2/29/12

Being in this class is starting to make me question everything that I have been taught since I was young! Because I went to a Catholic school until 8th grade I was taught to be ourselves but God has a plan for everyone and is all knowing. But today I learned that is a paradox because we are saying that God created us with a plan but yet we have free will and can do whatever we want. We this really was true than God's powers would be limited by the choices that we made and when we made them. If that was the case than how would that God be all powerful if what we did was the deciding factor in what he could do? The question came up today that if God create a boulder that was even to big for him to move? All of this is questioning if the the God that we think is a God and how much of a God he really could be. I never thought that it would be okay to question anything bigger than me.

2/28/12

How do you know if an amazing act is a coincidence or a miracle? When something is considered a miracle, it means that a higher power like God intervening in a situation that we as humans can't explain. When believing in a miracle, along with that comes faith. Faith is believing what you hear, not on something that you experience yourself. The believing in things that we can't see or explain helps us make sense of the world in a way that we can understand because there are so many unknowns. A good example of this statement is the belief in religion. The belief in religion can save us from the real world momentarily. As Karl Marx said, "Religion is like a drug, but it is also the heart of a heartless world". Because we as humans fear the unknown, we look for anything that will help us make a little more sense of a world that we will never be able to fully understand. 

2/27/12

Today we talked about the unnatural and supernatural. The basest of supernatural knowledge is the religious texts that full the basest of our knowledge on the things that we can't see or explain. Our belief in the supernatural is the belief that we are getting things right compared to what the religious text tells us. Our tradition makes us believe things like what color a wedding dress should be or what we should eat for Thanksgiving, but what makes us think that way? Is it the fear of the unknown, of how things would work if we didn't have these set "guidelines" that everyone around us seams to live by? Naturalist believe based on observation, so that we act and believe based on what we see in our everyday lives and that there is always an explanation. But when it comes to religious things like faith, we are believing because we choose to believe, not because there is any concrete evidence that there is something to believe in.

2/23/12

As an American, we hear the word free will a lot. We live in country that allows us to feel how we want to feel and say what we want to say. But in a more philosophical view free will is the humans ability to chose out of more than one option without the laws of physics interfering. It also means that nothing in our lives is determined, that the choices that we make determine what is to happen next. But to take it a step deeper, what if our thoughts and actions are determined but we just don't think they are? Like we think that we are making decisions on our own but really the world had it already determined that we would think that way. If this idea that our thoughts are already determined, there is no way we would be able to know because we cant tell the future. We can't reason our way though the illusion of free will and because of that we will never know if free will really does exist.

2/22/12

I learned today that determinism is that belief that humans do not have free will, that what we believe we choose is actually somt ething that is pre determined by the world. In the universe we have no choice which is something that is kind of scary to think about. Things change over time, and andifferent way to think about it is if time stopped, stopped all the elements of the world only then nothing would change because time isn' moving. Because we live in a world where things are always changing than there is no way to know what the future is unless you knew everything about an object like a piece of chalk than you could predict would would happen if it were to fall. Time doesn't only flow backwards, it only flows foward. In determinism it is believed that the basic laws of the world govern our thoughts even if we have no idea. This idea means that the world runs every decision that we make and we have no idea! We have no control over any thought or action even though we might think we do. Whoa.

2/21/12

So I was reading a story about how a little girl is a survivor of cancer of more than 3 years now and she wasn't supposed to live more than a year. I don't know why this struck me so deep, but it got me thinking about this class. I know it's not what we're talking about now but earlier in the class we were talking about how philosophers want an explination for almost anything and that is why we look into how we act as humans and what makes us act that way. But how could anyone explain how that little girl is still breathing? I know when we look into the world there are going to be things that accure that we will not be able to explain because we do not know everything in the world that we live in, but than why are we looking for an explination? There is going to be so much that we will never understand but yet we pick at some of the greatest minds in history in hopes that there will be some claification, I just don't understand why we toucher ourselves.

