Up@dawn 2.0

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Capitalism vs. Marxism


Capitalism vs. Marxism

An economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. This is the definition given to the ideology that governs most the world, this is in sharp contrast to another ideology called Communism, that derives from Karl Marx and Marxism. A political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned, and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. These definitions don’t adequately describe or detail these systems so, I will go into depth on behalf of Capitalism and Karl Marx as to teach my audience the importance of these systems, and to persuade my audience to take advantage of the opportunities that capitalism brings.

            Karl Marx grew up during the birth of capitalism in the early 19th century and was able to see what problems capitalism had and how terribly the lower and middle class were treated compared to the wealthiest elites. This led to his idea of elimination of classes and state control of resources. This idea is fundamental in not only the maturation of capitalism but, presented the world with a society in which the groups most under represented throughout human history, the lower and middle class, are finally the same status as the richest people of their country. The problem that comes with communism is that individuals are more complicated than the systems that hold them, class equality inevitably fails due to corruption of state officials and the lack of incentives present to motivate. This is a gross oversimplification but, with the lack of free markets and misallocation of resources, the state is unable to handle such a complicated world economy or the very complicated problems of its people, so it is the people’s responsibility to fix issues. So, Karl Marx and his ideas of class equality are more complicated than its most popular idea of communism; Socialism presents a new range of ideas that have influenced almost every country in the world. Socialism can be found in every democracy from Sweden to the United States, its influence varies but, its presence is felt through a welfare state to social security benefits provided at a late age such as sixty-seven. A society in which has a free market along with small state control is hard to balance but, if kept can create the closest thing to a utopia that humans can achieve.

In support of Marxism through Religious texts of Jesus.

The attacks of business and capitalism have come from very intelligent and powerful individuals for eons. For example, Jesus Christ once went to a temple and found merchants trading and thought it was an insult to god and he then flipped the tables and destroyed their places of business.  Mathew 21 verse 12”Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.” Jesus then went on to say the traders were making the house of prayer a den of robbers.

Charles Dickens vs. Capitalism and examples he used in literary works.

Dickens' formative years were the late 1830s and early 1840s - a period of turbulent capitalist transformation of the great cities, of enormous social conflict between different social forces, and of fierce ideological turmoil. Dickens' own family knew something of this everlasting uncertainty. They moved houses frequently to stay one step ahead of their creditors. Dickens' father was imprisoned for debt and Dickens himself was removed from school to do menial work in a shoe-blacking factory.

These were humiliating experiences, about which Dickens kept quiet. At the same time he was acutely aware, through direct experience, of the wretched lives of the poor. The horror Dickens felt at the poverty into which he so nearly descended and his sympathy for its victims form the imaginative axis of much of his writing. They also define his radicalism.

Social dislocation also opened up - in this new bourgeois world - the possibility of using your own talents to get ahead in life. Dickens was a case in point: as something of a one-man literary factory, he succeeded by constantly producing a stream of novels, short stories and journalism that appealed to a new public. He had nothing but contempt for the kind of aristocratic assumption that birth and breeding were owed a living. In this sense Dickens was an impatient radical, eager to rid society of the indolent parasitism that strangled individual initiative.

At the same time, he was deeply suspicious of another strand of radicalism shared by many of those who, like him, wanted to reform the existing order. This was a radicalism that focused on disciplining the poor and the vulnerable. "Reforming" the poor law and the workhouse to make "welfare" (such as it was) as unpleasant as possible for the "workshy" provoked Dickens' wrath - as seen in Oliver Twist (1839). This was the period when "free market" ideas, alongside the capitalist interests they served, were making inroads. The idea that those at the bottom of society had only themselves to blame if they starved struck Dickens as callous when there was wealth enough to satisfy their needs.

Dickens appealed to the idea that we share a common humanity beyond social division. He did so in order to fight what was fast becoming the reality of bourgeois society: its lack of common interests. Appealing to the "good" side of bourgeois society against its "bad" side is something we see in Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) and the way in which the heartless, tight-fisted Scrooge becomes a generous benefactor of the poor. Sentimental, yes, but it was a protest against the notion that there was no alternative.

The early Dickens novels are open and episodic. The serial technique of novel writing in monthly, and occasionally weekly, parts (a technique which Dickens virtually invented) meant that he could reach a new audience. It gave him the freedom to introduce new characters and address issues (the reality of the poor law or cruelty in education that might challenge this audience's feelings and conscience). The breadth of form also enabled him to vastly expand the social world of the novel: the rich and wealthy have to make way for characters from the lower classes. Plebeian voices jostle for the right to be heard.

I believe it is not in our best interests as a society to see Capitalism and Marxism as competing ideologies but as opposite sides to the same coin. As those who fight for the welfare and support of the lower class oppose the ones who fight for promotion of business and against regulations are creating new ideas and reform for everyone. It is also in our best interests in members of these contrasting groups compete with one another to eventually create a system fit for everyone.
1st installment from Landon Eaves #9

#9 How True Detective Complicates What It Means to be Good and Evil







The HBO anthology True Detective is known for being extremely dark and controversial. I will only be focusing on season one of the anthology due its darkened tone. Season one focuses on two homicide detectives: Rust Cohle and Marty Hart. The season starts with them finding the body of a naked woman with deer antlers and a satanic emblem on her back. This is the beginning of a dark path for both of the "protagonists" in the show.

