3b. What grade do you deserve and why?
- B because I tried really hard to get all the information and reading done plus I think that I learned a lot from this class that it is not a waste.
4. What is your real name?
- Raul Lopez
5. What is your "user" name?
- rsl_006@yahoo.com
5a. What was your midterm grade? Or, if you revised it, your revised midterm grade? Provide a LINK to your midterm.
6. What is your email address that you use for this class?
7. Name and address for your website.
- Knowledge Of Unknown and http://whatisunknown.blogspot.com/
8. Have you done all the reading for the entire class?
- Yes I have done all the readings.
9. Have you watched each of the films that were required?
- Yes I have watched all the films that were required.
10. Please place here all of the postings you have done for this class (you can copy and paste them. ALL eight WEEKS OF POSTINGS.
As I was watching
I found
Religion, Government
Fukuyama talked about religion which should not be taken lightly because it is what formed society and scientist always say that it is a myth or that it is a imaginary story that people believe in which I think is not the case. He said that religion is not need to put order in the world, but it helps the world agree with the order or rules that a country has. He said that there are no right or wrong religions just ones that have the right morals to them and that people can use those morals to get other people to agree with them.
As he talked about what today’s politics do to our country and how they are not a coincident on how they came to be, I agreed with him because people make rules to help the government not the people at most times. I think that the government does not want the people to agree on each other but fight instead so that they get to use that anger on things that they want like war because of the beliefs we have. Most people do not see that because they are left to believe that there religion is the best and everyone should follow it.
Huxley
Huxley view of how education should be given to people was brilliant because he told a story of a red queen which ran for miles but found out that they were standing in the same place. If we do nothing about give education to the people then we will never get anywhere because there will not be enough people to move the knowledge of what we know forward. Education is the foundation of this world because without it we would have less technology, health methods, or food production, etc. in order for us to populate everywhere.
As he chose the two essential assets of a person should be intelligence and good will, I agreed with him because they can build a society that can change the world with those assets. Intelligence is important because without it we are doomed to people who can not function in society or add progress to the things we have today. Then good will is important because in order to have people live on with intelligence they need to be health and they need to cooperate with each other whether it be love or friendship so that people can stay sane.
Does God Exist?
In the Socratic Universe the philosophers were asked if God exist and some of them said he did, some said they do not know, and some said he did not. The only thing that they came into conclusion with is that they can not prove that God does or does not exist so they do not conflict with other people on the matter. I think that it is better when people do not fight about their faith on whether God is real or not because it leaves people with the option of what ever they believe is right so no one has debates on a subject that they can not prove.
As some of the philosophers describe how the question would make better sense or ask a different question, I thought that they were sure that God either does exist or does exist. They ask what type of being he is and that shows that he does exist, but sometimes they ask where is the data and don’t be silly which shows that they do not believe. I do believe in God because I have faith even though people say that faith is not a good enough reason to believe in him.
Artificial Intelligence
Does Artificial intelligence have the ability to one day equal or surpass our knowledge, many of the philosophers don’t think so because it either is not in their area of expertise or they think humans are the ultimate intelligence. Even though some computers do better than them they still think that humans are better because they created that machine so it will never be able to surpass us. Some of them think that because they think that way we are against artificial intelligence which makes us ignorant to what possibilities could happen in the future of technology.
I think that Artificial Intelligence will not surpass us because we can feel and learn other thing just by communicating with each other when computers have to constantly be put information by someone or it will stay out dated. Computers will only be given the information it needs by humans it will never be given anything it can not be taught to feel or understand because of its limits. The person who makes a computer knows everything about that computer so even if he gives it all the knowledge he knows, the man still has limits to his knowledge and as a result the computer will have limits to its knowledge.
Apology Plato
Plato was describing how people saw him has and what they think he did during his time which they thought was bad, but he kept on defending himself of all the accusations they were making on him. He would discuss all the remarks they made about him and give an example of other people who have done the same thing and he would do it in a way that made him look like a good person. He wanted to show everyone that all he was or wanted to be was a philosopher and people just saw him as a threat and a sinner for believing in what he did.
I think that he was a wise man and he described himself as one too because all he ever wanted to do was spread the knowledge he had to the people who wander about the unknown. He was also a teacher that taught people things that they would not even think about and I think that that is what scared the higher people. I think many religious people and high powered people thought of him as a threat and if they would have listened to him they would have discovered many things about the wanders of the world.
History of philosophy
Philosophy has evolved over time along with man because changes need to be made when we discover something new or some thing unknown which is amazing because that means philosophy will always play a major role in future life. Even through the little things that people do everyday or things we do not notice while we go about our daily lives makes a difference in philosophy because we wonder about things every single day. People are always going to try and discover new thing or find out why we do certain things in life which will help us evolve.
Philosophy affects us in all parts of our life and even in all the ways we think because work has its own philosophy and so does having fun because we feel differently about things every time we do something. Philosophy also affects our culture because we have views that everyone wonders about like the traditions of the past of our people and the way we do certain things. It also affects our religion because we think about God or we believe in other Gods or holy people that we were brought up to believe as a child.
PYTHAGORAS
Pythagoras’ view on the way we are suppose to eat was very different from what other people think is right and what I think should be followed because the world today has a different view on it. I think that he took it too far because food should be eaten by the preference of the person who is hungry whether they are vegetarian or a meat eater. He thought that eating that food he would get or stay smart but the nutritionist today say that we need certain types of food to get our daily value in order to be healthy.
I found his views on music were amazing because do not know if music can contribute to health or medicine of people because I have heard that babies learn better when they listen to the right music that is classical. Music can also bring a person’s spirit up if it is the music they like and it can get them out of depression which harms a person’s health. He used it with many people around him so it can amplify the affect of the tone which had the affect of making a person orderly and elegant.
