Pursuit of Happiness

For another class I wrote an essay about C.S. Lewis' "We Have No Right to Happiness" and in this essay, one of the topics i discussed was the last sentence Lewis wrote; "And then, though our technological skill may help us survive a little longer, our civilization will have died at heart, and will—one dare not even add 'unfortunately'—be swept away." Lewis is arguing that if a society were to let men (he is talking about men and not humans in general) and their [sexual] impulses set free then a society should end. 
His statement is interesting because he puts morals of people above a society itself.  So any society that allows immoral actions not just illegal actions should not be allowed to exist.  Also he is placing the blame solely on man.  Earlier he argues that the pursuit of sexual happiness, which is immoral, takes advantage of women because they are more monogamous than men and need domestic happiness.  Lewis' essay as a whole talks about why the action of trying to achieve happiness is immoral but his last paragraph shows how much emphasis morals have on a society.

extemes and means of social media

During my presentation someone asked me what my opinion of the extremes and means of what a virtuous "Facebooker," although there are multiple extremes, I think that there are many that have to do with each other.  One way to judge a Facebook user is by how much time a person spends, the extremes are a person who spends all his time on social media and a person who never uses social media.  It is better to never use social media that to always be on it.  The second way to judge a Facebook user is how they use it.  The people who use it for only work and there are people who only use it solely for pleasure. A third way to judge is by how people interact with each other.  There are "Trolls," people who do not take anything seriously, who go around grinding everyone's gears and annoying them to get a laugh. And the other side, the side that the trolls pick on the most, that takes things too seriously.
I think a good way to determine the extremes is to be able to combine all of these extremes together to form two major extremes.

What Aristotle’s views of Friendship means to the Social Media Generation

In the age of social media, friendships have grown from a handle of friends right around the corner to hundreds of friends from around the world.  According to Aristotle this new version of friendship is not a Complete Friendship.  Aristotle’s friendships are broken down into three areas, Friendships of Utility, Friendships of Pleasure, and Complete friendships. Aristotle believes anyone can be in a friendship of utility or pleasure; only virtuous people can be in a Complete Friendship. In order to become be in a complete friendship, they must have to be good or virtuous people. For only Virtuous People can become Complete Friends. They must also have reciprocating good feelings for each other and want each other to succeed. Each must know how the other feels.  And they need to enjoy each other’s company without having to have an activity. These three criteria to have complete friendships are also going to be the criteria These facts brings question to whether in the age of social media, have people lost the ability to become Complete Friends or have real meaningful friendships. People go through life with Twitter, Facebook, and other ways to communicate increasing the amount of people to communicate with but decrease the amount of meaningful conversation.  These social media associates know little to personal information about each other.  Even less have seen each other’s houses or families.  While these social media outlets have brought good things and brought old friends back together.  It has set aside the want to have a close friend, friends that come over and hang out just to sit around and be in the company of each other.

The criteria for judging whether or not having true friendships in social media are if the friendship has reciprocating good feelings for each other, if they enjoy spending time with each other online, and whether both people in the friendship are virtuous people.

What makes a law just?

        During Stephanie's presentation she said that in order for a law to be just, it must steer people to become more just.  This is interesting to me and made me think about certain laws that I break everyday.  Speeding happens to be a big one that I break everyday and I have no concerns about doing it. Disclaimer I rarely go more than 5 over but 5 over is still breaking the law.  And since the chance of getting a ticket does not make me obey the law, the question that I raise is whether I am a bad citizen for not following the law or is the law unjust? My opinion is its a little of both.  I am a less than upstanding citizens (lets leave the bad citizens for the drivers who are putting others in danger: drunk drivers, people who go 100+ mph, etc.) and I do not lead a good example for others but I am not alone. Anyone who breaks any law set forth by the society is wrong at that time, though there is times in history where there have been immoral and unjust laws and appropriate legal action should be used to change the law. Civil Rights Movement and Gay rights are two major examples in the past half century. (some of the actions taken during the Civil Rights Movements were not appropriate legal action)
        And as for the law being unjust, it does seem it would be more advantageous for people if speed limits did not exist, maybe on city streets with lots of traffic but on a highway in west Texas, where nobody lives, is this law necessary or important.
        My second stem from this is that speed limits are important and Just for one main reason and this reason is what makes all laws just in my opinion.  The speed limit posted keeps people safe from themselves and other drivers whether they are walking along the road or driving.  A just law must make the society safer or more advantageous to the whole than if the law was not in place and it must not take rights away from people in the society. A just law must protect the rights of the people and the people from others that would wish them harm inadvertently or on purpose.
        This summer I will be working at a law firm that does employment law. The laws that are in place for employment law keep the employers from taking advantage of the employees and interviewees.  This makes the laws just because even though they disadvantage the few in this case the employers who already have a large advantage over the employee, they increase the aggregate advantage of the society.