The show follows their journey in finding the serial killer that was behind the occult murders going on in Louisiana, and what they uncover affects them severely. Marty begins having an affair with his wife and Rust knows about it, but he doesn't do anything about it. Marty believes himself to be a good man, but his actions say differently. Once the detectives find who they believe to be the murderer, Marty finds two naked children in the murderer's house and rushes out with his gun raised. He shoots the murderer in the head point blank. Rust then helps Marty to cover up the scene, and they both lie about what happened to the police. This sets up Marty to be a hypocrite within the show, which is a vast parallel to Rust. Rust knows exactly who he is and what he is capable of, while Marty is unable to control his desires. The show continues to delve into the detectives' personal lives, which shows the darkness in both of their lives.

Rust had to go undercover for four years in a biker gang. He started doing various drugs while he was undercover and he may have participated in the killing of opposing gang members. This drug use continued even as a detective, and it started to make him have hallucinations in the middle of the day. This starts to makes the audience question the mental health of Rust. Rust also lost a daughter during her infancy and he believes the world is hell. He also believes that human beings were a "tragic misstep in evolution" because they became too self aware. Marty hates when Rust speaks like this because he wants to stay ignorant to the dark and true ideas coming from Rust's mind. This shows that Marty wants to keep his innocence intact even though he has committed acts such as adultery and murder.

The show starts to really make the audience question what it means to be good and evil. Simply because the characters are labeled as detectives, it makes the audience believe them to be the "protagonists". However, they are true anti-heroes because of what they do during their daily lives. Rust is a rampant drug user while on the job, and Marty has sex with someone other than this wife every few months. They both are extremely good at their jobs as detectives, and that is because they are dangerously similar the men they are trying to catch. They can easily get into the mind of the criminal because everyone has something that they're trying to hide, including the detectives.

Sources:
Decay of Humanity
Philosophy of True Detective




Sigmund Freud Installment #1

Image result for sigmund freud
          Sigmund Freud was a man of many accomplishments. Physiologist, neurologist, psychologist, powerful thinker, as well as the father of psychoanalysis are some words used to describe him. Freud took his first breath on May 6, 1856, in the town of Freiberg which is now part of the Czech Republic. His family moved to Vienna when he was four years old and this is where he remained for the majority of his life.
          Above all, Freud considered himself a scientist. In 1873, he enrolled in medical school at the University of Vienna where he initially focused on biology and eventually began to specialize in neurology. In 1881, Freud received his medical degree and became engaged to be married the next year. Freud's happy marriage produced  him six children. His youngest daughter, Anna, would go on to become a distinguished psychoanalyst. Upon graduation, Freud opened his own private practice to treat psychological disorders. With science being at its utmost importance to Freud, he yearned to understand human experience and knowledge.
          Freud spent 1885-86 in Paris where he observed French neurologist Jean Charcot using hypnotism as a form of treatment for unusual mental conditions and hysteria. Freud was so impressed by Charcot's work that he began his own experimentation on hypnosis when he returned to Vienna. He was disappointed when he found that the beneficial effects of hypnosis were not long lasting. After this realization, Freud became influenced by his colleague and friend, Josef Breuer. Breuer had found that when he told a hysterical patient to talk unrestricted about when their earliest symptoms started to occur, the symptoms would sometimes gradually adapt. Freud partnered with Breuer on the idea that neuroses originated from incredibly traumatic instances that had happened in the patient's past that now were being hidden from consciousness. The treatment was to make the patient remember the forgotten experience. This technique is explained in detail in Studies in Hysteria, published by Freud and Breuer in 1895.
          Freud and Breuer parted ways when the two disagreed on the amount of emphasis Freud was putting on sexual origins of neuroses. In 1900, Freud went on to publish what is regarded as his best work, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. This was accompanied in 1905 by Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Freud's emphasis on sexuality made his psychoanalytic theory unsuccessful. Freud was pretty much disregarded until he was recognized in 1908 at the First International Psychoanalytical Congress held in Salzburg. With this recognition, Freud was invited in 1909 to lecture in the United States. This formed the foundation of his 1916 book Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Freud's fame skyrocketed from there.
          In Freud's life, he produced more than twenty volumes of clinical studies and theoretical works. In 1923, he revised his views of the mind and published The Ego and the Id. Freud learned in his later years that not everyone would agree with his teachings. Though Sigmund Freud died of Cancer in 1939 while exiled in England, the legacy he left will live on.
-The next installment: Freud's philosophies and my thoughts on him.
Sources: www.iep.utm.edu/freud/ https://www.biography.com/people/sigmund-freud-9302400

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Study Guide Test #3

Study Guide Test #3

Quiz November 1/2
Spinoza, Locke, & Reid, LH 13-14; DE 3-4

1. Spinoza's view, that God and nature (or the universe) are the same thing, is called _______.

2. If God is _____, there cannot be anything that is not God; if _____, God is indifferent to human beings.

3. Spinoza was a determinist, holding that _____ is an illusion.

4. According to John Locke, all our knowledge comes from _____; hence, the mind of a newborn is a ______.

5. Locke said _____ continuity establishes personal identity (bodily, psychological); Thomas Reid said identity relies on ______ memories, not total recall.