Java Philosophy
Most of the quotes in Java Philosophy made sense but some of them did not make any sense at all or it contradicted itself and some of them were funny because of the irony in the matter of what people did in their life. The one that I liked was the one that said there are two situations because it is true that there are always does and don’ts which most of the time has an affect on something that we might regret in the future. The one that I found confusing was the one that said impermanently permanent which contradicts itself.
The irony in one of the quotes was the one that said a man spent his youth building an insane asylum and as he got old he spent the rest of his days inside the insane asylum that he built. Even thought the person’s life was ironic the quote was still good because it describes how old age will realize the dream of youth which happens sometimes because people always think about the past as they get older but they do not realize it as they are young and end up regretting it.
Nicholas of Cusa
In the film Nicholas of Cusa I found it to be very interesting because if we think that we want to learn more than others just to be smart we are just going to discover that we are only learning about our own ignorance. If we think that way then we will only find ourselves in a world of unknown knowledge that we can not fix until we admit that we do not know anything. He said that if we know that we do not know anything than we will learn more which sounds confusing but make sense because we will learn more about the unknown.
Cusa said that in the beginning process of everything we are trying to learn is easy, but as we go further into it gets hard because it is the beginning that we have to go back to but in order to get back into that beginning we are difficult ways to get there. I think that once we pass though the difficult paths it will become easier because we are back in the beginning so it should be easier. I also think that numbers are the way of the way of the knowledge but because there are infinite possibilities we will never reach the answers we are looking for.
Owen Gingerich
As Gingerich spoke about how many views there are to how the universe was created, I did agree that those views where the major views that are debated about each other and constantly disagree on each other. He also said that everyone that is for and against religion have faith because they want to believe in something that they do not know. There are still people that are in the middle and they say that they think that people who are Atheist did not think it through.
Then he was asked about the big bang theory which he said what happened before the big bang and why don’t scientist respond to that question with facts, but they respond with theories that can not be proven. He said that what happened before the big bang is a question that takes us beyond normal thinking because we only have unknown knowledge on the matter. He said the same thing about string theory which no one knows about which causes us to determine that we do not know about anything.
Dimensions
Lisa Randall discussion on dimensions was very eye opening because I had a hard time believing that there are more dimensions that the one that we are in and she was not even sure about how many dimensions there are. She said that Einstein said there are four dimensions and the ones he said could be only the beginning way of thinking, but we live in a world that has either more or infinite possible dimensions. There are also dimensions that do not even know that we exist and we don’t even know they exist even if something passes through because we will see the object as our dimension.
She also said that in those other dimensions they are affected by gravity and we are affected by gravity and the only difference that we have from there gravity to ours is that ours is weaker than their’s. Gravity is the only element that can pass through to other dimensions and as a result we are affected by it because we are not given the full potential of gravity. This theory would also help out string theory because string is in another dimension so this would help philosophers discover what string theory really is and we are close to discovering if there are other dimensions.
Cosmic inflation
The cosmic inflation is what caused the big bang because two elements came together and this is a question that everyone is wondering about because it is a theory that can not be answered. I was interested in this because is a big matter that I do not know whether it is true or not because no one has proof that it is true or whether it is just a guess at what happened in the beginning of time. This question will always be asked by many people and some people will believe in it or some people will hate it because it goes against their beliefs that comments that God was the creator not a big band.
Inflation paid a major part in the big bang theory because it describes our questions that we have for the universe like why does the universe appear flat and other questions of that matter. Without inflation there would be no big bang there and scientist say they are studying the matter and they are seeing how it works so that their theory can work to show other people. I think that there is such a thing as inflation but it is not what caused the universe to be made and that the universe was created by God and that everything else are theories by people.
Little Things That Jiggle
I found the movie about physics interesting because it had clips about the H bomb and about other bombs that were created because of physics and it had a quote about how humans are trying to become God. The quote about becoming a God described us as people who are trying to create things, but we are also destroying things in the process even though we realize and do not even care about who gets hurt. If Issac Newton did not discover gravity then we would not have the physics knowledge of how to build a bomb or knowledge of how the world was created or how it works.
Many of the physic's quote said that it would like the knowledge of physics to be able to be understood by everyone and for it to be easy that it might be able to fit on a t-shirt. I think that physics will never be that easy because there is so much to learn from physics that it is to hard for people to keep up with and some people will give up on it because of the difficulty. I think that the way they described physics was easy, but it did not reveal the true essence of physics because it is to big and not easy.
Gods Too Decompose
In this film the story of the madman was amazing because I have never heard of it and this the first time that I have heard the a man thought of God as dead and that we have killed him. I understand what the man was saying because in all the things that we have done it is as if we have killed God because they are not good deeds and we are only left with bad deeds. All the mans views of why he lights the lantern and of the things he feels as he thinks about the people in the town are very insightful because these are his views of how we killed God.
I think that after all the talking that he did he made his point across to the people that he was talking to and they probably do not consider him crazy any more because he has convinced them of what they have done. I think that he should not be considered a madman because his views of how we killed God were right and about what is happening to the world is right, but i disagree with him about God being dead. I believe that God will live and he is suffering not dying because of our sins and that he will be waiting for us to ask for forgiveness so that he can accept us.
Edward O. Wilson
Edward O. Wilson said that God is in mystery of what we do because even he can not predict what we are going to do in some situations because it is unknown to us and other about what we are going to do. He then said that religion can not be seen as the truth because if it is then it can also be proven to be biology so they will not agree with each other because they are the two biggest powers in the world. He said that there is a possibility that God exist or a higher being because something had to have made the laws of physics like the elements that made gravity or biology and then we evolved from there.
I think that we did come from God and that it was because of him that we are human and that we did not evolve from a cell or species because a higher being made us for a purpose in this world. I think that what he said about the two most powerful elements which are biology and religion are close to each other, but they will always be against each other because of the bases of the laws in there beliefs. I think that we do have a soul and just because a person is a physicalist they should not deny the fact that there is one in us because most of the theories we had in the past couldn’t be proven but later were proven.