2/20/12

This weeks question was wether or not I would consider myself a compatibilist or an incompatibilist. I had no idea what either of these terms meant, so the defination I got off of Wikipedia.com is that compatibilism si the belief that free will and determinism can happen at the same time, and that it is possiable to believe both without being logically inconsistent. Incompatibilism is defined as the view that a deterministic universe is completly at odds with the notion that people have free will. It took me a long time to have an opinion on what I believed in, considering that I never really put much thought into it. But I came to the conclusion that I would consider myself a compatibilist because I feel that free will and determinism can coexist and help us make the decisions that lead us in our lives. The way that I see it is that without free will we would fully depend on other people to do something as simple as making a decision and determism gives us the drive to take the risks that help us learn and grow to lead better lives.

2/16/12

I was wondering today why it is that we listen to the ideas of these philosophers anyways, I mean they make connections with the world that don't make any sense anyways to people like me that are just trying to make sense of the world! I would be lying though if I said that the ideas that these great men thought of didn't interest me, but what bothers me is that they all make me feel bad about something I do in my every day life. Looking though my past posts I see that all of my ideas revolved around the idea that we should feel bad for any type of happiness that we feel for ourselves and if we don't examine our lives then we are not living the lives that we should be. But I think everyone can agree that sometimes it is better to just live life rather then trying to over think everything that we plan to do. What type of life would we be living if we thought about every action we took? We would never fully be living the lives that we could, and in that way wouldn't that be selfish? I think all of these readings are starting to get into my head...

2/15/12

I swear this class is making me feel that there is no act that one can do without being selfish. I learned in this weeks reading about altruism, doing something nice for someone else  but allowing yourself to feel nice about it in some way. But how nice are we allowed to feel until we are being selfish? How do you even measure the way you feel? Like if you feel more than half percent good about what you are doing than its not okay. Well what if you feel more happy about how you feel than what you are doing, can you measure that? That got me so confused thinking about how we feel bad about yourself by how we measure how we should be feeling and what we actually feel. I disagree when thinking that we shouldn't be allowed to feel some type of happiness for ourselves when doing a good deed for someone else because if we didn't feel any type of happiness than what would motivate us to what to help others? Yes I wish we lived in a world where we just wanted to help those in need but in reality that isn't the case. We help others because we feel that is what we should be doing and when we do it we feel good because not everyone would sacrifice their time for someone else.

2/14/12

What would you do to stay alive? Picture your on a boat with one other person and there is only enough food for one person to survive, would you give up the food to that person or would you except that food and watch them die? By no means is this an easy question but this was the example used in class to explain the difference between being selfish or self interested. By taking the food does that make you selfish or accepting? And what are your intentions when giving the food away, is it just so you don't have to watch the other person die? But what about the idea of being a "hero"? When you think of a hero, most think of someone that goes out of their way in an extreme mannor to help someone else. The reason that heros are so looked up too is because there aren't many real life people that would be willing to risk everything that they have for someone else. But back to what you would do to stay alive, would you be selfish enough to take the food, or selfish enough to die so you don't have to live with the fact that you are alive because someone else had to die? 

2/13/12

Today we talked about the difference between self interest and being selfish. Selfish is when acting based on own self interest and being self interested is acting based on your own health. An example would be not crossing the road during rush hour so you don't get hit out of self interest, or not crossing the road to help someone in danger and being selfish. But then there is also different ways of acting selfishly by doing nothing when you should. We used the example of someone watching a baby drown and doing nothing about and not having to go to jail based on that action. Should the person that watched the baby suffocate have to pay the same price as the person that put that life in the water? Thinking about it, it doesn't take action to act selfish, being selfish can include doing nothing at all. We live in a society that we won't harm one another, but we won't go out of our way to help one another either. We use little sayings like, "I didn't mean too!" that make us seam less involved or that there was little that we could have done to help another when in reality we could have made a difference.

2/9/12

In my class we talk a lot about what makes us human, more specifically what makes us different from animals. An example would be how both animals and humans can move freely without the need of another force, which seperates us both from plants that need the wind or another force to move them. But than what do we have that animals don't have? Now don't forget that we are animals, but with concious thought. We are able to think of questions and problem solve, we do have animal desires but we are the only species that has reason. Reason is a driving force for almost everything we do, thinking abbout what is the best way to get something done or how to solve a problem. Arostotle believe that every human body is just the shell for a soul, which defines us as a person and without the human body the soul would not be able to survive. But the soul is not a "thing", it is an enity all of it's self. It is invisible but it makes that we classify as ourselves as being human.

