Civil Disobedience...

Under what conditions is it morally justified to break the law?

In what sort of cases would you endorse civil disobedience? In your answer, think about 1) how would you define the idea of an unjust or immora law. Would you agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all'? and 2) what cases (if any) would count in your view as legitimate uses of civil disobedience? 

Civil disobedience, which is the refusal to obey certain rules or laws. One good example is the underage smokers and drinkers. Every state has a law on buying liquor and cigarettes but these vendors tolerate it for business. Yes its not right to sell anything illegal to underage but what about those people who gets it for them.

St. Augustine states that an unjust law is no law at all, i dont agree on that statement because there are a lot of laws that imposses on us and it does not justifies to what they state on things that should be done.

Buddhism...

According to Buddhism, the main source of our suffering is our preoccupation with our own desires. Suffering is said to be caused by selfish cravings and desires. The way to enlightenment, for Buddhism, therefore involves detaching from our narrow concern with ourselves, escaping the prison of our own desires and illusion. 

Do you think it is possible to live according to this teaching in the contemporary United States? Is there a conflict between what Buddhism teaches, and how we are encouraged to think and act in our society? What are your thoughts on this. 

I agree that the main source of our suffering is the cause or our selfish cravings, our indulgence to our impulsiveness. It plays a part to why we're having a hard time when it comes to presenting ourselves to what we need. The way to enlightenment involves detaching from our narrow concern with ourselves escaping the prison of our own desires and illusions, i believe its possible to live with this teaching. We suffer everyday and for all reason are related to personal reasons, money problems are encoutered almost every minute in a persons life. But also there are other reasons some things in our lives like for example the things that get us affected from work, from school, from relationships, stress can brought us suffering.

Greed keeps us in sight of the impulsiveness we decide for our lives, i think that is 1 reason that there is suffering, the desire of wanting more for more than what we have. In life we suffer because we wanted to reach something higher standards but instead of using the suffering as a lesson and learn from the mistake we made. But instead we use it as an excuse to create more stress and end up in more suffering.

Cosmological & Design Argument...

You think philosophy might contribute to the understanding of religion?

Personally i believe philosophy has a lot of contribution when it comes to the understanding of religion. I believe in God, my family is somewhat religious. Philosophy has helped me to understand different kinds of religion other than catholic christian, their beliefs and there tradition. Its confusing that we have all these different kinds of religion but we only try to understand who is the creator of everything. Then we have all these philosophers and their beliefs or their thoughts and arguments of what they believe in, and people actually follow them and support to what they believe in.

Yes, i believe that philosophy has a great influence in religion, it helped alot in a form of making people accept what they believe.

Functionalism & artificial inteligence...

Some philosophers, including John Searle, say that computers are not really intelligent. Rather, they just stimulate intelligence. However it could be argued that, just as computers are programmed to respond in different ways to different commands, so human beings are 'programmed' by society, an education to perform certain tasks. For example, we are programmed to do complicated things like speak a language, as well as more somple things like brush our teeth. 

What are your thoughts on this compassion? Is there any difference between the programming computers, and the 'programming' of humans by society?

Computers are made by humans, its program is designed by humans, its generator that provides its service is also made by humans. I agree to computers' stimulate intelligence, as we based our processors to what and how we want our computers would run, the speed, the commands, the applications and everything is acquired in its mother board and stilmualted by its own "brain" or what we called processor.

Considering with this argument, i would say that there is not much difference between us, humans and the computers. Indeed we are programmed by society, we educate ourselves, we present ourselves to the knowledge that we accomplished or acknowledge. We study and we learn, by that process we gain more intelligence within ourselves. And same thing as the computers, we program their input and they process it. We can be the same based on experiences and knowledge, but the only difference that i can see it the emotions and feelings that we, humans have. Artificial intelligence can't process emotions, not unless you imply that inout in them.

The movie Bicentennial man, personally i loved that movie. It has a great example of an artificial intelligence acquring an emotions within itself. Since he's with the family over centuries, he actually acquired the feeling of lonely, sadness and the need to find its own self. Another very good example of a movie where computers manipulating humans is the movie, I Robot. The main computer of the company is the one who controls everything and even led her creator to kill himself.

In our generations up to date, we have a lot of things going on, politics, war, inventions, superstars, high-end technologies. Everything is through online, i think humans are the only ones who's capable to manipulate computers to its extent.

Dualism & Physicalism...

Should we, as human beings, think of ourselves as made out of two different substances, like Decartes argued? Or are you persuaded by the arguments of physicalism that we are purely physical beings? If  you agree with Descartes, how would you explain the fact that our mental life seems to be very closely connected to a physical organ, namely the brain. If you agree with physicalism, how do you explain the fact that our mental life seems to be like nothing else in the physical world (think of how unique something like consciousness is, for example). Write your thoughts on these issues. I think i would agree to Descartes' arguement. Somehow our mental and physical actions are connected sometimes we do things out of consiousness, our minds are connected to our body, and sometimes our brain tells us what our actions should be but there are times we go on the other direction. Between physical and mental qualities, theres always a direct contact to where our actions are coming from. Descartes was the first to identify the mind with consiousness and self-awareness and to distinguish this from the brain. Within the things we do we have actions that just done by our own mind, its like the brain is working on its own and then all of a sudden we stop and say "what am i doing?" we have actions that we are aware of, thats our mind and body connected, thats when we actually communicate with our brain, and work together.