Richard Dawkins
Dawkins said that all the elements of the world are empty space and that everything solid is made out of empty space but to us it seems to be solid because we are solid so two solid things can not pass through each other. When he quoted a man who said that solid things are fiction because they are not there, but we make them real because it has become useful to us in the middle world. I think that would mean that everything that is theory or that we think is happening in an object is real which could be true because it is only a non fiction thing.
I think that everything that he said about empty space could be true because we can not prove it but it is such a huge possibility that solid things could only be objects that we need to survive. Dawkins said that if all the things that we think are real are really not real because it is only a fictional solid then we are not real because it did not exist and we did not exist so we should be careful how we use real. I think that some of what Dawkins said is true because I do believe that I am real but there are things that I do not understand so to question what is real or not is hard because I will never know what is true.
Evolution
Mutation is a process where one of the living organisms are randomly changed into a different type of gene structure and sometimes this causes a change in appearance or other traits. I think that mutation is a natural rare occurrence which can sometimes be a good thing because the species could evolve because of the mutation if it reproduces. It might be a bad thing as well because that trait could cause a deformity that might restrain the species from performing certain tasks that other organisms in its class can perform
Natural Selection and Naturally Selected
Fundamentalism is a Mental Disease
On the film of fundamentalism I found it interesting that a person thinks that religion is just there to confuse a person and that all of life’s answers are in evolution so there this nothing else to it. He does not see that there has to be a beginning to everything and that everything started off from there so the question still lies there and we will never find the answer in the research we have now or the research of the future because it was done by a higher being an that is what I believe. I don’t know about evolution because I haven’t seen it been done or see the possibility that we as people can become even greater or another species evolving into something different.
In the film it also said that religion is ridicules because people believe in something that is not there, but the truth of the matter is that everyone is trying to find answers and it can be in different places. I think that some people do not think things through whether it is religion or science because they are accepting what is told to them and not thinking about their own opinion. I think that some people are rushing to the answer on how we came to be and they make up some strange theory or a theory that is only answered half way through so we are left with only wonders for those who think all of it through.
The Astonishing Hypothesis
Francis Crick was a person who believed very deeply in what he discovered which I think is a good thing for him because more people should strongly agree with what they believe in even though I thought that his views were not right. I believe that we were created by God and that we do have a soul that God gave us so that we can use it to care for others, But Francis believes that we do not have any of those and that we are only DNA or material things. This means that we are only objects and that we can never be something that is spiritual or has a soul that will save us in the end.
He also mentioned that we are just objects that see other objects which shows that we do not even think about things that are spiritual because all that we do are done by neurons which does all our abilities for us. He said that we make darkness when ever we close our eye which we can control, but I think that because we close our eyes the world around us is still going on and it is doing thinks that we can not explain because we can not see it. He said that people ask if there is a possibility to see life and he said it was our DNA and that is what life is, but life is something much greater because it is important to everyone who has a life.
Steven Pinker
As Steven Pinker described evolutionary psychology as regular psychology he wanted them to be the same just like the brain and the mind are the same because they are a thinking process. He also talked about how some scientist who are geneticist say that every part of a person is in there genes which he thinks is wrong because there is something else to it and I agree with that because it is free will that changes a person into his personality. He talked about how evolutionary psychology is based on the environment and not by the genes which I think is true because if you are in a certain country then you are bound to learn another language or pick up traditions that are in that country not the ones that your parents were born in.
Steven said that the brain had to have evolved because we can not just put in information in to things with out it learning something or giving a response because we are not robots and robots will never be like us because it can not advance on its own. I think that Steven is right because if we can change the planet than we had to change with it so we must have changed our thinking patterns and that is what led us to evolve to the society that we are today because it was necessary. I thought that the Ken selection was a good concept because everyone loves their family before their friends and they would choose the people they care about before anyone else.
Dr. Gerald Edelman
In the beginning of the film it said that the brain is a three pound meat that has neurons that connect to each other and function together which I think that the brain is much more because we need our brain every day. I think that the brain can also learn things like love, happiness, anger, and sadness because the heart does not think about these things it is the brain that is very smart and very important to us so that we can accept or determine things. I also think that the brain is the best system in the body because it is what changes us from an animal to a human or it is what makes us the dominate species because we can learn anything we want.
Dr. Gerald Edelman said that the brain was the most important thing in the body because we can use all our senses because of it and we can understand anything that we are doing so we can learn from our failures or problems. He said that the world needs to have motion so that we can advance in our studies or in our life because if we do not do anything then we will never discover new things or get any problems which we need to learn from them. He also said that we need to label everything and that is what the brain does because it tries to learn new things by making up things or try to understand what is going on in the world that it is interacting with.
AN INTEGRAL THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Introspectionism is when you are conscious of what you are doing and you are learn because of the experiences that you are having in your life which helps you understand concepts better if it happens later on in the future. I think that this is true because if we move around all the time or do things in a daily bases then we are bound to learn something new that will help us advance so that we can change the way anything hard works. This can only be learned through a first person bases because in a third person view you will not understand the matter as if you were there so the experience will not be the same as if it was happening personally.
Neuropsychology is when all consciousness is in the brain and it is because of the brain that everything is going on and it is based on computer science which means that it is biologically based and can be seen inside the body. I think that this is half wrong because not everything happens in the brain and can be learned in the body because someone can not determine what you can do just by looking inside your body because it will not show. I also think that all the hardship that people go through is what makes you learn new things and makes us different from everyone else who was raised the same way.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
Individual psychotherapy views consciousness as the individual’s ability to adapt to certain things and it also is used to treat emotional problems and distressing problems which people have and can not handle. I think that this is not true because in order to solve a problem you need to learn something that can fix it and in order to do that you need to be active and look for the answer which you can find through experience. It says that the main problem that people are getting emotional and distressed is because people are trying to find the answer of what their purpose is and what they are trying to find and I think it is life that causes these problems not the questions we ask.
