“If the Frog Tells You That the Crocodile Is Dead, Do Not Doubt It”

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Journal 1B November-08-11 Today, the question being addressed is “If the frog tells you that the crocodile is dead, do not doubt it”. What might this Ghanaian proverb mean? To start off a proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularity known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practice experience of humanity. As we saw in class with the demonstration of the railroad tracks and the construction workers on the tracks, our minds can affect what we think based on expectations caused by previous experiences and beliefs. The quote is similar to the railroad example because one can take this situation in two different directions. The first actually believes the frog and the second is disregarding what he/she has to say and portrays “it” is lying. My first insight is taken as "trust those whose situation makes their claims likely to be reliable". Crocodiles eat frogs, so the life/death of the crocodile is so important to the frog that it's unlikely to be mistaken/lying about the matter. Also, one might take into consideration about the surroundings of the two animals and realize that they live in the same environment. This answer requires one to ask themselves if the conviction is sufficient enough for a knowledge claim to be validated. Conviction is fairly sufficient as the frog would have more accurate knowledge of the crocodile's passing than others would. This as a whole plays a part to the things that we talked about in class about knowledge. Although, belief could be added to this situation to interpret this saying in another way. For instance, I also thought that the quote could be talking about politics, how society believes everything the government says blindly. Everybody just believes whatever is thrown at them. The government lies about many things which has been proven voluminous times. People are just

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