Final Exam

3). I don't deserve a B, I feel that I earned a B with the effort that I put forth. I have done all of the postings in a timely manner, and I did the best the I could to complete them as best as possible as well. But more than that I have made the effort in emailing you about redoing my midterm which I did because I care about getting the best grade possible. I am not going to claim a grade that I didn't believe that I didn't truly earn. I also thought that my progression from the beginning to the end of the class was huge. More importantly than my grade I have learned a lot about philosophy but I have also been able to look at things differently and expand my view on things which will help me in the future.

4). My real name is Mark Allen Reynoso

5). My user name is markman3188

5a). My midterm grade was a C. I revised or tried to revise it but on the revision I got a B. I wasn't really sure what I needed to do to get a B on it. I put in as much effort as I could because I need a B in the class so I am able to play baseball and I will revise till I am able to get a B. My link was http://markman31.blogspot.com/2007/09/midterm.html

6). My email address is markman31@aol.com

7). Philosophy- http://markman31.blogspot.com/

8). I have done all the required reading for the class and as we have gone on the subjects have interested me more and more. In the beginning I didn't really enjoy reading about cellular automata.

9). I have watched on the films and for the most part I found them to be very informing a couple of them I didn't necessarily agree with what they were saying but they helped broaden my horizons and allowed me to think outside the box which was good for me because sometimes I can be narrow minded with my thinking. Some of the genes came from my dad which I can't get rid of especially living with him.

10).

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Week 8- Films- Aliens from Spaceship Earth

This film was kinda hard to understand but it is talking about life. Depending on what religion you believe in some have a master of believe that God gave you life. That we are living in what they would think as the happiest place on Earth. I didn't really understand the end of the movie where the guy is talking about the bank closing and the other guy telling him to shut up. Maybe it is talking about that there are more important things than money in the world and that we
put to much of an emphasis on money or tangible goods. All the people in the movie seemed so happy for some reason and it is hard to achieve that in the type of world that we live into today. I mean everything is what am I getting our of this not what I am doing to benefit us as a whole. We have no unity and we always want people to things for us for free well it shouldn't have to work like that. The only thing that I don't like about the lifestyle that we live is that we do the same thing over and over again. We are so boring. I mean for the last 15 years, I go to school and do homework and now I go to school and then go to baseball everyday and nothing every changes or so it seems so. Things change that you don't want to change like losing friends and
the time of year but nothing really changes with us. We will always be the same person. We will lie, we will cheat and we will steal from life. I think that we should be doing so much better as a society than worrying about things that don't really matter.

Week 8- Film- The Zahir

The Zahir is a a coin and that there is nothing less material than money and that it is nothing but abstract and future times. Money can be anything that you want it to be. These thoughts about money makes you believe and leads us to believe that we are greedy. Some people have a lot of problems when it comes to money. Where do we fit in as a whole society. The problem is that we live in a consumer society where we are materialistic and that we believe that money can buy us what we think is our happiness. My older brother once told me, that Mark if money can't buy you happiness than well you probably aren't buying the right things. Listening to that I now saw my brother as an idiot. Money is not what I am looking for, I am looking for the truth. When I
mean that I am looking for the truth I want to find what the meaning of life is, why am I here, what am I suppose to do? Money is an object that gets in the way of our goals. Yes money is a necessity to life but we need to be able to live. The problem is that as a society we are brained washed into thinking that we need all these different things that will solve all our problems but in reality it makes us feel worse. Sometimes we will do things that we dont want to do just so we can have our utility. The problem with money is that it drives us to our insanity and is utlimately the destruction to all mankind. We need to start worrying about more important things like world peace or feeding those that do not have anything to eat at night time. That
is what is important, not the type of sports car that we are driving.

Week 8-Film- Inner Visions and Running Trains

"Who knows what may happen to me at the time of death? I may enter the state of unconsciousness, enter the state of dreams and see railway trains. . . How can I make a claim about my attainment of the Ultimate? The truth is that I know nothing." --Baba Faqir Chand. This passage is nothing but the truth and when you look at this it is really scary. Here is what makes it so scary and hard to understand. What's really hard to understand is that human nature is scared of the unknown. We try to put this front up as if we are not scared but the
reality is that we are scared because we do not know what happens after we die. But what makes it even worse is that we don't know when it is our time to go or how we are suppose to go. I guess thats what really makes it part of the life cycle because it factors all these things in. I mean that some of us are gonna die from cancer or natural causes while others might go in a car accident you just don't know.

But what this leaves me to believe is that there is an ulitmate goal for us and that someone made us what we are today. I dont mean that our parents made us because yes that is a given, I mean that we come from something more than just that. I mean can you answer the question
where we were you in 1915. No you can't but you had to be somewhere it is as if that are memory was erased.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Week 8- Assigned Reading- On Learned Ignorance by Nicholas Of Cusa

In chapter one it talks about how we do not know anything and we are trying to find out the truth. And of course they go with Socrates that in the end Socrates did not know anything. Well here is my thing on that. That there are a lot of things that we do know, I mean we are able to say that everything in this universe is made up of atoms. But at the same time there are a lot of things that we don't know or that we will never be able to find out. That is a part of life. There are things that we probably are better off not knowing like what happens to you after you die? That is something that I do not want to know. And yes i do fear that as well as everyone else fears death. You have to fear the unknown because you do not know what the unknown is made
up on. But back to the point of not knowing anything, we no that gas is a combustable product. So there are things that we do know just a lot of questions that we can't find answers to.

It then goes to talking about it is self-evident that there is no comparative relation of the infinite to the finite. Which this makes a lot of sense because this is something that we are able to know. For truth is not something more or something less but is something indivisible. I agree with that statement that he tries to make because once you have a final solution that is the final thing and therefore can not be divided or taken away because you already know it.

It then goes into talking about generation. And that God is the being of things and I do agree with that statement because generation does mean that things happen over and over again. Just like it says in the context like father like son. I mean you are going to be almost exactly like your dad whether you want to be or not. I mean you have half of his genes and then to top it off, if you live in his environment you are going to be a match with him even if you do not
think so. So i think at some point in time things will stop changing.

Week 8- Assigned Reading- A Free Man's Worship

It is with science that is able to present us the world which allows us to create our beliefs. "That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave". Everything that Bertrand Russell says agree with. I think that Russell is trying to say that we are self learners and that we or our mind is what allows us to be so much different or unique from other people in the world. See there has to be a point of our existence not necessarily a God but there is something more than what we are doing now. There is something more than just the life cycle. It's as if we know to much but not enough. Because we are learning not so we can just take it to the Grave but we are learning because there is something more than just the Grave. What is cool is that no one can preserve a life past the grave, which means that we are our own worst enemies. Meaning that our purpose is to be able to find purpose for ourselves because not everyone is going to have the same purpose
because we all want different things out of life. This is what makes up our free mans worship that no one can take away.

"But the beauty of Tragedy does but make visible a quality which, in more or less obvious shapes, is present always and everywhere in life." When Russell says this it makes to much sense because someone has to get screwed its just a part of this world and life. I was unfortunately able to see this with one of my high school friends that I played baseball with. He was paralyzed in a car accident at the age of 19, doing nothing wrong just bad luck hit his car. But what baffles me that most is that, why do bad things happen to good people, but bad things don't happen to bad people. There has to be reason for that. I mean why does the drunk driver get to walk away while the sober passenger doesn't. Some things don't make a whole lot of sense and it is with passion that we want to search for these answers. Because around every corner there is something bad that can happen. There is a risk that we take everyday by waking up and going outside.

Week 8-Expert Lecture- Ramana Maharshi and Indian Philosophy

Maharshi was a living example of the teaching of the Upanishads. His life was at once the message and the philosophy of his teachings. He spoke to the hearts of men. Maharshi found himself within himself and then gave out to the world the grand but simple message of his great life, "Know Thyself". I think that this way of life or living is the only way one can live there life. When you go by "Know Thyself", you are your best teacher for the unknown. When you give yourself limitations or dreams, you know what to judge before you say anything because you know yourself better than you know anything else. Discriminate between the undying, unchanging, all-pervading,and the ever-changing, phenomenal and perishable universe and body. When you are able to this you will find your nirvana in the end. Thats what this talks about. I defiantly agree with this but what I have to say like people say when you get married you just know that she is the one, and you get this feeling inside. Well how do you know that you have reached your nirvana or found your ultimate happiness because being human why wouldn't we just strive to be happier, so it would be this cycle that you do till the day that you day.

The Indian philosophy that came from this was something called Yoga. The Yoga philosophical system is closely allied with the Samkhya school. From this type of philosophy you utimately try to reach your inner peace or get peace of mind. But with that you do not have to try to reach a God you are able to go with the form of Samkhya, so in a sense it is a lot similar to Samkhya. Indian philosophy denotes the philosophical speculations of all Indian thinkers, ancient or modern, Hindus or non-Hindus, theists or atheists. All that Indian philosophy is that they are searching for the truth. I think that this is the correct philosophy and most philosophy does try to make sense out of all of this. See we need to be able to search for the truth because once we are able to find out the truth then we know that we are going to find our happiness because we now have peace of mind. Without peace of mind or closeure you will never be able to be happy because you are living your life in fear of the unknown. But once you are able to not live your life in fear and you find the truth it will all make sense.

Week 8-Expert Lecture- Daniel Dennett and Consciousness and Physica

Brights are people that reject supernatural things. He talks about that it is time that brights need to come out of the closet and accept the things that are happening. Daniel Dennett believes that there is no God. He talks about how you can not prove a negative but he believes that God does not exist. He then talks about how no two people think of or worship God in the same way. He believes that no to many people believe in God but really they just try to be devoted to it. But most of the people behave that there is no God. He talks about how you would take this risks because you no that God would be there to save you or give away your things. He says which makes a lot of sense is that God is too undefined.

Evolution he then talks about having a certain direction but not by design. His favorite image of this is going up is being the rise of complexity but at any moment it could crash, that it could be a saw tooth. But that the trend shows that there is progress in design. With Natural selection that it is possible that there is something more possible that has yet to unravel. However, he doesn't know that it is a coherent idea that there is something more to come that we just do not know about. He talks about individual organisms that give you real purpose that by design are a part of natural selection. So in the end that there are open possiblities not enough reasons are assumptions to say that natural selection happens by design. But Dennett says that it simply happens to happen.

I don't know if I necessarily agree with what Dennett is saying because to first start things off, everything has to happen for a reason. Newton said that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". That statement holds to much power for things just to happen to happen. There has to be a design or a purpose of natural selection or for the big bang theory. You don't have to believe in God to believe that but, we didn't just become who we are today without a
different variety of things happening. Then he talks about how God is to undefined, well if you go off of Socrates theory everything is to undefined so how can you believe in anything which at some point you need to believe in something. I think Dennett had some bad experiences in his life because humans don't believe just to believe or at least I don't because that is just a waste of time.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Week 7- Film-Nietzsche and the Myth of Eternal Recurrence

The eternal hour glass of existence will turn again and again and we will just become the dust is straight from the movie but what I like about that saying is that we are nothing but a series that happens over and over again. It is known as the life cycle or human nature. But what I really enjoyed is how they ask the question would you really want things to happen again and again, all over again and be stuck where we are at? What makes this different is that this questions makes you wonder, what is the point of human existence. Because when people say animal cruelity, that humans are the dominant species here, well I am sorry but I believe that the world does revolve around us. But that still doesn't help us understand the question why are we here and what are we suppose to do with our life? It seems as if we are in the waiting room of a doctors office waiting for our name to be called but we do not know what is wrong with us or why they are going to call our name. So once again we believe that our soul as eternal life or at least that is what the bible says and we do not know anything different.

