Philosoraptors

So today in class we talked a lot about Pyrrho and Epicurus. Pyrrho was the skeptic that took his ideas a bit too far (though I happen to really appreciate his philosophy). Epicurus is sort of labeled as a hedonist, but I myself would debate that title. The main philosophy of Epicurus that we've been focusing on is his idea on death. He held the idea that we did not exist before our births and we don't typically worry so much about that time that we weren't alive, so why should we spend so much time fretting over what will happen after our death? He focuses on living a life of happiness and fulfillment and finding pleasure in our time on earth without being overly concerned with what happens when we leave. He also talks about focusing on our past pleasures in times of distress as a way to ease pain. This is a very interesting concept to me. 

We didn't have a lot of time in our group to really discuss these concepts and ideas, so please feel free to discuss your opinions on these philosophers here. I happened to really take interest with both Pyrrho and Epicurus and would love to discuss them more.

So this reminds me a lot of Pyrrho and skepticism...

If you haven't seen The Big Lebowski, you should.

Anyway, back on track.
 

We spent a good majority of our time discussing our upcoming group project. We finally picked our topic: philosophy in social networking. As of now we have it established that Facebook will be one segment, Tumblr one segment, and Twitter or Instagram be one segment. Before we left there was mention of also doing a segment on Youtube. This would mean we would have four presenters. We tried to divide the rest of the group into smaller groups to do research with each person planning to present. I know that was a bit rushed, so if you are confused about which social network you are researching for, you can ask questions here or we can discuss it further on Wednesday. If anyone that volunteered to present has any questions or issues, we can also discuss that here or in class. By no means is this all set in stone, and there's plenty of room for us to alter how we choose to approach this topic. If any of the presenters have any ideas on what aspects they want to discuss on their social network, let the group know so we can maybe have a pattern in how we all present each one. I personally have several potential ideas including looking at the way social networks allows people to share ideas, the way social networks and the people we choose to add/follow narrows our exposure to ideas within our selected groups, privacy issues, and blind following of ideas. Would love to hear any other ideas people may have!

Also, as far as the readings for Wednesday, I'm not sure if anyone took it upon themselves to assign pages, but we should probably make sure all the material gets covered in some fashion. If it would make it easier, we can just assume that everyone is in charge of posting about the material assigned from the typical text you read from. I know some of us stick to the Little History and some of us consistently post about America the Philosophical, so try to do what you usually do if you can. (: