1.
Thought
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Thought refers to ideas or arrangements of ideas that are the result of the process of thinking. Though thinking is an activity considered essential to humanity, there is no consensus as to how we define or understand it. Thinking allows humans to sense of, interpret, represent or model the world they experience. It is therefore helpful to an organism with needs, objectives, the word thought comes from Old English þoht, or geþoht, from stem of þencan to conceive of in the mind, consider. Definitions of thought may also be derived directly or indirectly from theories of thought, the notion of the fundamental role of non-cognitive understanding in rendering possible thematic consciousness informed the discussion surrounding Artificial Intelligence during the 1970s and 1980s. Phenomenology, however, is not the approach to thinking in modern Western philosophy. The mind-body problem concerns the explanation of the relationship exists between minds, or mental processes, and bodily states or processes. The main aim of working in this area is to determine the nature of the mind and mental states/processes. Someones desire for a slice of pizza, for example, will tend to cause that person to move his or her body in a specific manner and in a specific direction to obtain what he or she wants. The question, then, is how it can be possible for conscious experiences to arise out of a lump of gray matter endowed with nothing but electrochemical properties. A related problem is to explain how propositional attitudes can cause that individuals neurons to fire. These comprise some of the puzzles that have confronted epistemologists and philosophers of mind from at least the time of René Descartes, the above reflects a classical, functional description of how we work as cognitive, thinking systems. Therefore, functional analysis of the mind alone will always leave us with the problem which cannot be solved. A neuron is a cell in the nervous system that processes. Neurons are the components of the brain, the vertebrate spinal cord, the invertebrate ventral nerve cord. Motor neurons receive signals from the brain and spinal cord and cause muscle contractions, interneurons connect neurons to other neurons within the brain and spinal cord. Neurons respond to stimuli, and communicate the presence of stimuli to the nervous system. Neurons do not go through mitosis, and usually cannot be replaced after being destroyed, psychologists have concentrated on thinking as an intellectual exertion aimed at finding an answer to a question or the solution of a practical problem
2.
Subculture
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As early as 1950, David Riesman distinguished between a majority, which passively accepted commercially provided styles and meanings, and a subculture which actively sought a minority style. And interpreted it in accordance with subversive values, in his 1979 book Subculture, The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige argued that a subculture is a subversion to normalcy. He wrote that subcultures can be perceived as due to their nature of criticism to the dominant societal standard. Hebdige argued that subcultures bring together like-minded individuals who feel neglected by societal standards, in 2007, Ken Gelder proposed to distinguish subcultures from countercultures based on the level of immersion in society. As Cohen clarifies, every subculture’s style, consisting of image, demeanour, 2) Subcultures and resistance - In the work of John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson and Brian Roberts of the Birmingham CCCS, subcultures are interpreted as forms of resistance. Society is seen as being divided into two classes, the working class and the middle class, each with its own class culture. Yet the cultural industry is capable of re-absorbing the components of such a style. 3) Subcultures and distinction - The most recent interpretations see subcultures as forms of distinction, the very idea of a unique, internally homogeneous, dominant culture is explicitly criticized. Thus forms of individual involvement in subcultures are fluid and gradual, differentiated according to each actor’s investment, Dick Hebdige writes that members of a subculture often signal their membership through a distinctive and symbolic use of style, which includes fashions, mannerisms and argot. In some instances, subcultures have been legislated against, and their activities regulated or curtailed, british youth subcultures had been described as a moral problem that ought to be handled by the guardians of the dominant culture within the post-war consensus. It may be difficult to identify certain subcultures because their style may be adopted by mass culture for commercial purposes, businesses often seek to capitalize on the subversive allure of subcultures in search of Cool, which remains valuable in the selling of any product. This process of cultural appropriation may often result in the death or evolution of the subculture, some subcultures reject or modify the importance of style, stressing membership through the adoption of an ideology which may be much more resistant to commercial exploitation. The punk subcultures distinctive style of clothing was adopted by mass-market fashion companies once the subculture became a media interest, objects borrowed from the most sordid of contexts found a place in punks ensembles, lavatory chains were draped in graceful arcs across chests in plastic bin liners. Safety pins were taken out of their domestic utility context and worn as gruesome ornaments through the cheek, fragments of school uniform were symbolically defiled and juxtaposed against leather drains or shocking pink mohair tops. In 1985, French sociologist Michel Maffesoli coined the term urban tribe and it gained widespread use after the publication of his Le temps des tribus, le déclin de lindividualisme dans les sociétés postmodernes. Eight years later, this book was published in the United Kingdom as The Time of the Tribes, according to Maffesoli, urban tribes are microgroups of people who share common interests in urban areas. The members of these small groups tend to have similar worldviews, dress styles. Their social interactions are largely informal and emotionally laden, different from late capitalisms corporate-bourgeoisie cultures, Maffesoli claims that punks are a typical example of an urban tribe