2/8/12

What helps you lead a happy life, is it all of the money you gain or all the friends you make? Well if you ask Aristotle he would say that to lead a happy life you have to reflect and lead a life of reason. There should be no passive enjoyment only the use of reason. Plato believed that we needed to escape the cave to see the light and find the truth, but Aristotle believed that we didn't need to get out of the cave, only see what is in front of us. But being human, it is in our nature to be social animals, but because of this nature does that not allow us to exercise reason alone and still be happy? Aristotle believed that if you couldn't test your virtues by yourself, that the interaction with others help you learn. To be good to yourself is be thought to be living the "good life", but if we don't help others we are not acting human based on our nature because we can't survive alone. We can't funtion on our own, think about it; would wouldn't be able to brush your teeth without someone getting the water to work in the sink or making your tooth brush and tooth paste. We are dependent on others from birth until death.  

2/7/12

What makes a tree a tree? I kept asking myself that when I was walking outside if I  believed that it was possible that there is a form of a tree in a different universe. Just thinking about that there can be forms of everything living in a different universe that was better than the beings here literally made my head hurt. But than I was thinking what literally makes a tree a tree? Is it just because we call it trees or is it the properties that science has proved that has made us call a tree a tree. But if science has proven all that a tree is, than how is there a better form if we have proven what a tree is? Oh! And if there is a God, does only him know what a tree is or has he given humans the power to find out what a tree is? And what about miracles, is it a God that makes them happen or just a fact of unproven nature? I like to believe that there is something bigger than us that makes things happen and that a tree is a tree because we are given the thought process to figure out what makes something what it is.

2/6/12

Today in class we talked a lot about what powers the universe. This is a question that philosophers have been asking for centuries. Aristotle believed that caused power the universe, and when I heard that I had no idea what that meant. But think about it, if nothing caused something to be set in motion than there would be nothing to happen at all. Some believe that God is reason for the things that happen in the universe, but Aristotle didn't really believe in a God that could make everything in motion. We can't prove the existence the existence of a God, but we can prove effect that happen based on cause and effect. One of the most known back and forth questions using this effect is the question, "What happened first, the chicken or the egg?" Somehow this question came up in class and it helped make sense of what we were talking about. 

2/2/12

When talking about belief or knowledge, we tend to think of them hand in hand. But believe it or not there is a difference; knowledge is justified belief, meaning it has something to back it up. Belief is believing in something and having no proof to back it up. The reason people tend to correlate the two is because sometimes we fall victim to false beliefs, or believing what we want to believe. When this happens we fall victim to losing what is real and what is what we want to see. Plato believed that if you know the truth than you will always be good, and that is where the concept of believing whatever you want to believe is the truth and how that can lead you down the wrong path. With this idea that if we know the truth than we will do no wrong, can we condemn those who do bad things if all their lives they were taught what they were doing was the right thing and in that there was truth and understanding in their actions? I like to think that I know the truth with some things, but when hearing how we sometimes that your truth might not be the right truth, but than what again what is the right truth? Who makes that call?

2/1/12

Ignorance is bliss, this very common sentence holds a lot of truth is a lot of people's lives We fear the things that we don't understand and what we don't know. For example, we tend to fear the dark because we don't know what's lurking in the shadows. But what about when those fears start holding you back from leading a better life. The metaphor of the man chained to the back of the cave is a good example. The chain's represents the things that hold us back life being "blissfully ignorant", the authorities, and our own habits. Habits was a chain that really interested me because I never really thought how the way that we do things can push us more into the cave than helping us progress in life. But there are more than these few examples that hold us back, anything that fights us from leading an examined life is considered a chain. It is hard to fight these chains because sometimes it involves changing the way you live life as you know it and by instinct we fight that. But as Plato said, "There is more to the world than shadows in a cave".