Pragmatism & Feminism...

Pragmatism and Feminist Epistemology both challenge the view of knowledge as a detached, intellectual activity. Do you think they are right? How do you think we should think about knowledge? Now that we have concluded the section on epistemology, write about what kind of thing you think knowledge is.

Knowledge, its something an individual should have in order to succeed, in order to determine right or wrong, in order to survive. We gain more based on experience, facts and also from our mistakes. Im mutual about how they view knowledge is. It is something we can question it, something we have within ourselves to make us aware of everything going on. It's something we can use to control the way we live.

Empiricism...

What do you make of empiricism's claim that all of our knowledge is based on the use of our senses? What areas of knowledge do you think support this theory? Are there any types of knowledge (mathematical knowledge, for example?) that you think are a problem for this theory?

The view that experience, especially of the senses, is the only source of knowledge.

Empiricism, an oppsoing theory to rationalism. Senses can't support our knowledge, awareness in the kind of forms is a sturcture of a true knowledge. Commonsense on the other hand, can view senses to provide us knowledge, this however is adopted in some sort of empiricist view.

This theory would be claimed that our source of knowledge is based on experience. One reason might be that every proposition that we know is either a direct report on experience or a report whose truth is inferred from experience. A second reason for maintaining that all knowledge is dependent on experience would be that we can have no ideas or concepts which are not derived from experience. Mathematics for example, the truth in their area of knowledge are independently from experience. I have read it somewhere that in an unarguable statement that, mathematics ability is to yield important knowledge  about the world. I know math is frustrating sometimes but the for someone to have the knowledge of doing such problems, hands down.

Their are areas or types of knowledge, priori which is obtained without the need of observing the world. And posteriori or what they called the empirical knowledge which is obtained after observing the world or interacting with it in some way.

sites: Empiricism

Descartes...

What do you think about methodological skepticism? Do we ever follow this procedure in our daily lives, or do we do the opposite. In other words, do we tend to believe things until it becomes impossible to believe them, rather than doubting everything we can? If so, does this suggest that methodological skepticism is not a good strategy? 


Descartes was regarded as a thinker during his lifetime in able to provide for his philosophical thoughts/works he had acquired this method of methodological skepticism. It is to discard any ideas that can be doubted, and then to restitute them in order to acquire a true knowledge. I think this idea might work to some people who are overly stressed. Think about it, there's a word called "assume" where i think everybody uses it before they even have the understanding of what the event/story is. And this is when we cause an impulsive thought of doubt. In some cases we are allowed to gather facts to be able to state the truth about something. 


Do we follow this procedure? Not necessarily, but for a better acquisition in our daily lives i think we need to practice this method. With our economy, whats happening with our climate, and some other events i think we have to stop doubting the impossible outcome or of whats going to happen next. Human brain is full of skepticism. That is why sometimes we get anxiety attacks because we put doubt on everything. Negativity is what we always think first. 


I won't say that this method is not a good strategy, but i think it would be helpful for us.

Plato's cave...

In the Allegory of the Cave, Socrates suggests that, without philosophical education, we are all like the prisoners in the cave. What are your thoughts on this? How is philosophy supposed to be liberating? Do you think Socrates is right to be so pessimistic about life without philosophy?


The prisoners in the cave are the people that are chained down to see nothing but dark, blinded by the darkness and have no knowledge of what is going on in the outside world. The fire represents their only light which may not even be enough to see walls, only shadows that casts by it. In reality, we are like prisoners of our own thoughts, beliefs and perspective. We can apply what we learn from our parents and teachers, priests, or community leaders but we literally dont have to chain ourselves with only that. A person's mind is like a crops field that keeps growing, plant a seed and it'll grow. We can't just stick to what one person will say, in realization its just an opinion.


I believe philosophy is liberating because we are our own philosophers. We learn, and we apply. We teach and people apply. But whats liberating to it is that we can add soemthing to it, we can put a design to make it our own. Humor it a little bit.

What can we learn from philosophy...

Philosophy... critical thinking. Maybe with this course i can learn and have the understanding of what really goes in the mind of my two year old, but then again he's still growing so i can still play tricks on him *evil smile*

what makes philosophy interesting is that there are a lot of ways to think. our mind is a field of knowledge, at times when we read we can think of how the story goes, but then to others it comes out very different. and sometimes its just about the same. on the higher ground of arguements people always have misunderstanding because one could be thinking of a subject but the other person is thinking of a completely different topic. 

balance. thats what i want to learn in philosophy. how to balance a critical mind. thoughts can be pursuasive, it can lure you to something else that's really out of the main course. and its hard because sometimes you want to believe on whats out in the open but then your mind wants you to think of something else. i know its confusing, thats why im always confuse. 

have a good weekend... 

08.29.2001

Good morning everyone. Hope you guys had a good weekend forget about the hurricane. I hope all of you were safe. In my area, it wasn't that bad, only tree branches fell off but other than that it was fine.

...and the semester begins. GOOD LUCK!