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Alternative media
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Alternative media are media that differ from established or dominant types of media in terms of their content, production, or distribution. Alternative media take many forms including print, audio, video, alternative media challenge the dominant beliefs and values of a culture and have been described as counter-hegemonic by adherents of Antonio Gramscis theory of cultural hegemony. There are various definitions of alternative media, john Downing, for example, defines radical alternative media as media that express an alternative vision to hegemonic policies, priorities, and perspectives. One way of understanding alternative media is to consider their role in the process of democratic communication, philosopher Jürgen Habermas proposed that a healthy democratic community requires a space where rational debate can take place between engaged citizens. It is essential that the dialogue in this public sphere occurs outside the control of any authority so that citizens can exchange ideas as equals and this translates to the need for free speech and a free press. In Habermass idea of the sphere, participation is open to everyone, all participants are considered equal. However, this fails to note the inherent exclusion of women. The alternative media associated with these spheres are critical in developing the needs and identity of the group. Social movements are a type of collective action and they involve large, sometimes informal, groups or organizations which focus on specific political or social issues and instigate, resist or undo social change. Social movement media is how social movements use media, and oftentimes, due to the nature of social movements, communication is vital to the success of social movements. As a result, social movements often turn to media forms. An example of how the mainstream media problematically covers social movements is the Occupy movement, in comparing the mainstream news coverage of the Occupy movement against coverage from alternative press several trends emerge. First, mainstream media used confusion over the event as the dominant frame while alternative media focused on what the demonstrators were trying to accomplish. Second, the media placed the protesters at fault of any violence while the alternative media focused on the brutality of the police. For more information about social movements, and alternative media, see Social movement theory, Social movements in areas such as human rights, the environmental movement, and civil rights produce alternative media to further their goals, spread awareness, and inspire participation and support. An example of a human rights social movement using alternative media is the group WITNESS and they rely on video recordings using technology such as handheld camcorders and smart phones to capture the worlds attention and viscerally communicate human rights abuses. An example of an environment movement using alternative media is the group Green Peace and it uses direct action, lobbying, and research to achieve its goals, as well as alternative media. They use online tactics such as podcasts and blogs as well as performance art, an example of a civil rights movement group using alternative media was the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee
5.
Philosophy of science
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Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of theories. This discipline overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, for example, in addition to these general questions about science as a whole, philosophers of science consider problems that apply to particular sciences. Some philosophers of science also use contemporary results in science to reach conclusions about philosophy itself, Karl Popper and Charles Sanders Pierce moved on from positivism to establish a modern set of standards for scientific methodology. Subsequently, the coherentist approach to science, in which a theory is validated if it makes sense of observations as part of a coherent whole, became prominent due to W. V. Quine and others. Some thinkers such as Stephen Jay Gould seek to ground science in axiomatic assumptions, another approach to thinking about science involves studying how knowledge is created from a sociological perspective, an approach represented by scholars like David Bloor and Barry Barnes. Finally, a tradition in continental philosophy approaches science from the perspective of an analysis of human experience. Philosophies of the particular sciences range from questions about the nature of time raised by Einsteins general relativity, a central theme is whether one scientific discipline can be reduced to the terms of another. That is, can chemistry be reduced to physics, or can sociology be reduced to individual psychology, the general questions of philosophy of science also arise with greater specificity in some particular sciences. For instance, the question of the validity of scientific reasoning is seen in a different guise in the foundations of statistics, the question of what counts as science and what should be excluded arises as a life-or-death matter in the philosophy of medicine. Distinguishing between science and non-science is referred to as the demarcation problem, for example, should psychoanalysis be considered science. How about so-called creation science, the multiverse hypothesis, or macroeconomics. Karl Popper called this the question in the philosophy of science. However, no unified account of the problem has won acceptance among philosophers, Martin Gardner has argued for the use of a Potter Stewart standard for recognizing pseudoscience. Early attempts by the logical positivists grounded science in observation while non-science was non-observational, Popper argued that the central property of science is falsifiability. That is, every genuinely scientific claim is capable of being proven false, a closely related question is what counts as a good scientific explanation. In addition to providing predictions about events, society often takes scientific theories to provide explanations for events that occur regularly or have already occurred. One early and influential theory of scientific explanation is the deductive-nomological model and it says that a successful scientific explanation must deduce the occurrence of the phenomena in question from a scientific law
6.
