Up@dawn 2.0

Monday, November 30, 2015

Installment 2 Mary Wollstonecraft #8

Mary Wollstonecraft's Childhood

Mary Wollstonecraft's childhood was very interesting while growing up. During this period of time, men did not think women should have any type of power and they were not allowed to do much. Most women just took care of the children and the household.Over time, this began to anger Wollstonecraft because she despised this thought in every way as she became an young adult. As a child, Wollstonecraft had a pretty wealthy family; that soon changed. Mary's father Edward John Wollstonecraft made the family go bankrupt due to him investing in a farming business. This made the family become very poor and they did endure hardship. Not only did the father make the family go bankrupt but he was also very violent and abusive. Due to her father being this way, Wollstonecraft's mother soon passed away in 1780. After the death of her mother, Mary moved out of the house to live on her own. As a young woman, Wollstonecraft spent a lot of time with her sister Eliza and her best friend Fanny. In the same year her mother passed, the three of them had built a school in Newington Green; the school was made to empower and help the growth of women. The school soon closed down in 1785 due to her best friend Fanny growing incredibly ill. 
During the year of 1786, Wollstonecraft lost her best friend but in turn she began to write. Her first time writing is when she became the translator for Joseph Johnson as a publisher of radical texts. In 1787, Mary wrote "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters" which reflected her past experiences; which entirely meant and explained the agony of intelligent women being subject to rich fools.
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Wollstonecraft wrote a novel "Mary: A Fiction", which she talked about the patriarchal institution of marriage and described its affects on us women. She published this novel in 1788 and it was her most  radical and most feminine work yet. Mary's most famous and distinguished work was her book "A Vindication of the Rights of Women".In this book, she argued how people of this time had seen women as household adornments. The topic she discussed was very revolutionary simply because the way men had their outlook of women set out to be which in turn caused a lot of controversy. In 1796, Wollstonecraft soon wrote a reflective travel narrative titled "Letters Written in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway". Not only did Wollstonecraft write marvelous work in books, novels, and narratives, she had amazing and very relatable quotes. 
"Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives;-that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers"


Final Report Installment 2

CoPhilosophy: I believe in the Power of Prayer-Final Report 1st Installment

       Like I said in my first post, I strongly believe in the power of prayer. I've been in church my whole life, and I've always seemed to have a strong relationship with God. I'm extremely grateful for that, and I honestly wouldn't have it any other way. I love going to church and I love living my life for Jesus. In my personal opinion, the way you can be closest to God and have a good relationship with him, is simply by talking to him. It's seriously so simply and so easy, and I believe God made it that way for a reason. He wants his children to talk to Him. He wants to hear about our needs and wants. God loves his children and he wants to have a relationship with them, and one of the key components in that is prayer. In I Thessalonians 5:17, it tells us to pray without ceasing. This is a very powerful verse, and it means to pray all the time. Don't just pray when things are bad, but also pray when they are good. I've recently learned this lesson. I've had a really tough time coming to school here and being away from home. It's been really hard on me, and there's been many days where I've hated being in this town. What got me though that though, is prayer. I prayed my way through those hard time, but now that I'm through them I'm not going to stop. I'm going to pray and thank God for getting me through and for being there for me. I'm going to prayer and give him thanks, like I always should be doing. So like I've already said I believe in the power of prayer, and not only when things are bad but all the time.

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Kaylee Herrington (#8)




             

Final. Installment #2 section 12 . Epicurus.

Epicurus had many philosophies. one of these was his philosophy about happiness. According to Epicurus "the most pleasurable life is one where we abstain from unnecessary desires and achieve an inner tranquility (ataraxia) by being content with simple things, and by choosing the pleasure of philosophical conversation with friends over the pursuit of physical pleasures like food, drink, and sex". Epicurus uses this philosophy to guide him so that he will have a "happy" life. 
He believed that all you really need to be happy is to be able to live a simple life with good friends who you can have philosophical conversations with.  Epicurus said that you can train your mind to relive a moment of happiness and see it as if it was actually happening again . you could do this even when you are in a lot of pain. 
            He claims that there are two beliefs that make all men unhappy. The first is that we will be punished by our gods if we do anything wrong. The second one is that death should be feared. He says that these two beliefs cause fear and anxiety ; however they should not because they are not real. Epicurus believed that the gods did exist but they did not concern themselves with human affairs. He associates pain with pleasure and says we only seek out pleasure when we are in pain and the best way to get rid of this cycle is to create the mind set that there is no pain. this causes you to be more happy by not seeking out pleasure like food, drink, and sex.
 http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/epicurus/

