Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Happy Halloween!

Today is All Hallows’ Eve, or Halloween. It’s believed to originate in the Celtic festival of Samhain, a pre-Christian festival held around November 1 to mark the end of summer and the beginning of winter. It was the biggest holiday of the Celtic year: a combination of harvest festival, New Year’s Eve, and community meeting. Animals were brought in from the pasture and made secure for the coming winter, and some of them were slaughtered to provide salted meat for the winter. It was also a time of year when the veil between living and dead was particularly porous, so the spirits of the dearly departed were more easily able to return to their earthly homes. And it meant that other otherworldly creatures — like fairies, leprechauns, and other tricksters — were more likely to be among us. But even though ghosties and ghoulies wandered among the living during Samhain, the supernatural wasn’t the main focus of the holiday the way it is for Halloween.

As the Christian Church grew, Samhain blended with a Christian holiday known as All Saints’ Day, All Hallows’ Day, or Hallowmas, which was originally observed in May but later moved to November 1. It was a time for believers to honor and remember those who had passed on to heaven. This blending was not coincidental. Early Christian leaders told their missionaries that if they wanted to convert pagans to Christianity, they shouldn’t waste time on trying to suppress their rituals and practices, but rather they should consecrate those practices to Christ and incorporate them wherever possible. This had the effect of establishing Christianity among the pagans — but it also preserved many of the pagan practices instead of quashing them. So Samhain and All Saints’ Day rituals influenced each other and eventually merged, and that is when we begin to see the traditions that we associate with Halloween today.

One such tradition was the practice of “souling,” common in Britain and Ireland in the Middle Ages. Poor people would go door to door on Hallowmas and offer to pray for the souls of the family’s dead relatives, in exchange for an offering of food. It mingled with the practice of “mumming”: dressing up in costumes and performing wacky antics in exchange for food and drink, and eventually trick-or-treating became a traditional part of Halloween. WA



“All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks, in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.” Nietzsche

Philosophy of Science- Chapter 7- final chapter

     Okasha closes out the book with a short chapter on science and its critics. Choosing to pass on discussing the tension between science and religion presented in the book (I do not care to get into a religious debate), I will focus on the value of science and whether is comes at a cost and if that cost is worth it. We can all debate that science can be used for good and bad, example of good would be medicine and an example of bad would be nuclear weapons. However, perhaps it is not the science that is the issue, it the way humans choose to use their findings. Okasha makes a case on page 129 stating, “But cases such as these do not show that there is something ethically objectionable about scientific knowledge itself. It is the use to which that knowledge is put that is unethical.” Science is concerned with facts, and facts have no ethical value. It is our choosing as humans and what we do with the facts that creates the ethical/unethical lines. But those vary from society to society, generation to generation. What may be acceptable in one society or era may not be in another. So how do we determine who decides how the information is utilized? Leave it to a vote by the people? Give it to the governing bodies to deal with? Sell it to the highest bidder? And here I feel is where we begin to see the downfall of humanity… the corruption, deceit, lies… people of power, leaders, ‘best interest’ parties are often found at the top of the societal food chain thus controlling the outcome of newly obtained knowledge and seek to profit from it, no matter the means. Why is it so difficult to keep science and it’s findings amongst those who see value in its progress and see the bigger picture of how it can serve humanity in its entirety instead of to the highest bidder? Until we view all humans as equal on this ‘pale blue dot’ (thanks Carl Sagan), science and its advances I fear will continue to be corrupted and the ultimate demise of our species.

Saturday, October 28, 2017

POS- Chapter 6

In chapter six of Philosophy of Science, Okasha introduced the Newton v. Leibniz debate. Although there were several avenues, I will focus on just one, the Space/Time debate. 
      Newton had an absolutist concept of space, meaning “space has an absolute existence over and above spatial relations between objects.” (p. 95). The implication here is that space existed before any material objects (e.g. a cereal box before it is filled with cereal). Leibniz, however, did not agree with Newton’s theory. According to Leibniz, “space consists simply of the totality of spatial relations between material objects (above, below, to the left, etc.)” (p. 96). Being a relationist, Leibniz proposed that every material object is in relation to something else, thus space did not exist until material objects did. Without objects there is no space (e.g. a contract between two parties, if one party backs out there simply is no contract, it ceases to exist).
This brings us into the space/time debate. According to Newtonian SpaceTime, space and time just always is, no beginning and no end, thus they existed before the universe was created. So supporters of the Big Bang theory point to Newtonian theory as a proponent for their claims. There could have been a point in time where everything was concentrated in one tiny point, it exploded and thus the Big Bang creating the universe, but Space and Time were already in existence because we can trace it back. This defines Space and Time as more an idea and not a literal substance. The opposing argument proposed by Leibniz states in order for the structure of Space and Time to exists, there has to be a relation between material objects. Here, Space/Time are interrelated and viewed as a sort of fabric. The relation between objects causes that fabric to curve. There further back we go in viewing the creation of the universe, we see as objects get closer and closer together, the fabric curves more and more. Eventually as we recede back to the moment of the Big Bang, we see the curve in the fabric is so great is goes on for infinity, which does not make sense. There cannot be a curve to infinity and there still be a SpaceTime fabric that satisfies classical General Relativity equations mathematically. Thus showing Space and Time did not exists before the universe was created.

