Reality, Illusion, Appearance, and Deception in Shakespeares Hamlet Es

Reality, Illusion, Appearance, and Deception in Shakespeare's Hamlet   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   As appearances play an important role in today's society, so they also play an important role in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. From the first scene to the last, Shakespeare elaborates on the theme of appearance versus reality through plot and character.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The play's plot is full of incidents and events that are not what they appear to be. One such incident is Ophelia's ambiguous death. When, from the Queen, the audience first learns of her passing, the girl's death seems very peaceful, poetic and accidental. But later, during the Graveyard Scene, when the clowns are discussing her death, they classify it as a suicide. Does Ophelia, as it appears, absent-mindedly set foot too far into the murky waters and, held down by her heavy garments, meets with her untimely death? Or, does she, mad with grief caused by Hamlet's "insanity" and her father's death, willingly march to her muddy grave? Another example occurs when Laertes, Ophelia's brother, and King Claudius devise the Triple-Pronged plan. They set up a duel between Hamlet and Laertes. Since both young men are presumably using bated swords, this confrontation appears to be a simple, ordinary fencing match, no one will get hurt. Despite its h armless appearance, this duel proves deadly, for not only does Laertes plan to use an unbated and poisoned sword, but Claudius also prepares a poisoned drink for Hamlet.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   There are also many spy plots set up during the play which may also be considered as deceiving events. These spy plots demonstrate the appearance versus reality theme since they are invisible to the spied upon, but weave a web of dishonesty. In Act II, Scene... ...C. Quote. Literary Companion to British Authors: William Shakespeare. San Diego: Greenhaven, 1996. Danson, Lawrence. "Tragic Alphabet." Modern Critical Interpretations: Hamlet. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York City: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. 65-86 Findlay, Alison. "Hamlet: A Document in Madness." New Essays on Hamlet. Ed. Mark Thornton Burnett and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1994. 189-205. Hopkins, Lisa. "Parison and the Impossible Comparison." New Essays on Hamlet. Ed. Mark Thornton Burnett and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1994. 153-164. Rose, Mark. "Reforming the Role." Modern Critical Interpretations: Hamlet. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York City: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. 117-128 Wiggins, Martin. "Hamlet Within the Prince." New Essays on Hamlet. Ed. Mark Thornton Burnett and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1994. 209-226.

Tok Can a Machine Know

In today’s day and age, the question â€Å"Can a Machine Know? † is very important and relevant to what we are doing with machines in making them more and more humanlike and capable of human functions. A machine, as defined on Dictionary. com â€Å"is an apparatus consisting of interrelated parts with separate functions, used in the performance of some kind of work. † That seems simple enough, not very complicated at all. But then if you look up â€Å"know†, the definition is very hard to grasp. Dictionary. com defines â€Å"know† as: â€Å"to perceive or understand as fact or truth; to apprehend clearly and with certainty. This doesn’t give much justice to the word and requires you to define other terms such as understand and truth and certainty. It is much easier to use the term as defined according to Plato. His view is regarded to be the â€Å"classical† definition. According to Plato, at least three criteria must be satisfied in order for there to be knowledge; a statement must be justified, true and believed. And so if a machine meets all these requirements then it must in fact know. With machines, the main argument against their capabilty to know is that everything they can do is because humans programmed them to do it. Machines cannot do anything on a whim; they have no imagination or creativity. Creativity is one of the things that makes humans rather special and not just walking computer processors. It enables us to make decisions which are not based simply on algorithms or past history or other data. We can be bold, reckless, brave, and foolish or act in many other emotional ways. This is impossible to program as emotions do not lend themselves to mathematical analysis. Yet emotions are an essential part of knowledge. For example I know whether I am happy today or not and it probably affects what I do today more than the facts I actually know. Computers can never be happy or sad. They cannot love or grieve. They cannot, in other words, be human and know. But the other side of the argument is that humans are just computers which contrary is the exact opposite stated in the above paragraph. We are just many bits and pieces that are all working together to let us live and experience life. In fact humans are classified as biological machines, and if humans can know anything, machines should be able to know. Many consider the only aspect that makes humans and other higher organic creatures different from the commonly defined machine is our ability to express emotions and intuition. These emotions and intuitions come from our mind, which is a system; a system of biochemistry, electricity, some mechanics and maybe a bit of quantum mechanics, but a system nonetheless. If you take any individual part of this system away, none of these parts will understand anything. They're simply exchanging information with different parts according to set rules. This is exactly what a machine does when given instructions and prior facts and figures. As I was researching this topic and looking at both sides of the argument, I admit I was very torn. At first I thought no, there’s no way a machine can know. They don’t have brains and everything they do is programmed beforehand for them by humans. But as I delved more deeply into the question I found that some advanced robots are not quite like that. On Youtube, there are many videos which include Honda’s robot, named ASIMO, that show machines can think very much on they’re own. One video talks about how this robot can actually â€Å"see†, a trait we usually only give to living organisms. Though it has two cameras for eyes, the way it processes the information it views through the cameras is very humanlike, like a child learning their surroundings. A man shows the robot objects that it has already learned to indentify and ASIMO says what they are out loud. But then the man shows it two completely different objects, a toy car and a toy robot, and tells ASIMO what they are. The man then shows the robot the two objects again and asks it what they are. ASIMO dutifully replies what each is correctly. This amazed me because it showed machines could actually learn from experience, just like humans. But that wasn’t all, ASIMO was later told indentify a chair. At first a normal looking wood chair was placed in front of it and the robot nodded. Then a stool was placed in front and ASIMO nodded again, even though the stool looks nothing like a chair. But then it is showed a table and ASIMO shakes his head no. This was very astounding to me because it showed a machine making a judgment. So to actually determine whether or not a computer can know, we must go back to Plato’s description of knowledge and see if a machine fits. The main purpose of most machines is to record vast amounts of data which are all truthful so that fulfills the first criteria easy enough. Then it must be justified which is done by the programmer feeding information to the machine. And last but not least it must believe and because the computer must follow the code it’s given, then it must believe and thus it fits all of Plato’s criteria for knowledge. But this just seemed too easy so I decided to look into the ways of knowing, and if the machine fit all those components, then it definitely knows. Though a machine can use reason to solve problems that no human can, use intuition to figure out if an object is a chair or not, speak in every language known to man, see objects and know what they are, and be able to hear a human and respond, machines still cannot experience emotion and that is the one thing stopping them from knowing. As stated in a previous argument, an essential part to knowing is through emotion and creativity and imagination. Without these things a machine cannot know. Until humans are able to make a machine that has the capacity that the human brain does, a machine will never know like a human. It will understand how to perform certain tasks and learn new things, but it will never be able to create something of its own or experience any type of emotion. In saying this, I do believe that in the near future, with technological advances, there will soon be a machine which can think for itself and have its own ideas and creations. Due to Raymond Kurzweil’s theory of Singularity, humans will create machines that have intelligence which surpasses their own and by that time machines will most definitely know. Because of the human sciences striving to create robots that are humanlike, they will eventually become successful and once the breakthrough is made, then there will be thousands of different machines that can know and our society will have totally changed. But as of right now, a machine cannot know. It can perform very humanlike tasks and talk and walk and speak but there is still the barrier of not being able to imagine or feel which separates humans from machines.Bibliography http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=53888;page=3

