Theories and Models of Memory

Theories and Models of Memory Baddeley and Hitch developed another model of short-term memory which is called working memory. The distinction between short-term memory and working memory is that short-term memory is frequently used interchangeably with working memory however the two of them should be used separately. Short-term memory refers to just the temporary storage of information within the memory whereas working memory refers to the processes that are used to temporarily organise, manipulate and store information. Their model also put forward instead of the short-term memory being a single store, it is in fact an active processor containing many different types of stores- the central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and episodic buffer. Central executive: The central executive is the main and most important component of the model which can be best described and known for attention. It is responsible for controlling and monitoring the operation of the slave systems known as the phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketch pad that have limited capacity, and relates them to the long-term memory. Within the central executive, it decides what information needs to be attended to and which parts of the working memory to send this information to in order to be dealt with. Also, it is its function to decide what working memory pays attention to whenever someone is completing an activity and another activity comes into conflict with it. The central executive basically directs attention and puts the activity most important as priority meaning it selectively attends the important stimuli and ignores the least important. Despite how important the central executive is in the working memory model, we know less about it compared to the two subsystems it controls. It is Baddeley who suggests that the central executive functions more like a system that controls attentional processes, rather than a memory store. This is unlike the visuo-spatial sketch pad and the phonological loop which are both specialised storage systems. Phonological loop: The phonological loop holds speech-based information for 1-2 seconds and is composed of an articulatory control process and a phonological store. The articulatory control process acts as an inner voice which practices information from the phonological store by repeating it again and again. An example of this is remembering a phone number we have just heard. As long as we keep repeating it in our heads, we can retain the information in working memory. The phonological store on the other hand is the inner ear. Spoken words enter the store directly meanwhile written words must firstly be changed into a spoken code before they can enter the phonological store. The working memory model has strengths and is supported by Shallice and Warrington (1974). Theyfound support for the working memory model through their case study of KF. KF was a brain damaged individual who had an impaired short-term memory. He struggled to immediately recall words which were represented verbally, but was fine with visual information. This suggested that he had an intact visuo-spatial sketchpad but an impaired articulatory loop, therefore showing evidence for the working memory models view of short-term memory. This finding couldnt be explained using the multi-store model of memory, which therefore put forward that the short-term memory was just one system. Visuo-spatial sketchpad: The visuo-spatial sketchpad is known as the inner eye and refers to what things look like. It also processes the temporary storage of spatial and visual information. It can manipulate visual and spatial information held in the long-term memory, and images in two and three dimensions, for example people can recall someones face they know from long-term memory in only two dimensions and can also imagine walking around their kitchen in three dimensions. Evidence suggesting that the working memory uses two completely different systems for dealing with verbal and visual information is that it is much harder to perform two verbal tasks at the same time because they interfere with each other and results in performance being reduced. The same applies to carrying out two visual tasks at the same time. However, a verbal processing and visual processing task can be completed at the same time because the information does not interfere. Furthermore, this supports the view that the sketch pad and phonological loop are two separate systems within the working memory. Gathercole and Baddeley (1993) also support the working memory model and they completed a lab study where people participating were divided into two groups. All of them had to complete a task which involved them following a moving spot of light. This would use the visuo-spatial sketchpad. At the same time as this was going on, one group also had to describe the angles on a letter, which was another task involving the visuo-spatial sketchpad. The other group meanwhile was given a second task that would involve and use the phonological loop and they were given a verbal task whilst following the light. The results were that Gathercole and Baddeley found the performance was way better in the participants completing tasks which used separate systems. Episodic buffer: The episodic buffer was added into the working memory model by Baddeley in 2000 after the model failed to explain the results of various experiments. It briefly stores information from the other subsystems, integrating it together, along with information from the long-term memory, resulting in complete scenes or episodes. It basically acts like a backup store which communicates with both the components of the working memory and the long-term memory. The episodic buffer is not limited to one sense only, unlike the other two slave systems. Its functions seems to weave visual memories, bind memories together and phonological memories into single episodes, which then become stored in the episodic long-term memory. The central executive chooses information from the phonological and the visuo-spatial sketchpad that go into the episodic buffer to then form an episode of memory. Along with this, the episodic buffer also appears to download episodes from the long-term memory, referring them to be analysed and possibly recalled to conscious memory.

