Welcome!

Hi everyone! My name is Joe Atwood and I am an aspiring philosopher who has been working in a factory for the last fifteen years of their life. Ive started this blog to house whatever musings and silly thoughts that pop into my head while im at work and to showcase things im learning in school. To be honest, it will probably mostly be me thinking out loud but I am always open to comments of all kinds but especially discussions of whatever I'm rambling about!

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Charting a New Course: From Boat Parts to First Principles

       Its occurred to me that I've never set down on this blog exactly why I decided to pursue a career in philosophy, rather than keep up gainful work in a factory as I've been doing the last 15 or so years so Id like to make this my origin story of sorts.      As many people that know me know, I have been a philosophic thinker most of my life, if not all. Starting with my parents who started me off with a solid grounding in Christian ethics and, though they may not have thought of it in such a way, Existentialism, especially my father.      Growing up I was always encouraged to ask questions, even hard ones to my parents, whether it be about simple things like fairness in arguing with my sister or with more complex things like how you can't always trust everyone you meet and how, even if you mostly agree with someone, that doesn't always make that someone right.       I was raised with the Existentialist ideals of ...
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Fear and Trembling - by Soren Kierkegaard

      A book  about the Biblical story of Abraham and his intended sacrifice of his son Isaac, Kierkegaard reflects on how faith relates to ethics and how it ultimately transcends ethical standards.      Throughout the book Kierkegaard establishes the classically existential idea of the absurd in relation to Abraham’s plight and reflects on how an absurd situation such as this cannot have a rational reaction. Abraham is commanded by God to sacrifice his son Isaac because it is what Abraham values most in the world. Kierkegaard expounds on how deliberate and terrifying this must have been for Abraham while he made the trip to the top of the mountain with his son and asks the obvious question of “Could any of us make the same choices?”      From what I understand, Kierkegaard viewed the story of Abraham as a blueprint for his relationship with God. He makes the point that God, forever loving and magnanimous, would reward anyone w...
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A lighter note

So when I was in my intro to logic class this semester my professor at one point was talking about Descartes and his skepticism and I described it to a friend of mine with an example that was something along the lines of "Imagine you have a favorite pen. One that you know everything about, all the sights smells feel etc. and one day you let me bring it home as a favor and I bring it back to you the next day just totally burnt up. Its no longer the same color, shape, size, feel, any of that. How do you know its the same pen you gave me?" thinking I was being a real smartie with the thought experiment. Fast forward a month or two and I'm reading Descartes's meditations and come across the exact same thought experiment, only using a block of wax instead of a pen. My "original idea" turned out to be something like 500 years old. So I got a real kick out of the irony of that but at the very least I'm thinking like a philosopher!
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