I will admit, most of this chapter was well above my head but I feel after some more digging through academic journals, I was able to grasp the basic outline of the Newton/Leibniz debate.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Exam 2 Study Guide- Section 6

These aren't in order, but I think I got them all. Comment and let me know if i missed something or have too much. This website can be quite difficult to navigate.

Beatles Quiz:
1) In what album did The Beatles reference drug-use the most? 2) How did The Beatles leading men, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, meet? 3) How do The Beatles connect with hip-hip? 4) When and Where did Hip-Hop originate from? 5) When did Hip-Hop become the most popular music genre and how did it pertain to the status of our social standings? 6) What is alternative Hip-Hop and why has it become mainstream?   Aristotle Quiz:
1.) What did Aristotle believe happiness depended on? 2.) What idea did Aristotle introduce with his thinking of happiness? 3.) What did Aristotle say happiness was? 4.) What did Aristotle call metaphysics? 5.) One difference between Plato's and Aristotle's idea of metaphysics 6.) What does catharsis mean? 7.) What was the specific cause of Aristotle's death and where?
 Epicurus Quiz:
1. According to Epicurus, fear of death is based on what, and the best way to live is what? 
2. How is the modern meaning of "epicurean" different from Epicurus's? 
3. What famous 20th century philosopher echoed Epicurus's attitude towards death? 
4. What was the Stoics' basic idea, and what was their aim? 
5. Why did Cicero think we shouldn't worry about dying? 
6. Why didn't Seneca consider life too short? 
1. What was the main teaching of skepticism? ("Scepticism" in Br. spelling) 
2. How did Pyrrho say you could become free from all worry? Does Warburton think this would work for most of us? 
3. How does modern skepticism differ from its ancient predecessor? 
4. Why does Gottlieb think Pyrrho must not have been as radically skeptical as legend has it? 
5. What did David Hume say about too much skepticism? 
6. What did "throwing in the sponge" mean, in Sextus Emiricus's story?
1. In the Hellenistic period Western philosophy came to be seen as what? What did the Hellenistic philosophies all praise, and what did they all see as the key to wisdom? 
2. Of what later philosophy was Epicureanism the main ancestor? 
3. What central problem of philosophy was Epicurus apparently the first to state? 
4. From what did the Stoics take their name? 
5. What was the one thing the Stoics thought the Epicureans were right about? 
6. How does Gottlieb say the Stoics were inconsistent?

1. What did the Philosopher Martin Heidegger once call people? 
2. What two ideas about aging have dominated philosophical thinking? 
3. What is one country that is more youth eccentric? 
4. Name a philosopher who agrees with the negative aspects of aging. 
5. Name one country or society that praises old age. 
6. Name a philosopher who is positive towards aging or the elderly. 
7. Which philosopher favored middle aging? 

DR 358-390, LH 6-8  1. What happened in AD 529, and why is it a convenient milestone for philosophy? 
2. What did medieval Christians "know" that Aristotle said wasn't so? 
3. What's the one question almost everyone has heard about medieval philosophy? What's the obvious answer? 
4. What was "the strangest document in the history of philosophy" and how did it catch the spirit of its time? 
5. What was Plotinus's philosophy called, and what was its goal? 
6. What did Proclus see as the job of philosophy?  LH  7. How did Augustine "solve" the problem of evil in his younger days, and then after his conversion to Christianity? Why wasn't it such a problem for him originally? 
8. What does Boethius not mention about himself in The Consolation of Philosophy? 
9. What uniquely self-validating idea did Anselm say we have? 
10. What was Aquinas' 2d Way?

OCT 19 - Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, DR 14 (390-425)  1. What religion did Augustine espouse before his conversion to Christianity, and how did it account for evil? 
2. To what did Augustine return, that most of the first philosophers had rejected? 
3. What form does Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy take, what does it never explicitly mention, and how does it account for the compatibility of real choice with the existence of an omniscient deity? 
4. How did Anselm define God, and what is his famous "proof" called? 
5. Who was Heloise's boyfriend, what was his greatest misfortune, and how did he go beyond established traditions? 
6. Who wrote Guide for the Perplexed? What did he try to do in it? 
7. Who had a "razor," and what was it for? 
8. Who declared that there are other worlds, and was burned at the stake? 
Pythagoras Quiz:
  1. What did Pythagoras say the three classes of people are?  
  1. What term that we use today was coined by Pythagoras? 
  1. How can you explain Pythagoras' "Perfect Triangle?" 
  1. Using his theorem, What is the lentgh of a right-angled triangle if the two shortest sides are 6cm and 8cm 
  1. Some may refer to Pythagoras as "Pythagoras of ____ " 
  1. Pythagoras is credited for many mathematic and geometric advances, most famously, what?
 Rick and Morty Quiz:
  1. What relationship is Rick to Morty? 
  1. What idea, described by American philosopher Eugene Thacker, does the show embody? 
  1. Name one way the show embodies existentialism. 
  1. Name two philosophers who are considered nihilists or absurdists. 
  1. What is the difference between active nihilism and passive nihilism? 
  1. What parable did Nietsche use to explain science's devaluation of Christianity? 
  1. What did Camus dislike in Sartre and Dostoyevsky's stories? 
  1. Was Dostoyevsky an absurdist? 
  1. What is existentialism? 


Confucius Quiz:
1. Did Confucius die believing he left a major impact? 2. What was his "other" name? 3. What religion surrounds him? 4. What were the "Six Arts" he believed were most important in education? 5. What countries has Confucius made an impact on their society? 6. What other things besides the society did he make an impact on?