I believe that there is eternal life and that heaven is on earth but right now as I speak, we are living in hell. Everyone says how can you be living in hell, well how can another person kill another human being or a life? How is it that we are so ruthless, that we will cheat, lie and steal to do anything to save or butts? This is why I believe that we are living in hell, I mean I know there are good things that happen on earth like the birth of another person or some do good, but most people are greedy just looking out for themselves so they can make another dollar. Our existence is something different something more than just a life, but it is sacred, it is something
that is meant to bring joy to the life of others. That is our eternal existence.

Week 7- Film- Flame On

Marcel Proust said that " overtime this "homosexuality" is something that will become seen as a harmless pastime". That we don't know what are our best qualities. We used to think that our best quality was our ability to please others but that no longer seems to be true. I don't agree or disagree with homosexuality. My take on that whole deal is that God gave us our freedom and said that we have the ability to make our own decisions. We all have to make choices in our life some that we do not want to make but some that we have to make. Homosexuality is a choice that one has to make and it is not any other person decision besides your own. Just like no one can tell you who you are able to fall in love with, that is a choice that you have to be able to make
own your own. The right to think for yourself is something that no one can take away, it is what makes us unique or different than each other because in reality we all have similar traits and we share similar features but its or ability to let our mind wonder that allows us to be who we are.

What I don't understand about homosexuality is that I don't know as human beings how the majority of people are able to say that it is so wrong. Or that this is not what god wanted or created but I think that if you are a believer in religion you would understand or know that God already has created or masterminded the ultimate plan for you so he already knows that choices that you are going to make and he already knows how you are going to live your life because he wants you to live in that certain way. Just as if that God knows when it is your time to go because he is your creator.

Being a religious person myself I believe that religion is everything and that in the end we will be judge and gods kingdom will have no end. Making a choice of homosexuality is a choice and is something that is your choice and no one should or is able to tell you what you can do with your life because it is not there life to live. Every person in this world thinks that they know best for you but the person that really knows best for you and is your best teacher is yourself because you know your capabilities or things that you like and don't like so its your choice.

Week 7- Assigned Reading-Peace, Non-violence And Conflict Resolution

"Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law-to the strength of the spirit...." these words are spoken by Gandhi. What philosophy that I like about Gandhi is that he is so ruthless when it comes to non-violence. Especially when he is trying to prove a point. Basically what Gandhi believes or goes off of is
that he believes and preaches that human nature is great or better than brute force. That as a human being we have self respect and honor not to become confrontational with other human beings. Unlike most other philosophy teachers don't believe or have a different view of religion, Gandhi believes that everything happens through the greater power and without him these non-violent acts would not be as possible. He believes that it is the Grace of God to save our people.

Nonviolence is common to all religions, but it has found the highest expression and application in Hinduism. All religions don't preach for violence but Hinduism under no circumstance are the permitted or able to fight back with violence because then they are looked at as weak or not as strong as there opponent. What Gandhi then says that just because you do not fight back that does not make you a coward, because it is in all religions.

When Gandhi does into talking about nonviolence, he talks about being a coward. He says a coward is not a person that does not fight back, but a person that runs away from violence. So basically what he is saying is that you have to have a strong will and be able to take a hit or two to prove a point that that they can not hurt you no matter what you do and that you are not scared. He believes that is more powerful than being able to fight back with force.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Week 7- Assigned Readings- On the Genealogy of Morals

I found it interesting how the first thing that this articled talked about is how humans are so ignorant but it gets even better because then it talked about how we don't even care or want to learn why we are so ignorant. The first thing I say to this is that it is very true but the problem with human nature is that we don't want to say that we are ignorant or call it ignorance but we want to hide it for as long as possible. Anything that can hurt us and not help us we want to hide if for as long as possible. This all starts off because we are greedy people that are always looking to benefit themselfves in any way possible.

We are most defiantly "self-absorbed" people. Here is the thing a lot of these ideas are not new and they go back from the very beginning of survival of the fittest. If you think about it, it makes prefect sense. We are self absorbed people why will because of evolution has told us that we have to be greedy or only looking out for ourselves if we want to be able to make it in this world. Here is my take on this, if you don't look at for your self who is going to look our for you?
You can say that I am proving there point but I am realistic. No one cares about anyone else, I mean take a look at your care and all those dents that you have in the door will prove that. But if you don't look out of yourself you will get ran over or like my baseball coach says you will just look like every other person in this world and will get lost in the mix. Sad to say I know but we have to be self absorbed or at least confident in ourselves that we can get the job done.

Then it goes on a little bit further to talk about human morality and this is where I am sum it up in less than a line that humans they don't have any morality and ethics, well i think we all lost those a long time ago. This was me giving up on the human race.

Week 7- Expert Lecture-Why Turn Vegetarian?

I am not sure that I agree with this film that we should stop eating meat because I think that the film maker is unaware that there is a life cycle or as some call the food chain. So when it talks about us killing these helpless animals it's called Darwin's theory of evolution of survival of the fittest. Not to mention that an animal is not even close to being a human on anything level therefore you can never say that we should not eat them. And the nutrients that we get from an animal, the protein or the good fats that we need to survive. It is a different story that I do not agree with that if you are just killing an animal to kill an animal, I believe that it is wrong and should be considered as if you are killing a human being. But we need to be feed and I would never not want to eat me because I like the taste of hamburgers or of a good steak. I think it is rather funny how in the state of Texas they called it in humane to kill the Cow the way that the were killing the Cows before. I think that we are giving animals way to many rights. If you don't like it you should move to another country because in a third world country they don't have in humane things. The way they slaughter there animals are way worse.

Another thing is that we have more important things that we should worry about before we worry about this. A crime problem that is bad is the crime in Southern California. Forget about the Cows, we should figure how to stop people from shooting other people. And some people might be or get offended by what I am about to say but I think that the human race is the most important species on the planet and yes I believe that we should come first. This doesn't mean that we should be able to do anything that we want to do becasue we do need limitations and we should not be able to inflict animal cruelty but we should have the ability to eat them, I mean it is all part of the circle of life.

Week 7- Expert Lecture- Sam Harris and the End of Faith

I like the fact that Sam Harris talks about living in a secular world and in this secular world people who believe in faith or fanatics and these people are people that are arrogant and that they only believe their own kind. Sam Harris talks about how we have all these notions about how God wrote these books that we read but how can we be so sure that God wrote those books when he wasn't around. He says that he is worried and he says that religion to us is turning into the Middle East. The fact that from a short few years from now you can sit in a cave in the Middle East with your lap top and be able to screw the human population.

The Sam Harris goes into talks about belief. A belief is a thought that your think maps onto reality. He talks about beliefs and how the can transform your life. That they are machineary to guiding your life. The level of thought brings out the lingustics of the world. That 23 percent of the US believes that Jesus will come back to this world and save us and what Sam Harris is saying that this believes don't happen in isolation. Then he talks about how we are building a
society of ignorance. Followed by these beliefs have a big geo-political problem not just a sunday thing. Then he says something that is interesting and that is we shouldn't be resisting so many things like stem cell research because we are losing so many lives from not testing further and that we are losing many lives because we believe that it is bad to use condoms. So in Africa more and more die form HIV every year.

I agree with Sam Harris. I believe that it is a tragedy that so many die year after year. There are so many things that we as a human race that we are not doing because we believe that it is wrong in a moral way when it can say so many more people like stem cell research. It can aid so many to having better lives. Sometimes we need to go against or morals or tradition, and be able to think outside the box especially when it is for the greater good.

Week 6- PHILOSOPHY FILMS: A Glorious Piece of Meat

I like the film how it takes about the eye not doing a whole lot that it mainly decivies it self more than it does good for the body. The eye can change the way that you look at things and transcend things. This film was interesting because it went back to the theory that you don't really know anything or that how can you be sure of anything. It was basically saying that how do we or how are we able to know about these neurons, when we are really not that sure of them. What I find different is that the human eye tends to screw the human brain more that you think. Take for instance if you are driving in a car you believe or think that you are driving slower than you are really going. Well you can say because you do not have any reference points but your eye tells you that you have more reaction time than you really have. Or if you look at an airplane that is just lifting off it looks like it is going slower than it is going when in reality it is going close to 500 mph.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Week 6- Assigned Reading- The Problem of Consciousness

By "consciousness" I simply mean those subjective states of sentience or awareness that begin when one awakes in the morning from a dreamless sleep and continue throughout the day until one goes to sleep at night or falls into a coma, or dies, or otherwise becomes, as one would say, "unconscious". This definition comes straight from the article because there definition explains it all. Being or being able to be consciousness is quite important. This is the ability to be an individual is what makes us unique otherwise we would all be the same and we would think the same but it is our dreams that allow us to set goals that we hope to achieve or give us our purpose to life.

The relationship between consciousness and the brain is that conscious states are caused by lower level neurobiological processes in the brain and allow the brain to function at a higher level. Consciousness commits us to a dualism of "physical" things and "mental" things. This in relationship is what allows us to be able to think the way that we think as humans.

Here's were we believe that there is problems with Consciousness.The characteristic mistake in the study of consciousness is to ignore its essential subjectivity and to try to treat it as if it were an objective third person phenomenon. What this means is that we allow to many third parties to examine the way that we think or the way that we see things. We allow people to interferr in our lives which end up slowing us down as individuals. Our mind and our thoughts that come
from our minds are something that no one is able to take away. This is something that we will always have which make us free us people.

Week 6- Assigned Reading- AN INTEGRAL THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

"Abstract: An extensive data search among various types of developmental and evolutionary sequences yielded a `four quadrant' model of consciousness and its development (the four quadrants being intentional, behavioural, cultural, and social). Each of these dimensions was found to unfold in a sequence of at least a dozen major stages or levels. Combining the four quadrants with the dozen or so major levels in each quadrant yields an integral theory of
consciousness that is quite comprehensive in its nature and scope. This model is used to indicate how a general synthesis and integration of twelve of the most influential schools of consciousness studies can be effected, and to highlight some of the most significant areas of future research. The conclusion is that an `all-quadrant, all-level' approach is the minimum degree of sophistication that we need into order to secure anything resembling a genuinely integral theory of consciousness." This comes from the Journal of Consciousness studies basically saying that there are four different factors in how we think as individuals. They have this really neat scale that shows us what regions of our brain do what different thing that make us who we are.

