4) What is your real name?
- Raul Lopez
5) What is your "user" name?
- rsl_006@yahoo.com
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 first three weeks?
- 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.
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.
11) Why does Lisa Randall believe that there may be many more dimensions than we presently know in current physics? Is there any evidence at this stage for her beliefs?
- Lisa thinks that there can be other dimensions because of the weak gravity that we have in this world and there is no evidence of this just a theory that in other dimensions gravity is stronger or weaker.
12) What are Pythagoras' philosophical views in a nutshell?
- He believed in the reincarnation of the soul again and again into the bodies of humans, animals, or vegetables until it became moral. He proposed that thinking and the soul were located in the brain and not the heart. He said the essence of being is number and that philosophy evolves into a belief that knowledge of the essence of being can be found in the form of numbers.
13) Do you think science and religion are compatible?
- Yes and someone who agrees is Adam (U.C. Los Angeles) who said, “There's a lot of scientists who are religious” which I think means that even people who are trying to find reason in things are still in belief of something that is not there or they will not find.
14) Why was Socrates put on trial? How did Socrates defend his position?
- Socrates was put on trial because he went against the
15) Give a brief history of philosophy using just 300 words
A) Western philosophy
① Ancient philosophy - The key figure in transforming Greek philosophy into a unified and continuous project was Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
② Medieval philosophy - Thomas Aquinas argued that everything that exist has a cause.
③ Modern philosophy - "Age of Reason" is the time where systematic philosophy became common. Galileo Galilei helped the rise of empiricism and humanism in place of scholastic tradition.
④ Contemporary philosophy - Epistemology (theory of knowledge) and its basis was a central concern. Hans-Georg Gadamer and Alasdair MacIntyre have both revived the tradition of Aristotelianism.
B) Eastern philosophy - Ancient eastern philosophy developed mainly in
⑤ Indian philosophy - The Indian or Hindu schools of philosophy can be considered the oldest schools of philosophy.
⑥ Chinese philosophy - Confucianism can be considered as the oldest school of philosophy in
C) Abrahamic philosophy - The standard text common to all of these subsequent traditions are what is known as the Hebrew Bible.
⑦ Jewish philosophy - It is often used to refer to the views of the medieval Jewish scholastics, influenced by Aristotle.
⑧ Christian philosophy - Derived from the philosophical traditions of Western thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle, with the theological doctrines of Christianity. Christian philosophy originated during the Middle Ages as medieval theologians attempted to demonstrate to the religious authorities that Greek philosophy and Christian faith were, in fact, compatible methods for arriving at divine truth.
⑨ Islamic philosophy - This resuscitated the earlier antagonism to philosophy by arguing for a return to the original principles of Islam and rejected modernity as a Western imperialist instrusion. Avicenna is a thinker who attempted to redefine the course of Islamic philosophy and channel it into new directions.
16) Explain the big bang and the inflationary universe. Why is it important to know astronomy in order to do philosophy?
- The big bang theory is described as four major elements coming together and causing an explosion that cause the universe to be created. Astronomy is important to philosophy because there are things outside of this world that need to be questioned and need to be researched on so the only way to do that is to study astronomy and question aspects of the universe that are not considered.
17) How do Heisenberg's views on philosophy and science DIFFER from Einstein's? How are they similar?
- Heisenberg’s views were different from Einstein’s views because Heisenberg said that science helps us find truth, but we will never find truth and Einstein said that he will make his own religion and find his own truth which they don’t agree with each other. They are alike in the matter that a person that admits that he is wrong is a true man and that we will always make mistakes because we are humans.
18) What is meme theory and do you find it plausible? Explain your reasoning.
- Meme theory is the act of trying to mimic a culture by being with them, but it sometimes will not be mimicked perfectly and those people that are not perfect will become cultural evolution which will change society. I think it will work because if people are exposed to areas where they are not familiar with they will learn to appreciate it and become a part of that group or tell others about that group which will change peoples views.
19) Why is understanding biological evolution so important in understanding human thought and behavior.
- Biological evolution is important because if we want to know why we do the things we do we need to know if it is our gene or if it was cause by a medical problem which can determine whether we are bound to act like that or because of our parents we do those things and think that way.
20) In one of the films you were required to see, the narrator argued that fundamentalism was a mental disease. Why? Do you agree or disagree and please detail your rejoinder.
- He said that fundamentalism is a mental disease because he believes that everything is in front of us and we should not follow the stories that people tell us about religion because they only complicate things and they also confuse us. I do not agree with him because religion gives us morals and inner peace through our hearts which I think he has not experienced.
21) Where do you think Owen Gingerich "parts company" (fundamentally disagrees with) Edward O. Wilson? Who do you think is more persuasive in their reasoning about religion, Owen or Edward? Explain.
- Gingerich parts company with
22) What does Francis Fukuyama mean by the "end of history." Do you agree or disagree? Explain.
- What Francis was talking about that the human government comes to an end because all the views we had before are not even seen only the main important ones. I do agree because people today don’t care about major change they just want to change between groups they are told of which are important.
23) Explain Nicholas of Cusa's philosophy of "unknowingness."
- Unknowingness is what we all have because all we do when we think we discovered something or think we know something is finding out that we really don’t now anything. If we don’t know what the creation of the matter is than we do not know what it is and since we do not know what created anything then we don’t know anything.
24) According to Nietzsche, how did we actually "kill" God? Think before you leap on this one.
- We killed God by becoming him through our experiments and our inventions to become like him so we ended up killing him.
25) In the movie, Little Things that Jiggle, physics is explained by a series of slogans. Why, then, is physics important in the study of philosophy?
- Physics is important in philosophy because in order to question something we need to know how it works and most of the why things work in the work are through physics or can be explained through physics and that is how philosophy is able to question things.
26) How do you explain the following line, "To have freedom OF religion one must also have freedom FROM religion."
- To think that you are open to religion of any kind you have to not believe in anything at first and then so can see what you think is the best religion out there for yourself.
27) Why does Dawkins believe that believing in God is delusional?
- Dawkins believes that believing in God is delusional because he does not think that God is real and that we are all blind and to thing that God is there is believing in something that is a myth and if we realize that God is not there and understand science more than we will be able to see what is really there.
28) Can science offer a sense of mystery comparable to what certain religions offer?
- Yes science can offer a mystery that is the same as religious ones because they are in search of how the bases of there discoveries come from which will be an endless search the same as a religious one because of God.
29) How does an understanding of cellular automata suggest a "new kind of science".... according to Stephen Wolfram.
- Understanding cellular automata makes a new kind of science because we get to understand how the universe works and how is it that we are not connected or mixed with other galaxies. It shows us new rules that we can use so that we can advance in many areas and so that we do not reach a dead end.
30) What were the key turning points in
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