Women as boss

In class when we talked about de Beauvoir philosophy on women, someone mentioned the stereotype of women being a "bitch". And we talked about how a woman usually is called this if she is strong-willed and aggressive. This made me think about an episode of That 70's Show when Jackie gets a job at a tv station and her boss is a woman. She comes back from work complaining how mean of a boss she has and Donna says "why is it when a man is a jerk he is just a tough boss but if a woman is the same way she is a bitch?" This is such a good question. Many times a woman will act just the same way a man would but it has a total different effect on each one. This is even true in the idea of sex. If a man has slept with a lot of women it is seen as an accomplishment but if a woman has slept with just as many men she is called a slut. What is it that makes females and males so different?

Satre: Nature vs. Nuture

Satre's philosophy on how man makes the choices in his life and how he is in control of who he is and his nature makes me think about the Nature vs. Nurture argument. It is common for us to blame one of the two for why a person is the way they are, it's either how they were born or it's because of how they were brought up. Can Satre be right in basically saying that it is neither? That is something I still haven't decided. Part of me wants to agree with Satre but then again I feel there has to be a reason for everything.

A college students stage

When I look back on my freshmen year I can definitely say that my friends and I could all fall under the Aesthetic stage of life. Though it's a stereotype of freshmen, it is so true that your freshmen year you completely are living in the moment. It's your first time completely free. But now as a sophomore I see how even over the summer I began taking the "leap" to the next stage of life. I think it was especially when I turned twenty and my sister told me "In this next decade of your life you will most likely get your first real job, pay your first bills, buy a house, buy a car, get married, possibly have your first child, and be on your own health insurance." That scared me just a bit but it definitely made me realize that you can no longer live your life in the "Aesthetic" stage you have to be ethical. In my opinion, sophomore year is when all those decisions really start shaping you.

Class synopsis 3/14

In class Monday we continued discussing Kant. We started off by discussing how Kant was not strict on either rationalism or empiricism, but said that there must be a balance of both. This was referred as the overcoming of dichotomy. Part of Kant's philosophy is that the mind is an actively involved.

We also discussed the two main questions Kant posed: "Is it possible to know what is ultimately real" and "Is Metaphysics even possible". To put these two questions into one, Kant asks "Are synthetic, a priori judgements about noumena possible?". He answered this in looking at what that means in three ways. The first way was the aspects of reality, or noumena vs. phenomena. The thing itself vs. how it appears. The second way was ways of knowing, apriori vs. a posteri. Without experience vs. through experience, and is it possible to know reality without experience. Dr. Layne explained it that a posteri is based upon experience, how things appear or noumena, so if we want to have knowledge of noumena it must be a priori. The thrid way which was kinds of propositions, synthetic vs. analytic. The example given was how the statement "pen is red" synthesizes two different concepts and therefore is informative and in contrast the statement "a bachelor is an unmarried man" is the same concept expressed two different ways so nothing is learned.

Someone then asked if Kant ever answered is question can we get to Noumena, which the answer is no. That led us into Kant's Categories of Perception, which is what we answer instead of getting noumena. According to Kant we only experience the world through a particular group of categories: time and space. Even if we think of a place without these two they still exist and are experienced in our mind therefore they must be something constructed by our mind. Another category is cause/effect, where Kant agreed with Hume in that we never directly experience cause & effect.

Nike Philosophy Collection

In the David Hume reading for class, two manners of moral philosophies are discussed. When reading the first one I started thinking about the advertisement industry. Especially in the line "They select the most striking observations and instances from common life; place opposite characters in a proper contrast; and alluring us into the paths of virtue by the views of glory and happiness." I almost feel like some advertiser read this and made it his mission statement. More specifically a Nike advertising agent.

I found this amateur advertising video for Nike. Its not one of their commercials but I thought it depicted the idea well.

Ignorance

You know that phrase, "How could they know if they were never taught?". That is continuously been running through my head while learning these philosophies. I look at Plato when thinking about this and the "Allegory of the Cave". In the "Allegory of the Cave" the characters are not able to understand or know truth until they leave the cave. I always have loved "Allegory of the Cave" because I feel it truthfully explains human ignorance. Unless we experience something or see it for ourselves, we will continue to believe anything someone tells us. If a person grows up in a village where they are told one thing, they are going to believe this until they leave that village and experience or see it somewhere else.

In the comedic film The God's Must Be Crazy, a coke bottle falls from the sky (out of a low flying plane) in Africa into a village of bush people. Because the Bush people have no idea what a coke bottle is they use it inappropriately http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN3EecB9fGM. The clip shows how sometimes the ignorance and lack of understanding can result in our unhappiness.

Socrates believes in reincarnation

When I was reading Phaedo, I began making connections between Socrate's argument with the idea of reincarnation. Both have the idea of "souls [that] existed before we were born". The cycle of Death, Soul, and Birth made me think of reincarnation. When then reminded me of my brother. When my brother was younger he use to tell us about how he was in the Civil War, and the people he knew before we were born. At the time it was really funny. But reading Phaedo made me start thinking about the possibility. Another trait about my brother has is that he seems to know so much about history. Now granted he learns it in his high school classes but his memory is like someone who is "recollecting" something he already knew. Maybe my brother is actually Socrates.

Being Philosophical Everyday

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

I came across this video this weekend. I thought it was funny enough to share. But then I began thinking about what life would be like if we interacted this way. We began discussing ethics and arguments this week and I tried to apply this question to what we were talking about (unsuccessful). What I did realize is that everyday we are faced with opportunities to say "philosophy", but we don't. I believe we don't because majority of people probably wouldn't be able to handle day to day questions they can't seem to fully answer. It would be very tiring. In my mind philosophy has its time and place. It is great to do alone or with one other friend, maybe over coffee. But for a common person in a normal situation, philosophy, or more so philosophical questions are unfriendly.

Dreams

In class someone mentioned the senses they experience in dreams. How they can feel the hurt of a pinch, or the emotion in their dream. The more we were being introduced into philosophy, the more I found myself taking on the questioning activity of philosophy. I started thinking, why is it dreams are so real to us? How do dreams seem to come true for others? Are dreams just a look at the past mixed with the present? Though Sigmund Freud claimed he had answers for us you are still prone to wonder. The movie Inception explored another side of dreams. For me, after the movie I thought "Can I really control my dreams?" I experimented with trying to tell myself what I wanted to dream about before I fell asleep, or tried to pick up where I left off in another dream. To say the lease I have not found an answer. I am enjoying the philosophy of dreams and exploring it.