DE 3-4

6. Who called Spinoza "the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers"?

7. If we "understood clearly the whole order of Nature," according to Spinoza, what would we conclude?

8. "...atheism now carries no stigma in economically developed countries except _____."

9. What did Thomas Jefferson exaggerate about John Locke?

10. How did Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding play a role in advancing the Enlightenment?

11. From where did Locke say the authority of a ruler derives?

12. What is one of the odd consequences of Locke's theory of personal identity?


Quiz Nov 6/7
Berkeley, Voltaire & Leibniz (& Voltaire), Hume & Rousseau

LH
1. What English poet declared that "whatever is, is right"?

2. What German philosopher, with his "Principle of Sufficient Reason," agreed with the poet?

3. What French champion of free speech and religious toleration wrote a satirical novel/play ridiculing the idea that everything is awesome?

4. What 1755 catastrophe deeply influenced Voltaire's philosophy?

5. What did Voltaire mean by "cultivating our garden"?

6. Was Voltaire an atheist?

7. (T/F) Hume thought the human eye so flawless in its patterned intricacy that, like Paley's watch, it constitutes powerful evidence of intelligent design.

8. (T/F) Hume's view was that it's occasionally more plausible to believe that a miracle (the unexplained suspension of a law of nature) has happened, than not.

9. Rousseau said we're born free but everywhere are in ____, but can liberate ourselves by submitting to what is best for the whole community, aka the _______.

10. Name two fields of study Leibniz contributed to, and two of his inventions/proposals.

11. Leibniz's "atoms of nature," each a "windowless" self-contained world , are called what?

12. What did Berkeley allege to be the sole contents of the universe, and who said this was "close to my own view"?

13. Who won first place in a poll among philosophers to pick their all-time favorite, which close friend was at his deathbed, and what did he tell Boswell about an afterlife?

14. What is induction, and what did Hume think accounts for our confidence that the future will resemble the past?

15. What did Hume say theres' no point in trying to do?

16. What ill-defined concept of Rousseau's might be read as providing intellectual support for dictators?

17. What did Rousseau consider better pastimes than intellectual work?

Quiz Nov 13/14
Kant, Bentham, Hegel, Schopenhauer LH 19-23

1. Kant said we can know the ____ but not the ____ world.

2. How does synthetic knowledge differ from analytic knowledge?

3. What was Kant's great insight?

4. What, according to Kant, is irrelevant to morality?

5. Kant said you should never ___, because ___. Kant called the principle that supports this view the ____ _____.

6. Who formulated the Greatest Happiness principle? What did he call his method? Where can you find him today?

7. Who created a thought experiment that seems to refute Bentham's view of how pleasure relates to human motivation?

8. What did Hegel mean when he spoke of the "owl of Minerva"? What did he think had been reached in his lifetime?

9. What Kantian view did Hegel reject?

10. What is Geist? When did Hegel say it achieved self-knowledge?

11. What "blind driving force" did Schopenhauer allege to pervade absolutely everything (including us)?

12. What did Schopenhauer say could help us escape the cycle of striving and desire?


Quiz Nov 15/16
Mill, Darwin, Kierkegaard, Marx LH 24-27

1. How did Mill disagree with Bentham about pleasure?

2. What view did Mill defend in On Liberty?

3. What's the benefit to society of open discussion, according to Mill, and what's wrong with being dogmatic?

4. Who did Bishop Wilberforce debate at Oxford in 1860?

5. The single best idea anyone ever had was what, according to whom?

6. What scientific developments since Darwin's time establish evolution by natural selection as more than just a theory or hypothesis?

7. Who was the Danish Socrates, and what was most of his writing about?

8. Why is faith irrational, according to Nigel Warburton?

9. What is "the subjective point of view"?

10. Why was Karl Marx angry? How did he think the whole of human history could be explained?

11. What was Marx's "vision"?

12. What did Marx call religion?

Quiz Nov 20/21
Peirce & James, Nietzsche, Freud LH 28-30

1. What's the point of James's squirrel story?

2. Who said truth is what we would end up with if we could run all the experiments and investigations we'd like to? (And what's a word his name rhymes with?)

3. What did Bertrand Russell say about James's theory of truth?

4. What 20th century philosopher carried on the pragmatist tradition? What did he say about the way words work?

5. What did Nietzsche mean by "God is dead"? (And what's a word his name rhymes with?)

6. Where did Nietzsche think Christian values come from?

7. What is an Ubermensch, and why does Nigel find it "a bit worrying"?

8. How did Nietzsche differ from Kant but anticipate Freud?

9. What were the three great revolutions in thought, according to Freud?

10. The "talking cure" gave birth to what?

11. Why did Freud think people believe in God?

12. What was Karl Popper's criticism of Freudian psychoanalysis?


Quiz Nov 27/28
RUSSELL, AYER, Sartre, de beauvoir, Camus (LH)

1. Reading whose autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God? OR, What did he see as the logical problem with the First Cause Argument?

I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day at the age of eighteen I read _____'s Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. Why I Am Not a Christian

2. The idea of a barber who shaves all who don't shave themselves is a logical ______, a seeming contradiction that is both true and false. Another example of the same thing would be a statement like "This sentence is ___."