Social psychology views all the things that we know was learned though culture and the society around us which is different from individual psychotherapy because we are not depending in ourselves but the people all around us. I think that this is some what true because it is society that teaches us things but it is ourselves that determines how we handle that experience for the better or for the worst because of the matter at hand. This theory is saying that we can not rely on ourselves and we will never get anywhere with out any one to help us, but I think that we can succeed if we think hard enough so that we can discover think for ourselves and for other people.
The Problem of Consciousness
Consciousness is something that we need to talk about or be able to say what ever we want because it will let ourselves know how we are or where we are at in a decision so people can have their own opinions on a matter that need seeing. I think that this is true because if we need to know how we will look to other people we need to be able to be ourselves and we need to be able to talk to other people in the world so that we know what other options are out there. It also is something that gets us out of our sleep and makes us understand the boundaries that we have in reality because we are dreaming when we go to sleep and then we come back to the life that we were living.
To be self-conscious is not the same to be conscious because if we are self-conscious then we are in an understanding of ourselves whether we are sad or happy, but that is not the case if we see something or if we hear something. I think that this is true because if we are in deep thought then we are not in real conscious about the things around us because we are too worried about ourselves and everything else is still moving on. Neither is attention the same as consciousness because we are not paying attention to the collar of a shirt against our neck, but we then put attention to it will not change the fact that it was not there before.
Some Features of Consciousness
Subjectivity is the most important part of consciousness because it is what causes us to be aware of what we are doing and I think that this is the important part because it is what turns our senses on and we understand what is happening to us. Unity is also a major part of the conscious because it is what allows us to start something and end it by knowing what we are talking about in the beginning and it can combine multiple experiences so that we can come to a conclusion. Intentionality is par of the conscious and it means the there must be a purpose to why we are feeling down or to why we are scared because it will not just come out of anywhere and I think that this is true because we have to find out something in order to realize something else.
The aspect of familiarity is the process of seeing things that are similar in category but different in look like a metal handless chair compared to a wooden handle chair which they are both chairs but they are different in some aspects. Mood plays another role in consciousness because in any experience that we are we have a mood to it as well and that is what makes certain experiences either good or bad which makes sense because people always say it depends how you accept the experience. There is also boundary conditions which lets you understand what time it is and what month or year it is so we will know these things because are conscious keeps a record of this even though it is not exact.
WHY I DON'T EAT FACES
I think that the way the author became a vegetarian is the same as everybody else because he had to apply his feeling to what he was eating and then he realized that what he was doing to the food was supporting the company to kill animals. The author did not talk about how some companies kill animals in a quick none painful way which seem to be much less cruel, but it is still wrong in his point of view which makes a reader who eats that type of meat feel wrong. If that reader eats that type of meat because he loves meat but hates animals that are being brutally killed then the author is making him feel bad even though it is a food that he does not want to do without and not because other people tell him to do so.
The way the author describes how we share our pain with each other and that is why we do not eat each other is a little right because we do not want to cause others pain or suffering and that is why we do not eat each other and I believe that too. There is still the reasoning of island people who do not have meat to eat still end up eating each other even though it is another human being and that shows that humans like to eat meat and that the savage people would not consider growing plants or vegetables. This shows that not always will a person consider morals over the food that they eat because if the only meat in one place is a human than they will end up eating each other because we are meat eaters.
Reasonable Logic
In the story the author talks about the world being facts and that the facts determine what is the case and what is not he case which seemed to me as kind of confusing but I think it meant that the world is full of everything we think we know. It also talked about anything that happened did not happen accidentally, but that it happened because it was going to happen already which I do not believe in because I think that we have free will and that we can change things that happen to us. If an object is known then we should know all the possibilities that the object can do if it is an atomic fact and that sounds impossible because we are always finding out new things from our current objects.
It said that the events of the future can not be discovered in the present and that superstition is a belief in a casual nexus which I think means that it is not reasonable to think that the future can be determine by seeing something that is not there. Then it talks about truth and all the possibilities that it has so that it is possible to get the truth but out of so many odds which it think is true because it is hard to find the true in a big world that is full of many other false things. The way that he described logic was hard to understand because it was neither this side nor that side and that got me to wonder then what is logic suppose to be so I thought that logic is both complicated but also simple.
A Glorious Piece of Meat
I the film the narrator said that we are controlled by the brain, but we feel that we do more than the brain which I think the same way because I can not control everything in my body or all the motions that I do. I can how ever move my body and comprehend what is going on in the world as well as think of things that I want to be known that I have already learned. I don’t know if I control the thoughts that come to my mind or if I move the way they go in my mind to the place that I want them to go which is my conscious. My body does move on its own like when I sleep or wake up because I do not have a control over it or else I would not need an alarm clock or another device to wake me up in the morning.
He said a quote from a person which said that what we think is our soul is actually neurons moving about in our body which I think is not true because in the first place you can not determine where the soul is so we can not assume certain things. The soul is a sense of morals and what makes you unique and the brain can not change that no matter what, but what the brain can do is change the way you think about certain things. In the end you will feel different about what you think because you will have a conscious telling you what you feel is right or what is wrong.
Sam Harris
As Sam Harris began talking about how people these days are criticizing other people based on there religion or what they believe in because they think that what they believe is the best thing out there. There are people who that their beliefs to the extreme and they try to change other peoples beliefs which is not right because people have a right to there own beliefs and people get to study or practice what ever they want, but some people do not understand that and they hunt the outsiders making them look and feel bad. It is peoples beliefs that makes them have emotions and express what they think about things and some people use it to find happiness, but others use it to anger other people because they are not the same as them.