My favorite part of this would be the upper left region of the brain and this part deals with more behavior and concepts than anything else. The reason that I like this part of the brain so much is because it deals with things like impluse, one of the most important things that we as humans have to offer. There is nothing better than going off and making a judgement off of instinct. You can't go wrong because this is your gut feeling. When you start to allow yourself to second
judge yourself you than begin to make wrong decisions. Another part of this region is perception. This is huge when it comes to life. How do we look at others or see things but most importantly, how do we see ourselfves when we look into the mirror. Are our hands clean or are our hands covered with red ink?

The methodology of an integral study of consciousness would apparently need to include two broad things: the first is the simultaneous tracking of the various levels and lines in each of the quadrants, and then being able to show the correlations, each to all the others, and then trying to figure out what this means. This whole section on consciousness shows you that everything starts from the beginning and there are relationships to everything even though it may be on one end of the spectrum.

Week 6- Assigned Reading- The Astonishing Hypothesis

When Francis Crick talks about how we are "very core physical beings who have somehow deceived ourselves into believing that we are something more, something non-material, something transcendent", makes you really think about how big the human ego is. How can we be so certain that we are something more when in the sense of reality we are not certain about anything. How can we be so sure that we are transcendent? I mean let me ask you a question, where were you 5 years ago before you were bore? Will you can't answer that, because you don't know, I don't know. And after answering that question where are you going to be 5 years after you die? Probably at the same place you were 5 years before you were born. All we can be certain about is where we are now. To me it seems like we all live in different time worlds and that time starts to when you start. And because there was a beginning if you want to start with the big bang, than you know that there must be an ending. The only reason we know this is because there is a life cyle to things in life or we can also say that what goes up must come down because in life we have an equilibrium.

Francis Crick talks about where he has located what he calls "free will" in the brain. When he says that he found it he talks about what he calls his first assumption which is " that part of one's brain is concerned with making plans for future actions, without necessarily carrying them out. I also assumed that one can be conscious of such plans--that is, that they are subject to at least immediate recall." You see this everyday. Human nature is to want what it doesn't have or try to surpass what it already has because human nature is to be greedy. We look in the future when we should really just be looking in the present.

Then he talks about his second assumption which I liked the best because this has to deal with me a little more than the first one. And Crick said "My second assumption was that one is not conscious of the "computations" done by this part of the brain but only of the "decisions" it makes--that is, its plans." We all make plans, we all want to know what is going to happen in the future and this has to go back to human nature that we are scared for the future. You ask why
are we scared of the future? Well to start off we are scared because since we know that there was a beginning we know that there is an ending so, we are then scared for death why, because we are scared of the unknown because to many things can happen which we have no clue.
The bottom line is that we are scared for anything that we can't see or anything that hasn't happened yet.

Week 6-Expert Lecture- Gerald Edelman on Neural Darwinism

With our mind we make this world. I like this statement because without or minds and our imagination the world would not be what it is today. When looking at the brain you would not believe that 80 percent of the brain is made up of water. The brain is composed of many different things like a neuron. This neurons are charged particles that allow you to think. Cognitive computing is about engineering the mind. The most important trend to this is that there are certain minds from all different departments that are beginning to have dreams about putting a theory together about how the brain works. They talk about how we are trying to quicken the pace of how we learn cognitive computing.

Take about IBM research is an exploratory research place that not only studies technology but also studies science. Studying computer science as well as a new discipline called services science. They are starting a collaboration about mind that not only will change the IT world but will change the way that people look at things. They talk about how we are drowning in all this data and information that we no longer need to just look at computers but we need to look at computers in general.

Gerald Edelman is trying to expand our knowledge of the fundamental understandings of science. He has created many things or discoveries that have improved the quality of life for decades now. 1972 he discovered the antibodies and won the Nobel Peace Price. He has saved
many lives due to his work.

It is weird for an empirical scientist to talk about the mind but not a philosopher. At the very beginning of Western scientist said that the mind was taken out of nature. Galileo who is behind the beginning of Western science took it out of nature and began a new thing. Decartes came up with a new theory that Edleman believes is wrong and that is Dualism. Edleman talks about how we need a fundamental base about the world and then we need to be able to mesaure this expirmental and then we need to be able to find the differences.

Week 6- Expert Lecture- Steven Pinker on Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology is the study of the mind constraints on evolution. Steven Pinker believes that the mind was developed in the way that it was because of natural selection. When you seek the adapted mind then you begin to see that everything in the mind has an adapted part in natural selection except when it comes to dreams or music which he believes are by products of the brain. Listening to this you begin to think how weird this is because it is natural to believe that your mind is one or a whole. That it would all be part of natural selection because dreams are a part of what makes us human. Its for our dreams that allow us to think outside the box or sometimes give us hope when we are not able to see the light. Without dreams there would be no reason to roll out of bed because you would already know that it is not possible.Most Evolutionary scientist study the differences to the environment not to ones genes which is rather odd because you would think that the differences that we have would all be obtained due to the genes that we are given from our creator. But then again if you look at it, it
could also come from the environment because a person who lives in Southern California thinks and acts much different from a person who lives in the mid-west.Intelligence is a generic property. Steven talks about a robot and how it will never be able to be human. Kin selection is the key to understanding our social relations why people care more about there children, why blood is thicker than water or why airports are busy during the holidays. Kinship is almost everything. You have stronger feelings about your kin than anything else. Robert Trivers said that you love your brother and sister because they have 50 percent of your genes but not a 100 because what my brother wants isn't what I want and what my sister wants for me isn't what I want. This is interseting because my dad you know well all dad want things that I feel are not the best for me in my life.
Steven Pinker had some really great theories that show you why we think the way that we think. I love how he talked about benefiting from people who are not your blood relative is rare because in society today you don't see it happening. People are to in grossed or worried about themselfves to know what is going on.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Week 5- Film-"Creationism is science dressed in drag."

Creationism now realized that talking about god doesn't work anymore especially when it comes to science. Evolution is basically the ending of christainty so god is trying to get back in to biology. Basically this is saying that god and science do not work together. Depending on what you view point is I don't agree with this statement because I believe God and Science do work together. From a religious stand point if you are talking about saying the Our Fathers, it says that Heaven is on Earth. Everything that happens in life or with anything happens for a reason. I believe Science can answer some of this questions like for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction but for other things that are past the paranormal science can not answer. Let's say for why people are pronounced dead and some how they come out of that state when medicine is no longer a help surpasses science. It is something that we can not explain because it is not meant for us to be able to explain it. Some things in this world we need to understand may just be over our head.

Week 5- Film- "The Truth is that Truth Lies"

"Any meaning is better than no meaning". That we can not live withoutpurpose. It is the true that the truth lies so we are able to live another day. You can not put this in any better way than the way that the movie put it together. Like Jack Nicohlas says " do you want the truth cause you can't handle the truth". Well that is true because we are all trying to find meaning out of life. Like what the point of our existence is. We don't know what it is but it serves a purpose that we try to find it but we dont ever get there. This is what Benjamin Franklin said from the very beginning, that we are searching for the pursuit of happiness, however that is exactly what it means becuase we never may find happiness, but we are able to search, that is a freedom that our country has that some other countries don't have.

What we as man need to understand is that any meaning we are able to find out of something is better than not understanding it at all. Because there are a lot of things that we are not going to be able to understand simply to the fact that we weren't here in the time that it happened. No one is going to exactly understand why Hitler thought the why that he didn't. We didn't have any modern physcharists there to anylaze his behavior or his mind. We can kinda understand we he did things the way that he did based off of his actions but we are not 100 percent and we will never be to. Here's the thing, that we are able to understand a little bit we can get a better idea of what happened and know a little to why things happened the way that they did.

Week 5-Films- "Natural selection is really natural editing"

Looking from the way that this film is set up, it is easy to see that the film is talking about evolution and how we have changed. The film is taking about how we started out as monkeys and evolved over time.Also it takes about natural selection and how the strongest sperm wins in the fight for reproduction. A lot of this has to do with Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. That in this world a lot of people or things are going to become extinct due to the changing factors or what we would call evolution. Because we know that from the beginning of time to now things have changed drastically and continue to change day after day. Take a look at the dinosaurs as an example. No one really knows why the dinosaurs are extinct but if we have to take a guess the theory that we would have to go off of his the change in climate. That the dinosaurs were not able to adapt to the change in climate. Everything that happens, evolution, is part of the life cycle and is never going to stop. We are changing as we speak. The sun is rise and then the sun is setting. And one day the sun will set never to rise again. At that point what happens to man kind. We no longer can function anymore. A plant can longer create photosythesis. At this point we will become like the dinosaurs. But the point being is that just like the sperm fighting for the egg we as humans are fighting everyday, for a job to support our family or a house to help us live, life is a constant battle and those who lose or give up become no more.

Week 5-Assigned Reading- Richard Dawkins, ``The Selfish Gene''

Dawnkins in this article talks about humans have a "biologicaladvantage" to all other species and I believe this to be very true.Dawnkins talks about our hunting process to an animals and how we arejust much more sophisticated. Well this belief that he has comes backfrom the theory of evolution that we evoloved from different things.We as humans do have the advantage because we are able to fend forourselfves because over time we changed from being cave man to beingmore sophisticated coming up with better ways of hunting for food,producing food, and of course trough technology.

Week 5-Assigned Reading- Sociobiology

One the most well known philosophers came up with this idea ofsociobiology and his name is Edward Wilson. Sociobiology deals withthe success of reproduction in any type of species and this has todo with natural selection. Sociobiology has yet to really capturethe study of things that are not human, we tend to still not reallyunderstand them to there fullest. The reason for this is because insociobiology you have to take the culture and mind into account withand animal it is rather hard to do this. A second criticism concernsgenetic determinism, the view that many social behaviors aregenetically fixed. A lot has to do with they believe that there is astatus quo, so that is why this doesn't work for that.From that sociobiology is seen as evolutionary science in thebehavior of humans and how we change our thoughts over time.Evoulution not only has to do with the change of a humans genes overtime but it also has to do with how a human thinks of time or thepsychological side or culture changes of humans. What we end upseeing that is one of the biggest factors in sociobiology is socialstatus or wealth.This subject I think is so cool I like the section where it takesabout the selfishness about human nature. Because as humans we tendto be greedy or never satisfied with what we have. So research ortrying to understand why things happen with the way that they happenis really cool. Another thing is cool when it takes about cheating.When you get help but do not give anything in return. We all do thisand this is linked to humans being greedy.Edward Wilson has great thoughts, maybe the best theories thatrelate to things that are happening today and will be there in thefuture.

Week 5-Assigned Reading-Evolution 101

Biological Evolution is descent with modification. This is justsaying that the changes don't happen in couple of years but overgenerations we changed as humans becasue of climate changes orsocial changes. Usually things don't change over days but yearsthings happen like the ice age or global warming. These are thingsthat will change the structure of us in the long run. The basics ofbiological evolution which I agree with is the we do carry a commonancestor, that we all started off in the same place.This theory comes up with that basically in one or two differentways, we as human beings have something similar to another speiceslike a shark, it has a vertebre like a human and amphimians haveegss just like humans. So this goes back to the common acestortheory that we all came from the same thing.Off of this you then get a family tree, which I belive this to betrue that we share the same common patterns of differences.Thisshows the idea that all of life is related and can be divided intothree major clades, often referred to as the three domains: Archaea,Bacteria, and Eukaryota. All this evoultion goes back to the centralidea that we are similar to so many different things that we ashuman beings evolued to what we are now today from previous things.