3. A.J. Ayer's ______ Principle, stated in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, was part of the movement known as _____ ______.

4. Humans don't have an _____, said Jean Paul Sartre, and are in "bad faith" like the ____ who thinks of himself as completely defined by his work.

5. What was Sartre's frustrating advice to the student who didn't know whether to join the Resistance?

6. When Simone de Beauvoir said women are not born that way, she meant that they tend to accept what?

7. Which Greek myth did Albert Camus use to illustrate human absurdity, as he saw it?

BONUS+: Who had a Near Death Experience his youthful philosophy would have declared "nonsense"?

BONUS++: Name the faux English matrons who crossed the channel to ask Sartre about his views on freedom?

Quiz Apr 29/30
Wittgenstein, Arendt, Rawls, Turing & Searle, Singer LH 34-35, 38-40

1. What was the main message of Wittgenstein's Tractatus?

2. What did the later Wittgenstein (of Philosophical Investigations) mean by "language games," what did he think was the way to solve philosophical problems, and what kind of language did he think we can't have?

3. Who was Adolf Eichmann, and what did Arendt learn about him at his trial?

4. What was Arendt's descriptive phrase for what she saw as Eichmann's ordinariness?

5. What did John Rawls call the thought experiment he believed would yield fair and just principles, and what was its primary device?

6. Under what circumstances would Rawls' theory permit huge inequalities of wealth between people?

7. What was the Imitation Game, and who devised a thought experiment to oppose it?

8. What, according to Searle, is involved in truly understanding something?

9. How do some philosophers think we might use computers to achieve immortality?

10. What does Peter Singer say we should sacrifice, to help strangers?

11. Why did Singer first become famous?


12. How does Singer represent the best tradition in philosophy?

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THE PRO-TRUTH PLEDGE
An Effective Strategy for Skeptics to Fight Fake News and Post-Truth Politics

How do we get politicians to stop lying? How do we get private citizens to stop sharing fake news on social media? Deception proved such a successful strategy for political causes and individual candidates in the UK and US elections in 2016 that the Oxford English Dictionary named post-truth as its word of the year, with the definition of “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” The extensive sharing of fake news by private citizens led Collins Dictionary to choose “fake news” as its word of the year for 2017, meaning “false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting.” (Skeptic, c0ntinues)
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I Pledge My Earnest Efforts To:

Share truth

  • Verifyfact-check information to confirm it is true before accepting and sharing it
  • Balance: share the whole truth, even if some aspects do not support my opinion
  • Cite: share my sources so that others can verify my information
  • Clarify: distinguish between my opinion and the facts

Honor truth

  • Acknowledge: acknowledge when others share true information, even when we disagree otherwise
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  • Defend: defend others when they come under attack for sharing true information, even when we disagree otherwise
  • Align: align my opinions and my actions with true information

Encourage truth

  • Fix: ask people to retract information that reliable sources have disproved even if they are my allies
  • Educate: compassionately inform those around me to stop using unreliable sources even if these sources support my opinion
  • Defer: recognize the opinions of experts as more likely to be accurate when the facts are disputed
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Final report- installment 1 Isha Mudgal #10


# 10 Futurama and the philosophy of evolution and God
Based on S6E9: A clockwork origin

Futurama is an American animated science fiction comedy series created by Matt Groening and written by David X. Cohen. The series follows the life of a late-20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J. Fry. Fry is unwittingly cryogenically frozen for a thousand years and wakes up in the futuristic 31st century. He finds employment at Planet Express, an interplanetary delivery company where he works alongside Turanga Leela, the competent one-eyed Captain of the Planet express space-ship, Bender Bending Rodriguez, the foul-mouthed, heavy-drinking, cigar-smoking, kleptomaniacal, egocentric, self-centered robot manufactured by Mom's Friendly Robot Company, and Professor Farnsworth, the owner of the company and Fry’s 160 year old distant nephew (this is the future!) amongst others.  

Every episode of Futurama tackles one of the many political, moral, ethical, religious and scientific issues that our world currently faces, and each episode leaves you with a different outlook on that specific issue. That is probably because to avoid controversies, the show tries to depict every one’s point of view, and makes people (or at least me) a little more understanding towards those views. Being amazed by science almost every day of my life, naturally, Futurama is one of my favorite TV shows. Having said that, I find that the episode titled ‘A clockwork origin’, is one of best depiction of the never-ending debate over the creator (god) and evolution in our world.

And that is why I chose to write about it.

