Biology 202 Web Paper 2

Lessons Learned from Haitian Voodoo: Zombification and the Altered Consciousness Experience

 

In class we discussed how language is most easily learned during the early stages of one’s life. We resolved that this is because the I-function is not utilized. In fact, utilizing the I-function to concentrate on speaking a foreign language actually hinders oneself from becoming fluent. We established that the most effective way to learn a new language is to abandon the I-function and immerse oneself into a situation where only that specific language is spoken. This paradox has been of interest to many, and it has provoked several questions. Is learning a language mutually exclusive to the I-function? Is language itself independent of the I-funtion?

To the contemporary American or Chinese person, it is nothing new to suggest that “Westerners” and “Easterners” act differently. As we have discussed in class, different behavior suggests different ways of thinking, and ultimately different organization of the brain itself.  One would then expect to see observable differences in “Eastern” and “Western” behavior, and some underlying neurological cause for such observations.

But what do the terms East and West really mean? Are these terms derived from a common region, culture, or language? The definition, to be sure, is a combination of many factors, which historically are ultimately selected to the definers’ (Westerners) advantage. For the purposes of this paper I will refer to East Asia as China, Korea, and Japan, and the West as America and Western Europe. The terms East and West are socially, politically, and economically weighted and the biases associated with them are so deeply rooted that even so called sinifiles may find themselves advocating the very stereotypes placed on the East by the West. For example, someone might argue how a mystic conformist society is far superior to an individualistic reason based society, without questioning how mystic or conformist Eastern culture truly is.

        While having a picnic in a park one sunny afternoon, a small spider crawls onto the picnic blanket of two friends. From a distance,both friends are noticeably afraid of the spider, but upon further observation,one of the friends is displaying fear solely in reaction to the spiderappearing on the blanket while the other is panic stricken. What is the cause of the different reactions?

Questioning Moral Behavior: how should we interpret innate evil? 

This paper stems from the Biology 202 class discussion which asked can self responsibility and neuroscience coexist.   

For many of us in this world, love appears to be the sole purpose for living. We live to find and experience love and sometimes even die for love. Human beings appear to have a "genetic clock," such that they mature, fall in love with a mate or several mates, and thereafter spend their adult life having children. Like most other animals, humans appear to have an innate purpose to reproduce. Humans, like other animals, repeat this "life cycle" over and over. However, there appears to be one major difference between man and the rest of the animal kingdom in this life cycle. We seem to make this life cycle even more complex than it really is. It is because of the way in which we love that causes this complexity.

At first glance, engaging in an activity that puts ones life at risk may seem evolutionarily unadaptive. However, much research and discussion has been initiated with just the opposite idea in mind. Risk-taking tendencies apparently lie deep within our evolutionary framework; our hunger-gatherer ancestors had no choice but to put their lives in danger in pursuit of food, shelter, or protection from danger. As Eric Perlman, a filmmaker specializing in extreme sports, said, “We are designed to experiment or die” (Greenfield, 1999)(1). Moreover, current generations of American descent can ascribe their

One of the common things I’ve heard from friends returning from their junior study abroad was how much they missed being away in the foreign country. On occasion, a few friends even confessed to feeling a crushing sense of distance between their time abroad and their return to school, that they wished they could have taken a semester off because they did not feel mentally prepared to come back to “reality” just yet. These symptoms surprised me because they definitely seemed a large step beyond the typical post-vacation depression. What exactly was it that seemed to make so many peers coming back from their study abroad to feel

Although you have not yet progressed to the second sentence of this lengthy paper, there is almost a 100% guarantee that, before this text directs your attention to reality and essence of tinnitus, you are already knowledgeable about the phenomenon that is the basis for the following discussion. The legitimacy of this estimate can be attributed to the presumption that, at some point in your life, you were made conscious of your ‘head noise’ through the incidence of ringing in one or both of your ears. The presence of some ‘head noise’ is ordinary and natural, and most of us are only aware of its