Advertising Stereotype Essay

Media stereotypes are inevitable, especially in the advertising, entertainment and news industries, which need as wide an audience as possible to quickly understand information. Stereotypes act like codes that give audiences a quick, common understanding of a person or group of people—usually relating to their class, ethnicity or race, gender, sexual orientation, social role or occupation. But stereotypes can be problematic. They can: reduce a wide range of differences in people to simplistic categorizations transform assumptions about particular groups of people into â€Å"realities† be used to justify the position of those in power perpetuate social prejudice and inequality More often than not, the groups being stereotyped have little to say about how they are represented. Anyone who examines North American entertainment and news media will notice that members of ethnic and visible minorities are inadequately represented in entertainment and news media, and that portrayals of minorities are often stereotypical and demeaning. This tendency is particularly problematic in a multicultural country, where some of the population is immigrants and some is visible minorities, along with larger urban centers. Visual representation of reality is influential in shaping people’s views of the world, where everyday realities are articulated mostly by what we see in the media. The role of advertising in this interpretation of reality is crucial. The target audience’s self-identification with the images being a basic prerequisite for an advertisement’s effectiveness, makes advertising one of the most important factors in the building of behavior models and values systems. The way a certain notion is managed at a visual level determines how people will perceive this notion and whether they will identify with it or not. Meaning is encoded in the structure of the images, which thus become potent cultural symbols for human behavior. The framing and composition of the image, the setting, the symbolic attributes and every other element in its structure, all are engaged in the effective presentation of the underlying notion. Gender Stereotypes in Advertising Dominant discourses surrounding gender encourage us to accept that the human race is ‘naturally’ divided in to male and female, each gender realistically identifiable by a set of immutable characteristics. In Foucault’s terms, relations of difference are social constructs belonging to social orders that contain hierarchies of power, defined, named and delimited by institutional discourses, to produce social practices. â€Å"Gender differences are symbolic categories† (Saco, 1992:25). These categories are used to ascribe certain characteristics to men and women. The representation of those characteristics determines how men and women are presented in cultural forms, and really whether an individual is identified as ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’. It is important to understand the big role that media, in general, and specifically advertisement plays in maintaining an ingrained gender hierarchy. The closer study of men’s and women’s images as presented in advertising should result in uncovering the messages about their identity and role in society. Until recently, masculinity in the media was not considered problematic since there was the notion that masculinity is not constructed. â€Å"Masculinity remains the untouched and untouchable against which femininity figures as the repressed and/or unspoken† (Holmlund, 1993:214). The role advertisements play in the development and perpetuation of gender-role stereotypes may include: Women Stereotypes in Advertising Advertising is an over 100 billion dollar a year industry and affects all of us throughout our lives. We are each exposed to over 2000 ads a day, constituting perhaps the most powerful educational force in society. The average American will spend one and one-half years of his or her life watching television commercials. The ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy. They tell us who we are and who we should be. Sometimes they sell addictions. Advertising is the foundation and economic lifeblood of the mass media. The primary purpose of the mass media is to deliver an audience to advertisers, just as the primary purpose of television programs is to deliver an audience for commercials. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable because they are new and inexperienced consumers and are the prime targets of many advertisements. They are in the process of learning their values and roles and developing their self-concepts. Most teenagers are sensitive to peer pressure and find it difficult to resist or even question the dominant cultural messages perpetuated and reinforced by the media. Mass communication has made possible a kind of national peer pressure that erodes private and individual values and standards. But what do people, especially teenagers, learn from the advertising messages? On the most obvious level they learn the stereotypes. Advertising creates a mythical, mostly white world in which people are rarely ugly, overweight, poor, struggling or disabled, either physically or