At this point, I would like to introduce the term Creationism. Creationism is the belief that the universe and life originated from acts of divine creation, as opposed to the scientific conclusion that they came about through natural processes. Futurama introduces this term as ‘Creaturism’ (perhaps to avoid controversy). The episode begins with the mention of a large mob of people who believe in creaturism. After numerous failed attempts of proving the origin and evolution of creatures to their leader, Professor Farnsworth finally gives up and decides to leave earth. The planet express crew lands on an uninhabited planet and sets up all necessary requirements for the professor to spend the rest of his life there. Professor Farnsworth introduces some nanobots into a dirty pond to turn the water into clean, drinkable water. However, through the duration of the night the nanobots evolve into trilobots and devour the spaceship and everything else. The crew is stranded and decides to spend the night in a cave. The next day a whole forest of mechanical trees has evolved with a number of robotic dinosaurs roaming about it. The nanobots have very quickly evolved into flora and fauna.
Shortly after, a solar flare causes a mass extinction on the planet killing all big Robosaurs while the smaller ‘mammalian’ robots stay safe in caves. The next day, the mammalian robots have turned into cavemen and the day after, into civilized human like robots. That day they come across a robot naturalist who takes them to the museum of natural robo-history. In his speech professor Farnsworth accidently blurts out that he is proud of the nanobots’ growth since he dumped them in a pond a few days back. Every robot is astonished and as the plot twists, professor Farnsworth is now the one being accused of believing in creaturism!
-Next installment: Analysis of the plot and conclusion

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

The Philosophy of Vegetarianism Part 1 (#6)

     As you may have realized from the title of my post, I am a vegetarian. I’m a recent vegetarian, the last day I ate meat was just almost five months ago (July 2017). Going vegetarian was not a spur of the moment decision for me, I had thought about it and wanted to do it for a long time before I actually did thanks to some documentaries I watched (hereherehere, and here) and some other research I did. Every vegetarian has a different reason for choosing this lifestyle, mine is mainly a moral reason- I don’t want to contribute to the killing of the millions of animals that die every day for human consumption (for what it's worth, here is the Humane Society's statistics on how many farm animals are killed for meat each year) Just saying, over four billion chickens were slaughtered in 2017 alone. Anyways, as a vegetarian, I don’t eat any kinds of meat (not even fish), and in addition I also don’t eat eggs or drink cow milk. I will one day go full-on vegan, but I’m just taking my time to transition to that. For anyone wondering I also no longer buy any animal-sourced leather, fur, etc., but I still use the things of that nature that I had before I switched. And, for any who may be wondering, becoming a vegetarian was so much easier than I thought it would be, and if you’re considering it, you should definitely go for it. Vegetarianism and the humane treatment of animals is something I’m passionate about learning more about and also informing others about, so here goes…

     The first topic I am going to talk about is speciesism. The term ‘speciesism’ was first used in the 1970’s and described it as discrimination against nonhuman animals (I used this website article for the information about speciesism). Moral philosopher Oscar Horta eventually expanded the definition to be a bit broader, saying “Speciesism is discrimination against those who are not classified as belonging to one or more particular species”. My cited website says: “According to this definition, trying to justify unequal consideration of other animals because they are not smart in the way humans are or because they don’t have relationships with humans is speciesism, even if an appeal to species membership is never made.” Basically speciesism says that humans use animals for meat, luxurious clothing, entertainment, cosmetics, etc., because they aren’t human on an intellectual level. This is just something to keep in mind as I discuss philosophy and vegetarianism more. I first learned about speciesism from this movie called Earthlings, which I highly recommend everyone watch (be warned, it's graphic, but everyone should see what really happens to animals). 

     Next up I will be discussing utilitarianism, deontology, and existentialism as they each pertain to vegetarianism. 

     Utilitarianism is defined as an ethical doctrine that virtue is based on utility, and that conduct should be directed towards promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number of persons, which could also be seen as something that seeks the most minimal suffering for the greatest number. This is how utilitarianism relates to vegetarianism- animals are sentient beings, they can feel and suffer just as we can. One of the most notable philosophers I've found is Peter Singer (influenced by the 'patron saint of animal right' Jeremy Bentham), an Australian moral philosopher who seems to be the man who spear-headed the movement of utilitarianism and vegetarianism. Here is an article from Singer where he explains his disappointment that animal slaughter/slavery is still prominent but that he has hope for that to continue to change. 
     
     Deontology is defined as an ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences of the action. This means that, vegetarian or not, we all (should) know that killing animals is wrong, whether you really care and plan to ever go vegetarian/vegan or not. Modern deontology was brought about my Immanuel Kant, a philosopher we have learned about over the course of this class. Most sources say that utilitarianism and deontology tend to be opposing view points. This is mainly because deontology says that some things are wrong regardless of consequences. Basically, deontology says that some things are just inherently wrong. Utilitarianism more so says that something is right if it leads to a good consequence. 

     Existentialism is defined as a philosophical attitude that stresses the individual's unique position as a self-determining agent responsible for the authenticity of his or her choices. This means that your choices are you. It doesn't necessarily say "don't eat meat" or anything like that, it more so means that if you are eating and buying meat, you are contributing to the pain and suffering of animals and you can't deny that. Your choice to eat and buy meat means your choice makes you partly responsible for that. Many people credit J.P. Sartre's existentialism to their choice to become vegetarian, for his reaffirmed that our actions are our own responsibility and it is our responsibility to choose to do the right thing and keep evil to a minimum. 

     In the second installment of my Philosophy of Vegetarianism report, I will be covering the 'moral high ground' of vegetarians and vegans, more vegetarian philosophers and their reasons, and debunking some myths on why people think humans should eat meat.