Noah Silver #8 Blog Post 2

http://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2015/11/final-project-installment-1-nietzsche.html


The birth of Tragedy (published in 1872) was the first book to be written by Fredrich Nietzsche. It is split into two distinct sections with each carrying its own message. The first fifteen chapters deal with the nature of Greek Tragedy and attempts to explain its creation as a synthesis between Dionysian and Apollonian forces. Nietzsche maintains that the aesthetic Apollonian world of ideas came first and provided mankind with a buffer for his suffering and agony. After the Apollonian came the Dionysian. Wild and untamed, the Dionysian aspect offered a true salvation from suffering and could be achieved from living “in the moment”. The two are intertwined with the Apollonian being required to bring out the Dionysian. This is achieved in the form of the Greek tragedy, wherein the Chorus (the Apollonian aspect) delivers the message of the Dionysian while also serving as a shield from pure Dionysian chaos. Nietzsche then goes on to state that only art that is a mixture of Apollonian and Dionysian can be considered “real art”. He criticizes several figures (among them Euripides and Socrates) for bringing about the downfall of true Greek tragedy by shifting focus on to the self rather than the Dionysian concept of the primordial “all”. At this point, Nietzsche begins to apply his metaphysical concepts to the modern world and its music, a theme that occupies the last ten chapters. He criticizes modern opera, while giving favor to “modern German music”, with Wagner being placed on a high pedestal. Nietzsche would later retract some of these claims in a forward that was added onto the second edition calling the book embarrassing. It is mostly the naïve nationalist sentiment that most readers take issue with, although the pseudo history and somewhat convoluted metaphysics at the beginning have also been criticized. Despite this, Birth of Tragedy contains some extremely interesting ideas. The American abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko cited this book as a source of inspiration, and when taken out of its nationalist applications, it’s easy to see why.

Citation:http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/birthoftragedy/summary.html / "The Essential Mark Rothko" by Klaus Ottman / "The Birth of Tragedy" by Fredrich Nietzsche 
Fatima Rizvi

Quantico and Philosophy 2nd Installment- A white lie




Are there special circumstances when lying is the right thing to do?

Yes, unfortunately, there are times when you have to lie to do the right thing. I do not condone lying, but there are times when a white lie is needed to get by. It is morally acceptable to lie when a falsehood protects someone from physical or emotional harm. Moreover, little white lies are socially accepted when they do no harm. For instance, telling a child that their drawing is nice or that their story is clever, or telling new parents that their baby is the cutest ever are both examples of this.

In Quantico, each agent has told a white lie at least once in their time at Quantico given their circumstances. Whether it was to protect them or the person they were telling the lie too.


In season 1 episode 7, Alex accuses the twins (Nimah and Raina) for master mining the terrorist attack and framing her because she saw one of the twins in the subway  camera of Queens three days before the attack. Simon who is helping Alex clear her name once had an affair with Nimah and tells Alex that it’s not possible for the twins to carry out an attack, but Alex refuses to listen to Simon and goes to the twins house. As she walks in the house, she sees Raina praying and asks where Nimah is. Raina tells Alex and Simon that she does not know and thinks Nimah is dead. It is  revealed that Raina and Nimah have been infiltrating an Islamic terrorist cell in the house across the street, and it was Nimah who was in the Grand Central surveillance footage. But Nimah's not behind it -- nor is she dead as Raina had assumed after not hearing from her -- she's just been following (and sleeping with) the group's leader, Hamza, who was planning to target an American landmark, and has been in the group's house this whole time. Raina then agrees to do a twin swap with Nimah and goes to the house across the street. When Raina finds Nimah she asks her why did she lie and make it seem like she was dead, to which Nimah replies it was to protect her so she would not come looking for her and so Hamza would not kill her. During a twin swap, Hamza told Raina-as-Nimah that his attack hasn't been executed yet and he wants to skip town with her.

As stated, sometimes a white lie is okay, if you are protecting someone from harm. Nimah was trying to protect Raina by lying to her and making her believe that she was dead so she could protect her life. 