Scientific method
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The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry is commonly based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning, experiments need to be designed to test hypotheses. The most important part of the method is the experiment. The scientific method is a process, which usually begins with observations about the natural world. Human beings are naturally inquisitive, so often come up with questions about things they see or hear. The best hypotheses lead to predictions that can be tested in various ways, in general, the strongest tests of hypotheses come from carefully controlled and replicated experiments that gather empirical data. Depending on how well the tests match the predictions, the hypothesis may require refinement. If a particular hypothesis becomes very well supported a theory may be developed. Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features are shared in common between them. The overall process of the method involves making conjectures, deriving predictions from them as logical consequences. A hypothesis is a conjecture, based on knowledge obtained while formulating the question, the hypothesis might be very specific or it might be broad. Scientists then test hypotheses by conducting experiments, the purpose of an experiment is to determine whether observations agree with or conflict with the predictions derived from a hypothesis. Experiments can take anywhere from a college lab to CERNs Large Hadron Collider. There are difficulties in a statement of method, however. Though the scientific method is presented as a fixed sequence of steps. Not all steps take place in scientific inquiry, and are not always in the same order. Some philosophers and scientists have argued there is no scientific method, such as Lee Smolin. Nola and Sankey remark that For some, the idea of a theory of scientific method is yester-years debate
7.
Science
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Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. The formal sciences are often excluded as they do not depend on empirical observations, disciplines which use science, like engineering and medicine, may also be considered to be applied sciences. However, during the Islamic Golden Age foundations for the method were laid by Ibn al-Haytham in his Book of Optics. In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of physical laws, over the course of the 19th century, the word science became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself as a disciplined way to study the natural world. It was during this time that scientific disciplines such as biology, chemistry, Science in a broad sense existed before the modern era and in many historical civilizations. Modern science is distinct in its approach and successful in its results, Science in its original sense was a word for a type of knowledge rather than a specialized word for the pursuit of such knowledge. In particular, it was the type of knowledge which people can communicate to each other, for example, knowledge about the working of natural things was gathered long before recorded history and led to the development of complex abstract thought. This is shown by the construction of calendars, techniques for making poisonous plants edible. For this reason, it is claimed these men were the first philosophers in the strict sense and they were mainly speculators or theorists, particularly interested in astronomy. In contrast, trying to use knowledge of nature to imitate nature was seen by scientists as a more appropriate interest for lower class artisans. A clear-cut distinction between formal and empirical science was made by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, although his work Peri Physeos is a poem, it may be viewed as an epistemological essay on method in natural science. Parmenides ἐὸν may refer to a system or calculus which can describe nature more precisely than natural languages. Physis may be identical to ἐὸν and he criticized the older type of study of physics as too purely speculative and lacking in self-criticism. He was particularly concerned that some of the early physicists treated nature as if it could be assumed that it had no intelligent order, explaining things merely in terms of motion and matter. The study of things had been the realm of mythology and tradition, however. Aristotle later created a less controversial systematic programme of Socratic philosophy which was teleological and he rejected many of the conclusions of earlier scientists. For example, in his physics, the sun goes around the earth, each thing has a formal cause and final cause and a role in the rational cosmic order. Motion and change is described as the actualization of potentials already in things, while the Socratics insisted that philosophy should be used to consider the practical question of the best way to live for a human being, they did not argue for any other types of applied science
8.
Hipster (contemporary subculture)
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The hipster subculture is stereotypically composed of affluent or upper middle class youth who reside primarily in gentrifying neighborhoods. The subculture typically consists of white millennials living in urban areas and it has been described as a mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior. Some scholars contend that the hipster is a marketplace myth that has a complex, two-way relationship with the worldview. The term was coined during the age, when hip emerged as an adjective to describe aficionados of the growing scene. Another argument suggests the term derives from the practice of lying on ones hip while smoking opium, the ultimate meaning of hip, attested as early as 1902, is aware or in the know. Conversely, the antonym unhip connotes those who are unaware of their surroundings, nevertheless, hip eventually acquired the common English suffix -ster, and hipster entered the language. The first dictionary to list the word is the short glossary For Characters Who Dont Dig Jive Talk, the entry for hipsters defined them as characters who like hot jazz. It was not a complete glossary of jive, however, as it included only jive expressions that were found in the lyrics to his songs. The term used in African-American culture was originally spelled hep, as in Cab Calloways famous song The Jumpin Jive recorded on July 17,1939, hep is also used in Mezz Mezzrow essential account of underground jazz culture Really the Blues. Initially, hipsters were usually middle-class white youths seeking to emulate the lifestyle of the black jazz musicians they followed. In The Jazz Scene, author Eric Hobsbawm described hipster language—i. e, jive-talk or hipster-talk—as an argot or cant designed to set the group apart from outsiders. The subculture rapidly expanded, and after World War II, a literary scene grew up around it. Jack Kerouac described 1940s hipsters as rising and roaming America, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere characters of a special spirituality, toward the beginning of his poem Howl, Allen Ginsberg mentioned angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night. Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay, theyre the people who wear t-shirts silk-screened with quotes from movies youve never heard of and the only ones in America who still think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a good beer. They sport cowboy hats and berets and think Kanye West stole their sunglasses, everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just dont care. In early 2000, both The New York Times and Time Out New York ran profiles of Williamsburg, Brooklyn without using the term hipster, the Times referred to bohemians and TONY to arty East Village types. By 2003, when The Hipster Handbook was published by Williamsburg resident Robert Lanham, the Hipster Handbook described hipsters as young people with mop-top haircuts, swinging retro pocketbooks, talking on cell phones, smoking European cigarettes. Strutting in platform shoes with a biography of Che Guevara sticking out of their bags, one author dates the initial phase of the revival of the term from 1999 to 2003
9.