Posts I commented on:
https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2017/11/why-rick-isnt-nihilist-final-report-1st.html?showComment=1513095098224#c2110578663526152614


     

Final Part 1- David Hume: Morals #10

Contact is the only way in which you learn about something. Someone must tell you about, or show you something in order for you to become familiar with it. Whether it be from a book, documentary, a seminar, or other methods, you don’t know something until it is presented to you, and typically it is conveyed in a certain light. Many people form opinions based on how those around them react to a topic and emotions. David Hume discusses how morals stem from this same type of situation.
David Hume believed that morals stem from your emotions and not through a rational thought process. Hume said, “It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.” That how you respond to something tends to stem from how others have responded to the same or similar events. He said that there are specifically three characters that play into his idea. These characters consist of the agent, the receiver, and the spectator. Each character receives the action in different ways and is influenced accordingly. This theory was developed based on other theories of earlier philosophers. In this dynamic the agent is the person who performs the action in question, the receiver is the person who is impacted by the action, and the spectator is whoever observes this action. The agent is the one who sets the scenario by performing either a malicious or kind-hearted act. The receiver then feels either hurt or happy based on this action, which impacts how the spectator perceives the action.
Hume’s theory suggests that two attributes control all actions. Either a virtuous attribute or a vicious attribute contribute to the action performed by the agent. The difference between the two is what causes the receiver to either feel positively or negatively. Which then cause the spectator to sympathize and feel as the receiver does. Hume expresses that these attributes are natural, meaning you either have them or you don’t. In contrast, there are other attributes that he considers artificial, meaning they are developed by others impact. He states that there are four types that all attributes fall into, including those useful to others, those useful to oneself, those that are liked by others, and those that are liked by oneself.

David Hume’s theory on morals was probably impacted by his childhood. Hume was raised by his mother after his father died when Hume was two. However, Hume did have an older brother who he went with to Edinburgh University. Hume began studies at Edinburgh around the age of ten, studying many subjects including philosophy. Hume became exposed to many ideas at an extremely impressionable time of his life which explains his devotion to knowledge. Which made him into the man who questioned morals and how they should be viewed. These views also reflect in his religious views. David Hume said, “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”

Source: http://www.iep.utm.edu/hume/#H7

Monday, November 27, 2017

Defining Courage- 1st Installment (#6)

What defines courage? What makes me more courageous than the person sitting next to me on a bus or in the classroom? How do I know that I acquire all of the attributes to call myself a courageous person? Is it something that I am born with or something that I get from my surroundings and experience? Is fear necessary in order to have courage?



According to Dictionary.com, courage is defined as the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, or pain without fear or bravery. But what defines something as being difficult, dangerous, or painful? According to Psychology Today, courage is something that everyone wants so they can feel respected and show that they have an attribute of good character. But is courage something that is only physical or is it also something that has to do with the mental state of mind? My answer is no. Being courageous is not only being physically strong, but also about being mentally capable of preparing yourself for an action or event. According to Authentic Happiness, “If a person is fearless, the behavioral component of fear is not at issue, for there is no reason to avoid or escape something that elicits no subjective or physical sensation of fear.” This means that no courage can come without fear, and that there are different kinds of fear which equals out to different kinds of courage.

In this Psychology Today article, historical figures like Martin Luther King Junior and Nelson Mandela are mentioned as people who weren’t known as much for their physical courage as much as for their bravery in the way they spoke out about wrong doings and injustice. So what attributes do define a courageous person?



Well for starters, the first attribute to define a courageous person is feeling fear, but choosing to act anyways. This is probably the hardest thing anyone can do. To feel afraid, and then to make yourself do something, is hard for most of us. To make that decision, one would have to be mentally strong enough to make a pros and cons list and to really determine what is at risk. Nelson Mandela once said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” This quote is the definition of this first attribute mentioned.

The second attribute is following your heart. If you do not truly look deep down inside of you and determine why you are doing something, then you may just be doing something for the sake of doing it and you may not necessarily acquire that attribute and have courage. According to Steve Jobs, “And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” To me, this means that following your heart is the foundation to having courage.

The third attribute is expanding your horizons and letting go of the familiar. This mostly means that you need to be willing to read about viewpoints that are not your own and to listen to people who argue against you on certain viewpoints. Lord Chesterfield once said, “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” That means if you do not let go of what you already know, you will never be able to fully experience what is to come. Learning about new things and experiencing new things not only helps build up your courage, but also your personality and your character. There is nothing better than a person who is all around well educated in all aspects of life, not only in school, but also with people. According to “The Science of Breaking Out of Your Comfort Zone (and Why You Should),” it is an important thing to push the boundaries of your comfort zone and that it is actually a big deal when this happens because you are growing as a person and building up your character.

The fourth and final attribute I will be discussing is facing suffering with dignity or faith. Aristotle once said, “The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.” I actually agree with Aristotle on this one because accidents in our lives cannot be avoided, but it is how you deal with them that really says something about you as a person. This is all about your spiritual courage. It is the voice on the inside talking to you about what your next move should be to deal with a specific thing.

In conclusion, courage is not something that can be measured by strength alone, but mentality and spirituality also play a role. To be courageous, you must be ready to fall off and get right back on, and it might not be easy. But you would be courageous for trying so hard to get back up, no matter how easy it would be to just stay down.



In my next installment, I will be talking about how the philosophers we have mentioned this semester view courage and what their definitions of courage would be.

