Posts

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 ...

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...

Its been a while

Its been way too long since I posted on here! This last semester I took Intro to Philosophy and learned so much and have been annoying anyone and everyone who will listen with this fact and I have been taking the time in between semesters to just devour books and again have been annoying everyone with this new information and I want to put it down in text and plan to do so hopefully a post a week or so!    

Empathy

 Today Ive been thinking about empathy especially in America right now. I don't necessarily think people in general lack it, I just think people misunderstand how to relate to it. It seems to me that when we develop empathy we go through stages where initially we are told that "You wouldn't like this to happen to you so you shouldn't do that to someone else" and we can logically deduce this idea. Then this later leads into this way of thinking of "This is sad, how would this affect me/ how DOES this affect me?" as if we are the main character of our and everyone else's life and that's not how it should work. Not to say this warped idea of empathy is BAD when the alternative is a world of uncaring sociopaths, but we need to come to an understanding as a society that the world does not in fact revolve around us but that doesn't mean we cant understand and connect with other people.  This concept of a Me-centric world needs to be reevaluated by ...

SEP

 I found a really great website that summarized an absolute TON of Philosophic ideas! Its called the "SEP Society" https://leibniz.stanford.edu/ Fantastic resource. If you join for $10 a year you get access to download any of their articles in PDF form (Up to 5 a day) or for $25 a year you get unlimited access but otherwise its completely free so definitely check it out!

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!

Free Will and Friends

       So the last month or so Ive been noticing a lot of talk (or writing I guess) about the concept of Free Will or really more of the lack there-of. I bought a book for my birthday specifically on the subject even and found a lot in it that I didn't agree with and a lot of arguments I felt weren't very well backed up or argued but it got me thinking and talking and a common theme I've noticed is that everyone seems to define "Free Will" something along the lines of "Thought or action free from any outside influence" which is ludicrous to think about.     And I really wanted to post here about my remarkable progress on the subject and how Ive come up with a better alternate definition because a day ago I would have sat on my high horse and claimed to and then my friends humbled me and got me thinking even more than the initial spur.     I and a friend initially settled on the suitably vague definition of "Thought or action free from an...