Week 5-Expert Lecture- Richard Dawkins and the Strangeness of Science

What Dawkins says about the universe holds to be true. That philosophyor sciece will not be able to grasp it becuase we will really neverknow the truth. Science has taught us that everything is compose of anatom, a tiny empty space. Well with that if we are looking at a rockif it is a tiny empty space then we is it so big and hard, that youare unable to penetrate them. So basically he is saying that we aretrying to navigate through these different obstacles. That we live inthe middle world so that is why we are not capable of comprehendingeverything. I like how he talks about Galileo's theory that a heavyobject and a light object will hit the ground at the same time becauseof air friction it doesn't matter and this goes back to Dawkins theorythat we live in middle ground. That in middle world we have changed sowe are able to live here.

Week 5- Expert Lecture- Edward O. Wilson and Consilience

Wilson's thoughts in Consilience is that a common body of inherentprinciples underlies the entire human endeavor. He says that hebelieves that the scientists in the 17th and 18th century got it rightfrom the beginning. Basically saying that we live in a material worldwhich the knowledge we have comes from science and humanities. He saysthat we are in this world to be able to explain everything and complywith the natural laws. That this world acts in two ways. The first oneis that it is organized by the laws of physics and that it goes off ofthe basic theory of evolution. That everything must change in order toadapt to the constantly changing world. Wilson talks about the socialinstutions and what it means to man kind. Without social instutions wewould be lost souls and would not know what we should follow and whatwe should avoid. Wilson has a unique perspective which helps you torealize that without human thought, we would not be able to see howeverything is connected.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

MidTerm

Mark Reynoso-markman3188
Markman31@aol.com
Philosophy-http://markman31.blogspot.com/

8). Yes I have done all the required reading for the class.

9). Yes I have watched all the films some I did not understand completely but tried my best to understand them.

10.) Posts- Week 1- Expert Lecture- Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley video on Man's Search for the Truth is rather difficult to understand and follow. Huxley talks about the inconsistencies in what he has written throughout his life. Basically for Huxley he believes that searching for the truth is what sets us free. However searching for the truth well is only a search because we may never find the truth. Then he talks about the mystical experience of the universe which is rather difficult because you then bring up the
questions who are we, who is man, and what is the point to our existence? Thomas Mann says "the doors of perception" if we stay fixated on something then we do miss out on life is true. Huxley talks about an escape is that we all will experiment to find out what is true for ourselves.

Week 1- Expert Lecture- Francis Fukuyama on the End of History

In this video Francis Fukuyama says that the end of history may be near because the experience of the 21st century, he believes that we need to change our life styles. He believes that there has been a gradual evolution in modern liberal democracies. Francis believes that for the most part has been peacefully and the major democracies would not go to war. That only the smaller countries are fighting. Basically he is saying that history has a direction and it is going towards the good. Another thing that Francis says is that we are something special in creation and that at the end of this door there will be more enlightenment. Subjective experiences give us a sense of what is right and wrong. We have to feel certain away to do a certain thing. Which
means in principle you can build a robot as complex as us. Another thing that has a direction is that religion has a direction as well as history. That if you look at religion it is a common book of social rules or corporative rules. Religion is more functionally important than some people realize. However, we are in the age of science which has stripped away some meanings of religion. Francis says that religions will need to evolve to keep up with modern science. Francis
says that if you believe that our institutions are the struggles around us and it forces us to look at the abstract of basic principles.

Week 1- The Socratic Universe

After reading the texts I found some of the concepts to be truthful, however, some to be a little farfetched. I do believe that at some point or place we need to have a separation from religion and science. Most things in life science are able to explain but it’s for the paranormal or the occurrences that have no explanation you then have to look at faith. When you look at the earth and say how it was created you can then go back and say that the big bang happened which gave us where we live today. But where did that big bang come for? Can we really and truthfully answer all those questions with science? Most likely not so it is important to have a balance. In the text a lot of the reading had to do with how we answer the questions that we don’t know. There are many things that go behind the thought of a question. Whether or not you are going to answer that with more of a scientific approach or with a religious approach. If we are able to combine both of these then we will be able to better answer the questions.

Week 1- Apology by Plato

To the defense of Plato there are three different parts to the story. The first part to the apology is for his for his colloquial style. The problem with Plato is that he has always been his own worst enemy and I mean that because he feels like he has this undying passion that he has to tell the truth. Most people belie that he is subject to public opinion as well as he is the ring leader to the youth's opinion. His accusations can pretty much speak by his accusers as "Socrates is an evil doer". To his accusers that answer to that begins with that being a natural philosophy are that he knows nothing. See the thing is that you are not guilty of anything if you chose not to pursue anything because you are ignorant of them or you chose to say that these notions are not important. So not teaching anything is because he didn't know anything therefore he is not responsible for anything.

Week 1-History of Philosophy

As time goes on and we keep learning about human nature and the experiences that occur through life it is quite interesting to see that man has not really changed over time. We don't really know anymore today than we did yesterday. From a science stand point yes there are new break through everyday but from an ideological sense we are still stuck with the same question that no one can answer, why are we here, what’s the point of our existence? When looking at philosophy and examining the purpose of it, I think that one of the best things about it is that philosophy has not limits, no prejudgments, no stimulations. Philosophy changes from culture to culture but the questions that we ask ourselves are the same. From the ancient philosophy to contemporary philosophy today, philosophy is just trying to make sense out of things.

Week 1- Java Philosophy "Who are You"

This clip of video brings up some interesting questions. Sore Kierkegaard says “I see it all perfectly, there are two possible situations--one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or don't do it--you will regret them both. This was quote that stood out because it brings up so many different questions that you a can ask yourself about different situations. This simple Saying quoted by Soren plays a role when deciding if you are going to purse a dream that is well just a dream. And just for sometimes it is true that we do feel like we are a part of the a chess game that Soren talks about because there are times in our life that we are buried so far down that we can no longer see the light, or that the piece on the chess board can't be moved. But what I say to that is that for every predicament that you get yourself in there is always a way out because there was always way in. Sometimes we don't realize that we are stumping ourselves when there is always a move.

Week 1- Nicholas of Cusa

I didn't really understand the point to the film. I did like couple of different quotes that came from this because a lot of them are really truthful with life. "These points are recognized in mathematics, where the propositions are quite easily traced back to the first and most evident principles but where propositions are traced back with more difficulty because they are only traced back through the mediation of the earlier ones. This is interesting because this basically saying that we need to solve to problem instead of putting it off. It is often funny to think that Aristotle one of man's most intellectual people would not have known anything but I guess that is part of philosophy.

Week 3&4- Expert Lecture- Owen Gingerich on Astronomy and God

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible"-Einstein. That fact that we can hope to understand it’s amazing and that we have the ability because there is something fundamentally there to comprehend it. What I was able to pull from this video from Owen Gingerich is that the universe and religion there is unity. Without some of the gravitational constants we would not be able to live regardless of religion. What I find interesting is that he talks about people in general, how that everyone to a certain extent believes in god and that is why some people opt out of believing in a god. Sometimes people have a hard time believing that there is a god because we are going through so much suffering. What I found interesting is thinking about what happened before the big bang. Scientist are now coming to think about eternity, that when you think about time you are going out of our time because you would need change and motion, however you could define eternity because it is embedded. Most preachers’ thing in terms of cause and effect. Basically what Owen is saying about the big bang theory or before it is that scientifically are not able to prove anything. Christians for a long time have been talking about other dimensions in the sense that another universe would be heaven. What I found weird is that Owen being a preacher he regrets his faith not being as broad as it was as a child. What I picked up from the video which is most defiantly true is that the human race is in jeopardy if we do not change something. We are running out of resources. The future of the human race is dying because with anything in life there is a time frame or a cycle. That the human cycle is coming to an end.

Week 3 & 4-Expert Lecture- Stephen Wolfram and a New Kind of Science

"How does anything complicated get produced"-Stephen Wolfram, the question that he asks about anything in the universe. What is interesting that Stephen says is that nature follows some kind of rule. The conclusions that Stephen drew in 1982 were incorrect he believed that if something in physics or anything starts out simple it will be simple and if it starts out complicated then well it will end up being complicated, however Stephen used a triangle formula with a simple black cell to find out that something so simple can become quite complicated. Basically he came up with and found out that some of these rules didn't follow a general rule. What Stephen is trying to get at is that a simple cellular model can become really complex and it can begin to start to generate its own idea’s. His idea quickly translates to the world, that we live in nothing but space. That the particles bring up quanta mechanics saying that it has it's own random us and this goes into space and time. Watching this video I didn't understand the inferences that Stephen was trying to make. I don't get how a simple cell can well make up or well change anything. Unless you look at it from the stand point is that we are made up from cells and if you change a cell on us you are changing, well, you can pretty much change anything. But based on the ideas that Stephen was conveying through mathematics I think that it was amazing how we are able to determine those kinds of things from just a simple cell.

Week 3&4-Assigned Reading-Cosmic Inflation

Trying to understand the basics of cosmic inflation is a little hard to understand. Basically this is saying that the universe's expansion was because a vacuum pressure that exponentially grew. Inflation then caused the universe to expand which leads us to be we are at today. The whole reason that we look at inflation is because there seemed to be some holes in the big bang theory that seemed not to make a whole lot of sense so inflation can help us understand how the big bang theory works. The first thing to understand about this whole theory is that we can see the universe and we can touch it so by those stipulations we are than able to conclude that we are than unable to try to understand it. So if we can understand or come up with a base of what we are trying to understand than we can then expand our knowledge like physics or human physiology. In science there are basic principles and patterns to how things work. Most things follow these rules which make it quite easy for us to understand new concepts.

Week 3&4-Assigned Reading- WAS COSMIC INFLATION THE 'BANG' OF THE BI

Sometimes it is hard to believe or understand how the structure of our world or universe is because of thermal expansion. But if you look at it everything starts back to the beginning of science bringing that everything is made up of atoms and electrons. What scientist believes is that they have a problem looking into the big bang theory because of the "horizontal flatness". So with this whole theory that the universe exceeds critical density, than therefore we can come up with the assumption or the conclusion that there will be a reverse big bang theory to end time called the big crunch. It is hard for me to understand the whole pressure vacuum concept because it is not something that you normally hear about or it is such a new concept tome.

Week 3&4- Assigned Reading- Physics and Philosophy

Plato's idea that prisoners in a cave can only look in one direction is very truthful. He is not able to see shadows in the cave because there is no sun, that when he leaves that cave he will now be able to experience "the light of truth". What I love about being able to find out the truth is that we are than able to make our own judgments based on our own experience. We can hear stories or try to believe things but human nature better understands things that happen to them on first hand. So saying all this, by humans being able to understand science better and take different angles at it, we are now able to have a better understanding of the world and what is around us. I also like Descartes fundamental principle that we attempt fundamental knowledge. The understanding of mind and body is one of the first things that we need to be able to grasp to have a better understanding of things. The he talks about the relationship between me and the world. This is important because sometimes I think that the world is only a direct relationship between us and no one else that we may live-in different time periods. I mean where you were 1 year prior to your birth, I mean your parents were living yet we can't recall anything. Time has relativity.