mentally (unless you count the housewives who talk to little men in toilet bowls). In this world, people talk only about products. The aspect of advertising most in need of analysis and change is the portrayal of women. Scientific studies and the most casual viewing yield the same conclusion: women are shown almost exclusively as housewives or sex objects. The housewife, pathologically obsessed by cleanliness, debates the virtues of cleaning products with herself and worries about â€Å"ring around the collar† (but no one ever asks why he doesn’t wash his neck). She feels guilt for not being more beautiful, for not being a better wife and mother. Very unrealistic goals for ideal body shapes, which lead to high rates of anorexia nervosa and bulimia Make women believe they are valued based on their body, therefore their self-esteem is also based on how their body looks compared to others. Give messages to women that changing their appearance, they will have a better life *Men* Stereotypes in Advertising It is interesting to see that now, when things have admittedly changed for women, we still see much of the same themes in modern men’s advertisements. In the ads from â€Å"Men’s Journal,† we generally see a handsome, strong, successful and somewhat rugged man. The camera angles are almost invariably from the bottom up, giving us a view of the man as though we, the viewer are below him, looking up at him. All of them are young, but none are teen-aged looking. All but one have, or show remnants of facial hair. None of these ads show the man in the work place, but their depiction of leisure is that of mature success, not youthful excess. Because of the camera angles, the strong stances, the rugged good looks, and the depictions of success, these ads reinforce the stereotypes of men as strong, powerful, aggressive providers. An ad for Tommy Hilfiger shows the man with his arm around a girl who is leaning into his chest. This ad depicts a man as protector and as a heterosexual. The one ad that stands out from the group in this collection of ads from Men’s Journal is the one from ESPN’s Sport’s Center. This ad shows a man finishing up a piece of cake at a diner and watching Sport’s center from across the bar. This is a different depiction of leisure which seems directly related to the product it is selling. The rest of the ads are selling some form of apparel. They are designed to show clothes as comfortable and stylish and show that a man who wears those clothes can be the aggressive, dominant male. The Sport’s Center ad is selling a product that isn’t consumed as part of public image, but of private pleasure. The clothes worn by the models are assertively masculine, and often emphasize a broad shouldered and solid body shape. The models display a highly masculine independence and assurance, as well as the coding of narcissistic self-absorption. The choice of lighting and film stock emphasizes the surface qualities of skin, hair, eyes and the texture of clothing. Finally the cropping of the images works to produce intensity in many of the images. This stereotyped presentation of a gender role, certainly tells us that there is still a part of society that believes that men should be naturally related to power, aggression and authority. In recent years however, other aspects of masculinity have become acceptable in ads. This can be seen in the difference between the ads in Men’s Journal and those in Maxim. The ads from Maxim are similar to those from Men’s Journal but definitely appeal to a younger audience. It is therefore interesting to look at what advertisers feel is more appealing to younger men. There is one ad for Ralph Lauren Cologne that shows a young successful looking man in a shirt and tie looking over the top of the head of the women cuddling in his chest. She is looking into the camera seductively and he looks as though his mind is elsewhere. He is dominant, even arrogant in this position and once again appears successful and confident. Another ad from Maxim is for a DVD special edition of â€Å"Rocky. † The ad shows rocky beaten and worn but continuing to fight. The copy reads â€Å"at least David had a slingshot. † This ad depicts the ultimate American sports hero, appealing men, both young and old. In-short, disadvantages with Men Stereotyping, are: Show ideal for body type, also which can be unrealistic Show men as aggressive and in control of things, including women Women’s problems are â€Å"fixable†, you either fit the part of the masculine ideal or you do not Negative Stereotypes in Advertising Aunt Jemima, Darkie toothpaste, Uncle Ben and the infamous â€Å"Waaaaaz up† crew from the people at Budweiser are some blatantly stereotypical roles that have had many conscious blacks frustrated during the past century. Darkie toothpaste may be unfamiliar to many Americans today because it was marketed in Hong Kong until March 1990. The toothpaste package featured a minstrel character with a wide smile. The character appeared to have placed black soot on his well-rounded face and red lipstick around his mouth while smiling large with gleaming white teeth. To make the character completely minstrel-like, the character added a large brimmed top