ONLINE CLASS TEST-CRITICAL THINKING

1.  Differentiate between probability and possibility?

Probabilistic thinking is essentially trying to estimate, using some tools of math and logic, the likelihood of any specific outcome coming to pass. ... In a world where each moment is determined by an infinitely complex set of factors, probabilistic thinking helps us identify the most likely outcomes. Probability theory is often considered to be a mathematical subject, with a well-developed and involved literature concerning the probabilistic behavior of various systems (see Feller, 1968), but it is also a philosophical subject – where the focus is the exact meaning of the concept of probability and the ways in which it relates to the fundamental aspects of our reasoning.

The word probability means occurrence in random. This is mostly used in statistics to find the probability of something that occurs in random. The word possibility means predicting if something can happen or not. That is the most common difference between both the terms.

Probability refers to the likelihood of something happening. That is a particular party winning in elections can be probable through a systematic statistics where as possibility refers to the capability of something taking place or being done. 

Possibility is used in our day to day life. For example, asking our friend if she or he is coming to college on Saturday? Here, the person who is asking is inquiring the possibility of his or her friend is coming to college. Possibility is sure of occurrence but probability is unsure of the occurrence sometimes.

2. Explain the types of fallacies?
 A flaw or an error in reasoning is known as fallacy. It’s a defect in an argument that effects the conclusion to be invalid. Few types of fallacies are:
Straw man- a straw man argument attacks a different subject instead of the topic that is being discussed. They use extreme version of the argument that is mostly illogical to the topic. People use such type of fallacy to prove that they are stronger than the others and the argument becomes invalid as they do not have the right point to argue.
Example; the class representative tells the class to participate in college activities, and a student using straw man will reply that she does not support like few subject teachers. Ad hominem- people using such argument personal attack the opponent instead of logical reasoning. They usually criticize the opponent by defaming their character, physical appearance, as they hold revenge over the opponent. Such arguments are commonly used by politicians to defame other ruling party as they lost the elections.
Ad ingnorantiam- it is known as argument from ignorance. People use such fallacy as a proposition must be true because it has not been proved as false or there is no evidence to it. Such arguments can lead to many more contradictory conclusions at a time. Therefore an appeal of ignorance does not prove anything.

3. Describe Benedict Anderson's concept of nation state?
Nation state is defined as a group of people who sees themselves as a cohesive and coherent unit based on shared cultural or historical criteria. It is an independent, sovereign government exercising control over a certain spatially defined and bounded area (territory), whose borders are usually clearly defined and internationally recognized by other states.
In the book Anderson theorized the condition that led to the development of nationalism in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Benedict Anderson was an Anglo- Irish political scientist and historian. He was best known for his book ‘Imagined Communities’ where he explored the origins of nationalism. Anderson defined a nation as "an imagined political community [that is] imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign" because of the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Coming to maturity at a stage of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism between each faith's ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state. Anderson views the nation as a social construct, a "imagined community" in which members share feelings of commonality with others even if they do not know them. He believes that nationalism leads to the creation of nations.  He defines a nation as a "imagined political community" that is both limited and sovereign, and whose members share a "horizontal" comradeship. The nation is imagined by him as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. it is imagined by him as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.

4. Write a note on hegemony?
The concept of hegemony was first given in Gramsci’s Notes on the Southern Question (1926). There it was defined as a system of class alliance in which a “hegemonic class” exercised political leadership over “subaltern classes” by “winning them over. In the more developed elaboration “Hegemony” entails two things. First of all, it presupposes that the “hegemonic class” takes into consideration the interests of the classes and groups over which it exercises its “hegemony.” Added to this, some equilibrium between the hegemonic class and the subaltern classes is entailed whereby the hegemonic class will be forced to make some sacrifices tangent to its corporate interests. Secondly, “hegemony” entails economic leadership besides ethico-political leadership. In other words, it entails that the hegemonic class be a “fundamental class”–that is, a class situated at one of the two fundamental poles in the relations of production: owner or non-owner of the means of production.
Gramsci’s concept of power is based simply on the two moments of power relations–Dominio (or coercion) and Direzione (or consensus). These two moments are essential elements, indeed the constitutive elements of a state of balance, a state of equilibrium between social forces identified as the leaders and the led. This state of balance consists of a coalition of classes constituting an organic totality within which the use of force is risky unless there emerges an organic crisis which threatens the hegemonic position and the ruling position of the leading class in the hegemonic system.
Hegemony (“predominance by consent”) is a condition in which a fundamental class exercises a political, intellectual, and moral role of leadership within a hegemonic system cemented by a common world-view or “organic ideology.” “Expansive hegemony” involves “direct consensus” and hence constitutes the “genuine adoption” of hegemonic status through the war of position. 
Finally, the “self-nationalization” of the proletariat as a class is an essential precondition for its full attainment of expansive hegemony. In its most inclusive meaning, expansive hegemony entails the successful creation of what Gramsci called a “collective national-popular will.”