What Diotima Taught Socrates

The Five things that Diotima taught Socrates were (1) Not everything is of one thing or the opposite. (2) Love is in need of Good and Beauty therefore not Good or Beautiful but it is not moral or immortal but is a spirit. (3) Spirits are intermediaries between the gods and humans.  They bring the gods prayers and sacrifices from the humans and in return spirits bring gifts back to the humans.
(4) Where the spirit Love comes from and what gods Love was born from. (5) The spirit Love is a love of wisdom because, she is the daughter of Resource who was wise and resourceful and Poverty which has neither, of the mix of her parents she knows of wisdom but has not obtained it.

The one thing about Diotima that interests me about what she said was when she talks about the spirits bringing gifts from the gods because love is a gift from god and it is interesting to me that she believed that love brings a gift and is not in itself a gift.

Symposium by Plato

ASIGNMENT

1. Know how each speaker defines love

2. figure out how each speech improves on previous

3. What do all of the speeches have in common

4. How Diotimis Speech is different

• Phaedrus asserts that both gods and humans regard Love as great  and awesome, for many reasons. In particular, Love is widely considered older than almost all the other gods, and has no parents.

•  Pausanias points out that there are two kinds of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. First, there is Heavenly Aphrodite, the daughter of Uranus, with whom he associates "Heavenly Love." Second, there is Common Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus and Dione, who is considerably younger than Heavenly Aphrodite, and with whom he associates "Common Love." 
• Love is neither good nor bad but what makes it is how

• Eryximachus adds to Pausanias' points on two kinds of loves but adds that not just humans but plants and animals. Not only medicine, but also athletics, agriculture, and music are all wholly governed by the god of Love. Eryximachus concludes that Love is ever-present and all-powerful in our lives, as it is the cause of all self-control, happiness, and justice, and it produces good actions.
•  Aristophanes' speech comes in the form of a myth.  And this explains why we try to find affection
• Agathon's speech is about the nature of the god.
• Socrates goes to tell what he perceives as the truth and proves Agathon wrong.
•   Diotima's speech is different from the rest because he uses the socratic method on socrates

Why I like the Analogy of the Cave!

I like the Analogy of the Cave because it gives insight into Plato's views on Epistemology and Metaphysics.  Plato's epistemology seems to believe that with effort we can begin to know a form of the truth.  His epistemology seems to lead from his metaphysics that the more you know, you notice that what you thought was truth was just a lesser form of what you know now.  Seemingly since we cannot know everything then would lead to a perfect form.  A form that is not tangible for human knowledge.  These "perfect forms" are the basis of the metaphysics for Plato.

The Atomist

The Atomist, Leucippus and Democritus, seem to build on Eleatic arguments and Anaxagoras by going off of the idea of not coming to be or passing away.  Building on Anaxagoras' "ingredients" that make up everything in the cosmos.  Leucippus and Democritus call these "ingredients" atoms. Atoms cannot be changed, but can be repositioned.  Opposing the atoms are "the void" or "the empty".  The Void is where the atoms are not but the atoms can move through the void.
The amount of knowledge that these two had of physics, even though for the most part it was speculative, amazing me because of how right they were.  With out microscopes to see what was actually happening.  They knew that there was some microscopic object that composed the larger objects.  They also thought of there being space between atoms and with the space the atoms can move.  We now know that atoms are constantly moving.   

Why Flappy BIrds is a game everyone should play once.

I want to start this blog by saying this has very little to do with any thing we are talking about in class but it does have a point about how we should live which is the one of the basic elements to philosophy so I thought I should share.  It all started when I was with a friend trying to do homework, and not getting any of it done because of this game and the fact that my procrastination level is off the charts, but my friend was playing this game and she said the one thing that angered her the most was that the bird flew so majestic until you started the game.  And later after I was playing the game, what she said got me thinking.  Looking around Baylor I see all these people who look as if they are flying through life, even though I know probably they are struggling to get through the pipes just as I am, but they seem to be just as majestic going through life as the bird is before the game starts and it makes me want to be majestic in life and come up with crazy ideas like learning three languages because I see my friends talking in fluent Spanish to which I only catch parts and pieces of and then stop turn to me and without pause speak perfect English to catch me up on what I miss.  But once life starts, I and most like myself fall flat on our faces over and over again but just like in the game we restart only to frustrate ourselves and ask serious questions like "what am I doing with my life" a question that has caused me to change my major once and my minor twice of course I would never leave the sanctuary that is the business minor. But through these frustrations our lives begin to unfold and we figure out what to do with the rest of our lives.  And maybe when we leave Baylor with our diplomas we will have become the majestic bird.