hat to grace his head. According to Jamieson and Campbell, the authors of â€Å"News, Advertising, Politics and the Mass Media: the Interplay of Influence,† Darkie toothpaste was removed because of its negative connotation of the word â€Å"Darkie† and not so much the image on the box. The regional commercial director for Hawley and Hazel (the makers of Darkie toothpaste) said, â€Å"We want the name of our toothpaste to be internationally acceptable. However, some people consider the word ‘Darkie’ racially offensive, particularly in America. † It’s not that the name is not offensive, but the image was not even discussed. Associating the name with such an offensive image makes the toothpastes image just a bit more offensive. If Darkie toothpaste were associated with an image of dark yellow teeth with a contradictory image of a bright smile shown next to the crude picture, it would have shown a whole new connotation to the brand name. The frightening thing about this image is it was only removed from circulation 13 years ago, well after the Civil Rights Movement. Aunt Jemima has been a character that has shown a dramatic change throughout the years. Aunt Jemima wore a red and white scarf over her head. Now Aunt Jemima has a well-groomed coif and a slimmer face that graces the boxes of pancake, waffle and syrup bottles across the world. The changing images of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben are representative of the changes in American culture today. Although we do not see blacks as cooks, maids and servants anymore, we may see a new stereotype arising. The â€Å"Waaaz up† crew from the recent Budweiser commercials is an example of this theory. This campaign was very effective and catchy. It had people – black, white and every race in between – making it a staple in our ever-changing language. Budweiser did not only stereotype blacks in America but also other often-stereotyped groups. The Italian mobsters constantly repeating â€Å"How you doin? † and the â€Å"yuppie† stereotype stating, â€Å"How are yooooooou doing. † The only people that spoke proper English in these advertisements were the upper class white men. The images of blacks have increased by number but not by quality. According to the Journal of Advertising, blacks spend more than $279 billion a year on consumer goods, yet the advertisers are only spending approximately $865 million a year to reach them. This disproportionate figure reveals why many advertisements misrepresent blacks across America. Only a small percentage of the black population is professional athletes, yet they are the majority of endorsers for black products. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and women must demand a wider variety of roles in advertisements for it may negatively affect the children of tomorrow. If we are only being shown in narrow roles, our future generation may not aspire to be anything but rappers and athletes, instead of politicians, doctors or lawyers. Ask the advertisers, â€Å"Waaaz up wit dat? † Research supports that mass stereotyping groups of people does not work in the development and marketing of business ideas. Although many corporations still try to capitalize on stereotypes, this line of thinking simply does not work as effectively as the old â€Å"mom and pop country store† approach to business: Getting to know your customers as intimately as possible. If grouping populations like cattle into marketing niches worked, why would major corporations still continue to invest so heavily into studying consumer habits and demographics? If this type of marketing philosophy worked well then anyone with a great business idea could make it simply by targeting. Obviously, this is not so. *Stereotypin*g Myths For example, stereotype marketing ideologies might focus too much on one group and ignore another equally, or even more important. For example, target only kids for (non-PC) video games and lose access to millions of customers. Nearly a quarter of all video games are purchased by consumers aged 40 and older, and 38% of all video game sales are made by women. Another case in point: Senior citizens have become the fastest-growing population in the United States. ; however, mass marketing to seniors has remained somewhat elusive. Several pioneers in the senior marketing industry note that age alone has little to do with the interests of senior consumers. Those who have attempted to cash in on the senior population, simply lumping retirees together by age, have failed, and miserably so. When it comes to advertising, â€Å"marketing† studies that offer only cold statistics may play less of a role than you think in developing successful marketing strategies and advertising campaigns. Customers can be your best or worst source of advertising. Word of mouth referrals, especially in the age of the Internet, should not be undervalued. And, since consumers are more likely to complain than to compliment, it pays to have customer-friendly and trustworthy complaint resolution practices in place. It pays to see your customers as individuals, with common needs, but not as groups who, because of stereotype images, have lemming-like behaviors when it comes to making purchases.