Week 3 &4- Assigned Reading- The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum

The theory that Copenhagen uses is based off of classical physics. Basically this is saying that we are able to use experiments to find results and even with results and answers that there is still a bit of uncertainty about things that we are not going to be able to find out or understand. These concepts that Copenhagen is saying are difficult understand. I think he is trying to say or go back to Aristotle’s concept that we don't know anything, even if we think that it is apiece of paper that is made from a tree, which came from a seed, which is made up of atoms, which well we just don't know what that paper really is even with exact information of how it is made therefore even with experiments and a simple answer the answer may not always be correct.

Week 3&4-Assigned Reading-Science and Philosophy

"One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have."-Einstein. Einstein is saying that sometimes our best knowledge is outdated or that we really don't knew whole lot about anything. "What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism." Even withal the different theories that Einstein came up with he is still notable to explain matter to the fullest. He doubted his own an ability to find a "complete theory”.” The essential in the existence of a man like me is what he thinks and how he thinks, not what he does or suffers.” These words from Einstein basically say that through pain and suffering is how we learn and how we understand why things happen the way that they happen.

11). What Lisa Randall is saying that there may be more dimensions than we know about could be true. One reason that she says that there be more dimensions than we know about is because we are not able to conclude that there isn’t, therefore until proven otherwise you can conclude that there may be more. What I found interesting her work was that out of the four fundamental forces, gravity is the weakest force. The theory that tries to prove Randall’s thoughts of extra dimensions is the string theory basically saying that we need to be able to start with one dimensional objects and if we can figure out how they expand than we are able to come up with the an equation about how there may be more dimensions. There is evidence about the extra dimensions that may be out there but there is still much needed research to find out if there are more worlds out there.

12). Aldous Huxley’s view on education is that it is one of the most important things we can do in our life. Coming from a wealthier family Huxley was well educated and went to college. Going to college not necessarily gave him more knowledge but it allowed him to be able to explore possibilities and think for himself. For Huxley, his experiences drove him into how he perceived things. It is with education that we allow our minds to think. You can look at the four different parts of the brain which allow us to freely think or dream but in the end it's our education that allows our minds to be able to wonder. A person once told me that in college a lot of things that you learn you will not remember but what college teaches you is how to find answers and how to think for yourself which is more than anything in it's self. Huxley had a very open mind when it came to school because to go to college in this day of age you were considered to be so far advanced from others. I mean the majority of people didn't go to college because they had to feed a family by 15. So the education that he got allowed him to see things in a different context.

13). Science and religion are not compatible. When you look from the religious aspect, science contradicts everything that religion believes in. Whether it is with the theory of Darwinism, and the big bang theory, these theories are all unproven but it doesn’t mean that they are not true. Looking from the science side, religion is just a belief to believe thing, that there are too many uncertainties that fall into religion. And with science are able to prove these theories and come up with an answer. Socrates believes that you have to be able to reason to come up with a solution. He is saying that without being able to reason religion is like a cult, you are worshiping to maybe something that isn’t what you think it is because there is no logic behind it. But depending on what side you take you can look at Science from a religious aspect basically saying that there are things in Science that no matter who you are, you are not going to be able to answer them because these phenemons that are happening are way out of the normal. So when Science can no longer answer that question who do you look at? You have to look at religion. Yes i agree with the thought you don't believe just to believe because then you are just wasting your time but you believe because you know (instinct) that religion is what started us here. You can look at the big bang theory to why man is here but then you begin to wonder, what started the big bang? Can anyone answer that? Or than you can look at why Dinosaurs are now extinct? We could look at the theory of evolution but who tells what to evolve. There are two sides to every story just like the side of Science there is religion and vice a versa.

14). Socrates was tried and convicted by the courts of democratic Athens on a charge of corrupting the youth and disbelieving in the ancestral gods. The reason that this happened is because Socrates did not believe that God is real. He believed that with logic and reasoning you are able to prove that our existence is because of the ability to reason with a single cell. This is not always true science is not able to prove everything that has every happened. A single cell well what does that single cell mean. We don't know. Who decided to call it a single cell or make it to what we now know as we do today as a singe cell. Or that everything that is made up in the universe is made up of these single cells. Well Socrates just like the beginning of the black movement came up with these new ideas that went against what was accepted in society, therefore they through him in jail and killed him. What this says about society and in people in general is that we are narrow minded up people, and that we are not open to new things.

15). There are three basic principles of philosophy or to the study of what philosophy is about: metaphysics which would be the study of things and why they exist, ethics, which is the study and how one should live, and logic, on how we should reason. There are different branches to philosophy; the first one that I am going to talk about would be is Western Philosophy. "The point of philosophy is to start with something as simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it." Bertrand Russell said this, a philosopher that dealt with logic. His history of Western philosophy is often divided into three periods: Ancient philosophy, medieval philosophy, and Modern philosophy. The beginning of Philosophy would be the Greco-Roman philosophy which can be divided up into pre-Socratic period, the Socratic period, and the Post Aristotle period. Socrates and Aristotle were amongst the most known Philosophers whose principles and theories we still use to this day.

16). The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the big bang, the universe was created sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion. The theory is based on the mathematical equations, known as the field equations, of the general theory of relativity set forth in 1915 by Albert Einstein. However, the initial state of the universe is still an unknown and that this theory is the most accepted one to how the universe started but is still unproven. The inflationary universe is a theory that says that the universe expanded from nothing. The inflationary model has many interesting implications, including the possibility that our universe is only one of billions of universes. It is important to understand how the universe is created because it directly correlates with philosophy. This meaning that philosophy is the study of things and why things happen, to try to get a better understanding of the world.

17). Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is one of the fundamental concepts of Quantum Physics. Heisenberg’s framework is drastically different from classical physics. Einstein believed and used the practices of classical physics. The difference between classical and quantum physics is that whereas classical mechanics presupposes that exact simultaneous values can be assigned to all physical quantities, quantum mechanics denies this possibility, the prime example being the position and momentum of a particle. How they were the same is that they both were trying to come up with a theory of relativity or be able to explain it.

18). You have to find the meme theory plausible. I mean it corresponds with Darwin’s theory of evolution and if you do not believe that things evolve than you are still living in the Stone Age. Proof of this would be an example of a bat. Why do bats have wings? We don’t know why it has it but without them, bats would not be able to function. So without the theory of evolution by memetic selection nothing in the world of the mind makes much sense.

19). Evolution itself is simply the process of change over time. Biological evolution is an important thing to be able to understand because it allows us to be able to understand human nature better. Charles Darwin said "Natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life". In the end the basis of evolution is to try to understand the life cycle. Darwin’s basic theory of evolution is that all man is related through a common descent.

20). Fundamentalism is a mental disease because it’s our inability to see God. We can not see god. Therefore it is all in our thoughts which means that god can decompose too.The force of fundamentalism as well as the implications for interreligious dialogue, specifically, how can people entrenched in oppposing religious perspectives step away and really see how they think or communicate with others and how it affects them. I think that the Renaissance was a period of time that had a lot to do with a new era of fundamentalism being that it redirected people’s attention from God and the kingdom of heaven to humans and humanity’s progress in this world. With that people started to turn to science and question the workings of a god or a religion. This was really the new era when people started wondering if there were other answers outside of religion that might make a little more sense.

21). Gingerich believes “there is a God as a designer, who happens to be using the evolutionary process to achieve larger goals — which are, as far as we human beings can see, self-consciousness and conscience.” He said that you are not able to prove that there is a God. Gingerich believes in the common descent theory saying that we all start or come from the same place. Wilson argues that the belief in God and rituals of religion are products of evolution. Gingerich to me is a better theory and holds up better because it is able to explain some things rather than Wilson who strictly believes in the science aspect which doesn’t confirm the paranormal.

22). Francis Fukuyama talks about the “end of history” which is a really interesting thing to talk about because you can’t prevent the end of time. Francis is saying that we need to talk better care of the environment that we live in because everything in the universe has a life cycle but he believes that we are altering the life cycle by the way we live. He talks about the big bang theory and how that happened, that if there was a big bang theory than we must be able to assume that there is a crash theory where the universe will be of no more. Eventually the sun will die out and other things will happen and there will be no more existence, it is evolution. \

23). Nicholas of Cusa's philosophy of "unknowingness" is that we can not be definite or indefinite. As we all think that we have all the answers to all the problems that we really don’t. That we can’t even be sure if we are really holding a piece of paper because how we are so sure that it is a piece of paper. So knowing that, the things that we learn are things that we either experience or learn from other people.

24). The death of God is actually meaning that through all these different things or theories that we believe in, God is no longer an answer. Through cosmic, physical and absolute values, God no longer exists. With this in mind if god no longer exists and you can't see him that means that he must have been just like us. That we were worshiping an Ali and that he really wasn't a God. So the death of God they say it is what allows us to sin and forgive but who really knows that for sure because God if there was a God is no longer here to tell us that is why he died for us. Unless he really wasn't able to escape the cross because if he was able to escape from death who wouldn't escape. So when we now look at answers we look for more logical answers that may make a little more sense like the sense that science can answer a lot of these questions like how the world started.

25). The Little Things that Jiggle is an eye opening clip to watch because it allows you to understand how physics interacts in our everyday life. Basically saying that, man is man’s worst enemy. This happens to be really interesting because with all this technology that we are able to come up with, it is destroying our habitat. It is important that we know physics well because it is able to help us understand evolution or the big bang theory.

26). “To have freedom of religion one must also have freedom from religion." This is saying that to truly follow your religious beliefs you can’t be tied down to a single domination. Basically saying that no one can dictate how you believe. This means that the government is separate and if not than you are not able to find your own nirvana through religion. What is so nice is that we live in a free country where we can choose to believe in religion or we can choose not to. Basically if you have to believe in only religion you may not get to see what science has to offer or the answers that science can give you without a God.

27). Dawkins says that believing in God is delusional because he believes in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. That there is no proof that God has ever existed so why worship to something that can not be proven real. There is no evidence or tests that we will ever be able to do to determine if there is a god or not so you are wasting your time worshiping to something that does not exist. With this you have to believe that we all came from something greater than what we can think. That from the big bang theory which we can say time started. And as we see with Darwin's theory that everything evolves over time and if we dont evolve we then will become extinct like the dinosaurs. This goes back to the theory of survival of the fittest. This makes a lot of sense because the Earth has it limitations as well as the humans have as well. There can only be so many people on this earth before we start having problems whether it be with limited resources or just the space we need to survive. So Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest shows us that we dont need a god to determine why people die or for answers we do know that we are just like every other animal and that there is a life cycle and we, well, we are in it as well.