If we believe in something really importantly than it is the way that we handle the belief that determines whether we can withstand the affects of the aftermath as Sam gave and example of a kidnapping. If someone we know was kidnapped then we would be in panic and we could either fall into a great panic where we can not do anything or we could try to help out the matter by trying to accept the matter and find out what we can do to help out. As he talked about how AIDS is affecting
Why Turn Vegetarian?
In the film they make meat factories that slaughter animals look bad and I believe that there are places like that kill animals in a gruesome way and that there are companies that know about these things and let it still go on. I believe that animals should not be treated like the way we are treating them only as food and to be abused to become fat so they can be eaten by a person who does not know what that animal had to go through in its life. I think that people should go against companies that do those things and that eating vegetarian food will make you healthy so people can have less life threatening problems.
There are other sides to it though like the fact that eating meat can give you protein that will take a lot of non-meat foods to match the amount of meat and that the taste of meat will never be replaced. Then there are companies that kill the animals in another way that is less painful or the quickest way possible which are not shown or told about because people do not want to spend the money to pay for that expensive meat. There is no shame in eating meat because even if a person raises an animal from the time the animal was born to the death of it from old age the meat on the animal is still good which can be eaten because it is already dead.
Gandhi's philosophy
Gandhi's view on how non-violence should be trained is hard because you have to devote a life time to become non-violent and you have to train to be patient and since he believed in many lives then he said it may take many lives before one can master it. I think that a normal human being will want to fight and it would take intense mental strength in order to disobey your instincts to fight back or not keep a humble mind if someone attacks you. Gandhi said that you have to prepare your self in order to die because if you have that train of thought then you will not want to fight back because if you are willing to call it an end then there is nothing you want to fight for.
Then there is another part to non-violence which says that you can not kill anything not even if you are fighting against a group or trying to protect something special to you which I think that I can not do because if my life is at steak then I will defend it at all cost. You also have to have faith if you are going to believe in non-violence because you have to believe that you are doing it for a purpose and that you will forgive the person you are going against because they do not know what they are doing. The way that you would defeat an opponent is by love no matter how much they want to kill you because that is the only way that society will be purely of knowledge and people making life worth wild.
My Experiments with Truth
I was amazed that the author had to tell the truth about his married at the age of thirteen and that in his country parents have to make promises to other families for money and then it becomes a battle of who is the greatest gift giver. Through out the time with his wife he did not believe the rules that were given to him as he got married which was to show authority to her and restrict her from doing things that she wanted to do and he believed that she should be happy. He said that he had no right to stop her from doing anything she wanted to do and that if he had the right to do that to her then she had the same right as well to do to him.
In high school one of his friends pressured him to eat meat and he gave him a lot of reasons why he should eat meat and what meat can do for him so he felt compelled to eat the meat his friend was forcing upon him. His brother already became a meat eater and it was because of the same friend because he told him that he would get stronger and that he will not get that many health problems because with meat they heal fast so that is why the teachers eat meat. I think that this happens to everybody that does not eat meat but they should be entitled to their own opinion and they should be able to be respected by other people who do eat meat.
Myth of Eternal Recurrence
In the film it said that if a demon came up to me and asked if I would live my life over and over again then I would think about everything that I have done in my life and see whether so far if it is worth living through. I would also think about what the future holds for me because if it is nothing but a down hill life then I would only feel pain for the rest of my life and I would want to end it there so that I can live life quickly. If I saw that I had a bright future with nothing but possibilities then I would feel good and be happy of the joys that are to come to me because of all the opportunities that I have still.
I would call the demon a God of blessing because I believe so far that my life is worth living over and over again even though I have had some hard times there are mainly good times that I would like to experience again. I also believe that I have a bright future that will let me experience even better joy and happiness so I would want to live it to a point where I can say I did something with my life and now I can live it again. I would try to make my future the best I can so that I can be happy all my life so if I do live it again then I would wait until the better part of my life starts and I would thank the demon for telling me this.
Daniel Dennett
I do believe in God and when he said that most people do believe or try to believe in God I do think that that is true because I know some people who are that why and that they go on with their lives trying to make God a part of their lives. He also talked about how if people who said that they know that they believe in God then they might get involved to much and suffer risking their lives just to please God he also said that there are degrees to how far you are willing to go or how you react to Gods beliefs. When he said that he disagrees that there is a higher being I got confused because he said that he liked that people believed in God in a way that they could hope that God was there so I thought that he liked the idea of God but instead he rejected God ever being there.
As they talked about how everything has a purpose and they quoted a philosopher that said that if you were to walk down a path you could see everything was created by God and everything had a purpose which I think is true because if it had a destiny than it had to be created by a higher being. Daniel said that he does not believe in that because it is natural selection that made the animal or object and that the only purpose that something has it to give genes to the future generation to reproduce and that there is not such thing as a higher being that made us to have a purpose. As they were talking about a world that people believe that a higher being is all seeing and all knowing where God knows everything that is going to happen to us and that God sees all free will possibilities then we can not change anything but Daniel believes that we have free will and anything can happen.
A Free Man's Worship
In a free man’s worship he talks about how God created us to see how we can please him and how we can come power full and I think that this way of thinking is wrong because God is all good and he cares about us a lot so that is what I think. He also talks about if we were all an accident and all the things that happen to us is a coincident where we have no actual purpose in life and we are determined to just live our lives with not after life to look forward to. Also that if we were not created by God that we got the ability to know the difference between good and bad and to know what is right from wrong so that we were lucky to get these things because we do not believe that there is a higher being who gave these gifts to us.
Russell talks about how some religions require for the members to sacrifice a person to please the God because God gave them power and the gifts to know right from wrong which I think is wrong because if God gave every person that gift then they are all equal and should not be sacrificed. Some people think that if the members that are left in the group after the sacrifices that they are the strongest and they are the chosen ones who should be alive which I think is the wrong way of thinking because I believe God loves everyone. He asked that if God does exist then he is evil and would want all these thinks to happen to us or that if we create a God it is the way we want God to be so in other words it is us who created God and that surprised me because if you think about we did create God because we are satisfied with the rules that we have to do to worship God.
