So we can see that humans have brains yet monkeys have talent, which brings us to the question...who would win a knife fight between a monkey and a human. Now remember the monkey would have trees and branches to use in its defence. I guess it would depend greatly on the size of the monkey. The average ape is stronger that the world’s strongest man, so if he got hold of him, he would just rip him to pieces. However some apes only have four fingers, so would struggle to hold a knife correctly. Well shall leave you guys to ponder over it and picture a monkey using a knife...makes me laugh every time!