28). Science can offer a sense of mystery when it doesn’t coincide with the theological teachings of the bible. If you read the bible its says the universe was created in seven days, yet the big bang theory says that it is the beginning of life, to me that’s where I see the mystery. Whether you are a person that follows science or religion it comes down to what unknown you rather believe because there are many questions that science and religion can not offer. In the end they are a mystery to both of us but it is faith that allows us to believe because with faith you can believe in the unknown. Sometimes things are meant to be unknown and we are not suppose to be able to figure them out. However, with Science it seems to me that there is a black and a white answer. That you can't have a gray because to scientist there is a solution or answer to every problem just like math, there is no median ground.

29). Cellular automata suggest using a series of mathematical equations, number, and patterns to hypothesize or make predictions of biological behavior. Cellular automata are extreamly simple computational systems that create interesting images which show some even more interesting behaviours. Essentially, these images show the product of thousands of simple computations based on rules that should be followed regarding what that image is suppose to look like. But what is so interesting or different about this topic is that with such a simple pixel you would think that it is suppose to follow these simple rules which it does not follow at all. Thats what makes this so interesting.

Extra Credit

“Who are you” is a film that means we need to all analyze how we are going to live our lives. That in a free society we should take advantage of our freedom and allow our minds to wonder because part of being human is our ability to imagine thinks and dream. At the same time that we are stuck in a game that sometimes we are not able to make certain moves because there are restraints to certain things. So the film is saying that we are here for a certain reason to find our way in life.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Week 3&4-Assigned Reading-Science And Philosophy

"One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science,measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it isthe most precious thing we have."-Einstein. Einstein is saying thatsometimes our best knowledge is outdated or that we really don't knowa whole lot about anything. "What I see in Nature is a magnificentstructure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that mustfill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinelyreligious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism." Even withall the different theories that Einstein came up with he is still notable to explain matter to the fullest. He doubted his own a abilty tofind a "complete theory"."The essential in the existence of a man likeme is what he thinks and how he thinks, not what he does or suffers."These words from Einstein basically say that through pain andsufferring is how we learn and how we understand why things happen theway that they happen.

Week 3 &4- Assigned Reading- The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantu

The theory that Copenhagen uses is based off of classical physics.Basically this is saying that we are able to use expirements to findresults and even with results and answers that there is still a bit ofuncertainty about things that we are not going to be able to find outor understand. These concepts that Copenhagen is saying are difficultunderstand. I think he is trying to say or go back to Aristole'sconcept that we don't know anything, even if we think that it is apiece of paper that is made from a tree, which came from a seed, whichis made up of atoms, which well we just don't know what that paperreally is even with exact information of how it is made therefore evenwith experiements and a simple answer the answer may not always becorrect.

Week 3&4- Assigned Reading- Physics and Philosophy

Plato's idea that prisoners in a cave can only look in one directionis very truthful. He is not able to see shadows in the cave becuasethere is no sun, that when he leaves that cave he will now be able toexperience "the light of truth". What I love about being able to findout the truth is that we are than able to make our own judgementsbased on our own experience. We can hear stories or try to believethings but human nature better understands things that happen to themon first hand. So saying all this, by humans being able to understandscience better and take different angles at it, we are now able tohave a better understanding of the world and what is around us. I alsolike Descartes fundamental principle that we attempt fundamentalknowledge. The understanding of mind and body is one of the firstthings that we need to be able to grasp to have a better understandingof things. The he talks about the relationship between I and theworld. This is important becusae sometimes I think that the world isonly a direct relationship between us and no one else that we may livein different time periods. I mean where were you 1 year prior to yourbirth, I mean your parents were living yet we can't recall anything.Time has relativity.

Week 3&4-Assigned Reading- WAS COSMIC INFLATION THE 'BANG' OF THE BI

Sometimes it is hard to believe or understand how the structure of ourworld or universe is becuase of thermal exspanision. But if you lookat it everything starts back to the beginning of science beinging thateverything is made up of atoms and electrons. What scientist believeis that they have a problem looking into the big bang theory becauseof the "horizontal flatness". So with this whole theory that theuniverse excedds critical denisty, than therefore we can come up withthe assumption or the conclusion that there will be a reverse big bangtheory to end time called the big crunch. It is hard for me tounderstand the whole pressure vacuum concept because it is notsomethign that you normally hear about or it is such a new concept tome.

Week 3&4-Assigned Reading-Cosmic Inflation

Trying to understand the basics of cosmic inflation is a little hardto understand. Basically this is saying that the universe's expanisionwas because a vacuum pressure that exponentially grew. Inflation thencaused the universe to expand which leads us to were we are at today.The whole reason that we look at inflation is because there seemed tobe some holes in the big bang theory that seemed not to make a wholelot of sense so inflation can help us understand how the big bangtheory works. The first thing to understand about this whole theory isthat we can see the universe and we can touch it so by thosestimpulations we are than able to conclude that we are than unable totry to understand it. So if we can understand or come up with a baseof what we are trying to understand than we can then expand ourknowledge like physics or human physiology. In science there are basicprinciples and patterns to how things work. Most things follow theserules which makes it quite easy for us to understand new concepts.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Week 3 & 4-Expert Lecture- Stephen Wolfram and a New Kind of Science

"How does anything complicated get produced"-Stephen Wolfram, thequestion that he asks about anything in the universe. What isinterseting that Stephen says is that nature follows some kind ofrule. The conculsions that Stephen drew in 1982 were incorrect hebelieved that if something in physics or anything starts out simpleit will be simple and if it starts out complicated then well it willend up being complicated, however Stephen used a triangle formulawith a simple black cell to find out that something so simple canbecome quite complicated. Basically he came up with and found outthat some of these rules didn't follow a general rule. What Stpehenis trying to get at is that a simple cellular model can becomereally complex and it can begin to start to generate it's ownidea's. His idea quickly translates to the world, that we live innothing but space. That the particles bring up quanta mechanicssaying that it has it's own randomous and this goes into space andtime. Watching this video I didn't understand the inferences thatStephen was trying to make. I don't get how a simple cell can wellmake up or well change anything. Unless you look at it from thestand point is that we are made up from cells and if you change acell on us you are changing, well, you can pretty much changeanything. But based on the ideas that Stephen was conveying throughmathmatica I think that it was amazing how we are able to determinethose kinds of things from just a simple cell.

Week 3&4- Expert Lecture- Owen Gingerich on Astronomy and God

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at allcomprehensible"-Einstein. That fact that we can hope to understand itis amazing and that we have the ability because there is somethingfundamentally there to comprehend it. What I was able to pull fromthis video from Owen Gingerich is that the universe and religion thereis unity. Without some of the gravitational constants we would not beable to live regardless of religion. What I find interseting is thathe talks about people in general, how that everyone to a certainextent believes in god and that is why some people opt out ofbelieving in a god. Sometimes people have a hard time believing thatthere is a god because we are going through so much sufferring. What Ifound interseting is thinking about what happened before the big bang.Scientist are now coming to think about eterinty, that when you thinkabout time you are going out of our time because you would need changeand motion, however you could define eterinty becuase it is embeded.Most preachers thing in terms of cause and effect. Basically what Owenis saying about the big bang theory or before it is that scientficallyyou are not able to to prove anything. Christains for a long time havebeen talking about other dimisions in the sense that another universewould be heaven. What I found weird is that Owen being a preacher heregrets his faith not being as broad as it was as a child. What Ipicked up from the video which is most defianlty true is that thehuman race is in jepoardy if we do not change something. We arerunning out of resources. The future of the human race is dyingbecuase with anything in life there is a time frame or a cycle. Thatthe human cycle is coming to an end.

Friday, September 7, 2007

Week 1- Nicholas of Cusa

I didn't really understand the point to the this film. I did like acouple of different quotes that came from this becuase a lot of themare really truthful with life. "These points are recongized inmathematics, where the propositions are quite easily traced back tothe first and most evident principles but where propostions are tracedback with more difficulty bcasue they are only traced back through themediation of the earlier ones. This is interseting becsaue thisbsaically saying that we need to solve to problem instead of puttingit off. It is often funny to think that aristole one of man's mostintellectual people would not have known anything but i guess that ispart of philosophy.

Week 1- Java Philosophy "Who are You"

This clip of video brings up some interseting questions. SorenKierkegaard says " I see it all perfectly, there are two possiblesituations--one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and myfriendly adivce is this: do it or don't do it--you will regret themboth. This was quote that stood out becuase it brings up so manydifferent questions that you a can ask yourself about differentsituations. This simple Saying quoted by Soren plays a role whendeciding if you are going to purse a dream that is well just a dream.And just for sometimes it is true that we do feel like we are a partof the a chess game that Soren talks about becuase there are times inour life that we are buried so far down that we can no longer see thelight, or that the piece on the chess board can't be moved. But what Isay to that is that for every predicament that you get yourself inthere is always a way out because there was always way in. Sometimeswe don't realize that we are stumping ourselfves when there is alwaysa move.

Week 1-History Of Philosophy

As time goes on and we keep learning about human nature and theexperiences that occur through life it is quite interseting to seethat man has not really changed over time. We don't really knowanymore today than we did yesterday. From a science stand point yesthere are new break throughs everyday but from a idieological sense weare still stuck with the same question that no one can answer, why arewe here, whats the point of our existence? When looking at philosophyand examining the purpose of it, I think that one of the best thingsabout it is that philosophy has not limits, no prejudgments, nostimpulations. Philosophy changes from culture to culture but thequestions that we ask ourselfves are the same. From the ancientphilosophy to contemporary philosophy today, philosophy is just tryingto make sense out of things.

Week 1- Apology by Plato

To the defense of Plato there are three different parts to the story. The first part to the apology is for his for his colloquial style. The problem with Plato is that he has always been his own worst enemy and I mean that becuase he feels like he has this undying passion that he has to tell the truth. Most people belie that he is subject to public opinion as well as he is the ring leader to the youth's opinion. His accusations can pretty much spoken by his accusers as "Socrates is an evil doer". To his acusers that answer to that begins with that being a natural philosphy is that he knows nothing. See the thing is that you are not guilty of anything if you chose not to puruse anything becuase you are ignorant of them or you chose to say that these notions are not important. So not teaching anything is because he didn't know anything therefore he is not responsible for anyhting.

Week 1- The Socratic Universe

After reading the texts I found some of the concepts to be truthful, however, some to be a little farfetched. I do believe that at some point or place we need to have a seperation from religion and science. Most things in life science is able to explain but its for the paranormal or the occurences that have no explanation you then have to look at faith. When you look at the earth and say how was it created you can then go back and say that the big bang happened which gave us where we live today. But where did that big bang come for? Can we really and truthfully answer all those questions with science? Most likely not so it is important to have a balance.In the text a lot of the reading had to do with how we answer the questions that we dont know. There are many things that go behind the thought of a question. Whether or not you are going to answer that with more of a scientific approach or with a relgious approach. If we are able to combine both of these then we will be able to better answer the questions.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Week 1- Expert Lecture- Francis Fukuyama on the End of History

In this video Francis Fukuyama says that the end of history may be
near because the experience of the 21st century, he believes that we
need to change our life styles. He believes that there has been a
gradual evolution in modern liberal democracy's. Francis believes that
for the most part has been peacefully and the major democracy's would
not go to war. That only the smaller countries are fighting. Basically
he is saying that history has a direction and it is going towards the
good. Another thing that Francis says is that we are something special
in creation and that at the end of this door there will be more
enlightenment. Subjective experiences give us a sense of what is right
and wrong. We have to feel a certain away to do a certain thing. Which
means in principle you can build a robot as complex as us. Another
thing that has a direction is that religion has a direction as well as
history. That if you look at religion it is a common book of social
rules or corroprative rules. Religion is more functionally important
than some people realize. However, we are in the age of science which
has stripped away some meanings of religion. Francis says that
religions will need to evolve to keep up with modern science. Francis
says that if you believe that our insitutions are the struggles around
us and it forces us to look at the abstract of basic principles.

