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Overview
Descartes goes on to say that he will try to prove not only that God exists, but that his existence is clearer and more certain than the existence of anything other than ourselves--that we can be more sure that God exists than we can be that tables and chairs exist.(Ockman, William, "Medieval Elements in Descartes." http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/z3611.html accessedApril 8, 1999)
Usually, for beginners the best places to gather information about this re-emerging and mysterious topic, is at local lectures or workshops. Other resources maybe the library or people who are interested in "new age" concepts, perhaps including yoga instructors, massage therapists, homeopathists, reverands, astrologers, and mediums/channelers or anyone who works with energy and healing.
30/11/2008 Descartes believes a lack of a belief in God will hinder the process of discovering truths that cannot be doubted. He says, Even so we shall not have met and answered the doubts suggested above regarding the reliability of our mental faculties; instead we shall have given mental force to them. For whatever way it be supposed that I have come to be what I am, whether by fate or by chance, or by a continual succession and connection of things, or by some other means, since to be deceived and to err is an imperfection, the likelihood of me being so imperfect as to be the constant victim of deception will be increased in proportion as the power to which they assign my origin is lessened. (Descartes, P. 90).
Mill believes a person should never be punished because his actions set a bad example or because the public feels they can not act responsibly concerning their own being(76).
22/11/2008 Going from a molecular to an atomic level, we can describe much more of what exactly water "is." In the final analysis, however, we find that the electrons which account, at least partially, for every characteristic of water fail to find definition, or a form. The only way to describe the multidimensional orbitals of electrons in water is through probability theory. History has seen the failure of the plum-pudding model, Bohr's orbital model, and every other definite model for the circulation of electrons. The only theory which adequately accounts for electron circulation in water, and thus, as a result, for all its more broadly recognized properties, is probability theory. Probability theory is, by the way, a method of saying, "We don't know!?"
A man of mild manners can form no idea of inveterate revenge or cruelty; nor can a selfish heart easily conceive the heights of friendship and generosity. It is readily allowed, that other beings may possess many senses of which we can have no conception; because the ideas of them have never been introduced to us in the only manner by which an idea can have access to the mind, to wit, by the actual feeling and sensation. (Hume, David S. "Concerning Human Understanding" Section II, 15)
28/11/2008 Pausanias discusses different kinds of Common Love. He says that if a person marries for money and gratifies his lover, this is Common ugly love. The wealthy person's love is not, because he was deceived. The deceiver still maintains Virtue. Pausanius says the same is true of the older Aphrodite's Love. The deceived maintains virtue as long as their intentions were seeded in virtue. For Pausanias virtue is the key to love. Love without virtue is inferior, Common Love.
The young are stronger, but the old more cunning. The older an animal or human gets, the more knowledge they possess. This knowledge is gained mostly through experience. A person can spend years in a classroom studying various subjects, but until they actually use that knowledge, and experience in the field the knowledge is useless. Hume writes in Section IX;
28/11/2008 The French philosopher Rene Descartes lived from 1596-1650. He was the son of an aristocrat and traveled throughout Europe studying a wide-variety of subjects including math, science, law, medicine, religion, and philosophy. Descartes was greatly influenced by other thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment.
Augustine seems to accept this general theory of Plato's, but he then proceeds to extend it to the realm of Christianity. The various forms which Plato believes are the realm of the "intelligible" or the "rational" are the very definition of god for Augustine. In other words, Augustine accepts Plato's theories and then redefines the realm of knowledge and forms as god himself. It is an interesting technique, but not completely in keeping with Plato. Where does this sudden redefinition come from? Does it follow the ideas of man's intellectual capacity for reasoning stressed by Plato?
25/11/2008 Socrates asserts that only he who is "by nature good at remembering, quick to learn, high-minded, graceful, and a friend and relative of truth, justice, courage, and moderation" (487a) qualifies to be a philosopher, and thus, a guardian. The question remains, if the "inferior masses" have a correct sense of justice, why must they remain pawns of the guardian and make no use of their own sense of justice, except to approve of the guardian? The obvious answer is that by Socrates' definition of justice, if a carpenter does anything but build, he is not being just.
John Locke believed that all people were equal and independent, and that no one had the right to harm another's "life, health, liberty, or possessions." Locke was not only a renowned philosopher in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, but he was an Oxford scholar, medical researcher and physician, political operative, economist and spokesman for a revolutionary movement.
An easy rebuttal to this objection is simply that we don't yet know the truth about electrons and water, and thus the form. This objection has no scientific basis. Any more accurate description of ele...
Augustine, however, emphasizes that free will does exist. Is this not a contrary position? Or does the concept of free will versus grace constitute another ambiguous, inexplicable belief-understanding...
Hume, David, 1711-76, Scottish philosopher and historian. Hume carried the empiricism of John Locke and George Berkeley to the logical extreme of radical skepticism. He repudiated the possibility of c...
Let's take the example of water. Someone who understands water only in terms of the wet stuff that comes out of the faucet obviously has an incomplete conceptualization of water's form. If water is re...
Gross experience is loaded with the tangled and complex; hence philosophy hurries away from it to search out something so simple that the mind can rest trustfully in it, knowing that it has no surpris...
Marx plainly states that historical materialism is as quantifiable as the natural sciences while the philosophy, religion, and political facades associated with historical development are the ideal an...
It is custom alone, which engages animals, from every object, that strikes their senses, to infer its usual attendant, and carries their imagination, from the appearance of the one, to conceive the ot...
Locke's assertion that an alien is exempt from the laws of a country to which he is not a citizen is a curious segment of his doctrine. Would an alien then be free to commit crime in a foreign land? W...
Therefore, according to Plato, a just ruler should not seek war, because war is unjust. War is evil, and "The creation of evil is not an accomplishment of justice, but a failure of justice." For Plato...
In response to the skeptics, Plato argues that the tyrant is not therefore truly happy, and that this can be seen in his behavior. Ruled by lower passions, tyrants are known to displace Reason with Em...
Locke's concept of the social contract is much more palitable than Hobbes' was. Locke not only delineates the nature and cause of the social contract, but he rationalizes his reasoning better. Locke's...
Hobbes also seems to have entered his argument with the foregone conclusions that 1) monarchy is the best form of the state and that 2) a monarch or government need not be accountable in any way to hi...
Dewey is asking us to accept the selective emphasis of the "inconclusive integrity of experience" as a starting point, but by doing so he is guilty of what he criticizes. How can there be "an empirica...
However, in Machiavelli's time, as it is today, the States whole reason for being was to serve the citizens, not vice versa. Machiavelli believed the only purpose for a ruler was to make war, and prot...
Hobbes also seems to assume that the natural position of man is one of chaos where everyone has right to everything and might makes right. It seems to me that this idea is questionable. Can mankind in...
There are, however, two possible reasons for de Beauvoir's primacy of freedom for others. One is that she has created a value scheme which promotes such values. But if this were simply the case, there...
The discussion in part I on despair and the causes and results of this despair is a fairly scientific description of observable phenomenon in the human psyche. The dialectical method of examination of...
Dewey wanted to be as naturalistic as Locke and as historic as Hegel. This can indeed be done. One can say with Locke that the causal process that go in the human organism suffice, without the intrusi...
Hofstader, a supporter of Dewey's metaphysics describes "the aim of metaphysics as a general theory of existence. . .the discovery of the basic types of involvement's and their relationships" (Qtd in ...
Now empirical method is the only method which can do justice to this inclusive integrity of "experience." It alone takes this integrated unity as the starting point for philosophic thought. Other meth...
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