Zeno of Elea

Views
things are not many: All is One - the view of Parmenides
Zeno's work the Treatise is a defense of Parmenides' work.
Zeno works with paradoxes to defend Parmenides belief that plurality is false and all things are one.
His paradoxes of Achilles, my favorite because it reminds me of the tortoise and the hare and if I understand it right, states that Achilles will never catch the tortoise even though Achilles is faster the tortoise because the tortoise is still moving. So if the tortoise starts 100 meters in front of Achilles and it takes 10 seconds for Achilles to move those 100 meters he would not have caught the tortoise because it would have moved from his spot, lets say the tortoise moved 10 meters. Then Achilles runs the 10 meters in 1 second but the tortoise moved a meter in that second and so on.  In my opinion the paradox is like the commercial from a couple years ago that had a guy talking then at the end he says it makes sense if you do not think about it, that's how I look at this paradox  So either I missed the point or it just did not make sense because no matter how you look at it Achilles would catch up to the tortoise, mathematically or in real life.  Any time two people are running and one is faster than the other, the faster will over take the slower, unless the faster person gives up before that time has occurred.  And if I were Achilles, I would have probably given up after 100 meters.

Parmenides

Parmenides was born Elea, a small town on the west coast of Italy, in 515 BCE. He was a student of Xenophanes but did not except his ideas, though Xenophanes' influence can be seen in his work.  He believed that the only truth is through senses.  He believed that the "beliefs of mortals" was not to be trusted and only what is will forever be.  And was is-not is unthinkable.  Therefore genuine thought can only be about what it.
Using the Homeric Hexameter and writing in prose brings the reader into the story, more intriguing to read on for the average man versus normal philosophical writings in my own opinion which if a person wanted to change a society, shouldn't you start at the average man?
So the goddess Night tells him "all things" but stresses that he must test everything that is said. And that is the basis of the story minus a chariot ride and meeting some other divine beings.
One thing that really got me thinking was how true he was when he says that what is will always be.  Justice will always be doing what is right.  And what is right will never change.  One person cannot change justice to meet his needs: though some mere mortals have tried eventually time and the hatred of injustice of others catches up to them and Justice prevails.  So why fight for what is unjust when you can not change what is.  

Heraclitus

Heraclitus was born in Ephesus around 540 BCE. He was a member of the aristocracy but turned his back on politics, the normal job for the aristocrats in ancient Greece. He had a reputation of misanthropy (the hatred of other people) and obscurity which led to his nicknames of "the obscure" and "the riddler".
His philosophy.
His cosmological view is seems to be influenced by Xenophales. Having a single divine law that controls and steers the cosmos, called logos.  Where his views change is that he believes people have the capacity to know all of logos, he believes that the most people do not exercise this ability.  Heraclitus tries to bridge the gap between logos and human knowledge pointed out in mytho-poetic traditions.  And believes that learning facts is useless unless used to gain insight into logos.

He seems to be a little full of himself, but does make some strong arguments in how to live ones life.  He constantly talks about digging deeper "You would not discover the limits of the soul although you traveled every road: so deep a logos does it have" Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosopher.
His point in trying to say that even if you knew every road in the world you would have not discovered everything about logos is that he finds facts useless unless they are examined and thought in away that shows how logos interacts with the cosmos.

Xenophanes

I open this post with Xenophanes's rejection of the traditional Greek Olympian gods.  This struck me for a few reasons one being that after reading the trial and death of Socrates, this to me seems like a punishable offense in some city-states in ancient Greece.  Also struck me that he has a belief in a unmoving, but all seeing, all hearing and all thinking god.  Close to what most monotheistic religions of today think of as an All Good, all powerful, and All knowing god (AGAPAK god for short).  He also believes in a gap between what humans can possible know and what this god knows. And to differ from the beliefs that people can know all he makes the distinction between knowing and believing.  This further separating humans and this god. Making another parallel to monotheistic religions of today. He also believed that because we are human we are inclined to believes that gods look like us but if a horse or oxen could draw and think like humans their gods would look like horse or oxen.  He believed that god was non-anthropomorphic or did not look like humans.

Like most pre-socratic philosophers not a lot is know about his life.  He was born in Colophon in Asia Minor, near Miletus, in abut 570 BCE.  He focused on religious and philosophical topics with some poems.  But in later account of his views, he shifted focus on natural philosophy like the Milesians.
 

My thoughts of Class on 1/16/2014

While starting the class Thursday on Homer and Hesiod and how they formed what is known as the Mytho-Poetic tradition and its influence on the creation of philosophy.  Made me think of how philosophy and literature, if approached in the same way can be mistaken as the same subject.  But where philosophy differs from literature is in the message that the author is trying to say. In literature, the story really does not make one ponder a question but simply states a question or problem and gives a solution, with the occasional lesson involved.  But philosophy is different it asks the question then pulls the reader into an argument making them pick a side or ponder an unanswered question. 

This leads me into my thoughts on Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.  These early philosophers started looking past their everyday world and questioned their environment around them.  They looked past the idea that gods caused everything and tried to rationalize their surroundings.  Thales thought that things were made up of water in one form or the other. While Anaximander believed things were made up of boundless things and not water.  Since water has its own form it cannot become something else. So he claims the cosmos is made up of something that is boundless.  While Anaximenes agrees in material monoism, he differs from both Thales and Anaximander of what the material is. He thinks the material is Aer which is a thick mist.  Aer is indefinite to the point it can create other things but not as vague as Anaximander's definition.