Individualism
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Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual. Individualism is often defined in contrast to totalitarianism, collectivism, authoritarianism, communitarianism, Individualism makes the individual its focus and so starts with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation. Classical liberalism, existentialism, and anarchism are examples of movements that take the individual as a central unit of analysis. Individualism thus involves the right of the individual to freedom and self-realization and it has also been used as a term denoting The quality of being an individual, individuality related to possessing An individual characteristic, a quirk. A more positive use of the term in Britain came to be used with the writings of James Elishama Smith, who was a millenarian and a Christian Israelite. Although an early Owenite socialist, he rejected its collective idea of property. Without individualism, Smith argued, individuals cannot amass property to increase ones happiness, an individual is a person or any specific object in a collection. From the 17th century on, individual indicates separateness, as in individualism, individuality is the state or quality of being an individual, a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. The individualist does not follow one particular philosophy, rather creates an amalgamation of elements of many, on a societal level, the individualist participates on a personally structured political and moral ground. Independent thinking and opinion is a trait of an individualist. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, claims that his concept of general will in the contract is not the simple collection of individual wills. Societies and groups can differ in the extent to which they are based upon predominantly self-regarding behaviors, the principle of individuation, or principium individuationis, describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinguished from other things. For Carl Jung, individuation is a process of transformation, whereby the personal and it is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche to take place. Jung considered individuation to be the process of human development. Thus, the atom is replaced by a never-ending ontological process of individuation. Individuation is an incomplete process, always leaving a pre-individual left-over. The philosophy of Bernard Stiegler draws upon and modifies the work of Gilbert Simondon on individuation and also upon similar ideas in Friedrich Nietzsche, for Stiegler the I, as a psychic individual, can only be thought in relationship to we, which is a collective individual. The I is constituted in adopting a collective tradition, which it inherits, methodological individualism is the view that phenomena can only be understood by examining how they result from the motivations and actions of individual agents
10.
Christianity
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Christianity is a Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who serves as the focal point for the religion. It is the worlds largest religion, with over 2.4 billion followers, or 33% of the global population, Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of humanity whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Old Testament. Christian theology is summarized in creeds such as the Apostles Creed and his incarnation, earthly ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection are often referred to as the gospel, meaning good news. The term gospel also refers to accounts of Jesuss life and teaching, four of which—Matthew, Mark, Luke. Christianity is an Abrahamic religion that began as a Second Temple Judaic sect in the mid-1st century, following the Age of Discovery, Christianity spread to the Americas, Australasia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest of the world through missionary work and colonization. Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization, throughout its history, Christianity has weathered schisms and theological disputes that have resulted in many distinct churches and denominations. Worldwide, the three largest branches of Christianity are the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the denominations of Protestantism. There are many important differences of interpretation and opinion of the Bible, concise doctrinal statements or confessions of religious beliefs are known as creeds. They began as baptismal formulae and were expanded during the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries to become statements of faith. Many evangelical Protestants reject creeds as definitive statements of faith, even agreeing with some or all of the substance of the creeds. The Baptists have been non-creedal in that they have not sought to establish binding authoritative confessions of faith on one another. Also rejecting creeds are groups with roots in the Restoration Movement, such as the Christian Church, the Evangelical Christian Church in Canada, the Apostles Creed is the most widely accepted statement of the articles of Christian faith. It is also used by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists and this particular creed was developed between the 2nd and 9th centuries. Its central doctrines are those of the Trinity and God the Creator, each of the doctrines found in this creed can be traced to statements current in the apostolic period. The creed was used as a summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in the churches of Rome. Most Christians accept the use of creeds, and subscribe to at least one of the mentioned above. The central tenet of Christianity is the belief in Jesus as the Son of God, Christians believe that Jesus, as the Messiah, was anointed by God as savior of humanity, and hold that Jesus coming was the fulfillment of messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The Christian concept of the Messiah differs significantly from the contemporary Jewish concept, Jesus, having become fully human, suffered the pains and temptations of a mortal man, but did not sin