Basic Teleological Assumptions of Classical Design Theory Essay

The Old School of Intelligence Design presupposes the existence of an intellectual being behind the creation of the universe. Through inference, it often acts as a proof in support of a theistic God. The Design theory is usually supported on two major points – the complexity of the universe and the teleological nature of all natural organisms that constitute the universe. Traditionally, the old design theory resorts to an analogy of the machine, which is complex with an absolutely immaculate correspondence between the parts and the whole and has a ‘purpose’ or ‘telos’, thus teleological. Using Paley’s now legendary example of a mechanical watch that begins its ‘Natural Theology’, one can say that a watch in good condition comprises a number of devices that are intricately connected to each other in such a way, that if one part moves, it in turn set the other parts into movement, thus making the clock work. The watch is thus a ‘complex’ machine. At a second or higher level, there is a ‘purpose’ behind this entire operation, i. e. the ‘purpose’ of the watch – to tell what time of the day it is to its user. Thus, all parts contribute to the whole leading to a well defined ‘purpose’, thereby making the device ‘teleological’. Paley’s inference, which he extends to include all kinds of being and is developed into the central argument of the Old Design theory, is that ‘there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use’. (Paley) Old Design theory, following Paley’s formulation, goes on to extend the analogy to include all natural beings to argue that the universe, being so well organized and infinitely more complex, thus presupposes the existence of a much higher intelligence, or a being with a much higher intelligence, who must have created this teleological universe. The general logic that establishes the thesis is: 1. Machines are produced by intelligent design 2. The universe resembles a machine Therefore, 1. Probably the universe was produced by intelligent design. (Rowe, p. 59) As a proof of this line of logical conclusion, we can look at anything of the natural world around us, both animate and inanimate, although the animate makes us understand the logic better. A tree, for example, is sustained by the nourishment that is produced by the leaf. The leaf works like a machine, with its every constituent carefully designed, arranged and contrived in such a manner so as to serve its exact purpose – carrying out photosynthesis and providing the tree, of which it is a part, with the necessary succor. It is thus a teleological unit within a bigger ‘machine’ – the tree. The tree, in its part, has all its constituent parts built and organized in such a way so as to make it serve its purpose – to exist and reproduce by creating more of its like. In order to understand this analogy, we can derive on the example of a car. A car, in itself, is a teleological unit serving the purpose of commuting people from one place to another. However, it is a combination of many smaller teleological units – the carburetor, for example, with parts to suit its express purpose – of providing the necessary combustion for the car to move. (Rowe, p. 57) Thus, a purposeful machine can be a combination of many constituent purposeful machines, which add up to carrying out the purpose of the whole. Any part of the human anatomy (like Paley’s example of the eye), and its relation to the human body in general can be counted as an example of teleological design in the natural world. Furthermore, Sartre’s existentialism can be taken as a normative school of thought elaborating on teleological renditions. As an existentialist belonging to atheistic principles, Sartre viewed subjectivity as the underlying source of inspiration behind creation. In other words, it is only the subjective understanding of things that he thought to be the fundamental purpose of beginning. The example of a paper-cutter can be aptly suited here to the context of explicating Sartre’s philosophical doctrine. The postulate that Existence precedes essence, as he came upon, can be justified by reasoning with the purpose behind the making of a paper-cutter. As is obvious, there are two sides to it. Firstly, the person who makes a paper-cutter knows what he is doing and what a paper-cutter is. So it directly involves the utility of a thing being made or created. Secondly, the process of making is also known to the maker. Hence, a logical inference can be drawn from these two interconnected preconditions that help assigning a teleological meaning to the whole. Needless to mention, it is unlikely that the person making the paper-cutter should be ignorant of its end-use (Sartre, p. 2) Arguments Old and New Till the end of the nineteenth century, the Design Theory, with certain qualifications, was thought to be adequate as an explanation behind creation and its unsurpassed complexity, through the presence of a super-intelligent being. However, right from the beginning of its existence and even before, serious questions and fallacies have been raised in the logical reasoning that draw correspondence between the mechanical and the natural world, leading to Intelligent Design theory. These criticisms are in fact older than even when the Old design was laid down as a philosophical foundation. Hume was one of the earliest critics, and Darwinism was one of the last and most potent criticisms of intelligent design – almost forcing the point of view to refashion and re-present itself into the New Design theory. The foremost accusation against the Design theory is that it is ultimately an analogy. Although Rowe proves in his article that analogy is necessary to reach the truth, yet he proves the significance of analogy only through