Femininity

The view on femininity is a touchy topic, just as everyone noticed in class. What exactly classifies being feminine to woman all of the time? As we discussed it cannot be an actual part of the body that makes a woman feminine, can femininity be classified on one's perception of how a person is acting or has acted? If that is the case then what constitutes as being a feminie action? Just like for men, if a man tries to look good and is well groomed all the time that means he is doing a feminine act because that is what a woman would do. The whole concept of what feminine actually is still unclear although thought to be known. Although this image that is put onto people is not formed from the body or mind, it is still as if it was.

Marx: Class Synopsis: March 28, 2011

In class we discussed Marx and watched a film, we talked about alienated labor, which states that the more the worker produces the more he falls under the power of his products. A worker becomes alienated from his product when he devotes all of his time to it. The object then does not belong to the man it belongs to itself because it now has all of the workers time. Marx gives many example of how his theory is put into play, one of his examples are that if a workers work has intelligence put into it, then the worker is witless. (988)

Marx also talks about the struggles between the Bourgeois and the Proletarians in the Manifesto of the Communist Party. A bourgeois is a class of modern capitals and in order for them to keep control they must keep revolutionizing instruments for production. The idea of revolutionizing the instruments for production has caused the Proletarians, the class of modern wage laborers, to have to fight to give their labor to obtain money. Bourgeois have not only been diminishing the amount of labor opportunities for workers but it has also turned family relations into money relations. The proletarians live only so long as they find work and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital.

Marx’s’ other views include that the difference in age and sex have no social validity for the working class. He states that they are all instruments of labor, more or less expensive depending or their age or sex. Because of the machinery that is being built there is less need for laborers and when there is a need for labor the amount of money credited for the labor is lower. Workingmen of all countries UNITE!

Senses and Perception

Senses are what give people the ability to know what a certain item or object is, but without senses how can one even come to percieve what that object is. Is one still able to learn what a specific thing is, without having been able to smell, touch or see it? This brings into the question of emotions, how can one know what the true meaning of sadness is? It seems that all objects or emotions no matter what people call them can be percieved which ever way you want. We are all taught what these certain feelings are and why they occur, but how are we to know for certain that these teachings are right or even that other people get that same exact feeling from specific situations? This can also bring into question if what we call reality actually is what we think it is. Could it be possible that some of the things that happen in our life are all dreams? Or are we supposed to take life and embrace it without question? This causes plenty of skepticism on whether being in a dream or in reality are interconnected.

Descartes/Dreams

Descartes had a firm believe that, " I think therefore I am," this one statement can be interpreted to mean many things. For example if I think that my hair is blonde ( definately not) then my hair is blonde. I feel that it is all on how people want to interpret different things. Just like a dream if you tell yourself your dreaming then why can't you be dreaming. It is like we are all programmed to "know" what a dream is and what it really means to be awake. Just think though, what if our supposed dreams were real and that it could actually do what everything that happens in your dreams. The topic of controlling our dreams was brought up and if a person is able to control their dreams then it must be just our minds giving us images of what was in our minds. Descartes theory is not supposed to be taken literally, but it is all about how someone wants to perceive the idea of what a certain one thing is.

God?

There was always this knowledge that the world around us was created therefore there is a "beginning". There is also the belief that a supreme being was the one who created the everything, but what if the question was asked the there was no supreme being and everything was just there without a creator. Faith is what guides everyone to their beliefs and if that was not there then there would be no way for anyone to attempt to try and figure all the mysteries of the world out. This supposed "knowledge" that God is around (which i fully believe) can be disputed so easily because there is no proof to state that she/he is here and she/he is looking over all of his creations.

Happiness?

According to the teachings of Aristotle, happiness is something that you obtain at the point of death. If that is so then what is this so called "emotion" that we call happiness? Is this feeling that we all have once had before just a little taste of what to expect at the moment of death? Or is it possible that the way we percieve happiness through life is ACTUAL happiness? I believe that everyone has their own belief on what happiness is because happiness can be brought to people through different ways. This emotion of happiness, that we all encounter at some point in our lives could in fact just be a a feeling that we think is happiness but actually is not. The whole belief of what happiness is can be interpreted in many ways, its your own choice to decide whether to believe that this feeling is something that is truth or if it is all building up for the end when everyone will be truely happy.

Happiness

The question of what happiness really meant was brought to the attention of the class. We all think that happiness can happen when good things come to you. We all should always be happy because we are blessed with life. Happiness has been interpreted to be a feeling that you get from materialistic ideas such as wealth. But like the old saying, "Money Can't Buy You Happiness," happiness could be something that might just be brought to you by materialistic items, but there is something far more that brings happiness to each and every individual. Every person has their own views on what makes them happy, sure one person who might be in a tight bond would get that feeling of happiness when they receive income to support themselves whereas a person who is a millionaire would not quite care as much. Everyone has their own perception of what makes them happy and what happiness is, it is up to us to figure out what true happiness feels like.

Phaedo Reading

The reading that was assigned to the class brought up the topic of whether a soul is mortal or immortal. This questions has never crossed my mind and probably wouldn't have if it was never brought to my attention. Socrates seemed to have the belief that even after he was dead, he would still be with his friends because his soul would still be around. Although this is a rare assumtion, he still believed that his soul would remain and he would be around the people that believed in what he had to say. There is no way that anyone could disprove this assumption, but there is also no way to actually prove it is the truth. Another thing that interested me about the past 2 classes was the "ARCHE" to all things. It was different philosophers' ideas on how the world came to be. An example would be Pythagoreans and their ARCHE was numbers. They believed that everything in the world was made up of numbers.

Free Will

A question was brought up in class on the projector asking, "If everything in the universe obeys unchanging physical laws, how an humans have free will?" This one question had brought to my attention that even though it is said that we the people have free will, but our lives are programmed from the moment of birth. We follow whatever is provided to us and we say that those are our choices, but in actuality it is us not having any free will at all and just following what everyone else is following. Without this question presented in front of me then I would have never even thought about this big problem. If our free will has been stripped from us without us knowing how do we even begin to appreciate how life is really supposed to be lived. I could be taking the whole context of the question out of hand, but isn't that what philosophy is? It challenges us to think past the exterior and delve much deeper into other questions that were right in front of you, but just never thought to find the answer.

Class On Wednesday: What Is Color? & Friday: What is Identity?

There are two topics one of which is the lecture about color and really struck me to be very interesting. It started to make me think about all of the things that we have around us and it is like we are just programed not to really question what a number is or what color is. I still do not completely understand the whole concept of what makes a table a table and all the particles that it is made up of, but anything can be a table if it has the same essence? This class was really the introduction I needed to philosophy and that there are questions to everything, we are just to blind to ask. Philosophy will be a challenge because I really just accept everything around me and I don't ask how or why its around me, I just take it in. When Dr. Layne presented the class with the question about what we actually are and our identities, I thought it would be an easy question to answer, but it wasn't. The reason it is so hard to answer is because anything I would say would be in a physical sense and the question goes much further than the physical aspect of a persons identity.