Resources:

Philosophy of Rap Music (1st installment)

Nava Sepehri (10)
Philosophy 1030
Installment #1
Dr. Oliver
Philosophy of Rap Music
   Every generation has the genre of music that is more controversial than the other genres. When jazz music first blew up it was controversial, as was rock music. My generation’s controversial genre is rap music. Rap music plays a very vital role in the American culture and it’s important that people understand why this is. 
   Rap music first began at the end of the 1970’s. This rap music was very different than today’s, obviously. Rap music began very clean and very simple. Towards the middle of the 1980’s rap music began getting its bad reputation. This was because of rappers like Slick Rick, Dr. Dre, and most notably, the talented yet troubled Tupac Shakur, who had run-ins with the law. N.W.A. also began growing popularity, and their music was different…they disrespected the police and, as they said themselves, tried to curse as much as possible. Flash forward to today. Rap music degrades women, glorifies drugs, sex, guns, and violence overall. According to my research, statistics show that rap music can lead its listeners to drink, do drugs, and participate in sexual activities. 
   Yes, rap music seems to have a “negative” impact, but that depends on what you deem to be negative. To me, drugs, alcohol, and sex aren’t necessarily negative. First of all, people have been drinking alcohol since the beginning of time, it really has nothing to do with rap music. People will drink it no matter what and that’s just the basis of reality. Next is drugs. Some drugs may have a negative impact on one’s health, but not all drugs. The drug most commercialized in rap music is marijuana. Personally, I find nothing wrong with marijuana. I believe it’s safer than alcohol and every other drug on the face of the planet. It’s impossible to overdose on and its only side effects are hunger and happiness. I do understand what the issue is when rappers commercialize drugs like codeine and Xanax, these are dangerous drugs, but you have to look at it from the rapper’s point of view. Many rappers grow up in an environment where their family members do drugs. These rappers are simply a product of their environments. Lastly, there’s sex. Sex is definitely nothing negative. It’s simply human nature, and just like alcohol, people have been conducting sexual tendencies since the beginning of time. I think our society likes to use the words negatively, bad, and immoral on certain products and actions so that it makes those who don’t drink, smoke, or have sex, feel like their better than others. This is not at all true, no one is better than anyone else. We are all the same, it doesn’t matter what you do with your free time, as long as you’re not harming another human being. 
   Rap music is critical to American culture for a few reasons. First, it gives a section of unheard American’s a voice, second it displays the problems within these sections, and third it’s a common outlet for American’s who live in troubling neighborhoods. Rap music is mainly embodied by African American’s in general, African American men in particular. This is how rap music all began. African American men have been shut out for so long, this is what let them speak. They rap about what they go through on a daily basis, it’s important that we note this. Rap music gives many African American men an outlet, a platform to speak about not only what they were going through, but about anything else they wish to speak about. It gives them a freedom of expression, one that gained popularity. Rap music displays many social problems in America, even to this day. There’s a reason why drugs are deeply embedded in rap culture. Many of these rappers who blow up come from nothing. Many of them grew up in a poor community, in the ghetto. They have a terrible education system and many of the people they know and live with either sell drugs or are drug addicts which lead to jail time. They basically grow up in a system set up for them to fail. This brings up the problem in America, such as systematical racism, mass incarceration, and discrimination against poverty. If you grow up poor you grow up with a crappy education which leads you nowhere in life. This brings me to my last main point, rap music gives young African American men an opportunity to get out of a system designed for them to fail. J. Cole once said in a song called “Immortal” from his album “4 Your Eyez Only,” an album that discusses gun violence and mass incarceration, "They tellin' *****’s sell dope, rap or go to NBA, in that order.” Many rappers have said themselves that music was their way out. A rising rapper who goes by the name of 21 Savage even has a song titled “Rap Saved Me.” It did indeed save him. 

   In conclusion, I understand why many people regard rap as controversial, but take a minute and look deeper than the curse words. There’s a reason why this genre of music has gained immense popularity. It gives a voice to an entire community, one that has, and still is, being shut out. It doesn’t have to be so serious all the time either. If you’re like me you may listen to rap because you don’t have to think, in certain cases, while you listen to it. It’s an escape from reality and I will continue to defend its legacy.

Above is a video showing ice cube, a member of the rap group N.W.A., describing rap music. This isn't actually ice cube, it's from a scene in the movie "Straight Outta Compton" because I couldn't find the actual clip :(   (fun fact, he was played by his own son in this movie) 

Course Evaluations

Please participate in the online course evaluations; they will open 5 more days for A1 courses (full term and A2 courses will be available later in the semester).   Students may evaluate these courses through October 15th. 

Students can complete the evaluation(s) at any time from now until  December 3rd, 11:59pm
, but we would encourage you to give them a few minutes in class.  The evaluation is mobile friendly, so if you do not have computers available, they still can complete it in class with their mobile device.

Students will receive an email from the IEPR each day until the evaluation is completed. Please ask them not to delete the email since it includes the link to access the evaluations. They will be asked to enter their MTSU Pipeline username and password once they access the link.

*If student have problems logging into PipelineMT, ask them try their old PipelineMT password. When Pipeline was upgraded last month, CampusLabs didn't upgrade.