The Unknowing Sage
Chand had to go through major training in order to get an inner master and that is something that people have to devote a lot of time into just to become higher in their meditation which will make them a master forever after they have see it. It would be hard if a master did have many disciples because then he would have to look after so many but he would have great power to see what is going on all over the world where the disciple will not know anything and if he had an emergency he would go to the master. I think that these will scare most people because they would not be ready for this type of responsibility so the training process would determine whether you are ready or not to become a master or to take care of other people.
The mother’s view of not eating meat is a good cause not to eat meat because it is a mother’s baby and it is killing the mother that her son had died and the mother of Chand was very angry with him for cooking a chicken and he saw that so he vowed not to eat meat. As Chand talked about how his disciples prayed to him and they found him in places like in rivers or test areas he was there to save them or help them and that it is good people who get the right things and it is bad people who get wrong things but he does not do or know about any of the things that go on around him. I think that it is the power of hope and goodness that gives his disciples the right rewards because they believe in something that is just and in something that does not cause harm to anything so they get rewarded or saved along the way of life.
Inner Visions and Running Trains
As Chand talk about how he was in the battle field it was the same way that everyone else felt and how every soldier would feel if they where in that position so he was chosen if he was the only one who got the vision of one of his masters. I think that he was chosen because his master could see that he could change the way that people think or the way that people can see the world which he did do by showing people that there are way to do things that do not need violence. It was a good choice on the end of the commanders to follow him because if they did not listen to him then they would have to fight back and they would end up dying for something that was not necessary and it also helped because they needed time.
When Chand got home and the people were worshiping him it was a sign that even the people of his village understood that he was chosen because he saved them all even though he did not mean to and because he was thinking of himself. He later became a master that taught many things to his disciples and saved many people throughout his life so there was a reason why he was chosen and he expressed it throughout his whole life searching for more until the end. I found it interesting that he said he knew nothing because it followed the way philosophers think that everything we think we know we don’t know and that the only thing we know it that we don’t know anything.
The Zahir
The Zahir is something that causes a person to think about it so much that it will appear as they are awake or as they are asleep in their dreams and that will make them turn it to an obsession which will take over their life. The Zahir can also cause a person to go mad because it is the only thing they think about whether they are trying to forget about it or whether they want to study it and because of this it will engulf them causing them to go mad over it. Jorge said he got it at a shop after he paid for something and he got change and it was with it so it make me wonder was this common or was this fate that he got this in order to tell others or for it to take over his life or was he insane.
Jorge spent much time with the coin because he knew what it was and wanted to know how he can get rid of it so he let the coin take over his life even though it was just a coin, but it might make people wonder is that the Zahir’s power. He also had a dream about it the first night and that can happen if you think about something the whole day because it will get into your dreams so it makes me wonder was it the coin that made him get the dream or was it himself, which he over thought, made him get the dream. He said that if he said or thought about it many times that he would let it go because he would make it into a common thing which would release him from the coin, but that method would only get him to know only the coin and find only the coin as a single object that he knows. He also talked about the coin having God behind it, but I don’t think so because it did not change the way people thought about the way of the world or beliefs so it would not make sense to do something like that.
11. Why does Steven Pinker believe that evolution is important in understanding human behavior? Be specific in your answer.
- Steven Pinker believed that evolution is important in understanding human behavior because as time goes by we pick up new things and that allows the future to advance and not just stay the same as the past generation. Human Behavior will change as knowledge or opportunities change so we would have to see how time changes the world in order to determine what will happen in the future. He also said that intelligence did not come out of no where it had to have been developed by generations so all the knowledge that we acquire came from the past that eventually added up to what we know now and that is how we change our ways.
Evolution psychology can be used in an everyday life because you will see all the things that you are doing even though you do not know why you are doing them because it is based on the experiences that you have had and evolution psychology will explain these things. Steven said that evolution is can cause genes to determine whether you love your family or not and it makes it pure so evolution caused us to love or family members.
12. In addition, why is the theory of evolution helpful in doing philosophy?
- Theory of evolution is helpful in doing philosophy because then we will be able to think about how we came to be because of our actions and because of our knowledge so we will be able to advance in theories that we are trying to prove. It will also help because then people understand there past and determine where we made mistakes in our life so that we can fix or we can change the way that we think. Theory can help philosophy become proven or help it expand because people will be able to see how far we can go and add knowledge to the gaps that we have in history.
13. Explain why Francis Crick does NOT believe in a soul.
- Francis does not believe in soul because he thinks that it is made up of neutrons that are in our body that are moving about so we make ourselves believe that it is something more or something we want it to be. He says that there is nothing that we can not see or that is greater we just make the assumption that it is there or that it is something higher that we will never reach. He says that because we believe in something that is invisible or not there that we make our lives harder in the end because all our answers are right in front of us.
14. What are some of the major issues behind a neuro-ethical argument for vegetarianism? What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses?
- Vegetarianism is good for thinking that you are helping the planet by not eating meat or killing an animal in order for you to taste meat which is not necessary because you can eat other things. It also bring down or not support major corporations that are getting all the money and using it to get things that will not benefit the country or it will not benefit the community that gives the money. The strengths that it has is that people will become healthy and see that it is possible to get rid of meat in order for our children to become health and keep generations going.
Strengths can make people feel better about themselves and they will wan tot keep on doing it so people will support more the cause then the easy way out.
A weakness can be that people will wan to eat meat all the time so people will think that there are plenty of people against meat that they will not make a difference so they will have to make a food that replaces meat. Another weakness can be the rich people will want to keep their money so they will go against vegetarians and since rich people have money they will win because of power.