Week 1- Expert Lecture- Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley video on Man's Search for the Truth is rather diffucult
to understand and follow. Huxley talks about the inconsitency's in
what he has written throughout his life. Basically for Huxley he
believes that searching for the truth is what sets us free. However
searching for the truth well is only a search becuase we may never
find the truth. Then he talks about the mystical experience of the
universe which is rather difficult becuase you then bring up the
questions who are we,who is man, and what is the point to our
existence? Thomas Mann says "the doors of perception" if we stay
fixated on something then we do miss out on life is true. Huxley talks
about an escape is that we all will experiment to find out what is
true for ourselfves.

11). Steven Pinker believes that the mind was developed in the way that it was because of natural selection. When you seek the adapted mind then you begin to see that everything in the mind has an adapted part in natural selection except when it comes to dreams or music which he believes are by products of the brain. Listening to this you begin to think how weird this is because it is natural to believe that your mind is one or a whole. Evolution is very important in understanding human behavior. Today as a whole our society and people in general think differently than they thought in the 30's. Well you may say that in the 30's they were going through the depression which is true and that altered they why that they were thinking but today we live in a consumer society and it seems to be getting worse and worse. Almost as if people are beginning to get greedier and greedier. We only think about ourselves now and what we are getting out if it. People no longer fight for our country because they want to protect our freedom, but it is because they can not do anything else with there life. I shouldn't generalize because not all are like that but the majority is. But being able to understand why our brains function the way that they do will help us understand we we make the decisions that we make. Trying to understand why people kill other people over land. This is nothing new but we are fighting for all the wrong reasons and the war is not in the Middle East it is over on our own land. Pinker tries to tell us that if we can understand how are minds are adapting we will be able to change so many different things and save so many different lives.

12). The theory of evolution is important in philosophy because it can help us answer a lot more questions that religion or beliefs can not answer. Evolution is basically the theory of common descent which religion as is the same but with evolution you get the big bang theory which explains why we are here today. Here is the thing, you can look from a religious stand or a philosophical point. The thing is that religion does not have as many concrete answers that science or philosophy can answer. We know that as time goes we have to adapt otherwise we will become extinct. This can easily be answered by the theories of natural selection or Darwin's theory of evolution. But what religion can't answer is what is happening after we die. Is god doing to be our savior? Or do we just become extinct? I am not saying that there is nothing wrong with religion because I have been religious throughout my whole life. But what baffles me is that a priest has the nerves to say in the gospel that you have to believe to believe. That is not true you don't believe if you know what you are believing in is false, thats just dumb. Science answers so many more questions like the possiblites that there is more than one universe and that these different theories of evolution.

13). Francis Crick talks about being "very core physical beings who have somehow deceived ourselves into believing that we are something more, something non-material, something transcendent". He believes that we do not have souls not for the reason that we are bad people but merely because there has been nothing to prove that there is an after life. When he talks about us being "physical beings" he is talking about how we are scared of what we do not know. We are scared of the unknown. Well how does this relate to not having an after life. Well what he is saying is that we are still trying to cope with the fact that as we were born the cycle of life says that we must die. It is like just hearing that your parent has cancer. You don't want to believe it or you want to try to make yourself believe that everything is alright because you do not want people to know that you are hurting. Well that is human nature. We try and we do end up believing in our own lies because we lie so much to ourselves that it sounds like it is true. From what Francis Crick is saying, he is saying the religion is just a way to make us feel sorry for ourselves or make us believe that everything is alright. It in a way is like alcohol, it is giving us a false sense of reality. We give ourselves a false sense of reality everyday we wake up, we believe that we are doing better off than we really are. And tragically it makes us feel better.
In the end there has nothing to prove or to show us that there is something out there beyond this world and everything that we do like go to church is to try to cope with what is happening to us because we all know that we are dying and have been dying since the day we are born. It is something that you can not stop or slow down, its a part of life.

14). There are major issues with vegetarianism. Some of the issues that deal with it would be that we are killing all these animals. When you see how cruelly we are killing them it would make you not want to eat meat anymore. I mean it is as if you (a grown adult) were going to kill a small little child because animals are life children and I mean that because they are not able to fight back. This is bad because it gives kids the idea that it is alright to kill things when in reality it is not okay. Another argument is that these animals can carry diseases that make us sick like cows have the mad cow disease that have already killed many human beings. As well as that argument another argument is that by killing all these animals we are going to eventually make them extinct like the dinosaurs became extinct. I mean there are so many people and we kill so many animals that at this rate they will no longer be able to reproduce at the rate that we kill them so one day they will no longer be cows are whatever it is. What this means is that if cows become extinct we are killing a lot of different speices not just one because all of these animals live off of each other and need each other to be able to survive.
The only weak points that you can really make about killing animals is that we only kill because we need the food, I mean its not like we kill just to kill them but that it is part of the life cycle and this is how many human beings are able to survive because we can not just survive off plants, there are way to many people. I agree with things needing to change, but what needs to change makes it really hard because we are so dependant on them.

15). Ken Wilber talks about his theories upon the conscious mind. John Searle talks about the problems of consciousness. So Ken Wilber says that things are broken down in the physical level of the brain and the functions of four segments of it. The four broken segments were of self behavior, social, cultural, and the intentional.. He believes that the conscious mind affects us on a lot of different levels. That there are a lot of different levels of consciousmess that happen from things that are intended to but the unconsciousness are thoughts that happen because we don't realize what is happening. Basically what consciousness does for the human is that it helps us with emotions and other things like how we respond to different things, that there are different situations are different places where things happen in the brain but whatever happens in the brain there is an action or emotion that takes place.
John Searle says the problem with that is that it is to vague and that it is to hard to understand it. Searle just talks about the different aspects of how the conscious mind works upon the understanding of issues and objectiveness. He believes that objectiveness is more important the the four different segements of the brian. I think that Wilber's makes more sense and is more applicable in our life's because I understand that depending on the action that happens, there are many different emotions that I am going to feel depending on what level it deals with me or affects me.

16). In a glorious piece of meat I enjoyed the message that it conveyed. It basically was saying that the human eye doesn't do a whole lot, that it mainly decivies it self more than it does good for the body.The eye can change the way that you look at things and transcend things. This film was interesting because it went back to the theory that you don't really know anything or that how can you be sure of anything. How you can try to argue from a religious stand point that the human eye is such a great gift and allows us to be able to do so much and yes i agree with that but the human eye creates many weakness that give us a false sense of reality. What I mean by that is the human eye needs so many different things to be able to function and can get decieved really easy. For instance an airplane, when in the air it looks like it is only traveling at a slow rate of speed but when in reality it is going over 500 mph. When you are able to decieve what we see you can then decive what is the most important thing that humans have, our brain or perception. How we look and see everything changes our actions, and I believe that everything is linked back to each other because when you change something it has a domino effect and it changes everything, like your emotions or the way that we just think in general.

17). Sam Harris is a great philosopher that wrote a book on the end of religion. The reason that he is so critical of religion is because he believes that religion puts unnecessary constriants on human beings. That religions are no more tenable than those which, for lack of adherents, were cast upon the scrap heap of mythology time ago because in essence he is saying that religion is just a like rumor, no one can no for sure what it really is and it just keeps getting passed down time after time and things start to change because it is only word out of mouth. So basically Harris believes that the idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow scared human convention which means that we no longer go to church because we believe, we go to church because it gives us a false sense of reality basically saying that everything is going to be alright when in reality we are really scared still looking for answers. Sam Harris also believes that religion or faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds. He thinks that what religion is doing is wrong, that it is putting these ideas that are so untrue which science can prove otherwise in our head and making us think that we are doing the write thing when in society today even though someone claims to be religious they don't live there life the way that "god" would want them to live there lives. A lot of this has to do with we are greedy people and for us to follow in what people call "god's" footsteps as his child, we would all have to change the way that we live or lives because we are to in grossed with ourselves.

18). These are what Nietzsche's calls the different genealogy of morals:
a.In the "First Treatise" Nietzsche is concerned to show that the valuations "good/evil" and "good/bad" have distinct origins. Basically what this is saying is that what we believe to be good is actually not good at all and we have this thing called "slave morality" that means evil but it really comes from our good.
b.In the "Second Treatise" Nietzsche advances his thesis that the origin of the institution of punishment is in a straightforward creditor/debtor relationship. This basically talks about what Nietzsche says as our "memory". Why this part or stage is so important is because our forgetfullness is a "faculty of repression" says Nietzsche which means that man needs to work in opposition to this in order that promises can be made that are necessary for exercising control over the future which means that we need to stop lying to ourselves about things that are not happening.
c. Nietzsche's purpose in the "Third Treatise" is "to bring to light, not what ideal has done, but simply what it means, what it indicates; it is that we can not really be to sure of anything or where anything is at because nothing in this world is certain.

19). Gandhi believes in Ahimsa or nonviolence for many different reasons. Basically what non-violence does is baffle your opponent to the least because it shows that you are not coward and you can handle anything that they do to you and that you are really the stronger person because they are hitting you out of fear. But Ahimsa is not merely a negative state of harmlessness, but it is positive state of love. Ahimsa is a weapon of matchless potency and in no way does is show that you are a coward because you do not strike back. See a lot of this nonviolence had to do because the strikers wanted Gandhi and his people to strike back because they wanted to be able to take them to jail so they could hurt them even more or just to get them off of the streets. But when you don't fight back there are a couple of different things that it does for your case of whatever you are arguing. It shows that you are not guilty because you are able to talk about it rationally and it also shows that you are going to back up whatever you believe in a civil way which makes you the bigger person. I mean we still use Gandhi's methods of nonviolence everyday, when we decide to go on strike at work becasue we believe that we are not getting the benefits that we deserve. But it makes us the bigger person not to fight back to try to get what we want because then we just come out the loser and then we have no chance of trying to get what we want.