another analogy, and thus laying the base of his logical inference weak. However, even if we take, for the sake of argument, Rowe’s formulation to be true and believe in analogy to be a way to reach the truth, there can be serious complaints raised against the way the analogy works itself out. One of the first problems to be thrown up by the machine analogy is that the creator of the watch is himself created by something external to his own self, and therefore the creator, an intelligent agency capable of action, needs to be created. Design theory often quite consciously avoids delving into the nature of the creator, just as it does about the ‘purpose’ behind the universal design. ‘Does intelligent-design theory provide explanatory power? ’ asks Young and Edis, ‘If so, it must provide information about the details of the design and, to this end, about the nature of the designer. ID theory, however, deliberately avoids the answers to this question’. (Young and Edis, p. 193) Even if we take into account the theological connotations of the theory that establishes the creator as a self-created, self-creating being, there are other problems that are foregrounded by Rowe. First, does a universe comprising teleological components itself become teleological? To prove that all natural objects that comprise the universe have a ‘purpose’ does not necessarily prove that the universe itself has a ‘purpose’. All that remains is transference that if the constituent objects have a purpose, then the world itself must have a ‘purpose’ where being constructed by a being that transcends ordinary intelligence, it is impossible to grasp that overarching ‘purpose’ behind creation. Such an argument runs into a danger of fallacy, because if ‘Design Theory’ is propounded to prove the presence of a God (or an intelligent being) behind creation, then we cannot take the presence of the being as a presumption. In that case we take to be proven what we are out to prove. Secondly, we can take into account Hume’s classical criticism of the Old Design theory, which says that it is presumptuous to take the teleology and the machine-like orderliness as the very pattern of the whole universe. Here we run into the danger of taking our argumentative basis as only that small section of the universe that is apparent to our sensory perception as the general model of the universe itself, something that we would never know. There may be, and probably are, other parts of the universe located outside the ken of our knowledge where chaos reigns. The greatest criticism of the Old Design theory comes in the form of Darwinian Theory of ‘Natural Selection’. Darwin started off as a believer in Paley’s theological model of Design theory, but as a result of his experience, defected and put forward his own theory of ‘Natural Selection’. It states that in order to be machine-like in teleology and perfect in construct, nature does not necessarily need a divine and intellectual being. Nature works in spite of such a presence or an absence in order to make its organisms best suited to the environment, whereby only the organisms that manage to suit themselves to the changing environment exist while the other perish. The survivors manage to make anatomical adjustments to survive in the environment, thus combining the part to the whole and carry on the acts of existence and procreation. Darwin’s locating the question of Intelligent Design within the question of the implicit ‘anthropomorphism’ of classical ID, is obvious when he talks about ‘Man’ and ‘Nature’ and their roles as agencies of creation: â€Å"As man can produce and certainly has produced a great result by his methodical and unconscious means of selection what may not Nature effect? Man can act only on external and visible character: Nature cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they may be useful to any being. She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life†. (Darwin, p. 53) Till the beginning of the twentieth century, the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection reigned supreme in the field of scientific enquiry, while Design theory was more or less relegated to the recesses of religious and spiritual thought. However, the beginning of the twentieth century saw a resurgence of the Design theory, as Darwinian Evolution was made subject to questions and doubts. One of the most common attacks on Darwinism from the proponents of ID theorists has been from the lines of what is known as the mousetrap theory. The mousetrap is one of the most common and yet one of the most complex devices of our everyday life. However, if any of its component parts: the spring, the hammer or the platform is missing, it would fail to achieve its ‘purpose’, its ‘telos’: that is catching mice. Similarly, the immense complexity of even the most basic molecular organisms is so self sufficient and so ‘teleological’ that it cannot be explained by the theory of natural selection, since they do not appear as the result of any earlier form adapting to suit to the changing environment. It appears created out of an intelligent design. Michael J. Behe criticizes Darwin from precisely this position. New Design Theory: In Search for a Philosophic Co-existence However, Behe’s criticism that Darwinism does not account for the immense complexity of molecular organisms is not the same thing as to say that there is a supremely intelligent, benevolent and perfect being who has designed the universe. In fact, Natural selection can be made to account for the immense complexity of even molecular organisms. Neither does Dempski, who otherwise supports the ID theory, speak about the real nature of the intelligent being in question. Under such a situation where nothing could be proven conclusively, the design theory re-formulated