Definition of Pogrom

A pogrom is an organized attack upon a population, characterized by looting, destruction of property, rape, and murder. The word is derived from a Russian word meaning to commit mayhem, and it came into the English language to refer specifically to attacks perpetrated by Christians upon Jewish population centers in Russia. The first pogroms occurred in Ukraine in 1881, following the assassination of Czar Alexander II by a revolutionary group, Narodnaya Volya, on March 13, 1881. Rumors circulated that the murder of the Czar had been planned and executed by Jews. At the end of April, 1881, the initial outbreak of violence occurred in the Ukrainian town of Kirovograd (which was then known as Yelizavetgrad). The pogroms quickly spread to about 30 other towns and villages. There were more attacks during that summer, and then the violence subsided. The following winter, pogroms began anew in other areas of Russia, and murders of entire Jewish families were not uncommon. The attackers at times were very organized, even arriving by train to unleash violence. And the local authorities tended to stand aside and let acts of arson, murder, and rape occur without punishment. By the summer of 1882 the Russian government tried to crack down on local governors to stop the violence, and again the pogroms stopped for a time. However, they began again, and in 1883 and 1884 new pogroms occurred. The authorities finally prosecuted a number of rioters and sentenced them to prison, and the first wave of pogroms came to an end. The pogroms of the 1880s had a profound effect, as it encouraged many Russian Jews to leave the country and seek a life in the New World. Immigration to the United States by Russian Jews accelerated, which had an effect on American society, and particularly New York City, which received most of the new immigrants. The poet Emma Lazarus, who had been born in New York City, volunteered to help the Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms in Russia. The experience of Emma Lazarus with the refugees from the pogroms housed at Ward’s Island, the immigration station in New York City, helped inspire her famous poem â€Å"The New Colossus,† which was written in honor of the Statue of Liberty. The poem made the Statue of Liberty a symbol of immigration. Later Pogroms A second wave of pogroms occurred from 1903 to 1906, and a third wave from 1917 to 1921. The pogroms in the early years of the 20th century are generally linked to political unrest in the Russian empire. As a way to suppressing revolutionary sentiment, the government sought to blame Jews for unrest and incite violence against their communities.  Mobs, fomented by a group known as Black Hundreds, attacked Jewish villages, burning houses and causing widespread death and destruction. As part of the campaign to spread chaos and terror, propaganda was published and spread widely. A major component of the disinformation campaign, a notorious text titled  Protocols of the Elders of Zion  was published. The book was a fabricated document which purported to be a legitimate discovered text advancing a plan for Jews to achieve total domination of the world by means of deception. The use of an elaborate forgery to inflame hatred against Jews marked a dangerous new turning point in the use of propaganda. The text helped to create an atmosphere of violence in which thousands died or fled the country. And the use of the fabricated text did not end with the pogroms of 1903-1906. Later anti-Semites, including the American industrialist Henry Ford, spread the book and used it to fuel their own discriminatory practices. The Nazis, of course, made extensive use of propaganda designed to turn the European public against the Jews. Another wave of Russian pogroms took place roughly concurrent with World War I, from 1917 to 1921. The pogroms began as attacks on Jewish villages by deserters from the Russian army, but with the Bolshevik Revolution came new attacks on Jewish population centers. It was estimated that 60,000 Jews may have perished before the violence subsided. The occurrence of pogroms helped propel the concept of Zionism. Young Jews in Europe argued that assimilation into European society was constantly at risk, and the Jews in Europe should begin advocating for a homeland.