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...
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09/03/2010 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). |
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04/03/2010 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) |
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12/03/2010 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; |
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09/03/2010 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? |
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05/03/2010 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. |