itself in what is now known as the New Design Theory. One of the most significant positions of modern proponents of the intelligent design theorists is to dissociate and distance themselves from the earlier theological imports of the argument. As Manson states ‘the fact that modern ID theory is a minimalist argument for design itself, not an argument for the existence of God, relives it of much of the baggage that weighed down Paley’s argument’. (Manson, p. 277) Thus, much in response to earlier loopholes of ID arguments, a section of modern theorists is looking for a co-existence of Darwinism and ID, stating that they are not necessarily exclusive. The big-bang theory of creation is used very commonly as a point of departure. It states that the conditions conducive to life and existence required too many factors to act in too perfect a combination, and hence they do not look like an accident. Therefore, the presence of an intelligent being is needed in order to present the conditions from where nature could take its own course and get on with its act of existence and procreation. The presence of an intelligent being, whether in the form of a single theistic God or otherwise, is thus established, albeit through a new formulation. Religion, Meaninglessness and the Old Design Theory Questions of decaying morality and faith often encroach upon the spheres of religion. A man’s existence can grossly be measured on two parameters: his belief in the system of religion and other ethical means; and his actual loyalty to what he believes. If a man, out of compulsion or faith, remains loyal to what he regards as the most singular religious creed, he ought to have some degree of propensity to it. So he can be adjudged credible enough to be an individual who does not sway from his internal notions. But in reality, things turn out to be markedly different from the nature of our interaction with the world. Even the sternest believers are compelled to choose a life that hardly conforms to what he believes in and of itself about religion. Religion acts almost as an external element which is unplugged from the course of life and does not have anything to do with controlling man’s destiny (Tolstoy, p. 2). In relation to the Old Design Theory, it can be stated that God’s presence is rather nonessential with regards to the actual ordeal man has to live through in this life. As Rachels (293) argues, the ancient myth of Sisyphus is correspondent to conveying the ultimate meaninglessness of life. Contrary to the seep-seated Christian faiths of Tolstoy, this philosophy is more akin to Sartre’s doctrine of atheistic and nihilistic existence. Even if we go by the conjecture that there is in fact a supremely intelligent being at the heart of every phenomenon in the universe, the scope of redemption in mortal life is nearly impossible and therefore, the influence of a single entity, however powerful it is, is negated. References Manson, Neil A. (2003). God and Design. New York: Routledge. Young M. , and Edis, T. (2006). Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism. Piscataway: Rutgers University Press. Paley W. (1837). Natural theology: or Evidences of the existence and attributes of the Deity†¦ With additions & notes. London: W. & R. Chambers. Darwin, C. (2007). On the Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection Or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. New York: Cosimo, Inc. Rowe. The Design Argument: Old and New. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism Is a Humanism. Tolstoy, Leo N. A Confession. Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Rachels, J. (2005). The Truth About the World: Basic Readings in Philosophy.

The 100 Most Commonly Used Words in English

Listed here, according to the 100-million-word British National Corpus, are the 100 most commonly used words in English. Many of these words are function words: they glue pieces of sentences together into longer syntactic units.   Where needed, the part of speech is identified to distinguish different grammatical uses of the same word.   thebeofandain (preposition: in the old days)to (infinitive marker: to sing)haveitto (preposition: to the country)for (preposition: for you)Ithat (relative pronoun: the book that I read)youheon (preposition: on the beach)with (preposition: with pleasure)do (verb: I do)at (preposition: at school)by (preposition: by midnight)notthis (determiner: this page)butfrom (preposition: from home)theyhis (determiner: his job)that (determiner: that song)sheorwhich (determiner: which book)as (conjunction: as we agreed)weansay (verb: say a prayer)will (auxiliary verb: I will try)wouldcan (auxiliary verb: I can go)iftheirgo (verb: go now)what (determiner: what time)thereall (determiner: all people)get (verb: get busy)her (determiner: her job)make (verb: make money)whoas (preposition: as a child)out (adverb: go out)up (adverb: go up)see (verb: see the sky)know (verb: know a place)time (time: a time to laugh)take (verb: take a break)themsome (determiner: some money)couldso (adverb: I said so)himyearint o (preposition: into the room)itsthenthink (verb: think hard)mycome (verb: come early)thanmore (adverb: more quickly)about (preposition: about you)nowlast (adjective: last call)yourmeno (determiner: no time)other (adjective: other people)givejust (adverb: just try)shouldthese (determiner: these days)peoplealsowell (adverb: well written)any (determiner: any day)onlynew (adjective: new friend)verywhen (conjunction: when you go)may (auxiliary verb: you may go)waylook (verb: look here)like (preposition: like a boat)use (verb: use your head)her (pronoun: give her)such (determiner: such problems)how (adverb: see how)becausewhen (adverb: know when)as (adverb: as good)good (adjective: good time)find (verb: find time)