Student link for evaluations: https://mtsu.campuslabs.com/courseeval/
Below are some common questions students may ask:

Are my responses anonymous? Yes, evaluation results are confidential to the faculty member.  
Why am I still receiving email messages?Reminder email messages will be received until all surveys have received responses.  

Why do I only see one of my A1 classes?There are only 7 departments that are participating in the pilot for online evaluations. Therefore, a student may have to complete an online evlauation and a paper evaluation for a different class.  

Thanks again for helping us with this pilot program.  Your willingness to help is vital to making this transition to an online system a success.If you have any questions, please contact me at Lisa Bass at lisa.bass@mtsu.edu.

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Why Rick isn't a Nihilist - Final Report 1st Installment (#6)

Anyone who knows about Rick and Morty knows it's all about nihilism, atheism, and overall absurdism. One of the most popular examples of this nihilistic view is in the episode Meeseeks and Destroy, where the show introduces the Meeseeks. They come into existence at the press of a button, and are born with a single task that they have to complete before they can stop existing. To entice them into doing this action, they're engineered to feel constant and intense pain until they finish it. This is a play on one of big questions of humanity: what is the purpose of life. Countless philosophers throughout the millennia have attempted to answer this question, to little success. Rick and Morty, rather than attempt to answer the question at all, asks "What if we already knew the answer?"

The Meeseeks (arguably luckily) are born with purpose. They know their destiny and they do whatever it takes to enact it. Now, the nihilism comes into play when they've completed their task. Think about it: what if, not only did you know your entire purpose in life, but you managed to complete it? What would you do with yourself? Would you be ecstatic that your life had meaning? That you did a good job? Or would you be sad, as you don't have a purpose anymore? Or maybe you'd be angry that the sole task you were born to complete was so easy it didn't even come close to taking a lifetime?

This is the scenario Rick and Morty proposes. Rather than answer that question either, the show elects to have the Meeseeks simply cease to exist. Essentially: if your purpose is over, why exist at all?

The problem in this episode is yet another question: what if we know our purpose, but we can't see it through for some reason? Would this be better than not knowing our purpose at all? When Jerry creates his Meeseek, he asks it to help him improve his golf game by two strokes. Unable to do this alone, the Meeseek creates another Meeseek to help it complete its task. When Jerry still doesn't improve, the Meeseeks become feral and angry, resorting to threatening others' lives if Jerry doesn't improve.


Another example of this nihilism is in the (perhaps more well-known) episode Get Schwifty, where the entire Earth is captured by Cromulons - godlike, planet-sized heads that "feed on the talent and showmanship of less-evolved lifeforms." The Cromulons run a TV show called Planet Music, where they force entire planets to compete against each other to see who has the best musical talent. The kicker is: the losers (i.e. their entire planets) are disintegrated. The Cromulons, being so immensely powerful, don't care about lower lifeforms: they're just a source of entertainment.

This is an example of the more common variety of nihilism shown throughout the show. "Why should I care?" If you had the power to destroy entire planets with a though, why would you care about the several billion individuals on it? They're insignificant.


It's in these examples and many, many others that Rick and Morty shows its overwhelmingly nihilistic outlook on the universe. However, there are also plenty of cases when even Rick himself - the smartest man in the multiverse - is shown to care about things.

..

Other final reports:
https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-cave-matrix-final-report-1st.html
https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2017/11/hobbes-and-knowers-ofchrist-god-is.html

Friday, November 24, 2017

Spinoza

Today is the birthday of the philosopher Benedict Spinoza (books by this author), born in Amsterdam in 1632. Spinoza was the descendent of Portuguese Jews who immigrated to the Netherlands seeking religious tolerance. Young Spinoza studied Hebrew, the Old Testament, the Talmud, and Cabala’s traditions of mysticism and miracle. Fluent in five languages, Spinoza wrote in Latin, which he learned from Christian teachers who introduced the young scholar to mathematics and philosophy.

By age 24, Spinoza had developed his own ideas. He asserted that everything in the universe was made from the same divine substance, possessing infinite characteristics. He defined God and the laws of nature as one and the same, a part of this infinite substance. All of this was too far-flung from the dominant vision of an almighty, singular godhead for Spinoza’s religious contemporaries to tolerate, and Spinoza was excommunicated.

This did not deter him from his intellectual pursuits. He said, “Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.” He left Amsterdam and supported himself grinding lenses while writing books of philosophy. He lived in solitude and studied the work of Bacon, Boyle, Descartes, and Huygens. Spinoza published three books while he was alive, though more of his writings were published later by friends. The only book that named him as an author was Principles of the Philosophy of René Descartes (1663). He withheld much of his work because he feared retribution from a group of theologians who had publicly accused him of atheism.

For more than a century after his death, Spinoza’s work was widely considered heretical and atheistic. But toward the end of the 18th century, his ideas underwent a revival. Thinkers called him “holy” and “a man intoxicated with the divine,” and he influenced philosophers such as Goethe, Herder, Lessing, and Novalis. According to the philosopher Hegel, “to be a philosopher, one must first become a Spinozist.”

Spinoza said, “The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”

And, “If you want the future to be different from the present, study the past.” WA
==
On this day in 1639, 1st observation of transit of Venus by Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree - helped establish size of the Solar System...1859 English naturalist Charles Darwin publishes "On the Origin of Species"