Life and Language 2/3 (Section 8)

You can look at my previous post here



In his first published “book”, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein defined the relationship between language and reality. He wrote his notes for this book during WWI and finished it when he was held prisoner. The book is not based on [arguments] but more of declaring things that are merely self-evident and shows why the logic of our language is misunderstood. There are 7 basic propositions with sublevels connecting each together.

1.    The world is all that is the case.
1.1      The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.2      The world divides into facts.
2.    What is the case—a fact—is the existence of states of affairs.
2.01  A state of affairs is a combination of objects (things).
2.02  Objects are simple.
2.03  In a state of affairs objects fit into one another like the links of a chain.
2.04  The totality of existing states of affairs is the world.
2.05   The totality of existing states of affairs also determines which states of affairs do not exist.
2.06   The existence (positive) and non-existence (negative) of states of affairs is reality.
 2.1     We picture facts to ourselves.
 2.2     The picture has the logical form of representation in common with what it depicts.

3.    A logical picture of facts is a thought.
3.1    In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses.
3.2    In propositions thoughts can be so expressed that to the objects of the thoughts correspond the elements of the
propositional sign. 
3.3    Only the proposition has sense; only in the context of a proposition has a name meaning.
3.4    A proposition determines a place in logical space.  The existence of that place is guaranteed by the mere existence of the
constituents—by the existence of the proposition. 
3.5    A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought.
4.    A thought is a proposition with a sense.
Most philosophical propositions are nonsensical.  We cannot answer them, we can only point out that they are nonsense and the deepest problems are not really problems. 
4.01  A proposition is a model of reality.
4.022    A proposition shows its sense and says that things do so stand.
4.1     Propositions represent the existence and non-existence of states of affairs.
4.2     The sense of a proposition is its agreement and disagreement with possibilities of existence and non-existence of states
of affairs.
          4.21   The simplest proposition, the elementary proposition, asserts the existence of atomic facts.
4.3    Truth-possibilities of elementary propositions mean possibilities of existence and non-existence of states of affairs.
4.4    A proposition is an expression of agreement and disagreement with truth-possibilities of elementary propositions.
         4.46  Among the possible groups of truth-conditions there are two extreme cases.  
4.5     The general form of a proposition is: This is how things stand.
5.    A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.
5.1    Truth functions can be arranged in a series. 
5.2    The structure of propositions stand in internal relations to one another. 
5.3    All propositions are the result of truth-operations on elementary propositions. 
5.4    There are no ‘logical objects’ or ‘logical constants’. 
5.5    Every truth-function is a result of successive applications to elementary propositions of the operation ‘ (…..T)(x….)’
5.6    The limits of my language are the limits of my world.
6.    The general form of a proposition is the general form of a truth-function [p, ξ, N (ξ)].
6.1            The propositions of logic are tautologies.
6.2             Mathematics is a logical method.  The propositions of mathematics are equations. 
6.3             Exploration of logic means the exploration of everything that is subject to law—outside
                                             of logic everything is accidental.
6.4             All propositions are of equal value.
6.5             When an answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question, therefore riddle does not exist.
6.51              Skepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked.  For doubt can only exist where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.
6.52              We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched.  Of course, there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer.
6.521           The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.


7.    What we can not speak about we must pass over in silence.

Sources: 




Aimee Wilson Section 12 Second Post on Sleep

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In my first post I discussed Descartes’ view, which I am going to refer to using Hill’s name the “retirement view.” This view can be summarized as the mind temporarily separating from the body during sleep and therefore the brain is unable to lay down new memories from the mind. John Locke’s view of sleep is the exact opposite. Unlike Descartes, Locke believes that the mind is not thinking and supports the existential pause theory that Descartes believed to be wrong. Locke believed that the mind would just black out during sleep. When contemplating the “retirement view” he brings up the issue of personal identity. He said:
“If there are periods of thinking in me that I can have no conceivable access to when awake, then the thinking in question is really that of another person.” (Hill) 
He says that if he still thinking while sleeping that it is not himself because the thoughts are not continuous with his present thoughts. Locke believes that this theory is much more probable than Descartes’ view and believes that we have no thoughts during dreamless sleep. My next and final post will discuss Leibniz’s theory which is like a median between the two theories discussed thus far.