15. How do John Searle's views differ from Ken Wilber's? Who do you find more persuasive and why?
- John see the views of consciousness as a problem or discovery that is part of psychology and he wants to explain the way consciousness works is a part of the way that people think so we can understand things. He want to know how the mind work in itself because it only works through our knowledge and the way that we think so it is psychological factors that affect us or our consciousness. I think that his way of thinking was better because he brought up a good way of thinking that made sense like it is our experiences that affect the way we turn out.
Ken used the approach that biological it is consciousness is the way we determine it we make the way we want to understand things and it is the body that tells us what to do. He said that we are already predetermine to what we can do and how far we can go and we can stretch that by making our bodies go through all of that. I think that he did not have a good idea on how consciousness works because the way he provided his evidence was not logical way of thinking.
16. What is the theme behind the little movie, a GLORIOUS PIECE OF MEAT? How would a religious person argue against it?
- The theme behind the movie was that Francis Crick’s theories were that the way the soul works is that it is not there and that we made it up just to make things a lot harder. The theme also set that we are nothing more than people and there is nothing else out there so there is not higher being that will eventually save us or that we will be saved by the way that we act to each other.
I would go against this by saying that people believe that there is something else out there and that there is good things that happen to people so we should not assume that there is only us and nothing else. Other people might argue that God can make souls and that souls are in our body so there is not just neurons in our bodies that are moving about because people believe in the opposite.
17. Why is Sam Harris so critical of religion? Give his strongest arguments and where do you think his argument fails? Or, if it doesn't fail, where does it succeed?
- Sam Harris does not like it when someone has a different religion or belief that other people our there get mad at them or tell them that they are wrong because they think that there beliefs are right or are the best out there. There are extremist out there that always look for people that do not believe in their beliefs so they strongly insist that they follow them or force them to switch beliefs just to make themselves feel better.
The argument fails when he says that all groups have these people but the fact of the matter is that some groups do not allow that to happen in there name so if people do that then they are not considered being a part of that group. Also he talked about how people use condoms for AIDS and that it is the only way to keep it out of the community but if the people did really believe in their beliefs then they would have to not have sexual encounters so it would stop AIDS.
18. Explain the essence of Nietzsche's genealogy of morals. You can outline your answer here.
- That we do not know what we are or what we know because we are clouded by lies and beliefs that are not there so we can not determine who we are or what we can do. We only hope that at the end of the day or life we did something and we will be happy with ourselves so that nothing we did or the experiences we have had were a waste. That what we wonder is only to benefit ourselves and not meant for other people because we only want the answers to what we want and not of other people.
At a young age we begin to think about what were the origins of some of the major things like good and evil so we wonder who made what and what is evil even though we already have it in us. When we learn something new we want to tell people about it and we want to enjoy what we have created for ourselves which is a world of knowledge so we want other people to see it to.
19. Why does Gandhi believe in ahimsa?
- Gandhi believes in ahimsa because ahimsa means non-violence and Gandhi chose this path because he thought it was good and a righteous way to do things. He thought that this was the best way to go against political measure or go against people that throw political views at him so that they will look bad if they used violence. He thought that this way of doing things helped out his moral views and he can change the world this way because people would see that peace can solve problems not violence.
20. What is Nietzche's notion of the myth of eternal recurrence? Be sure to use the film as your guide.
- Nietzche notion of eternal recurrence is that we live our lives over and over and in every one of those lives we regain all the love and hate that we had in the life before that. When he asked the question that if a demon asked me that question whether I would have to live my life over and over again but the joys and sorrow in my life will happen also over and over again I thought about it. I would like to live my life over and over again because it would be fun to see all the joys again and I would thank the demon for telling me all these things because I would make my future life even better to get more joys.
21. What is the ironic theme in the movie Flame On? Hint: what is the movie REALLY trying to say?
- What the movie was really about is that no matter what a person says or thinks matters and the things that do not matter are what he is or what he did because if he opens up a view it can change the world. Even though the major philosophers were gay they still changed how people think and some people didn’t even know they were gay so that does not matter if you think their views are interesting. People have created a world were gayness is bad and a horrible thing where people do not want to associate with gay people, but some great people have to be thanked because they changed the world and they are human who have good ideas whether they are gay or not.
22. Why does Daniel Dennett favor calling himself a "bright"?
- Daniel Dennett calls himself a bright because he uses the term in a way that he does not believe in any gods so he criticizes people who do believe in gods because they do not know what they are doing. He does not believe in a higher being that created us or that is trying to save us because he thinks it is not logical to think that way. He says every does not full believe in God they only have a belief in of God which makes them not understand what they are believing because they go against their religion all the time.
23. Outline Bertrand Russell's a FREE MAN'S WORSHIP.
- Bertrand Russell’s A Free Man’s Worship is how we can make peace in the world with out using any force, in a world that is full of cruel things that people do. In science man is nothing but atoms and man thinks that they should do what ever they want before they die. Some men think they should make themselves in to something great so that they will become the ultimate thing in the world so they try to do bad things. Some of the things that man will do is make a religion that makes him look or feel good to others or himself so he can say he left the earth in a good manner.
Man creates himself around the materials he has and that causes him to be blinded by goodness and the only way to turn away from that is to accept that he is bad and that there is time to become better so he can save himself. Wisdom can be found by giving up on things that we see are possible or try and do things that are impossible because in life we will see that some thing are not meant to be discovered and if we realize that we can enter wisdom. Russell says that we do have fate and that we are prone to a destiny, but we should not let that get us down we should accept the cruel world and support it then peace will come.
24. What is the overall theme of the movie INNER VISIONS AND RUNNING TRAINS?
- The theme of the movie was that we are guided by things we can not explain and that we do not know anything until we discover them for ourselves. Baba Faqir Chand was in a battle field at the time and he discovered a way to save himself because his section was about to run out of ammo and the enemy was coming, but he got a vision from his guru saying let the enemy pick up their dead. He listened to his guru and it cause him and his section to live because what the guru had said was true so he ended up saving everyone’s life because of his vision .
Baba’s vision cause the rest of his village to worship him because he saved everyone’s life and because he had a vision from a high spiritual force so people looked to him for many things. Even if you do not have the intentions to save everyone you can still surprise yourself by finding out that if you do not do certain actions then you can not change things.
25. What does Nicholas of Cusa mean by "learned ignorance"? What are its implications for your own life?
- What Nicholas means by learned ignorance is that everything that we think we know is just something that we don’t know because we can not prove those things. The only thing that we can determine that we know is not knowing anything so we can not say we know many things, but what we can say is that we believe in certain things. He said that there are possibilities to everything because we can not prove anything and the more we look for knowledge the more information we find of ignorance and everyone who says they know many things is a person who just knows ignorance.
Its implications in my own life are that I am learning thing that are just theory on how teach kids because the teachers say there is not real way of teaching just a way to catch the students attention. I can not say I know how to teach because how I teach can not be copied or be the same everyday so all I can say is that I try to teach or I believe I have a method of teaching. No matter how much I study ways to teach or how to become a teacher I am just learning ways that people believe can be used to teach even though they are not perfect.
26. What does Gerald Edelman mean by Neural Darwinism and Second Nature?
- What Gerald Edelman meant by Neural Darwinism is that neurons adapted to us causing us to have consciousness and that makes our brain because of all the neuron functions. Neurons in our body perform a lot of tasks and it tries to understand how to use what we know to make us function. The conscious will be a result of this and it will give us ways to think and allow us to learn anything we want will help.
Second Nature in the views of Gerald Edelman is the process of which all the experiences that we have in our life are being seen by our neurons so they begin to process it and they adapt to us so it causes it to change our brain. The change causes consciousness and our awareness so that we know what to do if something comes up in our life and we will be able to understand how to handle the situation.
27. Why turn vegetarian?---according to the film you saw. What arguments are there against vegetarianism? You may need to do a google search here.
- I would turn vegetarian because I would wan to be considered an animal person and not as a supporter of abuse toward animals. I would also become a vegetarian because I don’t think that the taste of meat is the greatest thing in the world so I don’t have to eat meat just to satisfy my taste buds. I would not eat meat because I do not want to get heart decease that could kill me or tell my kids that killing animals is a good thing to do so I can look like a good role model.
Some of the arguments that they can have against them is that meat can not be replaced by anything else and the favor can satisfy all people because we are carnivores. They will also say that there are some places that kill animals in a just way so they do not feel pain and they are not taken away from there families because it might be there time to die. Meat has the best amount of protein than other foods because you would need a lot of other foods to replace the protein you lose per day.
28. What was the turning point in Ramana Maharshi's life?
- The part of Ramana Maharshi’s life that changed him was the fact that he had a fear of death and that he was scared it was going to happen to him and he did not know what to do. He was at his uncle’s house at the time when he realized what death meant to him so he got confused and scared, but he then realized something that does not go away from you when you die. He figured out that the spirit of you stays on this earth and it stays with the people so everything you did still can be seen by the people who are seeking you.
After Ramana had discovered that death is only in the body and that the soul of yourself stays with the people he felt much better about himself and that changed his life. He began to give up on childish things like games and having fun and started to pursue knowledge that he can use for the people in order to help himself and the rest of the world.
29. What was Gandhi's double shame? If Gandhi lived during our era would he have a different view of that event? Why? Why not?
- Gandhi’s double shame was that there was a night that he was supposed to spend it with his father but instead he went with his wife that he married at a young age. The had sex that night and that was the reason why he wanted to leave his father because he gave into his temptation opposed to staying with his father who was not well. Later that night his father died and he could not forgive himself for leaving his father to have sex and he missed his chance to say good bye to him. If Gandhi lived in our era I think he would still do the same thing, but his view of the matter would be different because more people do it now more than ever and some people would tell him that so he would not feel that guilty about what happened.
30. List Four distinct passages from Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and explain what you think they mean.
- “1.2 The world divides into facts.” – I think it means that the whole world is full of things we don’t know but they will probably know what they are and we will never find out what they mean.
“2.0123 If I know an object, then I also know all the possibilities of its occurrence in atomic facts.” – I think this means that if we truly know something then we will know everything about it like where it came from, what it was made to do, and what will happen to it.
“2.02 the object is simple.” – I think this means that everything is easy and it would be easy to understand, but we do not know what caused certain things and where things came from so it is hard for us to figure it out.
“2.0251 Space, time and colour are forms of objects.” – I think this means that everything can be explained and that even things outside of this world have answers and explanations to them.
31. What was your favorite expert film lecture this term?
- My favorite expert film lecture was Lisa Randall on the Universe because it opened my eyes to something very interesting. I have never thought about gravity that way and maybe that is why it was so weak because of another dimension. Then she said there could be more dimensions that we do not know about and I would like to see that, but then she said if something entered another dimension then it would not even know that it was from another dimension and that I found to be amazing.
32. What was your favorite movie this term?
- Little Things that Jiggle was my favorite film because I believed in it before I saw the film and it explained my belief very well I especially liked the quote that it use which was “If I did not create it, I do not understand it.” I think that this quote sums up the film because if God created every thing then I will not understand it and I do not know anything because I did not create anything so the only thing I know is that I do not know anything.
33. What was your favorite reading?
- My favorite reading was Why I Don't Eat Faces which I chose because I have never heard a story about a vegan and what they had to go through in order to determine that they want to give up meat. I have never thought that way that is why I have not given up meat and why I have not thought about giving up meat because the public does not show this to people you would have to research it.
34. Most unusual thing you learned this term?
- That the film Flame On showed me that everything that makes me wonder about the world and question what I know was discovered by a gay person. I don’t really care that they were gay, but the fact that many of them were gay is too coincidental and there may be a pattern. I will not look into it because I do not want to know the answer, but knowing that a philosopher can be anything makes me see that ideas and views are important not the person who expressed it.