20). What it means is that "Act as if everything that has happened will happen, and already has, infinitely many times." Nietzsche tells us to act in a way that is appropriate to a world in which the eternal recurrence is true. Which this basically means that whatever goes around comes around again. I believe in this so much because I ultimately believe that there is something more to our existence than we know, there there is an ultimate ending or that there is something more than what we know now because if there wasn't want would be the point of our existence. I mean the circle of life or the life cycle has to mean something that can explain why we are here or what are we doing. Nietzsche never talks about any actions, classes of actions, or patterns of behavior that his doctrine would require of us. Without these ideas, the idea of recurrence could be little help to us in planning our lives and choosing between alternative courses of action. I think that we begin to see something more than just eternal recurrence because we do not have the memory or capabilites to understand what we have already seen or been through. We all, whether or not you want to admit it have short term memory. I mean is anyone able to answer the question where were you five years before you were born? I don't think so but to think that time starts with us, that would mean that the world does revolve around us, so then you have to believe in eternal recurrence. Then he goes into how revenge plays a role in eternal recurrence, which this seems to all make sense or more than just sense. I mean thats what it really is.

21). Marcel Proust said that " overtime this "homosexuality" is something that will become seen as a harmless pastime". That we don't know what are our best qualities. We used to think that our best quality was our ability to please others but that no longer seems to be true. I don't agree or disagree with homosexuality. This is not an issue that really means a whole lot to me because I believe that we have something called freedom of choice. My take on that whole deal is that God gave us our freedom and said that we have the ability to make our own decisions. Flame on is a good message that homosexuals should be able to do there own thing. If they want to get married, alright, I mean it's not something that I would do but at the same time one of our founding fathers which we base the way we live on said that we are entitled to life, liberty, and the purist of happiness. Well when it means the purist of happiness you should be able to follow whatever it is that makes you happy otherwise you are cutting yourself sort and that is not how we become one of the greatest nations. Our ability to let our mind wonder and dream is what sets us apart from other countries. So to take away someones freedom of love is wrong. Because the idea that marriage is for a man and a woman came from the bible. Once again when religion comes into the question which we are suppose to be a nation were church and state are different, people think that the bible is always right, well I think that we need to look again in the mirrors and still see if our hands are clean.

22). Daniel Dennett says that he is a bright because he rejects supernatural things. Dennett believes that it is time that brights need to come out of the closet and accept the things that are happening. Daniel Dennett believes that there is no God. He talks about how you can not prove a negative but he believes that God does not exist. He then talks about how no two people think of or worship God in the same way. He believes that no to many people believe in God but really they just try to be devoted to it. But most of the people behave that there is no God. Then after that he talks about how there are to many things that are undefined in religion that just don't make sense. Another thing that Dennett says which I agree with is that you don't belive just to belive because then you are just wasting your time and that doesn't make sense. You in believe in something when you think that it is real. Remember when you were a child and you thought that there was a Santa, well you really thought that there was a Santa because you didn't know differently until you started to find the truth, once you started hearing things and seeing that santa was not real and it was just your parents you stopped believing in him. Well this is just like religion but for some reason if we believe in supernatural things because of God, for some odd reason when we go to bed at night we feel better and it is easier for us to sleep but in reality nothing is changing or God is not doing anything differently. So the point that Dennett is trying to make is that people need to come out of the closet and stop acting like the believe in something that they know can not be true.

23). It is with science that is able to present us the world which allows us to create our beliefs. "That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave". Everything that Bertrand Russell says agree with. I think that Russell is trying to say that we are self learners and that we or our mind is what allows us to be so much different or unique from other people in the world. See there has to be a point of our existence not necessarily a God but there is something more than what we are doing now. There is something more than just the life cycle.
If you really think about it I mean if our life was the end of it then there was no point of living in it but for some reason there is an ulitamte plan. Or atleast I believe that there is a plan for us after we die. Where you go or what happens no one can be sure on, or if we are tradescent or if it is an act of god no one knows. But the one thing that we do know is we are a part of nature which is a part of science meaning that just like we are born, we dide. Everything in this world has a life cycle be it a car or a plant or even a human life. Everything dies and reproduces again even if it is made by humans, nothing lasts forever, nothing is forever not even that tattoo that we try to cover up."But the beauty of Tragedy does but make visible a quality which, in more or less obvious shapes, is present always and everywhere in life." When Russell says this it makes to much sense because someone has to get screwed its just a part of this world and life.

24). "Who knows what may happen to me at the time of death? I may enter the state of unconsciousness, enter the state of dreams and see railway trains. . . How can I make a claim about my attainment of the Ultimate? The truth is that I know nothing." --Baba Faqir. The overall theme is not only to open our eyes that seem to be so blind but to tell us that in this world we can only be certain of two things, that we will eventually die and that we have to pay taxes. The taxes part I added in but at some point we will need some place where we can turn and say that we need help because at one time we will all need someone for help. The way that I mean that is in the context of that when you die or know that you are dying, there has to be someone there to save us or not even to say us but to help us through that. I mean can you answer the question where were you before 1915, I don' t think that anyone who wasn't born in 1915 can answer that question. So it almost as if our memory or that we can remember is short term because we can't remember anything. So I don't know if there is a god or not but i do believe that there is something more than where we are at that we dont know about.

25). Nicholas of Cusa mean by "learned ignoranced" means that we as people are evolving into become more and more ignorant people and that we have not always been this way but it keeps growing more and more. In chapter one it talks about how we do not know anything and we are trying to find out the truth. And of course they go with Socrates that in the end Socrates did not know anything. Well here is my thing on that. That there are a lot of things that we do know, I mean we are able to say that everything in this universe is made up of atoms. But at the same time there are a lot of things that we don't know or that we will never be able to find out. And that we are ignorant to believe that there is a religion because there are so many different ways to prove it that there is not a religion. A lot of this is just the idea that we are trying to cope with this idea of the unknown of us dying. Then he goes into talking about generation. And that God is the being of things and I do agree with that statement because generation does mean that things happen over and over again. Just like it says in the context like father like son.
In my life I know this to be true because religion has always been a huge part in my life because that was how my dad raised me. Well just like the santa thing I have begin to see that religion my by a fallacy like santa. I mean one of my preiests at my church said in a gospel that even if the Da Vinci code is real, you have to believe to believe. Well the Da Vinci code goes everything that I believed in and if it is true well I am not going to believe just to believe because that makes no sense. You only believe because you believe that what you are believing is true. I don't believe in something to give me something to do, I believe in something so I get something out of it and learn something, that is what human nature does.

26). Gerald Edelman mean bys neural Darwinism and second nature that neural Darwinism is is that the brain is a somatic selection system similar to evolution, and not an instructional system. The theory prevailing before the present one was called the theory of instruction. Secondnature are things that happen without you even thinking, secondnature would be basically your instinct. You do it so frequently that it gets inscribed in your muscle memory. Edelman has some of the best insight when it comes to these and if you think about it human nature is to act without thinking. I mean I know that I tend to act without thinking until after the reprecussions occur which is really bad. I think that it is really interseting how he talks about the brainbeing made up of 80 percent of water. The brain is composed of many different things like a neuron. This neurons are charged particles that allow you to think. Cognitive computing is about engineering the mind. The most important trend to this is that there are certain minds from all different departments that are beginning to have dreams about putting a theory together about how the brain works. They talk about how we are trying to quicken the pace of how we learn cognitive computing.Gerald Edelman is trying to expand our knowledge of the fundamental understandings of science. He has created many things or discoveries that have improved the quality of life for decades now.

27). There are so many different reasons to why we should stop eating meat. Here are some of the reasons that the film talked about. From the film one reason would be because of animal cruelity. That the animal is unable to defend it's self. Just think about if we were the animal instead of the human being, would you want someone to kill your mother or father so someone else could eat them? Another reason that people should not eat meat is because with that meat there are dieases that can come with that meat For instance, if you eat a cow that has mad cow diease you could die. The most important reason that a person should not eat me and turn vegetarian is because we seem to be killing animals at an alarming rate just so we can sit at home and have a piece of meat. What we don't seem to understand is that by killing so many animals a day they are not able to reproduce fast enough and we are starting to kill off a lot of these different species. You may say well why does that matter? The reason that it matters is because when you kill one species you are killing a lot more that you dont even realize becuase a lot of this animals rely off of each other to be able to live and survive. With that in mind we need to cut down on the number of animals we kill because we tend to be so wasteful with what we do with them after we kill them.
From the other stand point for reasons agianst vegetarism is that if we don't kill animals then they will eventually over populate us and we will become in trouble of resources. But other than that there aren't to many count arguments because turning vegetarian is not a bad thing, its just something different from what people are used to. In the end it just comes down to choices. You as a person have to decide the reasons why you eat that steak at night, becusae it tastes good are it gives you the nutrients that you need so you are able to function.

28). Maharshi turning point was when he found himself within himself and then gave out to the world the grand but simple message of his great life, "Know Thyself". I think that this way of life or living is the only way one can live there life. When you go by "Know Thyself", you are your best teacher for the unknown. When you give yourself limitations or dreams, you know what to judge before you say anything because you know yourself better than you know anything else. Discriminate between the undying, unchanging, all-pervading,and the ever-changing, phenomenal and perishable universe and body. When you are able to this you will find your nirvana in the end. Thats what this talks about. I defiantly agree with this but what I have to say like people say when you get married you just know that she is the one, and you get this feeling inside. Well how do you know that you have reached your nirvana or found your ultimate happiness because being human why wouldn't we just strive to be happier, so it would be this cycle that you do till the day that you day.
So what he turned to was indian philosophy because it was something that he could relate to, something that gave him closeure because we all look for closeure thats why some of us choose religion because it helps us through a lot of different things just like he looked at Indian philosophy. The Indian philosophy that came from this was something called Yoga. The Yoga philosophical system is closely allied with the Samkhya school. From this type of philosophy you utimately try to reach your inner peace or get peace of mind. You didn't have to look to god for answers or religion but you could if you wanted to and that is what he liked.

29). My favorite expert lecture was Sam Harris on the end of faith. I think that for me it answered a lot of my questions that I was wondering about philosophy. I think the faith no longer holds the same purpose that it once had and I think that we still look to religion not because we believe that there is a god but because we want something to make us feel better. This is also how we are so ignorant people and we continue to become more and more ignorant as time goes on. Sam Harris has really good insight by saying that if we were so religious and actually believe in what we were believing in why would humans act the way that they they act. I mean we cheat, we lie, and we steal, and for what, just to make a quick buck. We are not religious people, we merely religion as an escape from reality.

30). My favorite film that I watched this term would have to be flame on. Flame on is something bigger than what it looks like. I mean this because the sublimal message that is sends out is that we the people who look at homosexuality in the wrong. We should not be so quick to judge one's personal choice especially if we are tryign to stop them from being happy, thats just wrong.

31). My favorite reading would have to be on the Genealogy of Morals. The reason that I enjoyed reading this so much was because it made not only the most sense to me but it also was something that I have seen and experience on a day to day level. I mean it is so true that we are so self absorbed that one day we will be our best friends. As much as I would like to say that I am not self absorbed I would be lying to you because I am really self absorbed and that has to be one my greatest downfalls.

32). The wierdest thing that I learned from this class would have to be myself. I didn't realize that I was so narrow minded and only thought from one side of the street. I think a lot of this has to do with my perception of religion and how my ideas have been changing from what my dad has been teaching me. I want to thank you for making me a better person and helping me understand the different aspects of life.